The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010, Carolyn Kephart

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Other works by Carolyn Kephart on Smashwords: ‘Regenerated’ and ‘The Kind Gods’ (short fiction). Visit the author’s website at http://carolynkephart.com.

The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

Foreword by the Author

I had always intended that the story of Ryel Mirai should be contained in a single volume, but fate ordained that the tale was divided into two parts, Wysard and Lord Brother. Due to page constraints, fully half of the initial manuscript had to be excised. That, however, was in the age of paper. I’ve combined both volumes into one book and restored much of the original text. The current version is 40% larger than the original combined two-volume set.

A map of the story's world will be appearing soon on my website.

The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

Chapter One

Markul the Best and Highest rose in sharptoothed towers eternally enmeshed in mist, a bristling walled island of black and green and gray that surged up from the flat sweep of the Aqqar Plain as if the continual damps had spawned it overnight. In the skin-smooth, horizon-vast steppe this citadel was the sole interruption. It had dominated the plain for a thousand years, and Ryel had lived within its walls for nearly half of his birth-life. By the reckoning of Markul he was twelve years old, a mere child; by the reckoning of the World he was twice that and two years more.

He stood on the western wall, scanning the gray-brown mist-obscured monotony of the land. Night was coming on, he knew, although in Markul one seldom perceived the transition from day to darkness, so thick were the fogs. One might never discern the sun was setting, but for the faintest hint of radiance on a horizon only guessed at. Far beyond the endless overcast lay the Inner Steppes, Ryel's homeland, and countless times he had stood at this place on the wall, remembering the World-years of his boyhood. But now though his eyes were again fixed on the uncertain dusk, Ryel's contemplation roamed not to vast lands and swift horses. His thoughts made his eyes burn, and his breath come painfully.

Edris had been dead almost a month, now. In the reckoning of Markul he had died young, on the threshold of his thirtieth year. Even the World would have deemed him dead too soon at fifty-eight. His body had been carried in great state to the jade tower at the joining of the western and southern wall, where among the most illustrious of the City's lord adepts Edris lay as an equal.

Ryel drew his cloak about him against the cold—Edris' great mantle of dark scarlet. You are great in death as you were in life, my teacher, he thought, his sorrow heavy within him. But I cut that life short. With my pride I killed you, dearer to me than father. All because overreaching ambition would not let me rest, driving me to seek knowledge beyond reason or my own desert. And now —

A stifling oppression drove the thought from his mind and the breath out of his body, even as an alien voice arose from some chartless place within him, murmuring at the base of his brain, making him sweat. But though it answered his meditations, it was not the voice of Edris.

Fool, it sneered. Fool, to mourn that lumbering botcher, and squander your sweet young life and limit your Art among these graybeard dotards. To have wasted your self's substance in this desolate place, when the World and all its pleasures has waited for you. To have never had a woman—

Ryel put his hands to his temples as he labored to breathe. He stared about him, wildly. Uselessly. "Who are you?"

An insinuating snicker in reply. You'll learn. But no enemy, young blood. Far from it.

The air lightened, and Ryel could draw breath again. Sharp wind struck him full in the face, pushing back the hood of his cloak, chilling the sweat that had sprung upon his cheeks, prickling the nape of his shaven head, thrusting icy fingers into the rents of his robes. Those few who also stood on the wall had turned toward him in astonishment when he cried out to the air, and now they whispered among themselves. Hushed though their voices were, Ryel heard them.

"No," Lord Ter," he said, resigned and weary, to the one who stared most fearfully at him. "I haven't gone mad…yet."

Lord Ter paled yet more, and ran a trembling hand through his ragged white beard. "I never thought you might, my Lord Ryel. Lord Wirgal and Lady Haldwina and I were merely remarking our pleasure at seeing you in health, and unmarked by your late ordeal."

"Unmarked. Yes. In every place but one." And Ryel turned to face them, meeting their eyes with his. They recoiled, huddling back against the stones of the wall.

"Yes," Ryel continued. Every word he spoke came lead-heavy. "Mine were eyes you used to praise once, Lady Haldwina—a color that people who have seen the World call sea-blue." He gave a bitter smile. "You do not praise them now."

"You looked upon forbidden things," the lady replied, veiling her face with a fold of her headdress. "For that you lost your eyes."

"Not lost," Ryel said. His voice felt too tight for his throat, and each syllable came forced. "I still see. But it seems that all of you have gone blind. I assure you that I have not changed in any way since—"

"Worse than blind you look," Lord Wirgal snarled. "All black. No white or color in those accursed eyes of yours—only continued black. It does not affright us, that have seen true horrors in our time; but it marks you forever as an Overreacher."

Ryel smiled. It felt strange on his face, and probably looked so. "Is it not the aim of our Art, to learn all that may be learned?"

"Our Art is in the service of life, and the aim of our Art is Mastery, not death-dealings," Lady Haldwina said, her glance still averted. "You attempted the cruel Art of Elecambron, and in forsaking the true path have been justly punished."

Ryel shook his head in cool negation. "The adepts of Elecambron are our brothers, my lady. And do not forget that the First Ones of this City all attempted the Crossing, notably Lord Garnos who learned the secret of immortality thereby."

"And died of it," old Wirgal hissed. "I will not speak of Lord Aubrel, who returned from the Outer World raving mad according to the Books, and committed the foulest crimes before his miserable end. And what did you gain from the folly that deformed you? Nothing, by your own past admission—nothing save the death of Lord Edris, rest be to his lost soul."

The others shrank back in terror lest Ryel avenge Wirgal's hard words with some malign spell. But the wysard only abruptly turned and without reply moved to another part of the wall, flinching at the burning pain in his eyes, that no tears would now ever cool.

Forcing his thoughts away from intruding voices and rancorous adepts, Ryel again drew his hood over his head and faced away from the night-blurred plain to survey the city of Markul with what was left of the light. Yet again he admired the straight tall sides of the myriad many-angled towers, the intricate mosaics of the streets, the great windows opening to the mist-veiled moon and nebulous sun—all of it wrought in black marble and muted green nephrite, gray basalt and imperial porphyry and dark gold, the cold stone softened by the lush redolent herbs that wreathed the balconies and windows and trailed down the walls. Before he had come to Markul, Ryel had never seen buildings of stone, and what had amazed him at fourteen enthralled him still. He grew calm again, and breathed deeply of the herb-scented mist.

"Of all the Cities you are fairest," he murmured. "Most high, and best."

There were four strongholds of the Art, one at each quadrant of the compass: Markul to the east, Tesba south, Ormala west and Elecambron far, far to the north. Brilliant and gaudy Tesba was built of many-colored glass, drab dirty Ormala of wood and brick and plaster. Great Elecambron towered coldly pale as the icebound island it stood on in the eternal snows of the White Reaches, constructed all of adamantine rock that was neither marble nor alabaster, but something a hundredfold harder and utterly flawless. Tesba and Ormala were cities of the flesh, Markul and Elecambron those of the spirit; and Markul was deemed the strongest and best of the Four. Proud and haughty was Elecambron; but even Elecambron deferred to Markul, with a respect that was entire, however unloving.

The Builders of Markul—Garnos of Almancar, Nilandor of Kursk, Aubrel of Hryeland, Riana of the Zinaph Isles, Khiar of Cosra, Sibylla of Margessen—had founded the first and greatest City of the Art. Shunned and persecuted by the World of men, they had sought refuge in the barren ruleless regions of the Aqqar Plain that drove a thin wedge between the realms of Turmaron and Shrivran and the wide empire of Destimar. Joining mind to mind as other men join hands, the Builders had created massive reality from mere imagination, their visions of peace and strong-walled security translated into the fortress of Markul.

Elecambron the cruel had been created by malignant daimons of the Outer World, Ormala the vile by human slaves, Tesba the gentle by beneficent spirits; but great Markul had sprung solely from the psychic imagination of the First and Highest, and in a thousand years had suffered no harm whether from the passage of ages or the wrath of enemies. Such sublime Art as theirs was known and revered as the Mastery; and since the passing of the Builders none of the adepts of Markul had succeeded in equaling their forbears' glory.

Ryel ran a reverent hand over the glass-smooth surface of the parapet, as with the same wonder and awe of his first days in the City he beheld the beauty of the place that had for almost half his life been his home. "Lovely you are indeed, Markul the Good. Lovely even now that I am alone within your walls." As he embraced a porphyry column with one arm, his robe's wide sleeve slipped down to his bicep. In that moment the air closed in around him, and the voice again intruded into his thoughts, its soft insinuation laced with a connoisseur's approval.

Most impressive, it breathed. A warrior's muscles, yours; tall and strong you are amid these creeping hags and half-men. We're far from the paltry tents and stinking herds of the Inner Steppes, yes. But there are greater cities than this, young blood. Fair cities with women in them fairer still. And there's more. Far more.

Ryel had at first stiffened in anger at this new intrusion, but temptation warred with anger, and won. The wysard pushed his sleeve down to his wrist and turned from the city to the voice, slowly. "Show me more, then."

The voice laughed. And then it seemed that the nebulous gloom beyond the wall filled with white-flecked blue, a living burning blue such as Ryel had never known. The wind of the plain no longer howled and moaned, but calmed to a steady breathing, each breath deep and deliberate as a sleeper's. Ryel clutched at the parapet, leaning out. And it seemed then that the mists parted to reveal diamond-clear daylight, and the sun fell full on the infinite azure that now rippled and tossed in great waves, surrounding the city and dashing against the walls.

Ryel winced at the brilliant light, his eyes burnt and smarting with salt. But only for a moment before darkness again closed around him in drizzling mist, and a harsh wind tried to claw away his cloak.

"Again," Ryel whispered, imploring the air. "Show me again."

No voice's reply, no sea's resurgence. Chilled and weary, Ryel pulled his hood forward against the damp, then slowly descended the wall. As he made his way through the several levels of the town to his dwelling, he passed here and there small knots of mages in discussion, witches trading lore on lamp-lit doorsteps. As he passed, they all greeted him with mumbled formalities, low bows and downcast eyes, and fell silent until he had gone. Reaching his house after many courses of stone steps, Ryel entered and shut the door tightly.

Here was peace, and warmth, and silence. The clutter and paraphernalia usual with a wysard's apartments were absent here, for Ryel's learning had long surpassed the necessity for outward Art-trappings. Thick-piled jewel-colored carpets covered the dark stone floors, and deep cushions of soft leather and figured velvet served as seats, for Ryel still used the custom of his yat-dwelling people. Low tables displayed objects chosen for their beauty, long shelves contained books and scrolls. Flowers sprang from vessels of jade and crystal: straight slender irises, purple-blue; crimson lilies whose petals curled like clever tongues; the poppy of sleep with its pallid bloom scenting the air with lazy fragrance, and other blossoms of rarer shape and hue that Ryel's caprice had formed and brought to life. The east room was a chamber of repose, all soft browns and violets and greens, its walls heavily draped with tapestries so worn by time that it was difficult to discern their subjects, that kept out the equivocal half-light and damp wind of the Aqqar Plain. Its wide bed was curtained with thick silk, and the pillows were filled with fragrant herbs to induce slumber, needful for Ryel who often spent entire nights and days rapt in his study of the Art, until exhausted he fell on his bed unable to sleep for the fevered racing of his thoughts; here he was lured into a spice-scented oblivion, deep and dreamless.

He lay down and waited for that deliverance which had never failed—until now. Sleep he could not, and he dreamed with his eyes open.

*****

In the winter of Ryel's thirteenth World-year, Edris came to Risma. As the snow fell in the night had Edris come, and as quietly.

"The only problem with a yat is that there's no door to knock on."

At the sound of that voice, so deep and ironic, Ryel started about. A stranger stood framed in the yat's inner portal, without a trace of snow upon his great scarlet mantle, although yet another blizzard howled outside. The mantle's hood shrouded his face save for a white gleam of teeth, a keen glint of eye.

Ryel's father leapt to his feet at the sight of him, his hand on the knife at his side. "Who are you? How did you get past my guards?"

A laugh, warmly resonant, in reply. The stranger threw off his cloak and now spoke in the dialect of the Inner Steppes, although his first words had been in Almancarian. "Well met in this rough weather, twin-sib."

Yorganar took a step backward. "By every god."

The newcomer was clad not in Steppes gear, but in rich outland robes of somber colors. Hulking tall he was, with dark hair cropped short around his head, skin strangely pale, and shaven face; yet Ryel saw that were his hair long and his skin sunbrowned and his face lined and bearded, he would be the exact image of Yorganar. But the greatest difference lay in his eyes and his expression, both wonderfully subtle and acute. At the sight of him Ryel had heard his mother give a soft half-terrified cry, and felt her shrink close to his side; and he had put his arm about her shoulders and held her as a grown man would, proud and strong. Yet he too was afraid of the stranger in the yat-door, whose long dark eyes burned his face as they studied him.

"By every god," Yorganar said again. His voice trembled for the first time in Ryel's memory. "Edris."

The stranger nodded, unperturbed. "You live well in this weather, brother. I had forgotten how warm are the yats of the Triple Star when the wind blows wild." He gazed around him, noting everything with cool approval. "You've done well. Rich in goods you always were—richer still now, in a fair wife and a strong young son."

"I do not know you," Ryel's father at last replied, rough and harsh.

Edris smiled. Shrugged. "Then give me welcome as your people do for the least of wanderers. That much is mine by right."

Ryel's mother rose and came to them. She looked up into Edris' face as Ryel had never seen her look into Yorganar's, and it troubled him.

"Enter and rest, my husband's brother," she whispered. Yorganar glared at her, but she withstood his displeasure unflinchingly, and spoke ever in her soft way, but now with an edge of defiance. "Whatever else our guest may be, husband, he is your closest kin, and was at one time your dearest. Let him enter."

Ryel's father frowned. "Woman, this is not your concern."

Mira put her hand on Yorganar's arm, lightly but urgently. "He has traveled far. The night is cold. I pray you let him warm himself by our fire."

Yorganar did not look at her. "You know what he is."

Her voice was always gentle, but never with this pleading note. "Whatever else he may be, he is your closest kin, and at one time your dearest; I well know that you loved each other, once. Let him enter."

Yorganar said nothing; but after a long moment he moved aside, and let his brother pass.

Together they sat on the floor's carpets, amid cushions. Edris looked about him and smiled. "I've missed being in a yat. And it's warm in here, thanks to that stove; far warmer than it'd be with a hearth-ring, and cleaner too."

"Yes," Mira murmured. "Many other households do the same, now, in Risma."

Edris nodded. "I remember how greatly you disliked the smoke and grime of the hearth. This is a pleasant change."

Yorganar grunted. "Almancarian nonsense. I prefer fire, as do all men of my people."

Following Steppes custom, Ryel's mother poured out wine for her guest, choosing the finest vintage she had, pouring it brimful into a bowl of gold. Edris took the wine with a nod of thanks, and his hand for an instant closed over hers. Slight and brief as the contact was, Ryel noted it and was angered. Mira saw that anger, and her smile faded.

"I'll leave you now," she said, and would have stood up to depart. But Edris' deep voice stayed her.

"Wait. I have not yet drunk your health, Mira. Nor would I have you withdraw as a Rismai yat-wife feels she must, but keep the custom of Almancar, and remain to grace a stranger's welcome. Yet in truth we were not always strangers to one another, you and I."

Ryel had never in his life heard any man other than his father call his mother by her name. It was unfitting, as it was unfitting for a married woman to remain in the presence of an newcomer after the first greetings were done, or oppose her husband in anything. But his mother was not of the Steppes, and had kept the ways of her city. What shocked Ryel even more was that his father had not ordered her to withdraw, nor rebuked her for her presumption. He felt confused and uneasy at so much law-breaking.

Edris saw Ryel's emotions, and threw an ironic glance at Yorganar. "You've trained your boy well in the ways of the Steppes, brother. I came almost too late, it would seem." Turning from Ryel and Yorganar, he again addressed Mira. "What else has become of the brat, sister? Has he grown up unlettered and ignorant, like every other horse-breeding lout of this tribe?"

"I made sure he did not," Mira answered with quiet pride, glancing tenderly at her son. "Ryel reads and writes fluent Almancarian, both the common and the palace dialect."

Edris' dark brows lifted. "Ha. Impressive. The latter is damnably difficult."

"Ryel learned it easily," Mira said. "And he has come near to mastering two of the Northern languages."

"Good," Edris said, clearly pleased. "What of mathematics? Philosophy? Music?"

"I have caused the best masters to instruct him—"

"—fetched from afar at great cost, and for no good," Yorganar growled. "What need has a horseman of the Steppes for such foolery?"

Edris studied his brother with far more pity than contempt. "A natural question for you to ask, my brother, that have never looked with right understanding upon anything on earth, no matter how marvelous." And his dark eyes moved to Ryel's mother, resting on her face yet again. "No matter how fair. But I tell you that this boy will never be a warrior as you were in your youth, nor a breeder of horses as you are now." He leaned across the fire to Ryel who sat opposite, and looked long on him; and when he spoke it was in Hryelesh, one of the Northern tongues Ryel had learned, one that neither his mother nor his father understood, one that enwrapped him with his uncle in a bond half feared, half desired.

"You're tall for your age," Edris said. "And you'll soon grow taller, but you'll never be as overgrown as I am, lucky lad. In all else you favor your mother—girl-slender, maiden-faced, white-skinned and pale-eyed. I don't doubt the other lads mock you for it."

Ryel dropped his hand to his dagger-hilt and lifted his chin. "No one dares mock me. I've fought and beaten Orin, son of Kiamnur, and he is two years older, and bigger. At the last horse fair I raced with the grown men and won this, that the Sovranet Mycenas himself bestowed upon me." He pulled the dagger from his belt, and the steel flashed in the firelight.

"Ah," Edris said, not in the least impressed. "Mycenas Dranthene, brother to great Agenor, Sovran of Destimar. And what was an imperial prince like Mycenas doing among the Elhin Gazal?"

"He came to buy horses."

Edris glanced at Mira, who averted her eyes. "Is that all?"

Ryel knew what Edris meant, and was angered by it. "If you’re talking about the lies my mother’s old nurse Anthea likes to babble, forget them. Mycenas Dranthene isn’t of our blood."

Edris laughed. "What makes you so sure they're lies, whelp?"

Ryel felt his eyes narrowing. "Don't call me that.”

Edris' grin rivaled the blade's glint. "You're damnably arrogant. What else are you, lad? Come here and let me see."

Half against his will Ryel went from his mother's side and knelt before Edris, who looked long on him, so long that Ryel wished very much to look away, but could not. Edris' next words made him uneasier still.

"Are you still maiden, boy?"

Ryel lowered his head, and his long black hair fell around his suddenly flushed face.

Edris persisted. "What do you not understand—the language, or the question?"

Ryel felt his face burn and sweat. "I understand both," he muttered.

"Then answer."

Ryel blushed deeper, and made no reply.

Edris laughed. "A few kisses with the girls, then? Some toyings and foolings behind the yats?" He savored Ryel's confusion awhile. "Well, that doesn't mean ruin. Good. Your innocence will add immeasurably to your power."

Ryel lifted his head despite himself. "What do you mean?"

"You have the Art within you, asleep but strong," Edris replied. "You betray it in your every action. Having watched you closely since I entered this yat, I have observed that you favor neither your right hand nor your left, but are double-handed as I am. That's a thing rare among ordinary men, but a clear sign of capacity for the Art."

Ryel felt himself enmeshed in Edris' eyes, that were a burning black in his pale face. Felt himself drawn, and changed, and torn. "What is the Art?"

"You'll learn." Edris reached out and laid both hands on his nephew's head, as if in blessing. His long fingers slid into Ryel's hair, and Ryel shuddered at the touch, but not because of fear; rather because it seemed as if he had longed for that contact all his life. He closed his eyes, giving himself up to it. Then he heard Edris' deep voice whispering in a strange tongue, not words so much as a continued murmur like the storm-wind outside. Ryel clenched his teeth, shivering.

The fingers moved like frozen slow currents through his hair. But suddenly they turned to ice-knives, stabbing his temples so cruelly that his senses seemed to reel, and the air to blacken before him.

Edris' voice tore through the blackness, still speaking the guttural tongue of the North. His fingers slid to the back of Ryel's head, seeking the nape. "You were marked for the Art, boy. It found you, and left its stamp. Forever."

"No," Ryel gasped. "Don't touch me. Not there."

But Edris' implacable fingers had found the hard lump of scar tissue. "Remember how you got this, lad. Remember all of it."

At that command and that touch, the light returned—bright sharp high-summer light. Ryel found himself alone in a green infinity of grass, alone save for his horse Jinn that grazed nearby. The air was searing hot, so achingly ablaze that he winced at it, and sweated from crown to heel. But on the horizon in every direction great dark clouds were gathering fast. Shielding his eyes with his hand he watched the lowering masses with increasing disquiet, wondering how it was that they seemed to center on him. Slowly he turned round about, watching the clouds scud ever nearer, the circle of light shrink around him until suddenly there was no light left at all, only endless roiling black. And out of the blackness flashed lightning, bolt after blinding rending bolt—

He would not remember more. He would not relive what came next. He cried out until Yorganar pulled him free.

"Ryel!" Furiously his father turned to Edris. "What have you done to the boy?"

Edris met his twin's eyes, broodingly now. "Nothing but looked within him, and seen what you never could. He can remain in the Steppes no longer. His destiny must bring him to me."

"I'd sooner see him dead." And Yorganar forced Ryel to look away from Edris and into his own eyes, which were so like to his brother's, and yet so unlike. "You know what he is. I've told you often enough."

Edris' voice came deep as the snow outside, and colder. "Have you indeed, brother?" He turned to Ryel. "By all means tell me what I am, whelp."

Angered and still in pain from that terrible looking-in, Ryel rubbed the back of his neck and replied insolently. "You're a foul magician of the sorcerer-city of Markul. A charlatan and a fakir."

"And you're brave," Edris said. But Ryel involuntarily trembled at the cruel edge in the tall man's voice. "Brave and stupid. Anyone else using that tone with me would quickly regret he had, but to you I will only give better instruction. A wysard of Markul I am, yes. More accurately, a lord adept of the most powerful city in the World, compared to which Almancar the Bright is a cluster of huts, and its people simple savages—your pardon, sister. And I am Yorganar's only brother, born of the same womb in the same hour, no matter how much he tries to deny it."

Yorganar turned his face away. "Dead have you been to me for fifteen years."

Edris half smiled. "In complete forgetfulness of the thirty years that went before, years that we raced our horses together across the steppe, together wrestled and sang and talked long into the night of wars…and of women." He gazed across the fire to Mira. "So like to one another did we look in those days that not even the keenest eyes could tell us apart."

Ryel's mother spoke after a long silence, her sweet voice laden with anguish. "My brother, surely you cannot—"

Edris nodded, and replied gently. "I know your sorrow, Mira. Three children have you borne, and of them only Ryel has survived infancy. But I can promise you that in seven months' time you will give birth again. For some weeks you have known yourself to be with child, and you dared not speak of it."

Ryel had watched the stranger as he spoke; had seen how those dark eyes dwelt on every feature of his mother's face, and was infuriated by it.

His father was angrier. "This goes too far." Yorganar reached for his sword. "You jeer at her, and me. I will no longer—"

Edris remained unperturbed. "Put up your tagh, brother. It's a good blade, but mine's faster. Mira, you may tell him your secret at last."

Ryel's mother hid her face in her hands. "I feel the child within me," she whispered. Her hands slid down to her waist, and joined together just below her belt. "But I am afraid. So afraid."

Yorganar turned angrily first to his brother, then his wife. "How is it you knew her secret? And woman, why did he know it before me?"

"Don't use that voice with her." Edris' own voice was dangerous. "What I know, my Art has taught me." He turned to Ryel's mother. "Little star."

At the sound of that name, uttered with such gentleness, Mira looked up, and never had she seemed more lovely to Ryel than at that moment.

Edris' eyes took hers deeply, in a way Ryel knew Yorganar's could have never done, and the boy felt lost and alone as he listened to the stranger's prophecy. "You will bear a daughter fair as daylight, and she will grow to beauty, and wed far above her fortune." Edris darted a glance at Ryel, then, and suddenly grinned in a broad white flash. "But you're mine, brat."

Ryel leapt to his feet. "Get out." He felt as if his heart would burst for fury and fear. "Go your way, and be damned to you."

Ignoring him, Edris turned to Yorganar. "Before I leave, first I would speak with my sister-in-law alone."

Yorganar stared, too amazed for anger. "You know you cannot."

Edris shook his head, almost pityingly. "Your laws were never mine, my brother—nor hers." Reaching to where Ryel's mother sat, he held out his hand. "Farewell, little star."

Mira said nothing in return, and turned her face away at the name he called her. But she put her hand in his, and Edris carried it to his lips and kissed it.

Ryel would bear no more. "Don't touch her!" Lunging forward, he forced Edris to face him. "Touch her again and I'll cut your heart out."

But the look in Edris' dark eyes made Ryel's lifted fist fall helpless at his side. "You fool," the wysard said. "You beautiful young fool. We will meet again, you and I, and soon, and you will ask my mercy on your knees."

Ryel's father shoved between them. "Out of this place at once, warlock, or…"

Edris held up a dismissing hand. "No threats, brother. This is the last that you will ever see of me, I promise. I only ask that you bid me farewell as we used to long ago, before we rode into battle together not knowing if we would ever meet again alive."

"I forgot those days long ago," Yorganar answered. But his voice came tight and strained.

So did Edris'. "I never could, brother. The reek of smoke, and the shouts, and the horses shrilling, and the swords clashing, and you and I so young and wild. The only thing I have forgotten is how many times we saved each other's lives, for they were countless."

With a choked cry of impatience, anger, sorrow, Yorganar caught Edris in his arms, and crushed his cheek against that of his brother's in the warrior's manner of salute and farewell, and kissed Edris' temple in the Steppes way between men of shared blood. Edris returned the kiss, and for a long moment they remained hard embraced, until Yorganar thrust free.

"There. You got what you wanted," he said, his words unsteady. "You always did. Now go."

Edris blinked for an instant as if his eyes yet stung with battle-smoke. "I thank you, brother, for remembering at last. Farewell." He turned to Ryel, then, and his infuriating grin flashed once more. "To you, whelp, no goodbyes, for in a year's time you and I will meet."

When Edris had departed, Mira stood dazed for a moment, then pushed past Ryel and Yorganar and ran out of the yat, calling his name. Ryel would have bolted after her, but Yorganar caught him.

"Let her go, lad."

"But father, she—"

"I said let her go." He stood behind Ryel, holding him fast by both shoulders. "She has a right. And when she returns, leave her alone about this." He shook him. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," Ryel said at last. "But it's wrong. She—"

"She is from another land than ours, with other laws. Even as he is, now."

"I'll never be like him. I'll die first."

Behind his back Yorganar's voice—deep like his brother's, but rougher—came musing and still. "You say that now, lad. But he may be right—that you can be mine no longer." The great heavy hands released him suddenly, with a terrible hint of a shove. "And perhaps you were never meant to be."

*****

A year later, Ryel stood before the gates of Markul, and Edris looked down upon him from the wall.

"So you've come," the deep voice rang. "Even as I said."

Ryel encircled his mare's neck with a weary arm, shivering in the dank mist. "I've traveled more miles than I can count, alone in this wasteland. Jinn's nearly dead with thirst." Ryel himself was weak with hunger, but he was damned if he'd ever let Edris know.

The hulking wysard uttered a word in some strange tongue, and in that instant a spring of water bubbled up out of the ground at Ryel's feet. "There's for the beast."

Ryel leapt away from the water, and sought to pull his horse back from it. "No, Jinn! Don't drink." But Jinn would not be kept from the spring no matter how hard her mane was twitched.

"Let your mare be," Edris said. "The water will give her strength. Take some of it yourself—I know you're dry."

Parched beyond bearing though he was, Ryel would have sooner died than touch that water. The effort it took to turn away from the rilling clear stream used up the last of his strength. "And now what?" he asked, his voice rusky and trembling with the struggle. "Now that I'm here at your damned witch-fortress, may I not enter?"

The tall wysard shrugged. "What are you here for?"

Ryel was far too spent for rage. "That's for you to tell me," he muttered.

"I didn't hear you, whelp."

Licking cracked lips, Ryel repeated what he'd said. Edris seemed pleased. "Good. Such humility becomes you, after your latter insolence. I will let you enter here, lad. But only you. Not your horse, nor your clothes, nor anything else you have with you. Naked and alone you must join the brotherhood."

Ryel clutched Jinn's mane, all his thirst and hunger and bone-weariness traded for this new pain. "No. I won't. My father gave me his sword that he wielded in battle, and this horse, the best of his herd. She's like a little sister to me. I cannot—"

Edris was inexorable. "Throw away your World-trash, brat. Unsaddle and unburden the animal, and let it go."

Ryel's hand shook as it stroked Jinn's side. "But…I can't."

Edris made no reply, waiting with folded arms. During the silence Ryel at last did as he was commanded, because he had come too far to do otherwise. But he buried his face against Jinn's neck first, hiding his wet-eyed misery in her mane.

"Good," Edris said, as Jinn galloped away from Markul and was lost in the mist. "Now strip."

A desperate blush burnt Ryel's face. He had from the first observed that scattered all about in front of the towering wall were little heaps of belongings, garments and satchels and saddlebags. He had not known why. And now there were other watchers on the wall, some of them women.

"We all came naked into Markul, lad," Edris said, coolly merciless. "You've nothing we haven't seen before, believe me. Get on with it."

In furious haste Ryel unfastened his clothes and let them drop, kicked them aside and fell to his knees in the dust. Long he waited there with his head bowed. Then he heard the groan of creaking iron as the great doors swung open, pushed by unseen strength.

"Well?"

It was Edris' voice, nearby now. "I am here, even as you said," Ryel whispered, hoarse with wretchedness and exhaustion. "Make of me what I must be."

Edris seized Ryel's long black hair, wrapped it around his hand and yanked it back, forcing the boy to raise his head and show his face, now stained with dirt and tears.

"What shall be done with this young fool? Tell me, any of you."

Edris spoke in High Almancarian to the watchers on the wall, and was answered in the same tongue. "Send him back. He is but a little child," old Lord Srinnoul had said. "No one so young ever felt the Art within him."

"He has felt it since his birth," Edris replied. "I know this, because I have watched over his growing. And as for his youth, all of you remember that before him, I was the youngest ever to come to Markul."

"You were more than twice the age of this boy," Lord Ter had said. "Let him go back to his mother."

"I say no." Lady Serah's voice had come strong and clear. "Let him enter. We've need of new blood." Her voice warmed and teased, then, making Ryel heat all over with acutest distress. "He's no hardship on the eyes, is he? Well-grown in every respect."

Lady Elindal shook her head, stirring her gray-yellow braids. "I beg you send him back, Lord Edris. We all of us came to Markul after our youth was spent—after we had lived in the World, loved, borne children, joyed and sorrowed. This poor lad is on the threshold of manhood—let him know the pleasure and the strength of it."

"He will know both to the limit, my lady sister," Edris said. "But not in the World's way. This brat was born to the Art. And he's a pure virgin, too—or are you still, boy?"

Ryel trembled for weariness and hunger and rage and shame. "I am," he muttered.

This news caused a sensation among the watchers on the wall, who murmured among themselves. At last Lord Srinnoul spoke.

"If it is as you say and he affirms, let him enter. But this place may prove his death. Tell him that."

Edris looked down into Ryel's face. "He knows."

Ryel lowered his eyes to the dirt, where his bare knees quivered. "I am at your mercy, kinsman," he whispered. "I have come to you empty. Whether life or death awaits me, I no longer care."

Edris again put his hand to Ryel's hair, but gently now. "Good," he said, his long fingers smoothing the wind-tangled locks. "That's as it should be. Enter and welcome." For a moment Edris looked down at Ryel's forsaken World-gear, his wide underlip caught in his big teeth as he stared at Yorganar's sword. And to Ryel's mingled anxiety and joy, he reached for the weapon, unsheathing it to examine the perfection of its making. "My brother's tagh," he murmured, revery mingling with his admiration. "An uncommon blade. But heavy." Then a grin flashed over his face, and he shoved the sword back into its lacquered scabbard, slinging it over his shoulder. "We'll see how it does against mine. Come on, whelp."

Edris raised Ryel to his feet, and they went into the City together. As soon as they had entered the gates, Edris took off the great red-purple cloak he wore, and wrapped it about his young kinsman, and led him to his house.

*****

How well I remember that time, Ryel thought as the memory ebbed. Remember the wind of the plain, raw and cold on my nakedness, and the warmth of Edris' mantle as it enfolded me. But now…

He rose from his sleepless bed, took up the cloak, drew it about him, and went out into the night.

Never were the dead of Markul buried or burned. They were taken to the great tower at the southwest corner of the city, where they lay in rich robes, preserved from corruption by consummate Mastery. Some had lain there for nearly a millennium, yet to all seeming had died but that very hour. In a rich chamber at the tower's top, in wondrous state, were laid the bodies of all the First of Markul—save for that of Lady Riana of Zinaph, who had departed the City in secret, and gone no one knew where. Every day since Edris' death Ryel had climbed the many steps of the tower, entered the cold room where his uncle lay, and stood over the inert figure, wrung with meditation. He stood there now, in the light of torches whose undying Art-wrought radiance seemed to mock the lifeless forms it illumined.

Ryel pushed back the cloak's hood. The chill air shuddered across his naked scalp. "You would approve, ithradrakis," he said, using the Almancarian word that Edris had never in life acknowledged, his voice a numb echo on the stone walls. "I mourn you in Steppes fashion, head shorn and robes rent."

Edris lay unmoved. Half-open were his slant dark eyes, half-parted his lips. In the wide mouth the big teeth gleamed in something very like a grin.

I loved you, Ryel thought, staring down in numb anguish at the tall still form. I would have died in your place. But it was I that struck you down. Show me how to bring you back, because I am at the end of my skill. I have attempted everything, even the forbidden spells of the First. Ithradrakis, dearer to me than father—

And it seemed to Ryel that he would die, too, from the intolerable burning and stinging of his lightless eyes, the torment of unsheddable tears. He lifted Edris' limp dead hands to his forehead, and after that gesture of respect took his leave.

"I cannot find your help in this City, kinsman," he said to himself. "I must ask Elecambron."

Tesba and Ormala used the Art for pleasure or for gain, but Elecambron and Markul were refuges for those who, having dwelt in the World and grown discontented with the common lot of their lives, sought a deeper wisdom. Both of the Two Great Cities believed in the existence of the rai, the vital force which animated the corporeal form; but Markul held that death of the body inevitably meant death for the rai, while Elecambron put full conviction in the rai's immortality. The Markulit Art was in the service of life, and to that end the adepts of that City made the Mastery their chief concern; but for cold Elecambron the after-workings of death were its focus of study, and the Crossing its highest aim.

Among Worldlings, the possibility of existence after the grave was a tenet of belief devoutly held by the credulous of many persuasions, but in Elecambron one sought ascertainable proof. Endeavors to reach the threshold of death and look beyond were achieved only through great trials by the Northern brotherhood, and experiments with many spells; so perilous was the Crossing that most attempted it only when very old. Those of lesser ability died trying; those of the greatest skill survived, though never without some cost to body or mind. Markul's wysards considered the Crossing more a dangerous game than a worthy endeavor, and only a handful of that brotherhood had ever tried it in all the City's history. Ryel had known the risks, but had expected that his youth and powers would have taken him safely to that terrible bourne and back again. Never had he dreamed that Edris would pay for that journey with his life.

"I call Michael of Elecambron."

Ryel spoke to the mirror that hung in his conjuring-chamber, the reflectionless Glass. The name he uttered was that of his great rival, Lord Michael Essern. Once before they had met thus, and once only; it had been at Michael's instigation, and had not been a cordial encounter.

Long he waited, and called again; and at last a face appeared, seeming more a mask than human flesh--a mask of gray leather that had been left out in a harsh winter, and crushed flat.

The mask's lipless mouth moved, proving it toothless as well. "Who dares this?"

Ryel stared, aghast and amazed. "Lord Michael?"

The mask's mouth quirked upward at both corners, as if pulled by hooks. "Hardly. Michael has left this City."

Ormalan sorcerers routinely trafficked with mere men, and the enchanters of Tesba on occasion returned to the World; but so infrequently did those of the two greatest Cities, scarce once in every decade, that Ryel was as much perturbed as surprised. "Lord Michael has departed Elecambron? But when was this?"

"Two years ago, after attempting the Crossing, and returning with eyes like yours. I was his instructor while he dwelt here, and assisted him in the spell. Here, I am known as Kjal."

Ryel bent his head in recognition and respect. "I ask your pardon, Lord Kjal. Your abilities are famed in my City, and perhaps I should have sought you first."

"Call me only by my name, Markulit. I know you, even with your long locks rased. The proud Ryel, that meddled where he shouldn't have, and sent a better than himself howling into the black beyond. Look at me. I said look."

Flinching at Kjal's taunt Ryel raised his head, revealing his empty eyes. The Elecambronian laughed in a hyena's hoarse cough.

"Did you summon Michael for that? To show him how your pretty face has changed?"

"No. I came for help."

"And what help do you think Michael would have given? He scorned you. He told me as much."

Ryel felt his face growing hot as he remembered his first and only conversation with Michael Essern. "I seek any help at all. Edris was dear to me. He died untimely. If there is any way I can bring him back—"

The hooks of Kjal's mouth twitched. "You cannot. Leave it at that."

"No one knows more than you about the ways of death. Surely your Art has the power to--"

"Be silent, boy." Those cold words chilled Ryel mute, and after a long while, Kjal spoke again, his voice a blurry weary wheeze. "There is no resurrection. I have taken corpses and made them walk and talk. Dog's tricks. Mountebankery. Anyone with the stomach for it can instill a srih of the Outer World into the dead, and have it animate the body for as long as desired. We of Elecambron can all of us animate a corpse in a crude way. The cleverest of us—myself and a handful of others—can cause the srih to subsume the traits and qualities of the dead man, or woman, and so cause a cadaver to seem quite passably alive. But it never fools for long."

Yet I have been duped by it, Ryel thought, feeling his stomach cramp as he recalled, for a sickening instant, his fifth Markulit year and a beautiful woman with a laugh like crystal when it shatters, who had come to him in the night and—

Kjal’s shrug banished the memory. "The corpse eventually rots, and gives away the game rather nastily. You Markulits have your Jade Citadel to keep your dead fresh; we here in Elecambron have plenty of ice. But interestingly enough, Michael spoke of the Joining-spell not long before he left. That, and a voice which intruded upon his thoughts, giving him no rest."

Ryel started. "A voice?"

"Aye. Michael Essern is not one to hear voices, nor to obey when they command; but this one he gave ear to. It claimed to belong to none other than Dagar Rall."

Ryel felt a shudder crawl over him, but fought to keep his face calm. "All the Cities know of Dagar. He was a monster. But he lived centuries ago, and even monsters die."

Kjal's mouth twitched. "You are sure?"

Ryel winced as his skin crept. "Kjal, what do you mean?"

"I think you understand. Your City teaches that death of the body is death of the rai—death entirely. And we of Elecambron have for a thousand years done all we could to disprove you, to no avail. But nevertheless one cannot deny that many of the Art-brotherhood—you and my student Michael the most recent—have stood on the edge of existence, and sensed the shadow-land between being and unbeing. It is my belief that Dagar could well be trapped there, seeking a way to return to the World."

"But Dagar was slain by the entire population of your City, who banded together to destroy him. It took all their Art to do so, and his body was burned with fire so consuming that not even ashes were left. Even were his rai able to escape, it has nothing to return to."

Kjal just barely shook his head. "There is a moment where body and rai part, on the edge of death. In that instant, with the right Art, Dagar's rai could readily find a home again in another form." Again the hooks twitched upward. "Yours would suit him wonderfully. The irony of it."

Ryel felt Kjal's eyes on him like crawling pale slugs, and shrugged as if to shake them off. "The Joining-spell you speak of was created by Lord Garnos of this City, and lost long ago. No one of the Brotherhood now possesses the Art to re-create it."

"That's all as may be." Kjal's eyes finally blinked. "I didn't think I'd miss Michael as much as I do. He was young. Good to look upon. Trouble." The hideous mask hardened. "Existence is a curse, Ryel Mirai. Do not call upon me again."

The Glass darkened. Ryel for a long time stood looking at the blank surface, and then moved to the great chair that stood in the center of the room, and sank into it as he buried his face in his hands.

But even amid the most secret of his thoughts, the voice that had whispered to him on the wall spoke again, out of a swelter of oppressive air.

Ah, sweet eyes. What good to be greatest, if it be fool among fools? I that have shown you water can show you the World. Look here.

Ryel looked up, and found himself in a market-square of a city all unlike Markul. The buildings and towers of this place were of pale stone, alabaster and sweet-hued marble beautifully wrought. The wysard could smell fresh water, and rare spices, and almonds; could see merchants' stalls heaped with rare goods, mosaic-lined canals alive with shimmering fish, throngs of people hastening to and fro under a sun so brilliant and hot that his eyes dazzled and his skin glowed. And he heard music, bells, peremptory voices.

"Make way for the Sovrena Diara!"

A long slender boat, airy and graceful in the crystalline spangled blue of the canal, halted at the steps of a temple—the House of the Goddess Atlan, as the carving on the portals made clear. Half-naked slaves draped in jewels plied the oars, while soldiers in golden mail and ladies gorgeously clad guarded and attended a pavilion set in the midst of the deck. Ryel could discern a human form behind the translucent hangings—a woman's form, surpassingly beautiful. And when the curtains parted—

The vision vanished.

"Show me more," Ryel said, leaning forward, fighting for breath. "I saw her only for an instant."

Aha, the voice laughed. And to what purpose? Are you not dead from the waist down, Markulit?

It was a strange voice, of neither sex; its final words recalled Ryel to himself.

"I am Ryel Mirai, son of Yorganar that was," he said aloud. "A citizen of Markul. The Art and my life are one. I heed no voices but those that I myself call for; and I will no longer listen to you, whatever you be."

He rose, and would have left the conjuring-chamber; but the voice came again at his back, burning his bare nape.

Do not listen, then, the voice said. Look. Only look.

All unwilling Ryel turned again. Once more he was in the midst of pale lovely buildings, amid music and brilliant light; and the curtains parted, and the Sovrena Diara came forth. "Ah," breathed Ryel; and beyond that he was speechless.

Her body was veiled in film upon dawn-tinted film of translucent silk, her face concealed by a half-mask glittering with jewels, but Ryel could discern past these coverings that she was far fairer than the riches that covered her—whiter than the pearls that hung in strings from her diadem, with eyes more heaven-blue than the sapphires about her delicate neck, and lips brighter than the rubies encircling her wrists; and no stone drawn from any of the earth's mines could be precious enough to equal the beauty of her hair, that hung in loose smooth tresses and gem-entwined plaits—hair like black satin rope, heavy and gleaming.

Just turned of eighteen, the voice continued mercilessly. Beneath her silks, all the answers to men's riddles: nothing more slender than her waist. Nothing softer and sweeter than her breasts. Nothing smoother than her back, straighter than her legs. Nothing—

"Enough," Ryel rasped, dry-mouthed.

It seemed, then, that Diara looked directly at him, her gaze at once imperious and inviting. But beyond that Ryel saw something else behind the mask, something that disturbed him—a desperate pleading that froze out his desire. Yet only for an eyeblink, until her jewels flashed and glittered under the white sun with unbearable intensity, forcing him to close his eyes. When he opened them again he was alone, in cold darkness dispelled only by a single candle.

Aye, the voice at his elbow murmured. Light is hard to bear, after years spent in dank fogs and shadows. And lust is even harder...or is it, eunuch?

"Leave me," Ryel snapped. "Leave me and never return." And he said a spell-word of dismissal, a strong one; but the voice only laughed.

I'm no srih-servant, to be commanded. Nor can you so easily rid yourself of yourself, young blood. But enough of visions. Time now to get your hands full of the World. The World you have been locked away from for a dozen weary years.

"I cannot return to the World." The wysard blinked burning lids, thinking of the beautiful girl who could never look upon him save with horror. "I cannot. Not with these eyes."

The World does not see with the Art-brotherhood's acuity, the voice replied, its sly whine laced with honey. It will behold you as you once were.

Hope wrestled down disbelief. "Explain," Ryel breathed, clutching the arms of his chair.

Only one learned in the Art can discern an Overreacher.

Ryel leapt up. "How is it you know that? Tell me!"

A long while he stood waiting. But he knew by the quality of the air, by a sudden lightening of the atmosphere, that whatever had spoken had departed to whatever place it came from.

Chapter Two

Ryel slept little and badly after that day. Even though the voice did not torment him again, it had destroyed his powers of concentration and his desire for study. The wysard found himself wasting that most precious of his possessions, time. He would sit for hours at his great window that opened onto the Aqqar, watching mist succeed mist, waiting for he knew not what, anxious in his heart for reasons he could not explain. No human form came out of the mist during his watching, nor did he expect it; during the twelve years since his admittance into Markul only three aspirants had emerged from the fog and approached the eastern gates to petition for entry. One of them had been turned away for a madwoman and another for a fool, and the third had lived only months after entering the gates.

Our numbers were ever few, Ryel thought as he looked down at the ground just outside the walls, at the scattered clusters of garments and belongings, most of them wonderfully rich, left behind by those who had been taken into the city. Some hundreds of souls; never more than two hundred at any time. And save for myself, all old, old—Lord Katen the oldest since Lord Srinnoul's death, with his century and a half, or two hundred years if one counts by the reckoning of the World. In Markulit reckoning I am but twelve, not much less than the age I'd attained in the World when I came to this place; and now I feel as if I have lived both lives in a void .

His impenetrable eyes rested on the humblest of the garment-heaps, one made up of the common gear of a Steppes horseman—a side-fastened shirt of heavy undyed linen, embroidered in Rismai designs at the cuffs and collar and hem by his mother's hands; a long fawn-colored coat belted at the waist, the skirts vented deep for riding; soft leather leggings, and supple riding-boots that might be drawn up above the knee or downgathered in folds around the calf. Next to these garments were Jinn's saddlebags, containing things Ryel had cherished or thought needful. Such was the Mastery girding Markul that despite the eternal damp, each of these objects was as whole and unweathered as the day he had flung it from him, as indeed was everything left by others.

Were I to believe what the voice said, I could don those clothes again, Ryel thought. Belt them about me, pull on those boots, toss that bag upon my shoulder and leave this place even as I came. Leave behind the learning of the Art, I that have already learned more than any man living, and take up the World's way. The world of clear light, and blue water, and golden towers...

He half-rose from the window-embrasure where he sat, but another thought made him return to his place, and lock his arms around his knees.

"The voice wants that," he whispered. "Wants me to venture forth alone, and without doubt wishes me harm."

He rested his chin on his knees, and stared as far into the fog as he could, and remembered his first years in Markul. From the beginning he had been fortunate in having his kinsman Edris as his teacher. No blood-ties united the celibate wysards of the City, and newcomers were by custom given shelter and instruction by whoever it was that first saw them from the walls—not always a fortuitous circumstance. The first year had been hardest. Ryel had been required to put away all recollection of his past, to force his mind and body into the complete calm and mental readiness requisite for the second year's learning—difficult enough for a grown man, but far harder for a boy. The second year he had begun to experiment with and inure himself to the many drugs used by the Art-brotherhood to channel concentration and heighten perceptual acuity. And he learned his first spells, those that would harness the servant-spirits of the Outer World, an urgently necessary but dangerous test of will that had ever proven the winnowing-threshold separating live lord adept from mere dead aspirant.

Ryel had resisted this crucial step, but not out of fear. Even as a little child he had been deeply skeptical of those tales in which fakirs commanded the air for whatever they wished. What had seemed impossible to him then was in no way more plausible now. "It can't happen," he had said. And Edris had replied with the most contemptuously resonant of snorts.

"Spoken like a hard-headed ignorant yat-brat. Look around you, boy. You know full well that none of this was brought here by mules and carts. But what if it had been? Would you have thought mules magical beasts?"

Ryel shrugged as he blushed. "I'm only saying that it doesn't seem possible to create material objects from nothingness."

Edris' scorn was profound. "You're a fool, whelp. When you threw off your clothes outside the walls, you were meant to strip your mind fully as bare. In Markul the possible and the impossible are one and the same. Yet even in the World everything is a miracle, if viewed closely—the wind in the air, the blinking of your eyes, a seed's progress to a fruit. The Mastery of Air is no more or less miraculous, no more or less commonplace. But apparently you were too dull in the World to wonder how the stars got into the sky—or how you got into your mother's womb."

"I'm not as dull as you like to think," Ryel said, turning away at his kinsman's last words, remembering how from earliest childhood he would escape into the Steppes night while all else slept, running far from the yats into the deep fields, there to lie with his back to the breathing grass and his face to the flickering infinity overhead. As a child he had known no greater delight than those rapt communions that leapt to ecstasy at every touchstone streak of meteor. But as he grew older the joy ebbed, giving way to aching awe, ineffable hunger, solitude absolute and godless where each pinprick shimmer melded into a burning white weight just above his heart, intensifying with every star that fell.

I have not known the stars in two years, he thought. The remembrance of everything else he missed seemed to envelop him like Markulit fog, chill and desolate.

Rough gibing woke him. "Where're you woolgathering now, whelp?"

"Far away from this place," Ryel replied, every word snapped.

"I've been too easy on you. You're not learning fast enough."

"I can't learn any faster."

"You mean you don't want to."

Ryel lifted his chin. "I know by heart the spells that tame srihs."

"Then use them, fool."

"They shouldn't work," Ryel replied, stung and angry. "Not by the World's laws."

Edris snorted again, even more contemptuously. "Damn the dullard World. The Art takes imagination, lad—something you've shown precious little of, I'm sorry to say. You have to not only accept the impossible, but make it happen. That's what the meditations and the drugs of the first couple of years are for—to loosen your mind, open it up, free it from fear and doubt. You've learned all that, but you'll never move on to the next step as long as I keep feeding you. A few days' fasting, and you'd learn srih-Mastery soon enough..." To Ryel's deep perturbation and resentment, Edris' long eyes lit in mocking malice. "Now there's a thought. I'll just quit feeding you. Find your own dinner tonight, brat."

Ryel went hungry for three days. During that time he endured not only starvation, but Edris' taunts and wavings of food in his face, which he stonily ignored. However, by the dawning of the fourth day he knew by the lightness of his head and the famished tremor of the rest of him that he must either progress to the next step of the Art while he still had the strength, or submit to having his uncle throw him scraps and call him idiot. Goaded beyond all misgivings, he called up the last of his strength and strode to the book-table in the middle of his room, knocking aside the scrolls and volumes, cursing his stomach, the Art, Markul, Edris, everything. With peremptory exasperation he barked out the necessary mantra, then commanded a full Steppes breakfast with chal hot and strong. When these things appeared, he felt no astonishment, and scarcely muttered thanks to his unseen servitors as he grabbed a piece of bread and tore off a vengeful bite.

"So, brat. You finally came round." Edris leaned in the doorway, grinning. "Good job, lad. " Uninvited he came in, examining the food with a critical eye. "Not very fancily dished, but everything looks fresh." He sampled the food with approval. "And not a trace of poison, either. You must have done it right. Srihs are like horses—if you don't show them straightway who's master they'll throw you. The only difference is you might survive a toss from a horse."

Edris said that full-mouthed, and Ryel for a vicious moment wished his Art less, and his srihs venomous. "My thanks for your fatherly concern." He put a bitter stress on the adjective, one that made Edris stop chewing and swallow hard.

"Listen, whelp." His two great hands clamped down over Ryel's shoulders, his dark slant eyes probed Ryel's like thorns. "I wouldn't want a hair of your thick head so much as frayed. Believe that. But you've got to learn, and fast."

Ryel struggled to free himself, unavailingly. "Why should I hurry? Am I not to grow old here, like all the rest of you?"

Edris' warning shake made Ryel's teeth clack. "Watch it, brat. I'm not so much a graybeard that I can't keep you in line. It may be that neither of us will stay here forever. It may be that your Art is meant for the World. But even if you end up flat on your back in the Jade Tower, you're going to learn everything I can teach you first."

"I won't." Ryel wrenched himself from his kinsman's grip and kicked over the table, scattering everything. "I want to go home. I want to—to look at stars. I'm leaving."

Edris only laughed. "Try getting the gates open."

"I'll slide down the damned walls if I have to."

"Not a chance, lad." The big hands caught him again, and tightened beyond any escape. "You're staying here. And you're learning. You're going to learn the Art faster and more cleverly than anyone has since the First built this City. I'll see to it." A long time he looked upon Ryel's face, for once without irony. "But you won't have to live under my roof or by my rules any longer. You've shown today that you can take care of yourself. Markul's full of empty houses—choose one for your own."

Three days ago Ryel might have greeted that news with overt joy. Now he merely gave a curt nod, as one grown man to another. "I already have."

Edris was amused, but for once seemed to make an effort not to show it. "Where?"

"Close to this. It's the one built above the wall, looking westward."

"Ah. Lord Aubrel lived there—and died there, out of his mind and by his own hand."

Ryel shrugged away his shudder. "It's well-placed and large."

Edris grinned. "Considerably larger than this, you mean. Well, I had elbow room enough until you came along, whelp, and I won't mind getting it back. You're welcome to Lord Aubrel's house—no one's crossed its threshold since he was carried out lifeless over it, centuries ago. You needn't worry about its being haunted, but I'll wager the dust is a foot thick."

Ryel shrugged again, confidently now. "My srihs will clean it."

"Well said. That's what they're for. The First fully understood that learning the Art left no time for household drudgery. You can rely on srihs to provide all that you need to live—and they'll do so lavishly, if they respect you. But it's unwise to ask too much of them. Fatal, to some. Be careful."

"I will be."

"You're so damned young. Nothing but a boy, and yet—" For a silent while Edris seemed to brood, then, his eyes fixed not on Ryel's but someplace immeasurably far. "You're stronger than you know, lad. Stronger than I'll ever be." That grin again, more ferociously jeering than ever. "And too foolish by much to fear anything. So order us some fresh breakfast, and after it we'll go on to the next step."

*****

Ryel had learned the next step, and the next, and all others after. He learned quickly, without particular effort. The hard part was overcoming revulsion and fear, emotions all too frequent in Art-dealings. His initiation complete, Ryel might have followed Edris' example and Markulit custom, and devoted all his study to the Mastery. But because he was young and still felt the pull of the World, he often escaped to the great library of the City to study volume after volume of art, music, travel, literature, customs of various countries, sciences, mathematics, history. He also learned the healing arts, since many of the adepts of Markul had been notable physicians in the World, and were glad to teach him. From them Ryel learned surgery and herbal medicine. He could at need set a broken limb, cure illness, counteract poison—and more.

"You're the only male in this city still capable of delivering a baby," Edris had said, when Ryel was in his fifth Markulit year. "The men here who used to be doctors have long forgotten everything you've been learning from Serah and the others. It's that smooth face of yours—the sisterhood tell you things about their bodies' workings that the rest of us never had time to understand, and now have no use for. Never was a man—much less a mere boy—so deeply learned in women's lore. But you've got the best instruction, after all. Few women's minds are subtler and more keen than those of Serah, Mevanda, and Elindal, three of the greatest witches in the world."

"Don't call them witches. They are like my m—" Ryel caught the word in his bitten lip, but Edris guessed it nonetheless. His dark eyes searched his nephew's face, unsmilingly now.

"You still miss her."

Ryel looked away. "Yes. And my father, and the sister I remember only as a baby just taking her first steps."

He thought of them because he was in Edris' house, sitting on floor-cushions by the fireside as he would have on the Steppes. His own home by the western wall he had made ever more comfortable in the past three years, with Almancarian touches of luxury; but his kinsman's house was in all respects yatlike, its walls draped with leather hangings, its appointments rough and spare. One might almost walk outside into green miles of field, bright sun and blue sky and whipping winds.

Edris stirred the fire, and poured them each more chal. "Serah Dalkith would willingly be something more than a mother to you. She's still a beauty."

Ryel felt himself blushing, and made no reply. The thought had occurred to him many times before. "She's closer to your age, and I've seen the way you two look at each other."

Edris shrugged. "We're good friends. But friendship between a man and a woman is never without a bit of spark. Makes it interesting."

Ryel's thoughts stayed with the Steppes. "Do you never wish to leave Markul and return to the World?"

"Never, lad."

"Why?"

"Because as long as you're here, I am. To instruct you. And time's running out." He tossed more kulm on the fire, watching the flames leap up. "Our Art's fading, lad. Most of this City think they're strong and clever because they can order about a srih or two. The First Ones built this place with their Mastery, but nowadays you'll not find many in all this City who can cobble together so much as a privy using their minds' power alone."

"It's because everyone here is so old. Much older than you, even."

Edris dealt Ryel a withering eye-glint. "It isn't just age, brat. They're being bled dry of their Art. But it's gotten worse. People have been dying too fast in this City, and not by accident nor the wear of years. Their srihs turned on them. We took Abenamar to the Jade Tower only a few days ago—he was far from a fool, and not ten years older than me. And not long before that, Colbrent and Melisende. Whenever one of our brotherhood dies, his srihs go on to serve other adepts, or at least that's the way it's always been, until lately. Now they simply disappear. I can feel it, as if the air were growing thin. Someone—or something—has it in for us."

"I'll find out why. I'm young enough to learn fast, unlike the rest of you."

Those words elicited a heartfelt snort. "You're as arrogant as you were when we first met, back in Yorganar's yat."

Ryel stared into the fire, where his memories leapt. "They said in Risma that you were one of the best horsemen of the phratri. Do you never miss riding fast? Going at a full gallop in a game of kriy?"

Edris was silent a long time, so long that Ryel stopped expecting an answer. But then he spoke. "You should have put those memories behind you long ago, whelp."

"It is difficult to forget the World, kinsman."

Edris grunted a half-laugh. "You barely had time to know you were alive in it before you entered this City's walls."

Ryel bristled. "I was almost a man." A flash of anger burnt his heart. "You came here after you had fought in wars, and lain with women. But thanks to you I'll never—"

"Shut up." Ryel felt Edris' hand under his chin, forcing his gaze away from the bright flames into darker fire a hundredfold more hot. "So what if I nearly got myself killed a dozen times? So what if I had my first woman at sixteen, and a hundred more after that, using myself up with witless lust? What is it you envy, brat?"

The hard light in those long eyes dried up Ryel's mouth, and he spoke with effort. "There was...more than that."

"There was. But I was too much of a fool to understand. I came here. I'll die here." Edris hesitated; scrutinized his nephew's face more closely. "You have Mira's looks," he said at last. "Her looks and her ways, all unlike those of the rough Rismai." His unwonted revery gave way to a grin all too habitual as he reached out, grazing a tough knuckle across Ryel's cheek. "And you're still beardless, after nineteen World-years. Smooth as a girl."

"Lady Serah taught me the spell for it." Ryel paused. "She uses it for her legs."

Edris grinned. "Her legs and what else, boy? Yes, blush like the innocent you are." He gave the smooth cheek a stinging pat. "You're getting too pleased with yourself. For your better instruction—and to somewhat temper your conceit—you've a rival in Elecambron."

Indignantly amazed, Ryel lifted his chin. "A rival? Who?"

"A tall lad named Michael, a brash young wonder."

"For Elecambron, sixty is young."

"Don't smirk, whelp. I'll admit he's older than you, but he's not yet thirty. He came to his City at about the same time you found your way here."

"Why did no one tell me of him before?" Ryel asked, half in disbelief. "Why did you not tell me?"

"Because I only learned of him recently, and have never seen him myself. It was his instructor, no less than Elecambron’s great Kjal Gör, who informed me when we last talked by Glass some weeks ago. Michael's a Northerner out of Hryeland, a nobleman of one of the great families there." Edris half-smiled in ambivalent reminiscence. "His father and I were friends, long ago in my soldiering days."

Normally Ryel would have wanted to hear more of those days, but not now. "Does Michael know of me?"

Edris nodded, slowly and with irony. "He does; and he's not overly impressed, from what I hear. Other things I could tell you about his ancestry, but they can keep. You'd only feel more at a disadvantage if you knew."

Ryel flushed. "If he and I met face to face, he'd learn who was strongest."

Edris was very far from impressed. "Ah. Would he, now. He's lived rougher than you've any idea. Before coming to Elecambron—a terrible place so I hear, compared to which this of ours is a paradise—he fought in some notably vicious wars. You've been safe and snug here in Markul, everyone's darling boy. But had you remained in the World, I wonder what you'd have become—a mollycoddle at your mother's skirts, or a rank dullard like Yorg—"

Ryel lifted his chin. "I'd have been as you were. A proud wild warrior."

"Oh, indeed. As I was." But for all his tone, Edris now looked Ryel eye to eye, no longer jeering. "Get your blade, boy, and meet me in the courtyard."

*****

Minutes later they faced one another in cold mist, on chill flagstones, their robes and sleeves tucked up and tied back for ease of action, their feet unshod for surer movement. It was ever Edris' wont to go barefoot even when snow drifted thick upon the top of Markul's wall, but Ryel had not yet acquired that extremity of control over his flesh. To forget the icy rough rock beneath his naked soles, the young wysard fingered the hilt of the sword that Yorganar had given him in his thirteenth World-year—a Kaltiri blade of great worth, that had drawn blood in battle countless times. The Rismai neither made nor carried swords, preferring the bow, the spear, and the dagger; but Yorganar had wished that his son learn the warrior's art of his homeland, and to that end instructed him as thoroughly as he might in the little time he had. When Ryel left for Markul a year later, Yorganar had given him stern advice.

"Don't go soft in that sorcerer's roost. Edris knows a sword's use as well as me, if not better—make him teach you some of his skill."

They spoke man to man in the cold gray of dawn, for Ryel's mother had retired to the yat with Nelora, unable to bear the torment of parting from her only son. Mounted and ready, Ryel twined Jinn's mane in his fingers, trying to warm them as he struggled for words, using the most formal of the Rismai dialect. "You have given me great gifts, my father—this horse that is the best you own, and the sword you carried in war.."

Little Nelora at that moment escaped from the yat and ran staggering toward them, bawling with baby abandon. Yorganar picked her up, hushing her with a tenderness he had never shown Ryel.

"Hold your noise, wee lamb." And he tossed the child in his arms until Nel quieted and smiled. Addressing Ryel again, Yorganar harshened. "Those are not gifts. Nelora will grow up as a Rismai woman should, and have no need of a sword. As for the mare, Jinn was yours from the day of her birth, and I am no back-taker."

It's better this way, Ryel thought. I'm glad he loves Nel, at least. Reaching out, he stroked the child's wealth of curls, marveling as he always did at their bright gold gleam, so rare in the Steppes and so praised; the touch felt like a blessing, as did the little arms that stubbornly wreathed his neck until he gently urged them away. "Farewell, baby sister." He kissed her petal cheek, then turned to Yorganar, all haltingly. "My father, I will miss you."

Yorganar held Nelora closer, not looking at Ryel. "Edris will take my place. Has he not already?"

Ryel had no reply to that. For the past year he had remembered Edris every night as he lay awake, and dreamed of dark towers when at last he slept; had ridden the plain and climbed the dead fire-mountains and played kriy and wrestled with his play-brothers, knowing in his secret heart that he would never grow to manhood among them; had been a devoted son to his mother, and a loving brother to Nelora; had kept out of Yorganar's way, save when they fought with swords.

"Farewell, Yorganar Desharem," he said, then bent from the saddle and kissed him for the first and last time in his life, on the temple in the Steppes way between male kindred, swiftly lest he be pushed away. Wheeling Jinn about, he sent her into a gallop with a touch of his heel, and felt the swift wind blow the tears out of his eyes into his streaming hair.

*****

"Wake up, whelp."

Ryel blinked, torn from his revery. Edris stood waiting, his own sword drawn and ready—a Kaltiri tagh like Yorganar's, slim and double-edged and silver-bright, its hilt fashioned long for two-handed combat; like Yorganar's, but far richer and deadlier. Most wonderful of all, it was incredibly light, as easily wielded as a willow switch. Yorganar's sword felt like a log of lead in comparison. Ryel had been permitted to handle this exquisite weapon only once, but forever after had coveted the way its hilt-ridges took his grip like a firm handclasp, the fearful beauty of its glass-keen blade etched with an inscription that Ryel could not read, and that Edris would not translate.

"I want your sword," the boy-wysard said, feeling Yorganar's great tagh maddeningly clumsy in his hand.

Edris' cropped head gave a fierce scorning shake. "You'll have to kill me first."

"You've come close to being killed lots of times, from the looks of it," Ryel said, at once defiant and daunted. "You're covered with scars."

"Grown men gave them to me, boy."

During his time in the North, during the strength of his youth, Edris had become a member of an arcane cult of elite warriors, and the inscription on Edris' blade had been conferred by the order after deadly combat; that much Ryel knew, but no more. "Tell me what those runes say."

"Never, brat. Come on."

They squared off and saluted in one of the Kaltiri ways—not the salute of enemies bent upon death, nor of friends vying in strength, but of a warrior testing his squire—a low bow from Ryel, and almost none at all from Edris, and then blades lightly crossed once, twice, then drawn apart slowly—and in that lingering last moment, battle swift and strenuous. Soon Ryel felt all his blood grown hot, heard himself panting as he slashed and lunged.

Edris was fully versed in the formal style of Northern fencing, and had taught Ryel its rules and rituals as an aid to concentration. But for sheer diversion he and Ryel both relished the Eastern fashion of fighting with its wild grace and headlong acrobatics, its yells and grunts and curses, its savage slashings and hairsbreadth dodges. The Northern style relied on cold skill, agile discipline and rigid punctilio, but the way of the East was one of ruthless force and arrant treachery.

Although Edris had never yet employed the latter stratagem, Ryel knew his kinsman's strength only too well. Fifty World-years had thinned and grayed Edris' close-shorn dark hair, and deeply etched his outer eye-corners, but none of those years had shrunken or softened the lean muscles that clung to his hulking height. Now the disarray of combat revealed the long stark-sinewed arms and legs, the broad chest, that the trailing amplitudes of Markulit robes at all other times concealed, and at the sight Ryel felt newborn weak and naked.

"Someday I'll beat you," he panted.

Edris only gave a jeering grin. "You'll need Art for that, whelp. Go on, do your worst."

Ryel had never forgiven himself for what happened next. Murmuring a word that made his adversary lose his balance, Ryel had lashed forward; and all at once a great jet of blood burst from the base of Edris' throat, and he sank to the ground, clutching both hands against the gush.

Nerveless with horror, Ryel dropped to his knees at Edris' side. "Ithradrakis—"

Edris tried to speak, but no sound came save a horrible wordless rasp as he clutched at the wound. Steaming in the cold, blood welled up between his fingers, spilled down his chest, drained the bright battle-flush from his face.

Ryel forced his kinsman's hands away, replacing them with his own. The hot blood pulsed under his desperate palms, leaving no time for anything but as many words of Mastery as he could remember and rattle off lesson-like, terrified lest none of them should work, knowing that he had no right to utter any of them, that they were many levels above his learning, yet knowing too that any mortal art was more useless still. And with those words he mingled others of his own making, desperate mantras never learned from books, but surging forth from that hidden place within where his secret strength lay.

Only when his tears trickled into his mouth-corners and made him gag did he realize he was crying. He could smell Edris' blood, there was so much of it—a metallic savor of rust—and the fear-soured reek of his own body; feel the chill damp stones gritting his bare knees, the raw mist-laden wind freezing his face. Under his encircling arm Edris was slipping, growing limp. You can't, Ryel thought, all his own blood panicking. Not this way.

Edris' head lolled heavily against Ryel's shoulder, its eyes shut hard, its lips snarled in a lifeless grimace.

No, Ryel thought. Not while I live. And scorning that life he Art-willed his strength into Edris' dying body, uttering each word with such fevered concentration that when he fell silent he could barely breathe for exhaustion. But his kinsman remained motionless.

"Gone," Ryel whispered brokenly. "Gone—" he closed his own eyes, sick with desolation. In his heartbreak he began to make the keening moan uttered by the Rismai in their worst despair as he rocked back and forth cradling his kinsman's dead weight, a mourning-cry he'd forgotten for years.

But in that torturing moment he felt a stinging pat across his cheek as startling as a full-fisted blow, and Edris' heavy inert body give an impatient twitch. Ryel started, looked down, cried out. Edris' long dark eyes were open and gleaming, and his wide mouth grinned, and his deep voice mocked.

"In the name of All, quit squealing, brat. And hold still."

Ryel had already frozen. He was mute as well, but Edris didn't appear to notice.

"Not bad Mastery, whelp. Presumptuous, dangerous, and stupid, but good of its kind."

Ryel felt as weak as if half his own blood had been drawn. He couldn't speak, and didn't want to cry anymore, had no reason to now, yet the tears still fell. And for the first time in their lives together he felt Edris embrace him and hold him close, making him sob all the more.

"Shh. Quiet down, lad." Edris' long fingers raked Ryel's black locks, and his lips touched the thudding wet-haired fever just above Ryel's left ear. "Well done. First kill me, which so many have tried to do and failed, and then bring me back. Clever work."

Ryel heard his voice leap and crack. "Forgive me."

"Hah. Not in a hurry I won't. You had to resort to the Art to give me that cut—an unfair advantage."

"Treacherous, you mean," Ryel muttered. "I despise myself."

Edris shook his head. "Don't. I asked for it. I wanted to see how good you were in all your skill, Art and swordplay both. You're an indifferent fighter, but I'll have to admit you're turning into a pretty fair wysard."

Ryel felt his breath coming fast. "You mean you let me wound you?"

Edris shrugged. "It didn't hurt that much."

"But my uncle. The cut was mortal."

Edris gave a laugh. "Damned right it was. I'd have died had your Mastery been less."

Ryel trembled. "You'd not have saved yourself?"

"I'm not sure I could have, lad." He gave Ryel an impatient shake. "Quit sniveling. It's unmanly."

Ryel quieted, and for some minutes he and Edris rested against each other on the courtyard flagstones. Ah, ithradrakis, Ryel thought as he rubbed his wet cheek against the gore-stiffened hair of Edris' chest. How could I love you with my entire heart, and nearly kill you—

"You're shivering," Edris said. "It's raw out here, and our sweat's grown cold and we're reeking dirty. Come on." He got to his feet, and pulled Ryel to his.

Ryel stared at the place he'd cut. "Are you in pain?"

Edris considered a moment. "Not much. Hardly at all."

"There's a scar."

Edris fingered the place where he'd bled. "Yes. A good big one." He wiped his hands on his clothes. "What was that name you called me? The Almancarian one."

Ryel bit his lip. "Ithradrakis."

Edris seemed not to hear as he threw his cloak about him. "I need a drink of something strong. Come on." And he strode away, but Ryel watched him long before he followed.

*****

Later that night, after he had returned to his house and calmed his thoughts with a long hot bath and steadying meditation, Ryel dressed in fresh robes and settled in to study for the night. He had chosen one of the Books of the First that gave the histories of the Builders of Markul, his curiosity whetted by words Edris had let fall before their duel.

There in his conjuring-room, as he read by lamplight during that endless interval between midnight and dawn, he felt it--a stirring not of the air, but of something beyond the air. It was wordless, yet it commanded him. Never before had he been summoned to his Glass; Lord Aubrel's Glass it had been, large and richly framed, hidden behind a dark curtain broidered with arcane symbols in silver and gold. Ryel had always kept it tightly closed, but now he slowly crossed the room and drew aside the velvet drapery.

At length a shadow floated over the Glass, and fixed there; and the shape's darkness took form bit by bit, as if some unseen artist were painting an image upon the matte silver surface. It began with the hair--startling hair of deep blood-red, that spilled in thick skeins to broad shoulders. The body next appeared, to the waist; a strong form clad not in wysard robes but a black jacket such as Northern soldiers wore, with silver insignia denoting an officer of high rank. The top buttons of the jacket's high collar were loosened as if for the wearer's ease, but as if cognizant of Ryel's scrutiny the form's hand reached up and fastened them as the face filled in, starting with the eyes.

Those eyes would haunt Ryel's thoughts forever after. Never had he seen a regard more cold, so icy that he caught his breath at it; eyes of pale gray, wolfish and utterly unreadable under level lowering brows. The rest of the face was forcefully handsome in a harsh, abruptly planed way, every feature firm and unyielding. Ryel could not imagine that face smiling, save in scorn; and even now the fine lips twitched, parting to reveal teeth fiercely white, and a voice like deep still music issued, akin to a great bell tolling at a far distance.

"So. Ryel Mirai."

Ryel inclined his head, but just barely. He knew well with whom he spoke, and his Steppes blood quickened in his veins, and his hand clenched at his side as if around the hilt of a sword. "From all seemings, I address Lord Michael of Elecambron. What would you want of me?"

"Only to view for myself the boy wonder all the Brotherhood speaks of. How old are you?"

"Five. Nineteen, in World-years."

"My World-years number twenty-seven. I’ve dwelt in this ice-hell for six of them. It seems an infinity."

Ryel felt a twinge of pride. "Then you're only a year older than me, in Art-reckoning. That isn't much."

Michael grunted disdain. "I came here with well-trained wits and a battle-hardened body, studied the Art with my entire attention and almost no sleep, and didn't throw my time away as I've heard you do."

Ryel bristled. "And how might you have come by that knowledge, Lord Michael?"

The red wysard waved away Ryel's words with offhand scorn. "I have my ways. I also know how the Art found you. But if you think your little romp in the rain and bit of a shock impressed me, think again. I was thrown alive into my grave, Steppes gypsy. Stripped naked, smeared with pitch, bound with chains, and tossed into a hole full of fire." He made a noise probably meant to be a laugh. "The Hrwalri didn't like the color of my hair, perhaps…not that they're ever gentle with their prisoners."

Ryel thought of that fate, and shivered. "You were a captive of the White Barbarians?"

"Aye, a roving band of them. It was during the Barrier Wars. I don't think the savages expected me to crawl out of that pit unscathed, any more than they could have imagined the death I dealt them afterward." His wolf-eyes prowled over every feature of Ryel's face. "My Art's strength dates from that time. And my strength is greater than yours, boy. Far greater, even if I chose Elecambron instead of my forebear's City. I have the blood of the First in my veins."

Ryel blinked. "How is that possible?"

Michael's cold stare moved past Ryel and fixed on the open book on the wysard's desk. "Keep reading that and you'll find out." He fell silent awhile, his eyes brooding. "An accursed line it's been; high time it ended. My brother and I have made a pact to be the last." He reached up, thrusting back his strange hair as his teeth clenched in evident pain. "Enough of this. I wanted to see you, and I have."

"Wait." Ryel hardly knew what to say next, or how to say it. He'd suddenly realized how much he'd missed talking to someone close to his own age, and past Michael's truculence he sensed a kindred isolation. "If you ever wish to speak with me again, my lord brother, I'd be honored."

Michael grimaced, his face taut. "I've nothing more to say to you."

"You seem to be suffering. I have some skill in healing, and if you would…"

"Let me be, damn you.”

Stung and angered, Ryel would have replied, but the red wysard growled a word of dismissal and his image faded into blackness.

When Ryel had regained his composure, which took some time, he read further in the history he'd begun, and learned to his amazement that Michael Essern was indeed a lineal descendant of Lord Aubrel D'Sern, one of the most famed of the First and Highest. Aubrel's family had ruled in the North many centuries gone, and as an eldest son Aubrel was marked for kingship; but the Art called him to Markul. And for a long time he and the other First Ones dwelt there harmoniously together, studying and working the Mastery; but then Aubrel unwisely sought to explore the boundaries between life and death. He survived the Crossing, but returned infected with the malignant energy of the Outer World. It drove him mad, and among his many acts of insanity he forced and violated one of the wysardesses, Fleurie of Ralnahr.

She conceived by him, and was counseled by the Brotherhood to take drugs to end the pregnancy; but Markulit training and her own inner convictions would not permit her to go against the service of life. She left the City and made her way North, where Aubrel's family took her in and cared for her. Despite their every precaution, the birth killed her; but her son grew to manhood, carrying his father's infection in his veins, with his outward form likewise tainted—colored strangely, blood-red of hair and unnaturally pale of skin. He too died mad, but not before marrying and begetting. From that time daimonic sickness established itself among the male Esserns of the direct line. The unfortunates who carried the curse invariably died raving witless after lives of unremitting pain—short lives, mercifully, but not too short to preclude procreation.

*****

"A terrible legacy," Ryel murmured, recalling yet again that encounter from years past. "We never met again, and now you are out in the World…perhaps lured by the same entity whose voice gives me no peace."

I learned so much here, Ryel thought as that memory, like the others, trailed away into the mists. All of my kinsman's skill in battle, which was great, I learned as well as I could. All of his Art, which was greater. And it has made me strong, stronger than anyone in this City; but what good to measure my strength against the nerveless impotence of these creeping dotards? And what good to have learned the surgeon's art to no purpose, practicing on corpses? To have a birther's skill in this childless place? To know all the mysteries of pleasure—for I have learned them, as thoroughly as any amorist—and never hold a woman in my arms?

That last thought made him clasp his knees more tightly, and press his forehead against them until pain came to match that of his next memory.

Something like a woman I indeed embraced, that very night after my duel with Edris—a creature more beautiful than any woman alive could hope to be…which should have put me on my guard. But I had been hot with the knowledge of my strength, and restless with hungers I had no name for, and—

He forced his thoughts away from the memory of that night, but only to remember other beauty, real and breathing beneath its jeweled mask and diaphanous silk. Tormented, he hugged his knees harder, and ground his forehead against them until he winced as much from his body's pain as his mind's; and his memories drifted again, becoming part of the chill mists enveloping the City's dark walls.

*****

He was, by Markulit reckoning, six years old; twenty by World-count.

"You called me."

Often had Edris srih-summoned Ryel to his conjuring-room, to impart some bit of lore or other. But now for the first time he drew aside the curtain that veiled his Glass. "Look hard here, whelp."

The black matte surface of the Glass shimmered and lightened. The world it disclosed, endless green and blue, made Ryel's heart leap. "Risma," he whispered with a pang of longing; but in another moment he felt unease. Many times in his loneliness he had been tempted to make use of Edris' Glass to look again on his mother, sister and friends, but Edris had strictly forbidden him. When he spoke again, he was unable to keep a hint of reproach from his voice.

"Kinsman, you always told me that a Glass is not meant to be used to view the World."

"True," Edris replied with an offhand nod. "The Glass is for communication with others of our kind, and—in the old days when the First lived—for scrying into the future, or trying to. Nothing else."

"Then why--"

Edris indicated the Glass again. "Look. You know that man, I think."

Ryel looked, and saw a cavalcade of horsemen riding at an easy pace over a great sweep of flower-spangled grassland. The leader caught the eye and held it—a tall man of some sixty years, with features most purely Almancarian, dressed Steppes-wise in riding-gear of silk and gold; a man whose eyes were like sky-colored jewels in his sun-dusked face, whose hair streamed in black and silver almost to his belt, whose slim figure had not yielded an inch to age; a man freely and unconsciously regal.

"I've never forgotten him," Ryel said, feeling his blood warm and quicken as he spoke. "Mycenas Dranthene, brother to the Sovran Agenor. He came to Risma when I was thirteen, and watched me during the races at the horse-fair, and gave me my dagger."

Edris' voice held a grin, one Ryel didn't like. "Maybe you recall the rumors about your grandmother Ysandra."

Ryel shook his head vehemently. "I'll never believe them. They dishonor our house."

"Hah. Spoken like a true Steppes lout. That hearsay would make the Sovranet your kin, and you an heir to the Dranthene dynasty, albeit by many a remove."

Ryel's blue eyes flashed. "It's a vile lie."

"Calm, lad. Calm. Many in the World would give their skin to belong to the imperial house of Destimar, however left-handedly."

"I'm not in the World. Remember?" Ignoring his kinsman, Ryel studied Mycenas and his entourage and their wonderful horses. But then his eyes fixed on one sight alone. "Tell me who that boy is, riding next to the Sovranet."

Edris seemed surprised. "Boy? What—ah, I see who you mean. I don't know, whelp. One of Mycenas' servants, probably. Some page or other."

"He's dressed too well for that."

Edris grinned, all too meaningly. "Maybe he's a special favorite—very special. Maybe the Sovranet's tastes run to—"

"Don't say it." Ryel waved away the enormity of the implication, furiously. He'd discovered the truth, to his infinite relief. "It's not a boy, but a girl."

"Ah. Really. Enlighten me as to what makes you so sure, whelp."

"Her hair. It touches her saddle-bow, and some of it's in braids. Braids with jewels in them."

Edris gave a great bay of a laugh. "And what about those beckoning curves in her shirt and her breeches? Don't tell me you didn't see them."

Ryel had. But he'd never let Edris know.

"I'll give the little wench this—she knows how to ride."

Ryel nodded full assent at Edris' observation. She was admirably firm in the saddle, this girl—firm and supple and fearless. Overly fearless.

"That's too much horse for her," Ryel frowned.

"I have to agree," Edris said. "Those Fang'an geldings are as wild as full-stoned stallions. Mycenas should know better than to put his own niece in such danger."

Ryel's eyes widened. "Niece?"

As if that word were a malign spell, the horse curvetted and reared. A great outcry went up among Mycenas' entourage, and all rushed to the girl's rescue, but she kept tight in the saddle and impatiently waved away every offer of help. The animal at last calmed, and the ride resumed.

"Strong legs for a lass so young," Edris said, coolly approving. "And that Steppes rig shows them off uncommonly well, wouldn't you say?"

Ryel ignored the question. "She was afraid," he said. "I could see it. But her pride was even greater than her fear."

"The Dranthene are notorious for pride, if nothing else."

At that remark Ryel turned about to accuse his kinsman. "You knew who she was. You knew all along."

Edris gave a bare nod. "And now you do, finally. About time you had a sight of the peerless Diara, old Agenor's daughter. She's visited Risma every year in Mycenas' company since she was twelve. She's sixteen now."

Ryel felt a surge of regret and anger. "She and I could have met, had I never come to Markul."

"No doubt you would have," Edris tranquilly agreed. "And you'd have been an ignorant churl stinking of stable-reek, and she'd have passed you by without a second glance. As it is—"

"As it is I'm buried here," Ryel muttered. He yanked the curtain over the Glass, covering the image. "I didn't need reminders." And he would have left the room, very swiftly, had not Edris blocked the way.

"I didn't show you the Dranthene princess to torture you, whelp—much though you may enjoy thinking so."

"Then why?"

"As with everything else I show you. For your instruction."

Ryel eyed his uncle bitterly. "And what have you taught me, except to prove yet again that I'm a prisoner here? I've been living in cold fog for half my life almost, but it's springtime in the World. The Steppes are covered with flowers, and the sun is shining down on them, and a beautiful girl I'll never know is riding through those flowers, under that sun. And laughing. I haven't laughed since I came to Markul, not once—but you wouldn't have noticed."

This Ryel said and much more, as his kinsman stood listening with remarkable patience. When he'd at last made an end, Edris calmly enjoyed the silence awhile before speaking.

"Well, brat. I can't say it hasn't been hard for you—and it's going to get harder, believe me. But if it's any comfort, you're very likely not destined to end your days within these walls."

"You've said that before. Why not tell me what you mean?"

"You'll learn."

Ryel had heard those two words endless times during his years in Markul—long years full of danger and cold and, very often, pain. He felt anger rising in him, furious resentful rage, but the emotion was so familiar that he despised it.

"I'm going to try the Crossing," he said.

Edris showed no sign of interest. "Oh. Really. When?"

"You'll learn." And Ryel flung out of the room, expecting Edris' jeers to embed his back like flung knives. But he heard nothing, and his door-slam resonated in the hollow of utmost emptiness.

*****

The wysard’s musings ranged far until a light hand on his shoulder made him start, even as a voice he loved calmed him again. Once again he was at his window on the wall, dressed in ripped mourning, his head shaven. But his sorrow now had a sharer, and he reached up to clasp those gentle fingers.

"Lost in dreams you looked, young brother."

Lady Serah Dalkith stood at his side gazing down at him, her face unflinchingly gentle as her beryl-green eyes met his empty ones. "Knock though I might, you heard naught. But I made bold to enter—all the easier since your door's never locked."

"Never against you, my lady sister. I'm glad of your coming." The wysard took her cloak and uttered a command-tongue to the air, and instantly a laden tray appeared at his side, with wine and the sweet delicacies in precious vessels of crystal and gold.

"Always the courtly host." Lady Serah took a savoring sip of the wine, and reached for a one of the dainties on the tray. "Never do I eat these almond-apricot things except when I'm with you. What are they called again?"

"Lakh. They're Steppes sweets. I never got enough of them, when I was little."

"And do you get enough now?"

"Not really. No skill, no matter how magical, can equal that of my mother's hands."

Together they gazed companionably out at the mist as they enjoyed the wine and sweets, and the heady Ghizlan vintage—the most excellent obtainable, as one might expect to be offered by a srih-servant—brought on more memories.

"Yon's the frock I threw off twenty years gone," the wysardess said, pointing a smooth bejeweled forefinger at one of the cloth-heaps beyond the wall. "Purple silk and gold embroidery still unfaded and untarnished. And I could still fit into it, I do assure you, were I to wear it now."

"It'd become you well," Ryel said, again admiring Lady Serah's Northern looks—beauty tall and fine-boned, hair like a fox's pelt thrown back from a high forehead and hanging over strong shoulders. The pelt had silvered along the temples, but the lady's form retained its slender elegance, even as her face kept its bold hard beauty, its vivid lips and brows. Instead of wysard robes she favored elegant gowns cut in the Northern style, fitted to the body down to the slim ornately belted hips, thence flowing in folds to the ground, in deep dark colors and rich tissues. Today's was midnight velvet and purple brocade. "You seem not to have aged since you left the World, sister."

Lady Serah gave that little shrug of hers, that ironic smile. "The Art is kind to women." She rested her arms on her knees, her chin on her arms. "Even now, so many years away, I well recall the nights I spent with men who loved me; the children I birthed and suckled, the mountains I lived among. But life is sweeter, here where the flesh has no hold on me. Here where I can weigh and consider the causes and purposes of existence, and look into what might come after."

Ryel had always enjoyed the lilting tang of Lady Serah's voice, its Northern nuances—the long slide of the vowels, the clipped gerunds, the burry r's, the quaint inversions. Whenever he heard it he envisioned places he had never seen save in books and dreams—Serah's native island of Wycast, and its neighbors Ralnahr and Hryeland—cold lands of rough moss-grown crags, towering pines and aspens, snow-fed streams and waterfalls, wide skies of deepest blue and white-feathered clouds. To hear more of it he said, "Among all the talk we've shared, my sister, I wonder that I never asked what brought you to Markul."

She gazed out deep into the mists of the air. "The World drove me. Forty-five of its years had I numbered. My children were either grown or dead, my lovers and my husbands were all of them either dead or gone from me; the World's way had I lived, without a thought. And then I felt the Art stir within me like a quickening babe, and came here to give birth to that new life." She gave a sly little laugh. "Greatly abashed you looked when you stripped before the gates—even now you blush at my mention of it. But I felt no shame when I disrobed, far from it. Proud was I of my body, in those days; and I well remember how the City flocked atop the walls to look upon me."

Ryel smiled. "I'm sorry I wasn't here to witness that." He offered his guest more wine, which she accepted willingly; but after a sip she set down her glass.

"As I said, brother, you greet your guests with Steppes courtesy; and like a true bannerman of Risma you would never think of asking me the reason for my visit. But do you not wonder? All the more since I know the ways of your grassland home, that mourns in seclusion?"

Ryel shook his head. "We have been friends a dozen years, Lady Serah. I know you well enough to understand that when you speak of detachment, you are usually agitated within; and I also know that you will sooner or later tell me why."

"As I said, brother, with Steppes courtesy you greet me, and like a true bannerman of Risma never would you think of asking me the reason for my visit. Well, the truth is that I myself had a visitor today."

"An unwelcome one, it would seem."

"Srin Yan Tai it was," Serah replied slowly. "She called me to my Glass this morning—rather earlier than I prefer. 'Twas of you we spoke."

Ryel had heard much of Srin Yan Tai over the years, from Lady Serah and others. Lady Srin had come from the Kugglaitai Steppes to Markul, but had left the City many years past to dwell in the mountains overlooking Almancar. "How could she know me?" he asked. "We never met."

"All your life she has known you," Serah answered. "She charged me to give you a message."

Ryel waited, then prompted. "And what was it, sister?"

"Often she and Edris would confer together, when she dwelt in this City; they shared a bond wrought deep, of kindred lands and customs and language. After she departed and you found your way here, he would speak with her through his Glass, asking advice on how best to deal with you. She now wishes to see how you have grown up…and to learn what you experienced during the Crossing."

"I remember nothing of it, sister."

"Recall it now." She reached into the pouch at her belt, taking out a malachite vial, and sprinkled some powder from the vial into her palm. "Here. Breathe of this."

Ryel wet his finger, touched it to the powder, tasted; recoiled. "But this is quiabintha."

"You are stronger than it is," Serah said, quietly urgent. "Put your trust in me. You know I would never harm you, dear my brother. Breathe."

Warm it was within the great curve of the window, snug and dry behind the glass as chill rain fell upon the barren land; silent save for the rain's fall. Safe. Ryel bent to Serah's smooth fair palm, and inhaled deeply; closed his eyes, tensing against the shock he knew must come.

Used as he was to quiabintha, having learned its power early in his study of the Art, he trembled as it snaked through his veins. "I have always loathed and distrusted this drug," he said; and his voice seemed as far as the stars. "Only xantal is more vicious."

Lady Serah's voice seemed to come from the same immense distance. "Do not think of the drug. Are you ready?"

Quiabintha was quick. Already Ryel felt its hold upon his mind and body, accelerating his heartbeat and his thoughts. "Direct me," he said. "I am sightless until you lead."

"Good. Go back."

"How far?"

"Drift," Serah intoned, soothingly. "Drift until I stop you."

Ryel stared out at the rain, seeing nothing but gray emptiness as his memory slid away minute by hour by year; time felt like a skin that his being slipped free of as he moved ever backward.

Lady Serah's voice whispered like rain. "You are being born; you are before the walls of Markul, naked as the moment you pushed out of your mother's womb."

"I am there," Ryel said, marveling and dazed.

"As am I, watching you," Serah replied from someplace incredibly distant. "Tell me what you see."

"Edris has opened the gates. Has come to me, stands at my side." Ryel drew a sudden breath, his heart quickening. "He's pulling my hair." How real it seems, he thought. To be here, and yet there; to be so cleanly divided, yet so completely whole.

"Move through the gates, and deeper into the years. Now you are no longer a boy, but a man, and more learned in the Art than anyone alive in Markul. You have chosen the Mastery of Nilandor for your Crossing spell."

"Yes. It is the quickest." Fire leapt in the hearth of his house that had been Lord Aubrel's, and nearby a table stood ready with the things needful for the coming ordeal. "I am there."

"Enter that place again. The emptiness."

Sudden darkness enclosed him, cold and opaque and seamless. "I cannot."

"Only try, brother."

Urged by her pleading he felt the glass, uselessly pushing. "I am trying with all my power, sister."

"Surely you must sense something."

Ryel quit fighting the darkness, and instead pressed the lids of his lightless eyes with the heels of his hands, drawing a weary quiabintha-drained breath. "Nothing." He opened his eyes to the warm familiar window-nook, the gray rainy light, Serah's intent concern. "It's gone from me. All I can remember is losing consciousness, and regaining it to find you telling me that Edris had died giving his life for mine. And then I believe I went mad for a time, until you healed me. Often I wish you had not, my lady; very often, these days."

Serah did not reply, but took another vial from the bag at her belt, this one full of liquid. When she removed its stopper, the fragrance of celorn made Ryel reach for the little bottle, impatient for its deliverance.

"Only a taste or two, brother. 'Tis strong essence, and will work quickly."

"Thank all the gods." Ryel drank, and almost at once felt the quiabintha's harsh grip on his mind first relax, then dissipate. As he closed his eyes in gratitude, he felt Serah's gentle hands on either side of his head, and he leaned slightly forward, resting in her touch. "And thank you, sister."

"You suffered much, dear brother."

Ryel tried to swallow; snagged on his dry throat. "I suffer more, now. It is an everlasting shame to me. That I should have labored so hard, and in vain; spent months in readiness, and risked my life to seek the boundaries of death, only to come back empty. Worse than empty—bereft of one dearer to me than father, whose greatness in the Art would have far surpassed my own."

Serah's voice was always soothing, always like music he loved, but never more than now. "Lord Edris had been my friend from the moment we met. Often would he come to my house, and we would speak of you. Difficult enough it is to live in this City after passing one's prime, but for a young lad it is harder yet, and for a lad on the edge of manhood it needs must be not only hard, but perilous." She hesitated. "He told me about the succubus that tempted you in your fifth year."

Shamed blood burnt Ryel's cheeks. "I've tried very hard to forget that."

"Nor would I have spoken of it, but Srin Yan Tai suspects that the creature was sent by none other than that hell-born miscreant Dagar Rall…even as she believes that Dagar is responsible for the death of Edris."

Ryel could not speak for a long time, and when he did it came out raw. "But Serah, that cannot be. Dagar died long ago." As he spoke, he saw again Kjal's lipless, hideous face, speaking the same impossibility.

"His body indeed perished, and horribly as was fitting. But Lady Srin most adamantly maintains that his rai now dwells disincarnate yet vitally malignant, in that chartless realm too terrible for you to now remember. She believes that in these secret reaches Dagar's power is great, and is steadily increased by the energy it robs and takes unto itself from those emanations we of the brotherhood harness for our daily use. She is sure that Dagar is the cause of the decline of our powers, and I am persuaded she is right. Furious and vengeful Dagar ever was; and if he continues to draw its power from the Outer World, I tremble for what might be."

Ryel licked dry lips. "You once told me that Srin Yan Tai was eccentric, and given to wild imaginings. What can there be to fear, with Dagar trapped and disembodied?"

"Much, according to Lady Srin," Lady Serah answered. "Much that she would not tell me, saying it was meant for your ears alone."

"Then I will find her through my Glass, and speak with her," Ryel said.

Serah contradicted him with a shake of her fox-haired head. "You'll not succeed. Quite insistent she was that she would have a face to face encounter with you or nothing."

Ryel recalled the invasive unknown voice, the vision of Almancar…and the daimon temptress of his fifth year. He reached for Edris' cloak that lay near, drawing its warm scarlet cloth over his shoulders. "Then Lady Srin will have to meet me here. I will never leave Markul."

"Not even were it for the sake of the fair Sovrena of Destimar?"

"Least of all for her." He would not remember. Not so much as a jewel-gleam, an eye-glint. "It would take more than a woman to draw me from my City. I will never return to the World."

Serah shook her head, her copper-tinted lids brooding over her beryl-green gaze, her face somber. "If Dagar seeks ways to afflict that World again, you might find yourself choiceless, young brother."

Ryel stared at her. "Why do you say that?"

"I leave the explanation to Srin Yan Tai. Nay, no protestations; and I will now depart, and leave you in peace. Time you require to consider the matter of our talk." She rose to her feet in a soft midnight rustle of flowing skirts. "Might I visit you again? Fear not, we'll speak only of trifles, I promise."

"Since I have no intention of leaving, come whenever you wish, my lady sister." He stood too. "Your visit was a comfort to me. I thank you for it." Taking both her hands, he bent and pressed his brow against their smooth backs.

"I'll miss you," Serah said, her voice a whisper. "We'll all miss you…"

She departed swiftly, and for a long while Ryel contemplated the door she'd closed after her; but then he turned back to the mist, and reached for his empty goblet.

"Again," he said in the command-tongue, and watched as the rich vintage welled up from the whorled crystal stem like a ruby spring, dark and fragrant. Seldom if ever did the wysard drink more than a single glass of wine at a time, but his conversation with Lady Serah had been taxing, coming so soon after his far less cordial talk with Kjal. Unwillingly he remembered what he knew of Dagar Rall.

It was said that Dagar's very birth was in death—begotten of fatal forbidden lust in Elecambron, by a wysard spirit-slain at the moment of climax, and a sorceress daimon-butchered in her third month of pregnancy. Born a miscarried half-formed fetus Dagar was, to be reared by srihs, during those disordered terrible times so many centuries ago; born to live and thrive against all odds, and to work every evil within his power. And for a long time he worked evil; for a century and more, during which time his beauty never altered, but stayed that of a youth divinely fair. He was Elecambron's scourge, his tyranny cruel and ceaseless until at last the entire population of the City combined all their Art to slay him, lest he escape into the World and afflict it to annihilation. Dagar had summoned the daimonic legions of the Outer World in retaliation, and the savagery of the ensuing battle rocked Elecambron to its icy foundations; the echoes of it made even the walls of Markul quiver. Many great adepts of Elecambron had died in that struggle to protect the World they had forsaken forever. It had been a noble sacrifice, one that Markul remembered with greatest respect.

"Dagar," Ryel murmured, the name bitter on his lips. "Dagar, most beautiful and most base. He that no wysard of any City dared or deigned to call brother." You died, monster, he thought. There's nothing left of you. Kjal, poor eunuch, has lost what's left of his mind, up in that white hell of frost and ice.

He lifted his glass to his lips, and drank to dispel those vile imaginings. But all at once he was aware of a sudden oppression of the atmosphere, a stifling heaviness of the air. He fully expected the ever-intrusive voice to torment him yet again, but then he heard a sigh—not the voice's, but a woman's, and not within his head, but behind him. Ryel turned, and stared, and felt his fingers freeze around the goblet's bell. His unmoving lips whispered a word he had not used in a dozen years.

"Silestra?"

A woman attired in a gown of Almancarian fashion, her heavy black hair falling in mingled tresses and plaits almost to her waist, stood in the middle of the room—a woman neither old nor young, and agelessly beautiful.

Ryel leapt up, heedless of the goblet's crash. Although a dozen years had passed, he knew the one he beheld, scarcely changed since the day he had left Risma. But surely his mother would never have stood thus unseeing, unresponsive to his voice.

Ryel dropped to his knees. "My lady mother. I implore you to speak to me."

She did not reply, nor even look his way. Instead she paced distraught to and fro, clutching her body with both arms as if entranced with grief and pain. Then she caught sight of the wysard's unveiled Glass in the other room. As if gathering her resolution with great effort she swiftly approached it. Ryel rose and followed, knowing now that it was useless to call her.

Mira Stradianis Yorganara stared into the Glass, and to Ryel's astonishment her reflection stared back. Ever keeping her eyes on the mirrored image's, she flung back her hair and began one by one to rip away the brooches that fastened the front of her gown. Then with a desperate wrench she tore apart the silken cloth. Ryel would have instantly looked away, having never forgotten the Steppes law that demanded death from any grown man who laid eyes on his mother's nakedness. But the horror revealed in that first eyeblink held him appalled. Next to the reflection's perfect right breast hung a bruised bagful of pus, livid and foul. Ryel cried out in horror at the sight, but his mother did not turn around. She only stared into the mirror, her beautiful face now drawn and pale, her dry lips trembling. Then she hid her face in her hands, and vanished.

Ryel stood numbed, incapable of movement, crushed by the atmosphere's weight.

"You caused this," he whispered into the stifling air. "You wrought this lie." And he waited in silence, but not for long.

I do not lie, the hated voice smoothly said. The woman's cancered. As you might have noted, she's far beyond the skill of any doctor—but perhaps not beyond the Art of the greatest wysard of Markul. The greatest living, I should say.

Ryel remembered what Kjal of Elecambron had imparted to him; remembered, and forgot to breathe. "Tell me your name, daimon."

The voice laughed at him. Patience, sweet eyes. Rather than rudely questioning, you should thank me for giving you the chance to reach your mama in time. The woman has, from the looks of her, a month of life left.

Ryel could hardly speak, stifled with the heaviness of the air and the still greater burden of his anger. "I scorn this ploy of yours, whatever you are."

As you wish, the voice drawlingly replied. For my own part, I hardly care whether the woman lives or dies. You've already been the death of he that you so cloyingly called ithradrakis, dearer than father—now's your mother's turn.

Never had Ryel felt so helplessly enraged. "Go and be damned, slave of darkness!" he shouted. As if in complete obedience the air lightened, and he was again able to breathe freely. Drawing a starved draught of air, he sank down in front of the Glass, that now reflected nothing.

He had never used his Glass save in service of the Art, lest his powers weaken through contact with the World. Always it was Edris who had sought to view the World, and who would later tell Ryel what he had seen. But Edris was dead.

I will prove you a liar, thing of shadow, Ryel thought; and aloud he said, "Risma, the banner of the Triple Star. The yat of Mira, my mother."

The surface of the glass shimmered and dissolved, until it seemed that Ryel looked through a window into a circular chamber walled in thick hangings covered with embroidered designs. On the low bed a woman lay—the same woman he had seen before his Glass, in the same gown, her face drawn with the same torment. At her side another woman knelt, an old woman with her gray braids straggling from a scarf.

"Anthea," Ryel whispered. "My mother's nurse, still alive."

"Poor lamb," the crone said in a voice that quavered even more with tears than with age, "I cannot bear to give you pain, but your dressing must be changed." And she gently began to unfasten the front of Mira's gown.

"No," Ryel whispered. But he kept his eyes fixed on the scene within the Glass, his hands clenched on either side of the frame.

Mira gave a desperate gasp despite the old woman's tenderness; and in a throe of agony she twitched away, and the bodice of her gown fell open.

Ryel cried out furious denial, but nothing lessened the horror of his mother's affliction, more loathsome to his sight even than before. Sickened and stunned, the wysard turned away; and when he at last regained the strength to look back, the image in the Glass had vanished.

"Was this another ruse of yours, shadow-monster?" Ryel shouted to the air. But nothing answered him; and he beat his fists against the steely surface of the unreflecting Glass, his eyes burning like red fire, until he was bruised and breathless.

"I can't lose you, too," he whispered. "I will not."

He had felt guilty sorrow two years before, when he had learned of Yorganar's death—a death such as every Steppes bannerman prayed for, swift and without suffering and in the full accomplishment of his years, his neck cleanly broken by a throw from an overspirited horse. For Edris he had shrieked and thrashed until Lady Serah came to rub his temples with oil of mandragora, uttering frantic spells until he finally quieted and slept. And if his mother were indeed sick, and died through his neglect, he would not be able to survive his grief. "It will kill me," he whispered.

The air thickened and slowed.

Such extravagance of sorrow, the hated voice sneered. Such filial devotion. Your mama would be proud.

Furious, Ryel did not reply, but leapt to his feet and went to his bedchamber. The voice pursued him, teasingly.

Ah, we are angry. We refuse to speak .

Ryel clenched his teeth, and stared into his mirror, and muttered a word. At once his shaven head began to darken, covering itself with thick hair, straight and black. When the hair reached well past his shoulders, Ryel said another word that stopped the growth.

Very good indeed, young blood, the voice cooed. Much better.

Still ignoring the voice, Ryel uttered a word that faintly bearded his smooth face.

Excellent, breathed the voice. Most virile. Why this charming metamorphosis?

"You know why."

Where will you travel?

"You know where."

The voice grew cloyingly, mockingly sweet. The Aqqar is wide, and Risma far. You may not get to your dear mama in time. But I could help you. I can—

Ryel spat at the Glass. "You can go back to the hell you came from. I won't need your help."

A laugh, hysterical and shrill. Then the oppression lifted.

*****

Naked one came into Markul, and naked one was constrained to leave it. Ryel would be able to take nothing with him that he had acquired in the City—no books or talismans, none of his fine robes or other rich possessions, not even the plain gold rings in his ears and on his fingers. Nor did he greatly care. But it wrung him to have to part with Edris' mantle, and Edris' sword. He gathered the cloak to his heart in a long embrace, rubbing his cheek across the warm nap, remembering what his kinsman had once said concerning it.

"Since you keep badgering, whelp, I'll tell you." Edris swathed the red-purple mantle more securely around him, for they stood together upon the walls and the winter wind blew strong. His action was not prompted by any reaction to the cold; the icy mist was hardening into swirls of snow, but Edris could not have been less perturbed had his bare feet been shod to the knee in fleece and felt. "It's a soldier's cloak. It belonged to a Northern captain that the army called Warraven, because he lived to fight and he was swarthy as a crow." Edris' long eyes slitted with memory. "One of the deadliest bladesmen in all the North—a fact I know only too well, because my left ribs bear a deep remembrance of his skill. When I arrived in Markul and learned to command the air, the first thing I ordered my srihs to do was steal his cloak, just as I had them bring my sword as soon as I learned the trick."

Ryel smiled, remembering the Steppes custom between warriors, how close friends would wear one another's clothes—most often a shirt, but frequently enough a cloak—as a sign of their bond. Ryel himself had done so with his play-brother Shiran, before leaving Risma. "You must have admired this Warraven very much," he said.

"I did indeed. He damned near killed me." Edris shot Ryel a suspicious glance out of the end of his eye, wrapping himself inexorably in the red-purple cloth less for warmth than for surety. "Don't tell me you want this too, as well as my sword."

"Kinsman, I never—"

"You're welcome to both when I'm dead and gone—but not before."

"Then may I wait forever."

"I'll try to make sure that you do, brat. Go on indoors--you're turning blue out here."

Ryel folded that memory carefully into the tyrian web, and set the cloak aside; took up the Kaltiri tagh and slowly unsheathed it, reading character by exquisite character the words that ran like scrolled fire down the brilliant double-edged blade.

"Keener than lover's hunger,

Sharp as a king's despair,

Fell as a wysard's fury,

Coward and cruel, beware!

Turning to water the wicked,

Heavy as haunted land,

Lighter than air am I lifted,

Fire in a hero's hand."

Those verses were Ryel's doggerel approximation of the distichs written in the hidden language of the Fraternity of the Sword, a Northern cult of great antiquity. Edris had become a Swordbrother during his years as a warrior, when he fought as a mercenary of the Dominor of Hryeland against the White Barbarians. In accordance with the Fraternity's commandment he had forever after kept its ceremonials and its speech a secret even to Ryel. The young wysard had only divined the Fraternity's language by accident in his tenth Markulit year, while reading the history of the first lords of Elecambron. To his surprise their ancient runes had proven virtually identical to those on Edris' sword. He would have told his uncle of his discovery, but an inexplicable reluctance, a dislike of admitting himself an infringer into hard-won privilege, had continually prevented him.

Ryel raised the blade in both hands, touching his brow to it. The cold steel stung like a wound. Sheathing the tagh slowly, he lapped it in the cloak and laid it at the foot of his bed. After a final mirror-glance at his new self, he left the room and strode out of his house, leaving the door unlocked, and swiftly descended the black stone stairs that zigzagged level by level down to the western gate. A cold drizzle had begun to fall, but he did not feel it. Softly though he trod, nonetheless the quick ears of the Markulit brotherhood heard, and many looked out their windows to watch the Overreacher pass. Some left their houses and followed, sensing what was to come.

At the western gate Ryel stood, and uttered the opening-spell. With a recalcitrant shriek of metal stronger than any steel the great portals turned on their hinges, and at that noise so seldom heard a throng began to gather, watching for what would next occur, questioning Ryel to no avail. Lady Serah was among the crowd, and she alone did not ask why he was leaving.

"So. You took my advice after all."

At Serah's words the wysard shook his head. "When I declared earlier today that no woman could draw me from this City, I erred. My mother is very ill, and needs me."

Others heard him, and many were scornful of so slight and foolish a reason for abandoning the life of the Art; but Ryel took no notice of them. He was only too mindful, however, of Lady Serah's questioning gaze and words.

"How could you have known she was sick?"

"I saw her in my Glass," Ryel answered, not meeting his Art-sister's eyes, which could pierce when they chose. "Since I must take nothing with me from Markul, allow me to present you with these, my dear sister." He unfastened the circlets from his ears and drew off his rings, and gave them to Serah; then took her hands and touched them to his brow. She twined her fingers around his own as her beryl-green eyes met his, no longer with their wonted irony.

"It is imperative that you speak with Lady Srin," she said, her voice low and urgent.

Ryel shook his head. "But I cannot, sister. I make for Risma, not Almancar, and will return to this City as soon as my mother has been restored to health."

"Will you? I wonder. But no matter what passes, good fortune be yours, my lord brother. I will look after your house until your return, whenever that may be."

"You have my thanks, sister."

"Then show it." Cat-quick, Serah slipped her arms around his neck and drew him down to her, kissing his mouth. "I've wanted to do that for years." Smiling with her old deviltry, she ran a swift hand over his chin. "I like your new looks, by the way."

Ryel smiled in return. Then he began to ungird his robe, but paused abashed. Lady Serah at once understood.

"Come, you gawkers," she said to the watching crowd. "We'll climb upon the walls and watch our young brother's going, even as twelve years ago we witnessed his coming."

The Steppes modesty that Ryel had learned as a boy he had never outgrown despite all the knowledge he'd gained in Markul, and he blushed to strip before a watching crowd. Thankful for Serah's discretion, he waited until everyone had begun to climb the many stairs to the ramparts, then cast off his Markulit garb in haste.

He turned and passed through the gate, naked as he had entered twelve years before. The endless mist felt suddenly and unbearably icy on his bare skin as the wysard stood outside his City for the first time in twelve years. But he at once went to the heap of clothes that had been his, and opened the saddlebags wherein were carefully folded other Steppes garments, larger than those he had cast off so long ago.

"You will grow," his mother had told him when he left Risma as a boy of fourteen. "Therefore I have made these clothes to fit the tall man you will become." And she had embraced him, and he had dried his tears in her hair as he whispered that surely he would return to her someday …

Shuddering with cold, Ryel dressed as quickly as he might in the clothes he found still fresh in the saddlebags. Shirt, leggings, long-skirted coat—everything fit as if made to his measure, even the riding-boots that had been so loose when he set out on his journey. Warmth of both home-loomed web and remembered love enveloped him, but nevertheless he could not help another twinge of chill. A Steppes bannerman of considerable means he now looked, but a true Rismai brave went armed and cloaked, and he was neither. His dagger lay yet unrusted in its sheath, and this he hung on his belt. But it seemed little protection against the predators of the Aqqar Plain, even as his coat seemed insufficient proof against the rawness of the cold, Art or no Art.

Lady Serah, who for a time had left the wall, now reappeared and spoke, somewhat flushed and out of breath. "My lord Ryel! Among my goods nearby you is a purse full of gold coin and jewels, which is yours as my gift. You'll be needing them in the World, believe me." Then she gave that flashing grin of hers, the one that made her look so young. "And these things, too you may find use for, I'm thinking." She tossed a mulberry-colored bundle down from the wall. Ryel caught it, and with a thrill of joy found Edris' great cloak wrapped around his sword.

"That was ill done, woman," Lord Wirgal snapped to Serah Dalkith. "You know the laws of Markul—the boy may take nothing of his from our City."

She tossed her fox-haired head. "What I gave Lord Ryel were the erstwhile possessions of Lord Edris, beloved and mourned by us all—or nearly all."

Lord Wirgal glowered under gray brows. "Equivocating female, how dare you—"

"Let be, old fool," Serah snapped back. "Never will you leave this place, Wirgal, but die babbling in your bed."

During their quarrel Ryel slung the tagh's belt baldric-wise over his shoulder in the Steppes way, then donned the cloak. Gazing up at Lady Serah, he bowed low in the brotherhood's most reverent obeisance. "I will never forget this kindness of yours, sister."

"Thank yourself rather, for never locking your door," Serah replied smiling. But now her lips trembled.

Suddenly others wished to give Ryel parting-gifts, perhaps stung by Serah's words to Lord Wirgal. "Young lord, over there is the baggage I left more than fifty years ago," cried Lord Nestris, "and it is full of Almancarian robes wonderfully rich, and of your measure, and still as fresh as the day they were made. I pray you take as many as please you."

Lady Mevanda, too, raised up her voice. "And among my havings are a case of medicinal balms, and phials of healing essences—take them, and welcome!"

Unwieldy Lord Ter spoke next. "Over yonder are my things—bottles of water and wine and brandy you will find, and food too, all unperished. Take them, and spare your Art's strength thereby."

Many other lords and ladies of Markul offered Ryel whatever he wished to choose from the possessions they had been constrained to relinquish at the gates. Many other lords and ladies of Markul offered Ryel whatever he wished to choose from the possessions they had been constrained to relinquish at the gates; only Lord Wirgal played the churl.

"Touch nothing of mine, Overreacher!" he screeched. But he was scorned by all for his meanness.

Soon Ryel's saddlebags were laden with gifts, and his pockets as well, but one last thing of seemingly little use he also took—Jinn's halter of gold-embossed leather, that he wished to keep as a remembrance of his beloved mare now forever lost. Thanking his many benefactors once again and bowing a last time to Lady Serah, he shouldered his baggage and set forth. When he was some distance from the City he turned about, and saw that everyone still watched him, and he waved. Then he observed Lady Serah reach into the pouch hanging at her belt, and take out what seemed a ball of amber. Breathing on it, she threw it far from the wall. Midway in its flight the little sphere became a bright gold butterfly winging its way toward Ryel like a windblown flame-flicker amid the cobwebs of mist. As it flitted and played about him the wysard smiled, and waved a last time to his Art-sister. Then he faced westward again, and strode on.

Chapter Three

With Serah's butterfly playing about him Ryel trekked westward, until he knew that the City at his back would seem only a somber child's strange toy dropped and forgotten. But when he next looked round, he found that Markul had been completely engulfed by mist, and when he turned back again he discovered that the butterfly had vanished. Alone in the biting fog he stood for a time gazing about him, feeling most solitary and bereft. He thought of the contemplative tranquility he was forsaking, the long silent hours of study. Seen from the outside for the first time in a dozen years, the great walls of the City seemed no longer a prison as it all too often had in the past, but a sanctuary. Outside those walls and beyond the fog lay a World whose pleasures and dangers Ryel had read of in a hundred histories, and experienced barely at all, and longed for constantly. But now the pleasures seemed empty, and the dangers mortal.

"I'm going back," he said, challenging the mist. But although he waited for the atmosphere to thicken and the voice to speak, nothing happened.

"You lied," he said. "She is well."

Complete silence in reply. Something in its inexorable density made Ryel murmur imprecations and once again turn west, and walk.

No roads led to Markul, and too few aspirants came there year by year for their trails to mark the land. But those truly desiring to find the City never lost their way. Ryel well remembered his own first traversal of the Aqqar, and how much easier the actuality had seemed at fourteen than the very prospect did now.

That was because I had Jinn with me, he thought. Jinn to talk to as I rode and to watch over me over me as I slept, and Edris, feared and beloved, awaiting me at the end of the journey. Now only unknowns draw me on.

For a considerable while the wysard walked untired, following the path of the fogbound sun. But after several hours the saddlebags weighed heavy on his shoulder, and he stopped to rest. Sitting down on a slab of rock and opening a flask of brandy, he swigged and ruminated.

"There's got to be an easier way," he said aloud, newly aware of how much deeper his voice had grown since that first Aqqar journey, and how it had never lost its Steppes tang despite all the years in Markul. Hearing it emboldened him. "It'll take me ages to reach Risma afoot. What if I tried that spell of Lord Garnos, the Mastery of Translation?"

But even as he spoke, he laughed at himself. What if, indeed. Not until Ryel was very old in the Art would he dare to attempt anything so risky as a translation-spell. And at any rate, that spell of Garnos' was a lost one, like so many others of his. But a fool's trick for amusement's sake could do no harm—a trick such as Ryel was fond of trying in those days long past when he was a mere famulus…and Edris wasn't looking. Accordingly Ryel uttered the words to make his saddlebags dance for him, which they should have done with as much nimble alacrity as was possible in their packed state. But they only shuffled listlessly a moment before sinking down again like a fat skatefish on a sea-bottom. Feeling both sheepish and disquieted Ryel once more uttered the spell, this time with complete seriousness and concentration, but the saddlebags stayed sullenly put.

Something, the wysard thought slowly, is very wrong.

He hadn't packed that heavily. The problem was too much Sindrite brandy, no doubt; the drink which Lord Ter had given him was as good or better than any srih-servant could have procured for him, and like all Steppes folk he had small tolerance for strong spirits. Moreover, he had walked for miles, and the day was beginning to darken; perhaps now was the time to make camp.

The notion of building a fire and sleeping in the open had great charms for him. During his boyhood he would ride out with Shiran and his other play-brothers during the horse-gatherings, to join the grown men working hard in the saddle all the day, and resting around the fire at night before bedding down bone-weary to sleep unshakably until dawn—a blood-thrilling time for a lad eager for manhood and loving the feel of his muscles strained to breaking, the rough savors of charred meat roasted on dagger-point, and goatskin-bottled dark wine passed from hand to hand; the face-scorching heat of the fire, the talk of horses and heroes and women that he listened to silently, and the songs he took part in, the warmth of his mother-woven blankets cushioning him from the hard ground, his father's abrupt hand on his shoulder awaking him to a cold red dawn and a steaming bowlful of chal.

How long ago that time was, Ryel thought, sensing his isolation to the full. And it can never come again, any more than I can now return to Markul. But chal-powder I have, and water, and the wherewithal for making fire, thanks to the gifts of my Art-brothers and sisters, and Edris' cloak to warm me and his sword to defend me. It should be a pleasant enough night, even if a lonely one.

But the Aqqar Plain was not the Inner Steppes, as Ryel soon learned to his strong discomfort. Here was unfriendly emptiness, and continual damp, and nothing with which to keep kindled flame ablaze. Save for their scattering of extinct volcanoes, Rismai's steppes were fully as empty to the eye as the Aqqar, true; but amid their vastness one might readily find great deposits of concentrated plant matter, the remains of deep swamps dried up in ages past, providing fuel that burnt hot, steadily and long. A good-sized brick of kulm would warm a yat all night, Ryel remembered; and weakening under the pressure of that thought he spoke some command-words into the air.

"A close tent with a dry floor; and a porch to the tent, with a large fire under the porch."

The items appeared, but not quickly nor in such good trim as the wysard expected. The tent proved cramped, drafty and dank with a leaky porch; the fire was both meager and fitful. Used as he was to complete and lavish obedience to his requests, Ryel was too amazed to feel anger; and he remembered the poor success he had enjoyed with Lord Garnos' spell earlier, and sat ill at ease and baffled as he tried and failed to coax the flames higher while dodging water-drip.

Surely mere distance from Markul cannot be causing this, he thought. Could it be that Dagar has drained the spirit-energy from the air around my City, as Serah Dalkith would certainly maintain? No, impossible; a wild fancy. My Art would be strong whether in Markul or at some inaccessible end of the World; no weakness of mine is to blame, surely. I can prove that.

Gathering his saddlebags, he stood up and walked away from the tent into the persistent rain; lifted his face to its chill drip and yelled out a word that in less frustrating times he would have whispered, and that carefully. To the wysard's intense gratification a wisp of fog whirled into a spiral, and touched ground five feet from where he stood. The spiral eventually took on a wavering man-form, featureless save for long eyes like glowing amethyst, and spoke in a voice blurred and sullen, now running its words together, now stopping short.

"Leavemea lone."

Ryel ignored the request, and instead gestured to the empty ground. "Shelter. And make it comfortable."

A great soundless flash lit the night, and subsided to reveal a yat fit for a wandering prince, with a porch large enough for ten people, and a blazing fire under it.

Ryel at once installed himself amid the cushions heaped before the fire, and held his hands out to the warmth. "Good. Very good, Pukk. Quite close to my desire."

The wraith quivered on the point of dissolution. "Iwillg onow."

Ryel lifted his hand. "Wrong. Stay."

A long hesitation. Then, "Un usualre quest."

Pukk's tone was emotionless and distant, as ever, but its words sharpened the chill of the night. I am alone and outside my City for the first time , Ryel thought with a pang of disquiet. And my powers are not what they were in Markul—a temporary weakening without doubt, yet one that this daimon must not perceive.

But Pukk's senses detected every uneasy emanation, every prickle of human flesh. "Youf ear. Andnowon der. I amstron ghere. May bestron gerthan you."

Pukk was infallibly insolent, and Ryel had always taken a tense pleasure in their encounters. The most powerful of all the spirits of air, Pukk alone was capable of semi-speech and quasi-embodiment. It had been the death of at least a dozen lord adepts in both Markul and Elecambron. But Ryel had never allowed himself to fear Pukk—never until now. Steeling his self-command, he used all his Markulit training to keep his skin from sweating, his heart from racing.

"You don't want to try me, Pukk. Since there's no one else fit to wait on me, I'll trouble you for some dinner —grilled lamb, say, and rice seasoned in the Rismai fashion, with a flagon of Wycastrian ale, in honor of my lady sister Serah Dalkith."

Pukk shimmered in fury. "Ic ouldpoi sonyou."

Ryel lifted his chin, meeting the srih's glowing eyes with its own empty ones. "I think not. I might destroy you first."

Silence, save for the rain—far quieter, it seemed to Ryel, than his own breathing. Pukk's lambent violet eyes became slits, and then blinked. At that moment a steaming trayful of delicious-smelling food materialized at Ryel's side. "There. Eatitan dchoke."

The palpitating moment had stilled, and the frisson of fear evaporated like a rag of mist. I have my own strength, the wysard thought as his blood warmed again. My inward Mastery, that owes nothing to the Outer World. Strong Mastery that this srih senses, and fears.

"You'll never kill me with your cookery, Pukk," Ryel said aloud, quite coolly now. "You forgot the bones and the venom. My infinite thanks." Suddenly too hungry for fear, he turned all his attention to the tray.

The amethyst eyes of the srih glowed disdain and injury. "Iwillg onow." And as Pukk spoke it started to fade.

"Wait," Ryel said with his mouth full. "Tell me about Dagar first."

With a furious smoky shudder Pukk intensified, but did not reply.

Ryel, well pleased with preternaturally exquisite Steppes cuisine, urged without asperity. "He was a hard master?"

Pukk replied with more than a shred of contempt. "Hard erthany ou."

Ryel sat back, interested and amused. "Where is he now, communicative and garrulous servitor?"

"Dagard well sinthe Void."

"The void?"

"TheVoid." Pukk's emphasis on the last syllable was both weary and contemptuous, but Ryel ignored the inflection in favor of the information, recalling the words of Kjal of Elecambron, and of his Art-sister Serah Dalkith.

"Do you mean the shadow-realm of the Outer World, from whence come you and the other servants of the brotherhood?" the wysard prompted.

"No."

Startled by that rusky monosyllable, Ryel leaned forward. "Then it is a place apart from both the Outer World and this?"

"Yes."

"What else exists in the Void?"

"Otherra is."

"What other rais?" the wysard demanded, his vehemence stark. "Rais like Dagar's, bent on harm?"

Pukk never admitted ignorance. It merely said nothing—as now.

Unsettled as he was by his servant's silence, Ryel felt his blood heaten with hope never known until now. "The rai survives the body after death," he murmured. "It survives."

Pukk heard, and replied almost immediately. "No." Observing Ryel's speechless infuriation, it continued grudgingly. "Abo dycanb eseparat edfromit srai. Bot hwills urv ive."

"The body, separate from its rai? But how can that occur?" Ryel demanded.

Pukk made no answer.

"Dagar's body was destroyed," Ryel said, angrily now. "Burnt to ashes in Elecambron. I read it in the Books."

Pukk seemed to incline its head. "Yes. But therai ofDag arre mains." Then slowly, softly, alarmingly, Pukk whispered. "Dagar'sp ow erg rows. Hewill grows trong er. Indark nesshedr awsst rength."

For once Ryel was confused by Pukk's idiosyncratic syntax. "Dagar draws strength in the darkness? Meaning that he is powerless during the day?"

Pukk gave a reluctant quiver of assent. "Itwill notal waysb eso. Morew illcome. Soon."

"Why has Dagar not taken you?"

Pukk guttered under the insult. "Iamstr ong. Stron gestof myk ind. Nottobe take nuntilall elseistaken."

Ryel felt his heart beating too fast, and could not calm it. "And what if all else is taken? What comes after?"

The purple eyes blazed. "Itwill havey ou. As itss lave." In that last sneering syllable Pukk began to fade.

Ryel leapt to his feet. "I command you stay! You feckless ectoplasm, if you dare—"

But Pukk had vanished, all but its eyes. In another moment those eyes gave a malignant scornful flash, and were extinguished by the rain. A few minutes later the princely yat had dwindled to a miserable tent ubiquitously aleak, and the ardent blaze had shrunk to flickering smoke.

"Damn," Ryel muttered, furious and alarmed. He hugged his cloak around him, and listened hard. Only the lulling fall of skywater came to his ears. At least he'd be able to sleep, if the rain held. The wolves and night-serpents for which the Aqqar was universally ill-famed kept to their lairs during wet weather.

"I've roughed it worse," the wysard assured himself aloud. But he knew to his discomfiture that it had been very long since he last had. Sheltering in the folds of Edris' cloak he with great difficulty found a dry spot inside the tent and flung himself down, overmasteringly spent. But Pukk's words kept him restless where rain and cold could not.

*****

Uncertain sunlight woke him, and he rose on an elbow, blinking. The tent was gone, and the fire. Only a little heap of soggy cinders marked his erstwhile camp. But at least it wasn't raining.

Ryel sniffed, and groaned, and cleared his throat. His breath vapored on the chill air. "Chal. At once."

None appeared.

Quite deliberately he asked again, but with the same result. Dagar might not be powerful in the day, but Pukk had been right: the spirit-energy of the Aqqar was sucked dry. After last night's colloquy Ryel was disinclined to summon Pukk again, but he had no other servants in this place—only his Mastery, meant for higher aims than the body's needs, and his own ingenuity, not particularly scintillating just now. Rolling onto his back, the wysard contemplated the opaque grayness overhead as he shivered under his damp cloak and wondered if, for the first time in a dozen years, he was about to catch cold or worse. At that dire thought he redoubled his inventiveness, and suddenly remembered the little chunk of kulm he'd wrapped up with his flint and steel, stuck inside his chal-gear and thrust into a corner of his saddlebags on the morning of the day he'd reached Markul.

Some rummaging and cold-fingered cursing later, he'd coaxed a spark and started a fire under the chaltak; and after an interminable interval the water bubbled hot enough for him to throw in a good big pinch of chal-powder to make the strong brew he liked best. As soon as the powder settled he poured the infusion into the chal-cup, warming his hands around the bowl. The heat was an indescribable comfort, and he gave a little groan of pleasure as his stiff fingers relaxed; and when he put his lips to the bowl he shuddered as the chal, more delicious than any he'd ever drunk in Markul, shed its stimulant warmth into his ill-rested limbs. Since boyhood he'd loved chal, brewed to a deep jade-color in the Almancarian fashion; the Rismai and other steppe-dwellers in the realm of Destimar commonly drank it much lighter. Every horseman of Risma carried a set of chal-gear, neatly and compactly nested, in his saddlebags; most often the gear was wrought of tough fire-resistant Semlorn porcelain, but richer folks' were of silver. Ryel's chaltak and bowl were of exquisitely wrought electrum and enamel fit for a wandering prince, which his mother had had made for him as her parting-gift when he left for Markul. He had much missed them during his years in the City, and it was sheer pleasure to have them back again. As he savored that reunion, he thought of the land he had left so long ago, and would at last behold again.

The realm of Destimar was vast, comprising not only the Inner and Outer Steppes to the east and south, but fertile lands reaching as far as the sea, west of the towering jewel-teeming massifs of the Gray Sisterhood. The capital city of Almancar lay emplained at the foot of the Sisterhood's eastern slopes, and within its walls Ryel's mother had been born and had lived cherished amid every luxury until the age of fifteen. Much had Mira told her son of her native city and her family, and of her two brothers who roved the World by ship and caravan in search of treasures rich, beautiful and ancient. But she seldom spoke of her parents, from whom she had become estranged when she chose to marry a Steppes horseman rather than one of the several Destimarian nobles who had sought her hand.

The man she married, Yorganar, had grown to manhood on the Outer Steppes, and later moved to the Inner lands. It was the custom in both Steppes for folk to dwell as phratria, loosely-knit clans united and identified by their banner. The bannermen of the Muk'hai, the Bostrai, the Bakatt Segred and the Kaltiri—or the Red Moon, the Raincloud, the Nightwind and the Grass-fox—dwelt in the endless green fields of the Kugglaitan just west of Almancar, and were famed for their great flocks of sheep and cattle; save for the wandering and warlike Kaltiri they were town-lovers for the most part, nomadic only in summer. The people of the Elhin Gazal and the Fang'an, or the Triple Star and the Stormhawk, lived deep in the Rismai lands to the northeast, in encampments they shifted four times a year; they were renowned for the most excellent horses in the World. The Kugglaitai were close friends of Almancar, but relations between Risma and the Bright City were less civil, for the horse-folk of the Inner Steppes were haughty of spirit, and scornful of town-life; and whenever the Sovran exacted his yearly tribute of mares and stallions for his stables, he was compelled to come himself to fetch them, or send his emissaries to traffic at the great horse-fair held every year at springtide.

Long had the Elhin Gazal horses been reputed the best of all the world, and those of the Yorganarek breed descended from Windskimmer were deemed almost beyond price, and sought after by the great and rich of every land. Ryel had thus grown up used to the comings and goings of lords and princes in his father's yat, and as a boy of twelve had poured out wine for the Sovranet Mycenas of Destimar, and been called a fine young lad; but even then he knew that his family's privileged status was of very recent date. Yorganar had been born a Kaltiri, and his people had raised cattle. But while young men barely out of their teens, he and his brother Edris had forsaken their kinsmen of the Grass-fox banner to become warriors in Destimar's border disputes with Shrivran; and they signalized themselves by valor that the Sovran richly rewarded when the struggle was concluded in peace two years later.

Having tasted the life of the armed camp, the brothers found themselves more inclined afterward to be horse-tamers than herdsmen, and accordingly shifted their clan-allegiance to the phratri of the Three Stars, which was glad of such brave and ardent new blood. With riches, skill and strength gained from their warrior's days the twin brothers together built up the choicest stud in the Inner Steppes, and when Edris renounced his share of it first to soldier in the Northland for the Dominor of Hryeland, and then to spend the rest of his days in Markul, Yorganar was thus made richer even than the Triple Star's chieftains. But as a new man under a strange banner, without kinsmen among the phratri, wed to an outland wife and father of only a single son, Yorganar was always somewhat distanced from the folk of his adopted clan; and Ryel had grown up without that dense network of relations that signalized the nomadic life of the Inner Steppes. Nor was his bond with his father a strong one, which was likewise counter to Steppes ways. His mother had been so much to him--nurturer, sister, friend, queen.

"I would be with you now if I could," he whispered to her in a sleep-roughened voice unsteady with trapped and burning tears. "But I have no way. And it'll take long to reach you, every day bringing you more pain. I wish I had the Art."

As if to partly give him the lie, a whickering snort issued from very close by; and Ryel started up to find an animal grazing less than twenty feet away. Had it been a fabulous monster all horns and warts, the wysard could not have been more astonished; but it was a mare of the true Steppes breed, neat-limbed and strong and lovely, worth its weight in matched pearls.

"This is a dream," he whispered. The horse heard him, and lifted its head to look his way with great dark wondering eyes. At that gesture, so graceful and apt, Ryel caught his breath.

"Jinn?"

The horse's ears twitched, and its dark eyes assessed the wysard warily under thick-fringed lashes, but without fear. Very slowly Ryel got to his feet. He was trembling, but not from the dawn cold this time.

"Jinn. I know it's you. Jinn, little sister, do you not remember me?"

The horse hung back, its four legs planted and its head lowered. Ryel took a step forward, ever talking in a voice soft and steady.

"How came your mane and tail so long, and so light? It becomes you. Your coat's all rough, but we'll smooth it. And how is it you're so young? You should be old, old; not as fresh as the day we parted before the walls of Markul. Can it be that the land around the City kept you youthful, even as it kept my gear from perishing? But that isn't possible; surely you've escaped from a rich caravan, and some proud young brave is now desolate because of you."

By this time he had his hand on the horse's mane. Very gently Ryel stroked the pale shimmering forelock. In doing so he ran a finger over the cocked left ear, seeking a little nick at its base. He found it, and jerked back as if bitten.

"No. It can't be."

It couldn't. Not after so many years. But nevertheless the horse was warmly real, its breath vaporing on the raw Aqqar air. Real, and undoubtedly fleet and tough if her likeness to Jinn went further than mere semblance. Slowly lest he frighten the animal away, Ryel went to his saddlebags and took out the halter. "I never dreamed I'd have a use for this, here in the wasteland. Could you get used to it again…Jinn?"

The name worked like a spell. The mare stood motionless, giving only a snort or two as Ryel tossed the saddlebags onto her back and fitted the halter onto her head. Reaching into his pocket, the wysard brought out a bag of dried fruit.

"Here, little one. Apricots—your favorites, remember? They're a bit on the leathery side, and I'd say a word to freshen them, but it wouldn't work now. What, don't you want them?"

The horse apparently did not. After a tentative sniff, Jinn turned her head away.

"Very well. I won't force you," Ryel said. "But let me do this, at least." And he stroked Jinn's satin mane, and hugged her about the neck.

Although he had not ridden for a dozen years, the wysard vaulted without effort onto the mare's back and sat easily despite the lack of a saddle, his Steppes horsemanship unforgotten.

"All right, little one. Let's have a run, and see if you're as fast as your namesake was."

He touched a heel to her side, and the mare leapt into a gallop that no whip in the world could have prompted, and that surely no other mount in the world might equal. Ryel felt his hair stream out behind him, and in the fullness of his joy he began to sing a Rismaian ballad forgotten by him until that moment, shouting the words to the wind.

The day passed in an eyeblink—far too fast, in fact. Tirelessly Jinn raced across the infinities of green, never slowing her pace for an instant. At last Ryel forced her to a halt lest he kill her.

"This isn't right," he said, more disquieted than pleased, now. "Miles and miles gone by at a dead gallop, but you're not lathered even a fleck. You don't seem to need to eat or drink—or satisfy any other natural urges, for that matter. I'm starting to think you aren't real."

Jinn gave a whinny that sounded indignant, but Ryel was beginning to feel strong unease. He expected in the next moment for the air to close in chokingly around him, and the persecuting voice to shrill about his ears like an evil bug, and the horse to transform into something unspeakably monstrous.

For several taut heart-taxing minutes the wysard awaited the worst as Jinn watched him with great questioning eyes. At last Ryel allowed himself to calm, and put out a steady hand to stroke the mare's bright mane.

"Someone sent you," he said. " Someone who knows my memories. Someone who wishes me well. But who could it be?"

Whatever Jinn's arcane powers, speech was apparently not one of them, and Ryel had no time to ask whose Art-imbued agency had intervened so wonderfully in his behalf. He remounted, and rode.

But even if Jinn never tired, Ryel did. At sunset he made camp in the simple way of a Steppes bannerman, with no other shelter than his cloak. By now he was well out of the Aqqar. The mists had thinned, and now he was amid open air. With a World-horse the journey would have taken many a weary day, but Jinn's swiftness owed nothing to earth, for which the wysard was inutterably grateful. That evening Ryel looked up at the sky and for the first time in twelve years saw stars glimmering among the ragged clouds; and then the pale gold moon rose in silent state, vast as it slid upward from the grasses, a vision so wondrous that the wysard looked on in breathless awe. He barely slept that night, but continually awakened to fix his eyes on the flickering sparks and glowing disk. With hunger in his heart he dreamed of the dawn, and awoke to find the sky alight as if on fire, and he turned his head and saw the sun, and his eyes dazzled and burned.

That same day he found a trail and followed it sunward, tracing the path to a caravan-road he remembered well, riding ever southwest, joying in the brilliant blue of the sky, the clear ardent light, the green infinity of grassland. And soon the endless jade sweep took on other colors, vivid patches of citron yellow, glowing magenta, bright turquoise, deep scarlet—colonies of flowers spreading in their millions, anemones and roses and lilies in the height of their bloom, eagerly making the most of the evanescent Steppes spring. Amid interfused fragrance and color Ryel journeyed enraptured, feeling like a wandering prince in some epic of Destimar; like Prince Ghenris when he rode up to the throne of the Emperor of Rintala over a carpet that covered the entire floor of the vast presence-hall of the fabled palace, a carpet of the most precious silk dyed in a thousand hues, and pricelessly perfumed—a paltry rug compared to this endless living tapestry in which Jinn's hooves sank to the fetlock in soft scented growth.

It was under bright midday that he at last saw the banners of his people, deep blue with a triple star of silver, fluttering and snapping above the horizon's curve. Beyond the banners stretched a soft green plain, immensely vast, studded here and there with little conical hills. And far beyond that plain the white peaks of a range of huge mountains, the Gray Sisterhood, cut a jagged swath between earth and heaven.

My land, Ryel thought as his heart leapt. My great green land.

Those far-flung little hills had once been live volcanoes spitting fire, many thousands of years gone. Each cinder-cone bore the name of a Rismaian deity, and in their hollows the phratri sheltered their horses from the winter winds, sure of divine as well as natural protection. The wysard had grown up with legends of the Age of Fire, when all this earth was red and reeking with fiery lava; his people deemed themselves sprung from those flames. In the undulant slopes at the base of the volcano-hills the Rismai on occasion found ancient bones of men, their weapons and other goods; and the axeheads and arrowheads were highly prized by warriors of the phratri, who deemed them full of power and good fortune in the hunt. And the hunting was good, for antelope sheltered in the rare thickets of scrub pine, and hares in the basalt crevasses.

No river flowed through Risma, but scattered spring-fed ponds reflected the swift-changing clouds. At the edge of one of these basins stood the springtide encampment of the Elhin Gazal, its scattered yats echoing the shape of the cinder-cones, smoke rising from the peaked roofs as if from live fire-mountains.

His blood thrilling at the sight, Ryel would have driven his heels into Jinn's sides, but there was no need, for Jinn had seen the yats as well, and plunged into a gallop that mocked all other speed she'd shown.

A sentinel had noted Ryel's approach, and now drew his bow. Well aware that only two words would save his life, the wysard forced Jinn to a skidding halt and drew a deep breath.

"Ryel!" he shouted. "Ryel Mirai!"

The wysard waited, his hands lifted clear of his weapons in token of his peaceful intent, as the warrior overcame his apparent surprise, returned his arrow to his quiver and his bow to its sheath, and urged his horse to a canter. I know you, Ryel thought, his recognition growing all the more joyous and amazed as the rider neared him. You draw your hood about your face, but I know your eyes. Of all lucks, I had not hoped for this.

They were now a spear's length apart. The hooded warrior spoke first, in the common Almancarian that was the trade-tongue of the Steppes; and his keen dark eyes surveyed the wysard's every feature.

"The name you shouted so proudly belongs to one many years gone."

"Gone, but now returned," Ryel said.

"You do not use your patronymic, if you are he."

"I follow the custom of our people. But I may call myself Ryel Mirai, son of Yorganar that was. I greet you, Shiran."

The warrior's eyes widened, but only for a moment. "Many of the Rismai are named Shiran."

Your voice has changed, Ryel thought. As mine has.

"Shiran is indeed a common name on the Inner Steppes," he said aloud. "But in all the Steppes there is only one Shiran Belarem Alizai, and he and I once raced our first horses on this same stretch of ground. But he used always to wear a bow-guard of heavy gold, a treasured heirloom. Why does he not wear it now?"

Frowning brows at that, and a searching stare. Then from behind the hood the voice came rough. "Your eyes are strange."

Ryel felt the blood drain from his face like water into hot sand. No. Oh, no. He sees it. Sees the blackness, and—

"Yes," the sentinel said. "Strange. Not like ours." But as he spoke he took his hand from his dagger-hilt, and his voice grew calmer, sweetened with something like laughter. When he next spoke it was in the Rismai dialect, although formally, as befit men newly acquainted. "There used once to be a boy with such blue eyes, here in the camp."

Ryel blinked, but replied in the same language. "Was there indeed?"

The sentinel nodded. "A pale weakling he was. And I used to jeer at him, until he grew strong enough to make me sorry." The cowl fell free, then, to bare a brave face all in smiles. "Many years, play-brother," said Shiran, holding out his hand in that frank way that had ever been his. "I'd never forget those sky-colored eyes of yours, no matter how long you kept away. How many years were they?"

"Ten or so," Ryel said, too weak with relief to contest the grip of Shiran's tough brown palm. "Not many."

"An entire dozen, play-brother, not one of them short."

"You've grown strong in that time."

"And you soft." Shiran released Ryel's hand after a last hard clasp. "But tabibs' hands are ever soft. For all that, I dare swear you've cut up more corpses than I've yet slain, there in that leech-school of Fershom Rikh. So, have you mastered your craft at last? You should have learned by now to raise the dead, at very least."

Because wysards were greatly feared and distrusted in the Steppes, Ryel's parents had explained his leave-taking by saying he'd chosen to be a tabib—a doctor—and had elected to study medicine at Fershom Rikh, a far-off city of Destimar famed for its schools and its healers. Tabibs were scarce in the Steppes and honored, so this news had met with the phratri's entire approval. Shiran's questions made Ryel remember Edris, and for a moment he looked away. "Somewhat less is my skill."

Shiran did not observe Ryel's emotion, for his attention had shifted. "Only a skilled doctor could afford a horse like yours. She reminds me of Jinn--none but Windskimmer's get could cover ground so fast as this lovely one does. But Jinn would be old now, and this one seems less than two years." He reached out and stroked the mare's pale silken mane, and his thoughts seemed to wander. "Your sister Nelora has grown up while you were gone. Half the braves of the encampment are at each other's throats for her sake—which is just as she likes it."

Ryel felt a little twinge of pride, but still raised a brow. "Nelora is only a girl of fourteen, if I reckon her years rightly."

"Tell her that. And she's no cloud-witted child, believe me, but so learned at her age that the elders marvel at her."

Ryel leaned forward, interested. "So she's bookish, then, and gentle?"

Shiran flung back his head and laughed. "Hardly. Did you see her playing at kriy a-horseback with the boys—and winning—you'd think her neither. And with that tongue of hers, she doesn't need a dagger. Half wild she is, and self-willed, and fair as one born of your mother must be." But then Shiran ceased smiling, and spoke the words Ryel had seen hiding in his eyes all along, words the wysard had been dreading. "I do wrong to throw away your time this idly, Ry. You should see to your mother at once."

Again Ryel heard the unnamed voice. Its cruel taunting. "Then she is…"

"In deepest need of all the physician's skill you learned in Fershom Rikh. I suppose you are here for that cause, but I wonder how you knew--"

"I can't stay," Ryel said abruptly, already turning Jinn's head toward the yats.

Shiran nodded understanding. "May your doctor's arts help her. And when we next talk, may I hear of her cure."

"You will, ilandrakis."

The word Ryel had used was an eloquent, cherished one on the Steppes, meaning dearer than brother. At the sound of it, Shiran reached out. "Let this be greeting instead of farewell." And he bent from the saddle and caught Ryel about the neck, pressing his right cheek against that of his friend's. "Our faces were smooth when last we took leave of each other, and now we meet again, grown and bearded. Long years, play-brother."

Ryel returned the gesture with his whole heart. The two friends parted, and Ryel rode on to the encampment. As he neared the yats, a screaming crowd of dogs and children swarmed around Jinn's legs, but the wysard made no attempt to scatter them; the sight of shaggy hounds and red-cheeked little faces was too much of a novelty after petless, childless Markul. He merely quieted the urchins with a few calming-words, to which his mare added some kicks that sent mongrels scudding and shrieking in all directions. Because he had passed the sentinel and was therefore a friend to the banner, Ryel was not otherwise hindered as he rode through the encampment, although many paused to scan his face or admire his horse.

They think they know me, he thought as he acknowledged their nods and waves. The old ones who smile at me remember the lad who left to become a physician and study with the great doctors at Fershom Rikh; but did they realize that a lord adept of Markul rode among them, every hand now raised in greeting would be hurling stones.

In his admiration of the green infinity of steppe he had forgotten how rough life was among the yats. Forgotten the dirt and the din, the compacted miasma of meat seared by fire, of hot spices, horses, human sweat, the gritty reek of dust and smoke. The noisy hordes of children, and gangs of truculent dogs. Markul had taught him the luxuries of peace and cleanliness, however sparely he had elected to live there, and now he could not help wondering why his mother chose still to dwell among the Elhin Gazal when she might freely return to her native city of Almancar, the fairest in the World.

Mindful of ancient custom, he rode to the center of the encampment where the banner of the Triple Star was fastened to a tall slim mast in the midst of a clearing, its azure and gold silk straining at full length in the brisk spring wind. At the foot of the mast a simple wooden shrine held a burner of incense and various small offerings—wildflowers, copper money, and delicate seashells and fishes made of stone. The latter tokens were very rare, carefully pried out of secret places in the rock by horseman's knives. Bending from the saddle Ryel took up one of the shells and studied its fanned ridges a moment, remembering the old tales of his tribe. One told of how gods had carved the shells in their long millennia of idleness before man was created; another story even more fantastic, which none but the tiniest children believed, spoke of a great ocean that had once covered all the land.

Ryel turned the shell about in his fingers, his eyes fixed on the infinite green of the Steppes but his thoughts filling with another sea of vast and restless blue, splashing and foaming against the walls of Markul; and then the flashing glance of eyes bluer than any sea, azure with a live tint of violet. At that last memory he flinched, and hastened to complete the ritual of return, one performed by every bannerman after a journey. Bowing his head to the flag, he waved some of the incense-smoke first toward his face, then toward the four directions, invoking their gods; then touched the back of his hand to his brow, murmuring the ancient words of greeting to the protective deities of the phratri. These ceremonies done, he straightened, and turned Jinn's head toward his mother's yat.

He had recognized his family's yat-compound at once, pitched at some distance from the rest of the encampment and looked after by servants working hard at their various chores. Radiating from its central tent were five pavilions that served as sleeping-chambers and storerooms, while smaller yats for guests, guards, and servants stood somewhat further off—an arrangement once unique in Rismai, but now much imitated by those that could afford it. The yat-compound was but one of Mira's many successful attempts to confer at least a hint of her homeland's elegance to the uncivil Steppes. Other experiments were less happily realized: Ryel noted the struggling rose-bushes on either side of the yat's main entrance, and he recalled the constant efforts his mother had made to bring to this endless grassland some remembrance of the bright gardens of her native Almancar: the little orange-trees she cosseted to no avail in blue-and-white pots, the sweet herbs she sowed in neat patches never strongly enough fenced against marauding dogs and hares, the heaven-blue morning-glories she loved and ever tried, with little success, to wreathe about the yat-door. The memories distressed Ryel for the first time.

Constantly you sought to soften this hard life, my mother. But the roses always died, and the herbs never flourished, and the morning-glories would not bloom, and you would sigh and remember the flowering vines and sweet teeming greenery of your Almancarian girlhood, and my heart would ache for you. Neither of us belonged here.

Still, he could never once recall her complaining of her lot, any more than he could ever recall her spending her time idly. All of the many books she owned, and which Yorganar deemed useless clutter, were good and beautiful. Often Ryel would ask her to read aloud in her sweet voice, or listen to her as she sang. Often he would sing with her; and when she played the faldh, the soft-toned cithern of courtly Almancar, he would accompany her on his krusghan, the Steppes flute known for its soft carrying tones. The skill of her hands was marvelous, and her exquisite embroidery mingled Steppes designs with Almancarian, creating mythical beasts, fantastic flowers, unique ornament. No one else had the secret of those delicate sweets she made, lakh and other rarities that seemed the food of paradise.

Partly because she insisted, partly because it amused him, Yorganar had taught his young wife how to ride, and soon Ryel's mother had become proverbial among the Steppes for her bravery and skill on horseback. Although it was not unusual for young girls of the Rismai to become avid horsewomen, that activity virtually always ceased after marriage; and some of Ryel's most pleasant childhood memories were those in which he and Mira galloped together across the endless plains, she in bannerman's gear with her black hair streaming behind her, her cheeks flushed with the joy of exertion, her blue eyes glowing.

But now as Ryel neared his mother's yat, all he could remember was that Mira had never once looked upon her husband with any feeling deeper than gentle resignation. In the next moment he recalled the way she had gazed upon Edris that winter's night of so many changes, and the way Edris had returned that gaze. Ryel felt a wrenching qualm of sorrow for his mother, pity and regret for a delicate nature suborned to a dullard husband, a rough people, a harsh land.

Then the wysard's breath came fast, for he saw that the largest yat's entrance framed a woman, tall and girl-slender. Like a queen enthroned she half-reclined in a chair, instead of sitting upon a carpet in the Rismai fashion. Her night-hued tresses, only a little touched with silver, were arranged in the Almancarian fashion of many plaits and tresses, and her garments were Almancarian likewise, heavy silk and fine embroidery falling in a thousand narrow folds. She was more fair than many another woman half her age, but her cheeks were pale and her eyes and lips were taut with pain. She lifted her face to the sunlight as if it were the last she would ever feel.

Ryel flung himself off his horse and fell to his knees before her, pressing the backs of her hands against his forehead to receive their blessing. "My lady mother." He kissed her fingers, that were fully as cold as his own, and breathed the slightly bitter fragrance that clung to them. You're drugged, he thought. Drugged strongly with hrask, which means that your pain is great, but your doctors good.

At first she had recoiled, breathlessly startled. But now she gazed down at him, uncertainty giving way to recognition. "My little son," she said wonderingly, in the palace dialect of her native city, their shared and secret language. "My boy-child, now grown so tall." She reached out and laid a hand upon his head, caressing his hair. But her fingers trembled, and her voice was as faint as her smile. "Ah, Ryel, I longed for this. At the sight of you my heart beat so strong—"

She paled, and swayed. Ryel caught her in his arms. "My mother, you are grievously sick."

"Not now," she said; but he could barely hear her. "Not now. My thanks to every god that I saw you again before I breathed my last--"

"No," he said, whispering into the soft braidings of her hair. "No words."

"But you must hear them. You must know that I am—"

Ryel would not hear. "You are ill, yes. And I have come to heal you."

"Too late, Ryel."

"I said no." And Ryel lifted her up and carried her inside the yat before she could protest, finding his way at once to the curtained chamber where her bed was; and in her bed he set her, and knelt at her side.

"And now, my mother, I will consider how best to cure you."

Mira gazed upon him tenderly, but shook her head. "I am beyond any physician's cure, Ryel. The doctors have done all they could, save cut me. I would not let them."

"Good. But I know they drug you daily; your skin's redolent of it. You have cancer of the breast."

She stared at him. "How could you know that?"

"I saw your malady in a vision. Because of it I am here." A wave of cold passed over him as he spoke, because he had almost chosen not to believe that vision, sent by the voice; had almost not come to this place, but stayed in his City.

"You do not ask after Yorganar."

Ryel had not thought of him until this moment. "I am aware that he died three years ago. Edris told me when it happened."

"Edris." Mira's pale cheeks colored momentarily. "Did you mourn for Yorganar?"

"Should a son not mourn his father? Did you not mourn your husband?"

Mira gazed long on her son; yet her look was strange. "I never loved man but your father, Ryel." Again she put her hand to her breast; her beautiful features contorted. "The drug's power is waning," she whispered.

"I will give you more, and better."

"Some hurts there are that no medicines can touch, my own. You think my cancer gnaws me, but a greater pain has fed upon my heart these many years, years enough to number those of your life …"

Ryel bent near, alarmed. "Let me only—"

She clasped her hands above her heart, desperately. "Never. Have you not seen it already in your vision—a loathsome growth, ulcerated and monstrous? I have done great wrong in my life, yes; but it is hard to endure, this rotting alive. This pain. This horrible pain—"

The wysard would have risen and gone to search Jinn's saddlebags for stronger drugs, but Mira halted him. "No. No more. Only wrap me in your cloak, and I will be well."

"But my mother—"

"Your cloak. Only that."

Ryel enveloped her in the thick tyrian cloth, and she lay back strangely calmed and smiling. "It's warm," she whispered. "So warm." And she caressed its heavy web, and lifted a fold to her face, breathing as if she scented healing balm.

As her eyes closed, instantly the wysard said a word that made Mira fall into sleep. Then he fastened shut the hangings of the entrance, returned to his mother's side, and again knelt. All around was silence, for the dense hangings and layered carpets muted every sound within the yat and without. Ryel lit the lamps, and then, keenly feeling the chill in the room, he piled more kulm into the little tiled Almancarian stove, one of several that heated the various chambers of the tent-dwelling. A moment he looked about him as he warmed himself to readiness, and with enstrengthening pleasure contemplated the embroidery that covered every visible vestige of cloth with glowing designs that gentled barbaric Steppes angularity with soft Almancarian grace—every inch of it the work of his mother's hands, begun when she came to Yorganar's yat as a bride, increased an opulent hundredfold over the twelve years of Ryel's absence

The wysard next threw in a handful of dust onto the fire—feia powder, taken from Lady Haldwina's gifts—and at once a heady scent, not sweet but redolent of summer's earth, impregnated the air. In her sleep Mira breathed deeply of it.

"Good," Ryel murmured. "Let it take you." It's taking me as well , he thought. Blocking out the World, leading me deep into my mind's widest reaches, to my real strength.

Outside was strong daylight with Dagar not yet abroad, if Pukk was to be trusted. But Ryel did not greatly care either way, for he would rely on his Mastery to work his mother's cure, not the services of his srihs. He cradled both his mother's hands in his own and bowed his head over them, pressing the cold fingers against his brow.

"Give unto me the death within you," he whispered. "The death that thinks it owns you. Give it to me, and let me make it suffer."

Closing his eyes he uttered a word, and felt his being slip away from his body; and suddenly he was slammed into icy blackness sharp as knives. Excruciating as the pain was, it was yet worsened by Ryel's realization that he'd felt it once before. This was not his first time in the emptiness. He had stood in the same place almost two months ago; and he had never felt such horror or such fear before as then.

But I'm not afraid now, he thought. It can do no more to me than it has done.

There in the echoing abyss he stood on a narrow bridge that linked him to his mother body and mind. Naked and unarmed he stood, knowing he must not look down, but straight on into the blackness. In that moment he was mindful of the half-mocking words of Edris.

"Here's a little rhyme for you, whelp—never forget it," his kinsman had said. "'If there be doubt, the Art will find it out.' Any flinching, and you'll fail. Always. Either give it your all or leave it alone."

Half-mockingly spoken, yes. But behind those dark eyes Ryel had seen a sternness that made him tremble. "I will," he had replied, firmly quelling his fear, facing his kinsman with lifted chin and steady gaze. "I will."

And now Ryel faced the blackness with the same level defiance, with his entire determination, his complete self committed to the fight. Swiftly and boldly he spoke the needful spells, those that would destroy the cancer and restore the corrupt flesh to wholeness. His words reverberated a thousandfold before silence suddenly enclosed him, heartlessly cold. He stood breathless, straining like drawn wire.

And then it came.

His skin—the invisible integument of his disembodied being, not his shell of flesh now left a million leagues behind—began to tingle, then burn. And then the cancer engulfed him in a crawling swarm of fanged and clawed clots of slime. Taken aback by the onslaught, Ryel struggled appalled.

I can't fight this. It's too strong. By every god—

Strangled by overwhelming doom he thrashed and writhed, but all in vain. The foul tusks and fiery talons rent and tore him until he could no longer shriek, but dropped throttled into the abyss.

Chapter Four

Out of the blackness the voice he loathed came like a kick.

So, sweet eyes. You're not invincible after all. What was it you said to her—'give your death to me, that I may make it suffer'? You arrogant imbecile.

Even though he lacked material form, Ryel still ached and smarted bitterly. "Where am I?"

In a safe place, thanks to me. I had thought you'd be stronger. Your life hung by a thread.

"Is she alive?"

Yes, damn her.

"And healed?"

To my inutterable disgust, yes .

Ryel felt a surge of strength. "Then my Mastery prevailed."

The voice grew furious. Your Mastery, it sneered. Fool and double fool, I saved your idiot skin. Your sorry Art was only strong enough to rid the woman of her cancer; without me, your heart would have stopped forever.

"I had no idea how much my Art would be lessened by the World."

Lessoned, you mean. I hope you learned humility from this. You might thank me.

"What made you come to my rescue?"

I have my reasons, and you'll learn them soon enough. But how idiotic, to risk your sweet young life so that an old woman might grow yet older. Especially when according to your dirty land's laws, she should have been worm's meat long ago.

Disembodied though he was, Ryel shook at that. "Why? For what cause?"

The voice laughed, sly and greasy. Guess it, my arrogant beauty.

The wysard comprehended, and grew furious. "You lie. My mother has been blameless all her life. She is—"

The voice howled giggling. A common trollop! Edris didn't need to force her, oh no. She slipped between his sheets all willing, under the very roof where her husband snored oblivious. And the bastard fruit of their bed-sport became Markul's youngest lord adept, Ryel the Pure. How do you think you could have grown so great so young, fool, had not a wysard made you? And now that you have the truth, go thank your mama. Go.

Ryel opened his eyes. Still he was on his knees at his mother's side, holding both of her hands. But now her fingers were warm, and his cold.

He could not speak yet, but only whisper. "Mira."

His mother was yet far in sleep, but her pain-worn pallor had fled, driven out by the beauty he remembered from his boyhood, and that all the Steppes had marveled at and sung of.

How fair you are, Ryel thought. Mira Silestra, beloved of Edris Lord Adept of Markul, mother of his son—

His eyes burnt, his body ached to the bone, his wits gyred. But he could not rest. Not yet, not until…

Releasing his mother's hands, he unfastened the brooches clasping the bodice of the gown, and unlaced the opening of the linen shift. He breathed freely for the first time. The cure was complete. His mother's flesh was as whole and sound as in the days he drank life from it. With a physician's calm Ryel completed the examination, and fastened again the brooches and laces, but that once done, he buried his face in his hands to cool his eyes' burning, and clenched his teeth to calm his heart.

Ah, Edris. Dearer to me than father and my father indeed, why did you never tell me? Why did I never divine the truth when it stood so plain? For I know it is the truth, even though that evil voice spoke it; knew it in my secret heart since childhood, doubtless, when I saw that Yorganar and I shared little more than a roof and a name. Knew it when I knelt at your feet before the walls of Markul, and felt your hand so harsh and gentle in my hair. You gave your last breath to me; believe it that I would do as much for this woman you loved.

He went to the window-curtain, untied and lifted it. A chill night breeze caught him full in the face. The sun had set in the last hour, and now only a blood-red bar of dying light forced a swath between blackness and blackness.

"You're out there," he whispered, speaking to his father's murderer. "I feel you, Dagar." But amid the darkness of his rage and his sorrow drove a burning doubt, for he realized that the unbidden voice which haunted his thoughts had never spoken to him save when night drew on.

Healing his mother had drawn hard upon his strength, and he felt weary to the marrow of his bones. He lit the lamps at the doorway and then sat in meditation to quiet his thoughts, until a sudden turbulence outside the chamber made him start. Someone was approaching the compound, riding at a tearing pace; and then the rider dismounted. Ryel heard booted footsteps approaching Mira's yat almost at a run. Summoning what was left of his strength, the wysard rose and drew aside the curtain. Standing before him was a breathless beautiful youth in riding gear, high-colored and bold-featured, with light long hair glowing in the lamplight, and upslanting eyes of violet-tinged heaven-blue.

He knew who it had to be, but still wished to make sure. "Nelora?"

She nodded, but said nothing and kept her distance, looking him up and down. Finally she spoke, but not in welcome. "All the camp's talking about you."

"I'm not surprised. Word travels fast here." He couldn't help staring at her, for she was marvelously lovely, slim and boy-strong, glowing from a hard gallop. Her hair flowed nearly to her waist in ripples of pale gold, bound at the brow by a wide headband. Although her garments were like his own, she wore a silver chain around her neck, part of it tucked inside her linen shirt.

She frowned at his scrutiny. "Well? Are you who they say you are?"

"I'll let you decide," he said, hazarding a sudden guess. "Does that chain you're wearing have a sky-stone threaded onto it? An oval bead, carved with spirals?"

At his question her eyes that were so uncannily like the Sovrena Diara's widened and blinked. "How…how could you have known that?"

"Because it was my sky-stone, little sister. A pretty trinket I bought from a trader, and gave to you as a gift on your first birthday." He felt himself grinning. "As I recall, you tried to eat it, but I stopped you."

Nelora tugged at the chain and produced the turquoise pendant; gazed from it to Ryel, and then jabbed out to give his bicep an irate little thump.

"High time you came home, brother," she said, next entwining her hands in his, gazing up in mingled joy and reproach. "Why did you stay so long away?"

I can understand why the braves here worship you, the wysard thought. Aloud he said, "I had to learn my art. Such learning does not come quickly, and cannot be interrupted."

Nelora jerked her hands from his. "Why did you come at all, to come too late? No healer yet has been able to help our mother, save to give her sleeping-draughts and pain-allays. The tabib Grustar has said that—" she bit her lip and blinked—" that she has not long before—" she turned from him in impatient grief and anger, but Ryel took her by both shoulders and made her face him again.

"Look at me, little sister. Grustar I remember from my childhood, and never knew him a fool or a liar. But my skill is greater than his. Our mother is well again, because I healed her."

Nelora stared at him helplessly, her belief now stretched to breaking. "You could not," she said, tears spilling down her cheeks, her voice breaking. "With my own eyes I've seen what ails our mother, and it is terrible. Horrible. Do not tell me you think to heal it. Don't, or I'll…"

Another voice silenced her, sweet as soft music. "Then I will tell you, daughter, myself. He has."

Mira had risen from her bed, and now she moved to stand between her children, turning that terrible moment to rejoicing. "Believe him, child. Believe his every word. For too long I've been kept from this, and this." She drew her son and her daughter close to her heart. "No more tears, my eaglets, ever again. Tonight we'll revel."

Nelora would not let her go, hugging in that winning way Ryel remembered with a pang. "But are you really healed? Really well again?"

With a soft laugh Mira hugged back. "Ah, little one, never in my life have I painted this color you now see in my face, that I'd lost for so long. And now you must greet your brother Ryel kindly, who traveled far for my sake."

Nelora flung her arms around Ryel's neck, pressing her smooth wet cheek against her brother's bearded one; and Ryel embraced her close, and felt as if his eyes were on fire.

*****

That night they were joyful. Shiran was asked to the feast with his sister Yalena, as was the clan chief Khirgar, and many others. During the celebration Ryel noted how Khirgar barely spoke to Mira but ever gazed on her with looks yearning and awed; and the wysard thought of Diara, Sovrena of the City of Gold. But most of all he remembered Edris and the years he had spent with him learning the Art, and those innumerable instances of kindness and severity far surpassing any mere kinsman's care.

I was blind, ithradrakis, he thought. Blind as I was that night you came to Yorganar's yat and kissed my mother's hands, and looked into her eyes far more deeply than Shiran is now looking into my sister's.

Sometime after midnight the guests had departed and Nelora had staggered yawning to her bed, but Ryel and Mira still sat together upon the deep cushions scattered over the carpet, close to the open yat-flap that let in the moonlight, enjoying their communion as they conversed in the palace dialect of Almancar, their private language. A tray held the last of the wine, and the flickering remains of the many candles that had lighted the feast.

"It's grown cold," Ryel said. "Let me get your shawl."

Mira shook her head. "Only lend me your cloak awhile."

Ryel did so, draping the red-purple folds about his mother's shoulders. Mira smiled her thanks. "How well this holds your warmth."

"Just as it once held my father's."

Mira had been filling their glasses again, but her fingers trembled, and some of the wine dropped wet rubies upon the gem-tinted rug. "How did you learn? From Edris?"

"No."

"He kept his promise. I half hoped he would not." She set the glass aside. "I always wanted to tell you. I might have told you tonight."

"Mother—"

She looked up at him, deep into his eyes, for the first time in reproach. "But when would you have told me of Edris' death? No, say nothing now. I have known for two months almost, and wept all my tears out. Only the pain is left, which in many ways surpasses a cancer's agony."

Ryel drew back, amazed. "But how could you have learned?"

Mira fixed her gaze on the black sky beyond the yat. "Three months ago I was riding out to the grazing-lands with Nelora, when suddenly it seemed that a shadow passed, and something sharp and chill drove into my heart like an arrow, so that I fainted, and fell from my horse. And then I looked round and saw Edris as he had been at our first meeting, young and wild in warrior's gear. And he lifted me up and held me in his arms, and kissed me, and I was joyful. But as he kissed me his lips turned deadly cold, until I cried out; and when I next opened my eyes I was here in the yat, and Nelora was at my side with the tabib Grustar. And I understood what the vision meant, and fainted yet again."

Ryel too looked away. "Yes. Three months ago it happened."

"You have the right to kill me at any moment," Mira said after a long silence. "The laws of the Elhin Gazal command an eldest son to punish his adulterous mother with death."

"The Rismai are harsh and unforgiving, but you and I are not. Tell me how you came to love Edris, and he you."

Mira smiled, sadly. "Do you remember the epic of Kergestin and Nilandor?"

Ryel nodded. "You taught me High Almancarian with its help. But Kergestin was evil and cruel, and sought his brother's death."

"In that respect Yorganar differed much from the twin of the tale," replied Mira. "Yet in the romance, Kergestin persuades his brother, who is as gentle and accomplished as his twin is uncouth and ignorant, to woo the lady Aphresmene in his stead; and the ruse succeeds."

She told him, then, her own tale: how she was barely seventeen when she traveled to the great springtide horse-muster at Risma, to see the strange folk of the Steppes while her father chose the best of the herds for his stables, and the finest of the women's weavings for his collection of rarities. The twin brothers Yorganar and Edris were young warriors then, famed for the strength of their sword-arms and the excellence of their horsemanship; together they had come to buy the foal that would become the fabled stallion Windskimmer. Together they wooed Mira, Yorganar for his own sake, Edris for Yorganar's; and so like were they to one another that the damsel could not tell which of the two told her tales of battle around the fires that lit the steppes those nights of the fair, or sang to her the ancient ballads of the Rismai, or made her afraid with the reckless perfection of his riding during the races and the tourneys.

"I never knew," Mira said, her voice soft with revery. "Only after Yorganar and I were wed and Edris had departed for Markul did I wonder that Yorganar no longer had any wish to dance, nor any skill at music; that he had lost those wild graces of laughter and of wit, and no longer looked into my eyes with that comprehending tenderness that ever made me tremble…" Her voice broke, and she drew away.

Ryel reached for her hand. "Mother—"

She let her hand be held, and after a time returned the gentle pressure. "I cannot help but mourn, Ryel. Indeed I think sometimes I weep for Yorganar, who all his life never spoke of the cheat he'd used to win me, but all his life suffered for with guilt and sorrow, because he knew I loved not him, but his brother. In time I came to admire what there was to admire in Yorganar, and not sigh overmuch for those qualities he could never possess. I was wife to him, and conceived by him, and was joyful, because I longed greatly for a child. But I miscarried of my first, which broke my heart almost; and worse came a year later, for I lost my second child in the fourth month. What with my body's weakness and my heart's sickness, for a long time I lay between life and death."

"You never told me of that before."

"I never could, until now." And Mira continued her tale, softly in the silence of the night.

"Between life and death I lay; then I opened my eyes one morning with Edris' name on my lips, and found Edris himself kneeling at my bedside. He had changed much--pale from hard study in a sunless place, his beard shaven clean, his hair shorn close. And the sight of him made my heart beat again. 'So this is paradise,' I said to him, holding out my hand; and I was glad, so glad.

"But he said, 'No, little star'—that had ever been his name for me, and I had wondered after my marriage that Yorganar never called me by it—'no, this is life, and you must return to it.'

"And I asked what had caused him to come to me, and he laughed almost angrily, and answered, 'My brother, who cherishes your life considerably more than he values his own, rode all the way from the Steppes to the walls of Markul and shouted for me as if at a tavern door, until those watching sent to have me come and see the madman. And he was at least half-mad, was my brother, from a long journey alone through thirsty desert, and from fear for you, and fear of the place he was.'

"My heart was wrung and torn by those words, and I said, 'Ah, Edris, it was cruel of you both, to toss my heart like a plaything between you.'

"But he only replied, 'Hush. You are well now, and I can return to my City.'

"And I said to him, in sorrow and anger and pain: 'Know that every kiss I ever gave Yorganar was meant for you, Edris. Go back now to your sorcerer's roost, and never forget that of all the many women's mouths you ever tasted, mine that you scorned was sweetest.' And Edris made no reply; but his eyes were like burning coals.

"That night Yorganar came to my bed, as was his right; but I had never known him so wild and hungry before, even as I had never known such pleasure. And I ran my hands through his long hair, and his beard; and the hair instantly grew short, and the face smooth, and we looked into each other's eyes and laughed, Edris and I.

"All that night we loved eagerly, while the rest of the household slept under enchantment. But as the night grayed toward the dawn, Edris took my hand and led me into the Steppes, where we walked together and spoke of what had passed between us.

"'I am with child," I said. 'I feel it.'

"For a long time Edris was silent, and then he said: 'Tomorrow I will return to Markul; and tomorrow night you must lie with Yorganar, and the next morning awake to a dull round of sameness and falsehood. This was wrong love.' But I only thought of you, within my womb like a star; and never had I felt so joyful in my life before."

Mira fell silent, clearly remembering that time; and after some moments Ryel spoke.

"Was my father there when I was born?"

Mira nodded, still in revery. "He was. But I did not know him at first, because he had assumed the shape of a woman, to deceive the midwives—for as you are aware, among the Rismai no man may be present at a childbirth." She smiled. "He fooled everyone. Even Yorganar had no idea."

Ryel tried to envision the hulking wysard-warrior as a female; smiled back at his mother. "Who was his companion?"

"An enchantress, formerly of Markul. I recall Edris telling me that in reality she was more than sixty years old, although she looked barely half that." Mira's eyes, pure clear blue with the faintest tinge of violet, studied the flame of the candle at her side. "Even at the crisis of the pain, I was joyful; for Edris held me in his arms when I was all but overcome with the throes, and whispered words that made me strong. And when you emerged into the world, his were the hands that received you."

Blinking burning eyes, Ryel drew a deep breath so he could speak. "And you saw him a last time when I was thirteen. I remember how you ran out of the yat to follow him."

Mira sighed. "I know I made you very angry. But I had to speak with him. Had to kiss him again and again, warm under his cloak… this cloak…" She colored at the memory, but not in a blush. "I loved him beyond my life, Ryel."

Ryel fixed his gaze on the candle-flames, the quivering tiny lights dying one by one. "As did I."

"After you were born and before he returned again to Markul, Edris instructed me to watch you carefully as you grew. He said that if you showed signs of ambidexterity, you might well have the power of magic, as he had. Against Yorganar's wishes I had you educated as well or better than you might have been in Almancar; but I also wished you to be strong, the better to endure the harshness of the trials Markul would inflict on you, should you someday dwell there. Therefore I encouraged Yorganar to impart to you all his knowledge of the use of arms."

"You haven't yet asked how Edris died."

"I fear what you will tell me. I cannot bear to think he died in pain."

"He did not," Ryel said; and he despised himself for the lie, especially because his mother was so quick to believe it. "But he was nonetheless killed, my mother."

She stared at him, her face very pale. "But who could have killed him? Or what?"

"A malignant daimon, I am told. A force of evil, Dagar by name; a thing neither alive nor dead, seeking to return embodied to the World. And since Edris' death I have been tormented by a voice within, ever goading me with taunts and scorns…Dagar's voice, I now believe it might be."

"Then you will find this enemy, and avenge Edris' death?"

"Dagar is beyond the reach of my vengeance. And whoever the voice belongs to, it warned me of your illness, and helped me to heal you; for that I am grateful. But I'll not be led by it any further. I'll remain here with you for a while longer, and then return to my City." He stood up. "We'll speak more of these things, but at another time. The hour's late."

"Here, help me up. I'll sleep, too."

They stood together silently embraced for a time; and then Mira spoke. "I owe you my life, my own."

Ryel touched his lips to her cheek. "I but gave back what I received."

Awhile again they fell silent, mother and son. Then Ryel spoke again. "My heart-name for Edris was always ithradrakis."

"'Dearer than father.'" Mira smiled. "So you have not forgotten your language lessons in the palace tongue of my city."

"All that was taught me, I remember," Ryel said, returning the smile. "Every beautiful word—like ilandrakis, 'dearer than brother.' And silestra, 'as fair within as without'—always my name for you."

"I never thought I deserved it."

"More now than ever."

"Blessed am I in you." She gently moved away and took off Edris' cloak, settling it about Ryel's shoulders with the same care she had always used in his childhood. "I'll not need this again. The guest's yat has been made ready for you; sleep well." Touching her lips to his brow, she parted from him.

But Ryel slept little that night, kept awake by memories of the day, and thoughts of the future. Almost as he expected, the air closed around him, stifling and silent, and the voice spoke, very sweetly this time.

So. My brave lad has found out his father, and forgiven his erring mama. Now what will he do?

"Return to Markul," Ryel answered in his thoughts. "As soon as possible."

Oh? And what about Almancar?

The wysard stiffened. "Nothing calls me there."

Really? Not even pretty little Diara?

Ryel did not reply. The voice persisted, sweeter still.

Do you remember how in Markul I said the girls would go mad for you? I meant it. Even as we speak, all Almancar is bewailing the incurable insanity of its Sovrena.

Ryel felt his chest constrict. "Damn you," he whispered aloud.

The voice sneered and giggled. Yes, it hissed. Clear out of her mind she is. Tearing at her tender body with demented hands, besmearing herself with her own filth, shrieking obscenity and drivel. An interesting sight, should you care to see it.

Ryel struggled up on his elbow. "You lie, daimon."

Did I lie about your mother?

"Is the Sovrena's madness your work—Dagar?"

A shrieking peal of scorn in reply. Soon, sweet eyes. In Almancar.

The air lightened and cleared before Ryel could speak again. For the rest of that night he lay motionless and open-eyed.

*****

The wysard knew the dawn when it came. In Markul the silence of the air had been complete save for the wind and the rain, but the Steppes were never still. Wild beasts and camp-dogs and babies had mewled and moaned and howled in the night, and now the birds were awake, crying far overhead. Ryel rose, dressed, and went out into the morning.

The sky hovered between night and day, dark overhead yet glowing ever brighter on the eastern horizon. Some little distance from the yat his sister Nelora was sitting cross-legged on a rug with a trayful of chal and sweets at her elbow, her eyes on the gathering light. She was wrapped in a horseman's greatcoat, and her fair hair streamed out beneath a fur-lined riding-cap. Ryel approached, and sat down at her side.

"A good day, sister."

"If you say so." She smiled at him, but Ryel could see her cordiality was strained. He understood, and smiled back with more warmth, and a hint of play. Since they met they'd adopted the intimate form of the Rismai dialect, used among siblings and other close kin. He had always used it with Edris.

"You're up early," he said.

"Couldn't sleep," she replied, a little shortly. "I was thirsty."

"You drank wine last night."

She sighed. "Too much. My head aches like a stubbed toe."

"It's most unseemly for a Steppes maiden to imbibe to excess."

She tossed her head, then winced. "None of your lectures, brother. I only did it because I was so glad to see you. Have some chal—it's still hot."

Ryel filled a cup with vaporing brew and wrapped his hands around it, glad of the warmth. But when he drank, he grimaced. "Agh. There's frangin in this chal."

Frangin was the strong liquor of the Steppes, made by the Kaltiri Kugglaitai from the tart green berries of the thickets that covered part of their lands. The Rismai seldom touched it, save in times of great joy or great sorrow. "You're incorrigible," Ryel sternly informed his sister. But he drank again, finding himself actually liking the mingled savor of harsh and smooth. He next turned his attention to the chal-tray, and gave a little start of pleasure. "My krusghan!"

"You're welcome to it," Nelora said testily. "I was going to play something, but it made my head hurt."

Ryel set his chal-cup aside and reached for the Steppes flute, running reminiscent fingers over its polished ebony and joinings of carved jade. "When I was a boy, wherever I went this went too. A thousand songs I've played on it." And he lifted it to his lips, softly sounding a remembered tune. But at the first notes Nel gave a dismal dog-howl.

"Don't, brother! You'll split my skull." She shuddered, pulling her cap down over her ears, closing her eyes tight. "Be a sweet tabib and heal me. The frangin isn't working."

"It's better for you to suffer, and repent."

Nelora glared through a wince. "You didn't say that to our mother."

The wysard felt his smile slide away. "Enough. Take off that hat and lean your head toward me." And Ryel massaged his sister's temples with the tips of his fingers, gently combing her long fair tresses.

Nelora dropped her head back and sighed. "By every god, that's good."

"So. I find you've learned to swear," Ryel said, in no way approving. "That's what comes of gadding about with boys."

"If you expect me to stay in the yat and weave, you're deluded. Ah. Rub the back of my head, too."

Ryel slid his hands into the warm pale tangles of his sister's hair, combing the long strands out with his fingers. "Your hair's exactly like Jinn's mane. It's so thick I could hide an egg in it."

Nelora's mouth-corner quirked. "I'd rather you didn't. But my thanks for the compliment."

"I remember how folk came from far and wide to gaze upon you when you were a baby."

She leaned into his touch. "You left before I could know you, brother."

"But I remember you, little sister. The summer before I left, I used to carry you into the fields and watch you roll around in the flowers. I used to tickle you with buttercups, and you'd laugh so prettily…"

The sweet memory silenced him, and Nel too seemed lost in revery. Together they sat quietly, his arm about her, and her head on his shoulder.

"I missed you," his sister said after a time. "I've missed you for years and years. You should have stayed, and been my champion. My protector."

"You seem fully capable of looking after yourself. But I believe Shiran would be proud to serve as your defender—if you'd let him."

Nelora gave an impatient wriggle. "Let's not speak of that horse-breeding lout."

"As your eldest brother I could compel you to marry him in a few years, if I so wished."

"Bah. You're not so cruel, or so stupid, as to force me into that." At the little reproving tug Ryel gave her hair, she laughed, but not loudly. "I remember when I was nine years old, I asked our father if he had begun to look round for a husband for me, and he replied 'No, child, for you will choose better than I ever might.' Many times I miss our father. He understood me. Did he you?"

"Not very well." As Ryel gave the pale wild locks a last caress, he could not help thinking of Diara Dranthene's night-black jewel-twined braids. "How's your headache now?"

Nel cocked her head, warily considering. "I don't have one. How'd you do that?"

Ryel smiled. "Magic."

His sister smiled back. "I believe you. Here's your reward." She reached for one of the sweets on the tray, and popped it into his mouth. "Remember?"

Ryel closed his eyes and let the delicious almond-sugar and apricot preserve melt on his tongue a little before answering, deep in recollection the while. "It's lakh. I used to steal it because I could never get enough, back when I was little."

Nelora nodded knowingly. "Our mother tells me as much every time she makes a batch. That's why I brought some out here, just for you."

"How did you know I'd be up so early?"

"Were I home after being away for a dozen years, I'd not waste time abed, but rise early to see my charming sister. I was looking forward to a talk alone with you, because I've been on fire to hear of your travels. Tell me about the wide world, and everything you've seen in it. No one last night bothered to ask you a single question."

"They were too polite," Ryel said. "One never questions a traveler after a long journey."

Nelora grimaced. "Bah. Steppes manners—I'm sick of them. I heard that Fershom Rikh is a wondrous city, almost as fine as Almancar. Tell me what it was like."

"Some other time I will."

"Damn it, why—"

"Don't curse, sister. Please."

She noticed his face, then, and her own became concerned. "You're pale, brother, and your eyes are sunken. It looks as if what little sleep you got was bad. You're shivering, too. Here, have some more chal."

He drank and grew a little warmer. "I'd like it if you called me Ry."

She smiled, entirely this time. "Then I will."

The wysard looked skyward, into the waning stars. "We're up far before the sun."

"Not much before, brother Ry," Nelora said as she pointed eastward. "Look, over there at the very edge of the world—light at last. It's just like what the poet says in the epic—'And surging up from the sea's bed, driving forth darkness, cloud-lathered sun-horses scorched the world-rim'."

Ryel recognized the quotation, and nodded approvingly. "Alestria Maniskedes' Quest of Ghenris. You're remarkably learned. But I hadn't thought to find my little sister so manlike, in a horse-tamer's boots and breeches. Many another girl would fear the talk of the old women."

Nelora swung her bright locks back from her blushes. "I care nothing for the clack of hags, brother. It's never been deemed a shame for a girl of the Three Stars to be a horse-tamer, if her spirit and her strength be equal to it. Speaking of such, can I borrow that mare of yours for a run? I swear I'll be gentle."

The last thing Ryel wanted was for Jinn's inexplicable powers to be discovered. "You swear too much as it is. And Jinn's been wrung hard these past few days. Let her rest awhile."

Nel made a face, that soon turned impish. "Did you come back to the Steppes to wed, brother? Shiran's sister Yalena is on the market again, now that her old husband's dead. Her big sheep's eyes were rolling at you all during the feast, and don't think I didn't see how she kept loading your plate with the best bits. You'd become fully as fat as she is, if you wed her."

"Yalena was more slender than you, once," Ryel said, defending his boyhood sweetheart loyally, though without warmth. "A bit on the plump side now, I admit, but it becomes her."

Nelora snorted. "Then her witlessness does, too. I suppose her many years are yet another attraction."

"She's only twenty-four, evil imp."

"Twenty-five. A hag, as far as marrying goes in this place." Her face flushed to rival the dawn. "I'll never wed in the Steppes. Never. I love elsewhere."

"Indeed? Where?"

"Almancar."

Intrigued, Ryel smiled. "And what fortunate gallant of the Bright City claims your heart, little sister?"

"The most handsome, the most noble, the most wondrous man in the entire world--Priamnor Dranthene, the Sovran Agenor's eldest son."

Ryel gave a whistle. "You aim high, sister."

"It is him, or no one."

"The Sovranel used the be the most debauched rakehell in all Destimar, from what I heard last night, and a shameful malady nearly killed him. He was deformed by it, and is a recluse now. I'm not sure I approve your choice, sister."

"Shiran told you all those lies because he's jealous." A storm overtook Nel's blue eyes, sudden and fierce. "We could be part of the court, Ry. We could be living in a great city, in the mansion where our mother grew up, instead of a tent in the middle of a sea of weeds. Don't you wish you were in Almancar this minute?"

"No," Ryel said slowly, remembering with a twitch of loathing the lying words of the daimon. "I don't."

*****

The wysard firmly refused to believe the voice that had haunted him with tales of the Sovrena's madness. As if in compliance, it left him alone. The next two days the wysard spent in the encampment, enjoying being his mother's son again, and a brother to Nelora. He spent time, too, in currying Jinn until she gleamed like new gold, and fitting her with a saddle worthy of her beauty. Markulit gifts he gave to his mother, Lady Serah's richest jewels; but Mira took even more pleasure in the morning-glories he caused to twine in heaven-blue garlands around the yat-entrance. He vied with his play-brothers in contests of archery and wrestling and quarterstaff, and once again savored the perilous thrill of kriy, the Steppes game played on horseback at full gallop, sending a ball to its goal either through the air or on the ground by means of a scoop-ended stick and utter disregard of bodily harm.

He also aided old Grustar in doctoring his people's various complaints, none of them life-threatening to his great relief. Healing his mother had taxed his Mastery far more than he had ever imagined it might, so used was he to having been the most powerful adept of his City. He had come to Markul very young, before his connection to the World was fully formed, and the many years he'd spent within its walls had further weakened that bond. Now that his mission had been fulfilled, he could return to Markul and live out the rest of his life amid its mists; and at the outset he had firmly expected to. But life was so pleasant here, under the sun with the wild grasses so green and high, where he could ride across the meadows with his mother, or joke with Nel and Shiran, or tell wondrous tales to an enthralled audience of wide-eyed little children.

The third afternoon, however, he rode out alone. There was a place he had to revisit, a place he had shut out of his every memory, if not his dreams, for sixteen years.

The day had started fair, but by noon the sky began to darken with clouds, and now from afar off Ryel's quick ears could hear the deep growl of a coming storm. The noise made him quiver with an emotion part expectation, part unease. Markul's weather had been always the same—eternal fogs and mists and drizzles unrelentingly chill, the seasons distinguishable only by their extremes of rain or snow. But the Steppes were notorious for wild winter winds, and devastating spring storms. The storms were the worst: to be split in two by lightning was no unusual death among the Rismai.

Ryel sniffed the air. It was full of danger. How often as a small boy he had huddled in the yat when the great tempests shook the grasslands, feeling helplessly unsheltered in his frail tent. But as he grew, he learned to love the lightning-bolts in all their terrible forms. The shattering straight rods, the delicate branching fire-veins streaking out in all directions, the dragon-leaps of light high up, now hidden in the clouds, now flashing forth—these he had watched for, and thrilled at.

But now he had reached the fire-mountain he'd sought—a little grass-covered cinder cone that thousands of years past had been a volcano spurting liquid fire. It was named Banat Yal, after the Rismai god of the air. Reining in, Ryel dismounted, then began the brief ascent to the top. Every step became increasingly difficult, not so much from the climb's steepness as from the weight of memories. The wind was rising, and the sky's blue had been utterly effaced by clouds dark as night. Under that rumbling shadow Ryel stood on the rim of the fire-hill, looking out to the endless sweep of green.

The air became heavy with storm-threat. Harsh winds tore at Ryel's clothes, and the wysard clutched Edris' cloak tighter about him lest they strip him bare. And then a great brand of blinding light shot down from the darkness, hitting another fire-cone not at all far away. Ryel winced, waiting for the thunder-clap. At once it sounded, with deafening force.

Only a fool would stay out in such weather, but Ryel put his faith in the old saying about lightning. It couldn't hit him again—not here. Accordingly, he stood his ground. But recollection, not the storm, made him tremble.

Fourteen years ago a storm identical to this had shook the Risma plains, and Ryel had come to this same fire-cone drenched and breathless, hoping to shelter in its bowl. But the lightning had blasted down all around him, and the electricity in the air had lifted his hair from the back of his neck. He'd only managed to struggle to the hillock's rim when something hit him from behind with a tremendous shove, sending him hurtling down the bowl's shallow slope into the pit. Over and over he tumbled, never feeling the glass-edged cinder-rocks tearing his clothes and skin. His only sensations were the rending throb at his nape, and the agony rattling in his spine. But then he became aware of the wind, so strong now that he felt himself pulled into the air, caught up in its terrible whirl. His clothes whipped about him, flew off in rags, became part of the spinning debris. With blank horror Ryel realized that the next thing torn to pieces would be his body.

When he discovered he was still alive, he was lying naked, stretched prone in a pool of mud. The storm had subsided to cold needles of rain. He had never hurt worse. He put his hand to the back of his neck, and with sick dread felt throbbing warmth oozing under his fingers. When he touched the gaping lips of the lightning-wound, he fainted yet again.

Then he dreamed a very beautiful dream. In it a tall figure swathed in long robes came to where he lay, and lifted him up out of the mud, and carried him away from that place of pain, singing all the while some lovely quiet wordless song. Ryel had never felt more sheltered and safe, or more grateful for his deliverance. Tears of joy warmed his cheeks.

"Thank you," he whispered. He never expected any reply, but one came.

"It was meant to happen, whelp. Now rest, for you need it." The voice was vibrantly deep, like thunder, but Ryel wasn't afraid any more. Not when the voice was so sorrowing, and so gentle. He only smiled, and felt darkness steal over him again like a soft enveloping blanket.

When he again awoke he was home in his yat, his mother and Yorganar bending over him in an anguish of worry. He couldn't have been asleep long, because he was still covered with mud, still bleeding, still naked. But the terrible wound at the back of his neck had somehow closed up as if cauterized. All that remained was a knot the size of a sparrow-hawk's egg that the tabib Grustar diagnosed as a bad bruise. Ryel had decided never to tell anyone the truth, which he himself was far from sure of. In time the knot's swelling subsided to a mere lump not much bigger than a hazelnut, which Ryel's long hair hid from view. It never went away, nor for a long time did the pain. Even now, fourteen years later, Ryel winced at the memory-prodded twinge deep in his nape.

"Were you here, ithradrakis?" he asked aloud. "Was it you that saved me?"

He had never asked Edris that question while his kinsman lived. It couldn't have been possible, at any rate—not possible, that Edris should have materialized for his help. Still, when he had come to Markul and learned a little of the Art, Ryel often recalled his encounter with the lightning and the whirlwind at the age of twelve. Often he wished he might experience it again, and through his Art derive some use or knowledge from it. But Markul's weather was unchangeably dull, year upon year of fog-bound damp, and none of Ryel's Mastery might change it, for weather-witching was a lost Art. Only the Highest had ever possessed it. Folk of the World believed that power over the weather was the commonest wysardry of all, even as they deemed shape-changing and thought-reading and mind-moving to be likewise common attainments among lord adepts of the Four Cities. Nothing could have been less true.

But now Ryel stood again on the lip of that epiphanic fire-hill, under a dark sky close enough almost for touching, and never had he felt more strong, or more sure of his Art. He raised his face to the boiling black clouds, and felt first one huge cold drop hit his cheek, then another his eyelid, and then too many more to count, masking his face with dripping chill. He spread his arms to the storm, called it to him.

And it came.

Roaring and crashing it came, enveloping him in wind and lightning and torrent. He knew no spells to harness the wild power of that tempest, but made up a Mastery of his own, crying it into the downpour—mere meaningless syllables, mantras that pulled his Art's strength into a blinding white ball and hurled it into the storm. And the storm wrapped around it, and became a whirlwind.

Ryel never stopped to consider what he'd wrought. Still shouting mantras he felt himself being lifted and taken, but this time he directed his course with his thoughts. The storm's blackness engulfed him wholly then, and he very probably lost consciousness at some point, because when he next became aware of the world around him he was standing within sight of his mother's yat, even as he had wished. The first thing he did was ascertain if he were still clothed, and unhurt. He was both, to his more than mild astonishment.

A steady rain still fell, and no one was outside. He hadn't been seen, thank—

"Ry! Where in the name of All did you come from?"

Turning about, Ryel felt yet another shock as he beheld Shiran very close by on horseback, fully cloaked and hooded against the downpour. Despite so much water pelting around him, the wysard's throat dried up. Had Shiran seen…

Apparently, wonderfully, he had not. Ryel's boyhood friend rode closer, shaking his head in bafflement. "I've never seen a storm blow up this fast, out of nowhere. Then I looked around and there you were, as if the winds had tossed and planted you."

Not knowing how to reply, Ryel made an attempt at a shrug. But he was concerned about Jinn. He'd paid no attention to her once he'd begun climbing the fire-hill. What had happened to her since? What if she'd—

"I found your horse," Shiran said, as if answering his thoughts. "She was wandering out in the fields there." And he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "What happened? Did she throw you?"

Ryel nodded. It was easier than an explanation. "Where's Jinn now?"

"Tied up behind my yat. Come on over and get dry. I'll give you some chal—or better yet, frangin. You look as groggy as if you just dropped from the skies."

The wysard pushed back his wet hair, glanced up at the pelting clouds, and just barely smiled. "Next time I'll work harder on my landing."

But that night, alone in the quiet yat of his mother's home, he meditated upon the storm, feeling its reverberations deep in his bones, comprehending his affinity for water and air. He had not conjured the tempest, true; he had not commanded it, nor dismissed it. What mattered was that he had become one with it, part of it. Never had he felt so connected to the World, harbored in the heart of chaos.

Then his thoughts shifted to his first encounter with Michael Essern, who with few and terrible words had imparted the torture inflicted upon him during the Barrier wars. He had been thrown into a pit destined to be his grave, full of flames that should have been his winding-sheet; but the pit had been his womb, and the blaze his birthing.

"Fire and earth," the wysard whispered; and a thrill of premonition flared through him like a bolt, of affinities destined to converge.

*****

The next day, as they had arranged, the wysard accompanied Shiran to the fields where the Yorganarem horses grazed. The herds had long been looked after by some of Rismai's most expert horse-breeders, men who had been Yorganar's comrades for many years, and nearly all of whom Ryel remembered from boyhood. For two days the wysard lived among horses and men, spending the day in the saddle, the evening at the communal fireside, and the night fast asleep in blankets on the grass-cushioned ground. He greatly enjoyed himself, and much admired the best of the Yorganarem herd, in particular the great buff-colored stallion Suragh.

"He's Windskimmer's handsomest grandson, Suragh is," said Belar, a Kaltiri warrior who had served with Yorganar in his youth, during the Shrivrani wars. "A fit suitor he'd make for that pretty little mare of yours, Ryel Mirai. I've seen him ogling her, believe me."

"Jinn's somewhat young yet for a lover," Ryel replied.

Belar shook his head in emphatic denial. "Their offspring would be priceless. Your Jinn has the blood of Windskimmer in her veins, that much is clear to see. From their looks she and Suragh could be brother and sister."

"Rather close kinship for mating," Ryel said, more than a little doubtful.

Belar smiled forgivingly. "Not a bit of it. Look at the royal house of Destimar, if you care to see how incest improves the blood line. Be mindful that the Sovran Agenor's parents were brother and sister. The Rismai would punish such mating with death, but I am an old soldier, and have seen--and experienced--somewhat more of the world than your yat-folk. The Dranthene line is purebred, and merits praise."

Shiran frowned, scandalized. "It is against the law of kind."

Belar only chuckled in answer. "Some laws were meant to be broken. And from the manner in which the Sovrena Diara is sung of and languished over, I think many would agree with me."

Again Shiran's brows bent. "I'm glad Almancar's ways aren't ours."

"I sometimes wish they were," Belar said. "Once you've seen the Diamond Heaven, the memories stay with you…or so I hear. Had I been rich enough, I'd have found out firsthand."

Shiran made a scorning face at the mention of Almancar's far-famed pleasure quarter. "All that hell-pit's denizens are slaves, and not only its women but its men will commit any fleshly act for gold. I'd rather seek delight under a free woman's linen than a slave's silk."

Belar rolled his eyes. "You Rismai are so self-righteous. But it's common knowledge that the Fourth District has its whores of both sexes, too, and worse yet, children are sold for filthy uses. No wonder the place is called the Dog's Ward. "

Ryel knew Shiran's temper, and made an attempt to calm it. "The courtesans of the Diamond Heaven are the most beautiful women in all the world, so I've heard."

Shiran turned his head and spat. "Any woman can seem a goddess, given enough face-paint and borrowed hair and gaudy finery. And every Almancarian not afraid of the knife or the cost may buy beauty from the skin-surgeons, who they say can shorten long noses, excise the fat of over-feeding, and erase even the deepest wrinkles. Who knows how many of the city's pampered harlots owe their charms to the scalpel?"

"You'll never have a chance to find out," Belar scoffed. "It takes fine robes and a rich mask to get past the Heaven's guards, and they have sharp eyes for shoddy goods, believe me."

"And how might you know that?" Shiran demanded. "Were you perhaps turned away, once?"

Belar sighed. "It was a long time ago."

Shiran laughed at him, but Ryel was silent, thinking not of women bought for money, but of a maiden beyond price.

At that moment a horseman approached, galloping hard. Belar's quick eyes squinted in recognition. "Aha. There's my kinsman Mirib, just back from Almancar. I hope Count Tesandrion paid our price." He lifted his voice in greeting to the newcomer. "What word from the City of Gold, cousin? Are we rich?"

Mirib dismounted wearily. "Richer than ever. Every horse was sold, and the Count paid all we wished and more."

Belar's joy grew bewildered. "Then why look so glum?"

Mirib drew a long breath. "The Sovrena is ill. It's worse than mere sickness. They say that a demon torments her." Amid black silence he addressed Ryel. "No one knows how to cure the girl. The Sovran has called in the realm's best doctors, all to nothing. They say she'll die soon if no help comes."

Proud though the Steppes folk were, they shared a deep loyalty to the imperial house, and the Sovrena was all but worshipped among the Rismai, as Ryel had amply learned in the short time of his return to the phratri. Mirib's news brought concern to every face, but Ryel knew with helpless certainty that no pain could be sharper than his own.

"I have to get back to the encampment," the wysard said. "At once."

Belar divined Ryel's intention, and shook his head. "You're a good healer, Ry. But if you think to journey to Almancar for the Sovrena's sake, surely you'll lose your labor."

"Or your life," Mirib added. "The Sovran Agenor has punished with death some of those doctors who've failed to heal his daughter. And—" he lowered his voice—"it's said that he has begun to welcome sorcerers and warlocks to use their black arts upon her."

Everyone listening murmured in revulsion and made warding-off gestures, save for Ryel.

"I can't stay," he said, barely able to bring out the words. Whistling Jinn, he vaulted onto her back.

Shiran scrambled for his own horse. "Wait! I'm coming, too."

But Jinn far outstripped Shiran's mount, and reached the encampment even as the caravan from Almancar was telling its news. As the wysard leapt from the saddle, his mother hastened to him.

"Ryel, they've said that the Sovrena—"

"I know," the wysard said. "I must leave for Almancar as soon as may be."

Mira put her hand to her heart, close to where the cancer had been. "I fear for you. Surely your enemy means you harm, and lures you onward."

Ryel let out a resigned breath. "No doubt it does."

She took his arm. "Don't go."

Gently he freed himself. "I must. Every moment the poor girl endures as a captive is more than I can bear."

She understood, or thought she did. "Ah, Ry. If you are enamoured of her--"

"I'm not." He glanced at the sun. "If I leave now, I'll have six hours of daylight."

But the wysard could not leave until his gear was gathered, and his mother had filled Jinn's saddlebags with more than enough provisions for his journey, and Nel had begged to ride with him. Only an hour later, every minute of it grudged, was Ryel mounted and ready. During that time Shiran had arrived to add his farewells to the others'.

"The trade-road lies nearly straight southeast to Almancar, as you know," he said. "Good luck to you, play-brother. I only wish you weren't going alone."

"I myself wish it," the wysard replied. "But no one could keep up with Jinn."

"I'd try," Nelora muttered. Smiling, Ryel reached out and ruffled her long light locks.

Mira lay a light hand upon Ryel's knee. "So. I lose you yet again."

He felt her trembling. "Not for long," he said gently. "I promise you."

"When will you return?"

Ryel caught her hand, warming it in his, and bent his brow to its back. "Soon. Very soon."

"Not too soon," Shiran said with a brave attempt at a grin. "Almancar's beauties will take up at least a little of your time—but best beware those of the Diamond Heaven."

Nelora shot him a glance of purest scorn. "As if you'd ever be allowed in that harlot's haunt." While Shiran looked foolish, Nel reached out and drew Ryel down from the saddle until her lips touched his ear. "When you see the Sovranel Priamnor, tell him of me, brother Ry. And give him this." She kissed his cheek, close to the mouth. Before Ryel could reprove her, Shiran dealt Jinn a smart slap on the rump that sent the mare flying.

Chapter Five

The moon had come up full on the second night of Ryel's journey, bright enough to ride by. But the wysard had elected from the first to travel only by night, that Jinn's preternatural speed might be less observed. He only halted at his own desire—as now, to draw breath awhile and calm his thoughts. The perfect silvered silence was broken only by a messenger in Turmaronian livery galloping breakneck past him, and later by a troop of imperial soldiers heading in the opposite direction—toward the Cosran border, their captain had let fall as he courteously but thoroughly informed himself as to Ryel's departure-point and eventual destination.

Ryel obliged the captain with equal grace, aware that such questionings were usual on the great trade-road, and secure in the knowledge that his looks attracted more esteem than suspicion. Anyone beholding him with World-eyes beheld a young Rismai brave superbly mounted and armed, dressed with that warlike elegance for which the Steppes was famed, and enviably unencumbered. Of the many possessions the wysard had brought from Markul, he'd taken only a few on this journey—medicines and drugs bottled up in carved crystal and jade, ranged in a neat sectioned box of finely inlaid lacquer-work, the gift of Lord Katen; a leather pouchful of Destimarian gold coin; and Almancarian robes with their attendant finery, gifts of Lord Nestris that despite surpassing opulence could be folded into a packet no larger or heavier than a slim brick of kulm, so fine was their silk and so supple their embroidery. Other items included his chaltak, and provisions more than adequate. All these things readily fit into Jinn's saddlepacks and the journeybag that a Steppes horseman customarily slung across his saddle-bow while riding, and over his shoulder when afoot. But one thing Ryel much regretted having left behind: his krusghan, the music of which would have given him solace at this moment, and offered thanks to the moon-bright loveliness of the World around him.

Ryel stretched, shrugging off his coat, whistling a Kugglaitai air between his teeth. The night was warm—the first real warmth Ryel had known in a dozen years. Long silver-rimmed shreds of cloud fleeted northward over the dark land, casting wraiths of shadow on the slight rise and fall of the treeless hills. Ryel rode to the top of one of these and looked about. At the limit of the southeast distance he discerned a faint irregular line, gleaming white—the Gray Sisterhood, that divided the plains of eastern Destimar from the savanna and seacoast of the Zalla. He knew their names: Tanwen the Maiden. Willful and untrusty Dolgash. Winlowen, hardly more tender, and her twin Tryphene. Baltaigor the Kind, with the pass that was clear even at winter's worst. And in their midst Kalima, eldest, tallest, most murderous—and dwelling somewhere among her crags, Lady Srin Yan Tai.

Long did Ryel regard the world around him, from the wondrous sky to the distant peaks to the rolling moonlit land. But as he looked, his thoughts began to take him elsewhere, far from the road to Almancar.

*****

It was his seventh Markulit year, and his twenty-first in World-reckoning. He had parted from Edris and returned to his house to bathe away the grit and sweat of their latest duel. Hard exercise and a tall glassful of his kinsman's Sindrite brandy had loosened him to the blood, and he sank into the vaporing water with a long sigh, closing his eyes.

He was not by nature fond of luxury, but had always loved the small rituals that accompanied the body's cleanliness. His first command, once he had learned to suborn the spirits of the Outer World, was to cause his servants to create a mass of rock crystal veined with subtle flaws, hewn smoothly and hollowed deeply to twice the size of his body; this great vessel was set into a well of slow fire, that traced the crystal's flaws in burning red. The water was all but seething, and would remain so until he said a cooling-word; hot as the steaming springs of his homeland, Risma of the Fire-Mountains.

He breathed deeply. The water was scented with sweet oils, their fragrance like that of the flowers that covered the Inner Steppes during high summer. Closing his eyes, he remembered how it felt to lie on soft grass under a constant sun.

"Shall I scrub your back?"

At that voice and its question, both startling, Ryel bolted up, sending water flying. A woman stood silhouetted in the doorway, her hair a silken gold corolla, her body's outline exquisitely visible under the near-transparent folds of her gown.

She laughed. "I've startled you."

Beautiful though she was, her voice was grating and shrill, and her laugh set Ryel's teeth on edge. The wysard said the words that banished malignant daimons of the Outer World, but she did not disappear.

"How did you get in here?" he demanded.

"Your door was unlocked."

"What do you want?" he asked angrily. But his anger was for himself, because his voice wouldn't stop breaking and his pulse wouldn't calm.

She laughed again. "I'm but newly arrived in Markul. I was told that you were the greatest of this City's adepts, and I have come to learn of you. But it seems I've not chosen my time well." She turned as if to leave, silhouetting her side view. At that sight Ryel felt his mouth go dry.

"Wait. Stay." Reaching for a vial on a nearby table, Ryel poured some of its contents into the water, which instantly turned the opaque turquoise of a mountain lake, hiding his nakedness. "Come in."

With deliberate grace she entered the many-mirrored chamber, increasing her beauty sixfold. She was formed for rare pleasure, tall and lusciously yet slenderly fleshed; her ice-blue gown bared her arms and neck, that were wreathed in electrum and sapphires. Her face was of the fine-cut Northern cast, betokening high blood; it did not fit the ugly voice that issued from its full, firm lips.

She unfastened her belt, and the gown dropped to the floor. Then she slowly turned about, admiring her refracted selves as she took the pins from her hair and let it flow like white molten gold down her back. And as Ryel watched, tranced with amazement and desire and drink, she slipped into the water, supple as an otter, and pressed close to him.

"You're hot, Ryel," she whispered. "Hot and hard."

He seized her, pulling her close. "And you're—" he started away as if burnt. "You're—cold. You're like ice."

"Warm me, then. Fill me with fire."

But he had none. "The water's…freezing." It chilled him to the soul, despite the thick bed of embers glowing just under the crystal. He struggled out and threw on his robe, staring down at the woman in the water—and saw that now the water was no longer opaque turquoise, but a crystal that concealed nothing. "Get out."

"Not yet." She stretched to the full, tauntingly. As she did so the water began to simmer and steam.

Ryel took a step backward. "By every god…" He caught up his robe, and girt it about him. "Who sent you?"

She arched her back, and her breasts broke above the boiling water-line. "Someone you know, Ryel Mirai. One that loves you well."

Instantly Ryel thought of Edris, and went colder yet. "He would never..."

She laughed that meaningless shrill peal again. "No, no. Someone far greater." Lifting her knees, she opened them to the steam, tauntingly shameless. "Is this too hot for you?"

At the joining of her legs she glowed white gold and hot wild rose. Under the crystalline water the fine silk hair waved like a sea-creature's around the soft split of flesh. Her perfume rose on the silver mist of the bath—a strange fragrance made of a hundred scents of which Ryel could not name even one, half of which repelled despite the heady seduction of the rest.

He took up the flask of essence he'd used before, and would have poured it into the water, but she dashed it away with pettish coquetry. It shattered, and the wysard saw one of the shards drive deep into her hand. He gave a cry, but she did not; and the blood he sought to staunch never flowed.

"You had to have cut yourself," he said. "Let me look."

She laughed, and snatched her hand from his, and closed her thighs around it. "Go ahead. See where I ache, Lord Ry."

He loathed her. And he could not bear his hunger. "Get up, damn you."

She only laughed. "Make me."

Braving the scalding water, he roughly lifted her out. Her weight took him aback—dead weight, slippery and burning hot, so hot he could not hold her long. Carrying her as fast as he could into the next room, he dropped her onto his bed, dripping as she was. All the while she laughed that infuriating laugh, and to stop her mouth he kissed her. The thrust of her tongue in his mouth came like a jolt from some malignant fish, and her lips clung like leeches to a wound. Twining her arms around his neck, she pulled him down with irresistible strength, rolling him under her. As he lay breathless and ribsore from the clutch of her knees, her hands ripped his robe open. Under her clutching fingers his stiff flesh throbbed as if flayed with white-hot knives, and he gave a groan, clutching her hips to force her down upon him.

Her changeable eyes had turned complete black. She laughed like a madwoman, and lowered her body to engulf his. But suddenly her laughter changed to filthy cursings, and her knees' grip loosened, and Edris' voice came like the boom of a storm.

"Get off of him, demon."

Seething with frustrated lust, Ryel struck at his kinsman with all the strength he had left, but Edris shoved him away like a tiresome child and caught the woman by her long white-gold hair, dragging her from the bed.

"Who sent you? Tell me the name, hell-whore."

The woman shrieked with laughter, and lunged for Edris' eyes. He caught her wrists, and for a little while they struggled, she far the stronger, until Edris shouted out an unjointed string of syllables that Ryel had never heard before. At first the woman's beautiful features contorted with fury, but then her face went blank, and her prismatic eyes rolled upward, and she dropped with all her weight. The sharp crack of bone brought Ryel fully to his senses at last.

"You killed her," he stammered.

Edris rounded on him, seizing both his shoulders. "You damned fool, Ryel. Do you have any idea of the danger you were in?"

Ryel was more furious still. "You killed her. You murdering—"

The back of Edris' swift heavy hand knocked the words from his mouth. "Quit squealing, and wake up. Fool, she was already dead."

Ryel was utterly numb save for his throbbing cheek. "No. She couldn't have been…"

"Dead, I tell you. A stinking corpse, animated by a malignant srih. Doubtless sent by one of Elecambron, for no Ormalan has this kind of skill."

Suddenly marrowless, Ryel sank onto the bed's edge, staring down at the woman's sprawled silent form. "But why?"

"I can think of several reasons, all of them vile. Did you enter her? Answer me!"

Ryel shook his head, bitterly shamed. "You gave me no time."

"Thank all the gods. Whatever it was wanted your seed, and probably your death afterward."

"But…why?"

Edris' voice hammered away at him. "Couldn't you tell what she was? Didn't any of your training alert you?"

Ryel felt his lips twitching, and bit them hard.

"What of her hot and cold, fool? Her changeable eyes? Look here." Edris lifted one of her eyelids, revealing pure white and deep lapis-blue. "This is the real color."

"They were like opals. But then they turned black. All black."

Edris seemed to quell a shudder. "I saw it. That should've been enough to stop anyone but a fool like you." For some moments he contemplated the woman's pale nakedness with impassive deep scrutiny. "Barely an hour dead. And young—twenty-five at most. It's hard that she should have ended thus. Harder still the heart that could have contrived her death." He took the limp white hand in his, and now held it up, his anger rising once more. "Look here. Cut to the bone, yet not a drop of blood. And you still couldn't tell? How could you be such a—"

Ryel could not bear to be called that name again. "Who was she?" he broke in. "Who sent her? And why?"

"None of that matters." Edris reached for a blanket and covered the dead form. "I think you're going to have to be careful from now on, lad. If anything in the least untoward occurs, I want to know of it at once."

Ryel gave a bitter laugh. "I'll leave my door wide open, next time."

Edris frowned. "Watch your tongue, boy. And for my sake and your mother's love, have a care. This scheme wasn't expected to go awry."

"It was Michael of Elecambron, wasn't it?" Ryel grabbed Edris' arm. "Could it have been?"

The tall man shook him off like a bug. "Don't plague me, whelp. I can't believe Michael Essern would do a thing like this, even as bad as he is. But keep your eyes open…damn it, you'd better."

For the first time Ryel heard fear vibrating beneath Edris' anger, and it awed him. "Even as you wish, kinsman," he murmured. "I'll be watchful, I promise you."

Edris drew a long breath, and his next words came with his usual irony. "See that you are, whelp. Now, what about this corpse? We should burn it."

"No," Ryel said instantly. "Her death was not of her own making, and she said she was a sister in the Art. She belongs in the Jade Tower."

Edris seemed impressed, although faintly. "Have it your way, whelp." He took up his fallen cloak. "We'll have her taken there tomorrow. For now, get some rest; she'll keep." He made no attempt to smother a yawn. "I'm going back to bed." And he would have turned away, but Ryel caught him by the shoulder.

"Edris. Wait." He hesitated. "You—" He dropped his eyes. "How did you know I was in danger?"

"I heard you."

"But how? Our houses are wide apart."

Edris smiled, faintly and oddly hesitant, like his next words. "Do you not remember the Steppes saying—'blood hearkens unto blood'?"

"Yes," Ryel said. "But that saying applies to closer kinship than ours."

"Oh. Does it indeed." Edris' dark eyes dwelt on Ryel's for some time. "Give the credit to the Art, then. Let go of me, brat."

But Ryel would not be kept from taking Edris' hands and bending his brow to them. "I owe to you all that I am, ithradrakis. I will always be somewhere in your debt."

At the Almancarian word Edris made no reply, and pulled his hands free; but then he laid one of them on Ryel's head in a hurried embarrassed gesture half caress, half blessing. "Enough, lad. Let's see if you can stay out of trouble for the rest of the night at least."

But when Edris had left, Ryel dressed in warm robes, then calmed himself with some minutes' intense meditation. He gathered up the corpse, now much lighter in his arms than it had been, and carried it to his surgery, laying it out on the granite slab in the middle of the cold windowless room. Since the srih had departed, the flesh gleamed white as marble in the lantern-light, too coldly inert for any lust. But its beauty finally glowed clean and whole.

Despite his Art-driven dispassion, Ryel could not help feeling deep sorrow for this unknown woman, done to death so young. You were of rare intelligence and attractions, surely, he thought as he rolled up his sleeves. It shows in the refinement of your face. The daimon that mocked your lost soul with its lubricity spoiled your charms worse than any disease. Had your lover known how much, he'd have never given you over to death. For your sake someday I will find out who he is, and make him suffer. But not now.

He bent, and touched his lips to the smooth white forehead. Then he took up a scalpel, and began an incision from the navel down.

*****

Ryel shook that memory from him, along with his skin's crawling, and spoke sharply into the air of the night.

"You sent her. Didn't you, Dagar."

But no voice answered him. Awhile the wysard waited. Then, observing that the hour had advanced and he was utterly alone on the great road, he pressed his heel to Jinn's side. The horse leapt into a tearing gallop, and Ryel was borne away as if he gripped a whirlwind between his knees.

The next night Ryel spent in the lands surrounding Almancar's eastern gate. Well within sight the city glowed vast and silent. Above all the other buildings the palaces of the imperial Dranthene towered in the midst, raised upon great platforms of stone. Not a single wisp of cloud flecked the sky, and the risen moon wrought fair alchemy on the gleaming spires.

A city so wondrous deserved fair surroundings, but all around Almancar was wasteland dotted with scattered ruins. Once there had been orchards full of fruit, and great estates of rich men, very long ago. It was said that a wysard wrought that desolation—a sorcerer who demanded in marriage one of the imperial daughters, and was refused. In revenge he had cursed the land around the city, and made it barren with his Art. But he had no power over the Gray Sisterhood where the jewel-mines were, and because of those mines Almancar's folk were the world's richest. At every hour caravans came and went at the eastern and western gates, bringing provisions and luxuries into the city. The northern portal was used only for conveying the dead to the great necropolis of that quadrant, which was famed for its splendid mausoleums and vicious ghosts.

Ryel might easily have ridden the few miles remaining in his journey, but he required time in meditation to gather his strength for the morrow. He had chosen the arcaded portico of a ruined mansion as his shelter, and now sat cross-legged before his chal-fire, his hair tied back and naked to the waist, savoring the unaccustomed pleasures of the night's warmth on his skin, and steady silver radiance. As he had since leaving Risma, he made his camp like a simple bannerman, knowing that it would only too probably be useless to call upon his srihs for any service. He was in fact pleased with himself for requiring so little for his comfort, for so quickly readjusting to the life of the Steppes. After long riding, plain horseman's rations tasted fully as delicious as any banquet commanded from the air, and Edris' cloak made the softest of couches. Tranquilly he sipped his chal, giving his mind over completely to the task ahead, and to she that had drawn him here.

I wonder why I care so much, he thought. I saw you only once, in a daimon-sent vision, and even then you were masked. Why have I come to your help, when I might have returned to my City? It's not as if I loved you.

"I know you do not. I would not wish you to."

A beautiful voice, soft and low and sweet, had spoken in answer to his thoughts—spoken in the most melodious language in the World, the palace tongue of the City of Gold. But Ryel snatched up his sword and leapt to his feet nevertheless.

Out of the shadows glided a slim form, white and black under the moon—a human form, but translucent. "Lay your weapon by," it gently implored. "I cannot harm you. I would not."

Wary and trustless Ryel regarded the apparition. "What are you?" he asked, using the same language as his sudden visitor, but far less gently.

The slender spectre glided closer, until it stood opposite the wysard's kulm-fire. Ryel felt his pulse fail.

"Not you," he whispered. "Not again."

The Sovrena Diara looked on him with surprise. "Again?"

You were masked the first time. But I know you now."

He sensed rather than saw her, in the faint gleam of moon and fire; discerned that now she was clad in a single film of diaphanous white without a single jewel, and that her silken black hair fell unplaited to her elbows. The features of her face he could discern only if he beheld them indirectly, as one views certain star-clusters in the night sky, yet as the stars they were fair and bright, and as with stars Ryel stood awed and wondering.

But she was speaking. "You saw me masked, you say?"

"Yes, in a vision," Ryel somehow managed to reply. "But only the upper half of your face."

"A rich mask?"

"Yes. Covered in jewels, and winged at the brows."

"Ah. Yet another insult." Her voice was weary and sad, now. "Only the courtesans of the Diamond Heaven wear such masks, Ryel Mirai. My captor mocks me, cruelly as always. Shows me how much his slave I am, and to what further debasements he destines me."

The wysard felt the night's heat in his face, and cold anger to his fingertips. "Tell me all you know of your captor, my lady."

She sighed. "I only know that he gives me no rest. Even now he torments me, there in the palace. Makes me tear and bruise and starve myself." She looked toward the silver towers. "So immeasurably distant I feel. From everything."

The wysard took an involuntary step backward, even as his sword fell from his numbed grip. "I address your rai."

She inclined her head, still with her regard fixed on the far towers. "Yes, Lord Ryel. My spirit-self, enclosed in a wraith of my human form."

The night air continued warm, but the wysard felt a chill sweat break out on his chest and back. "Who sent you? How is it you know my name?"

She turned again to him. "I was told."

"By whom?"

"A woman, with powers like to yours."

Ryel came closer. "Serah Dalkith? Srin Yan Tai?"

Diara let him approach, until they were only a few steps apart. "I do not know."

"Why have you appeared to me?"

"I send a message," she answered. "You are not here for my sake alone, Ryel of Markul. Be assured that my captor has designs far larger than the torment of a helpless girl. But nonetheless he delights in giving pain no matter what the degree, and for a long time has lacked that pleasure. Thus he does not miss my spirit's absence now, so rapt he is with my body's torture."

Fury cramped Ryel's insides. "I will not let you suffer another instant." He reached for his shirt, but with a swift gesture she halted him.

"You cannot come to me, Ryel. Not now. You must put yourself in readiness. Tonight you must meditate on the Analects of Khiar."

The Analects were strong precepts against fear. Ryel had last murmured them to himself three months ago, before attempting the spell that had wrought his eyes' darkness and his kinsman's death. "What would you know of Khiar?" he demanded. "How—" racing possibilities halted his tongue.

Diara too fell silent. After a long moment she spoke again. "I know nothing of Khiar. Something put him in my thoughts."

Ryel bowed slightly. "Her, most exalted."

"You see the extent of my ignorance." Her face shimmered a faint smile. "Whatever puts me in mind of Khiar wishes me no harm; I sense that strongly. But I have no time to speak of anything else than my errand, which is this: once you enter the gates of my city, you must meet with my brother, the Sovranel Priamnor. For the past five years he has for private reasons lived in seclusion, never leaving the Eastern Palace. But tomorrow he will join my father in the selection of a physician" She caught her breath as if in pain. "I half hope you aren't chosen. You would see horrors. I'm afraid of how my captor will use me, and ashamed..." she wrung her hands, and turned her face away.

He reached toward her. "Most exalted, if I could only—"

"You cannot…Ry." As she looked round again she said his name so softly that he more felt than heard it, sensing it envelope him like some exquisite scent, some dearly remembered music. "I am glad you do not love me, so glad. My captor would exult in turning that love to loathing, or would kill me outright to give you greater pain, and himself more sport." She trembled. "I do not wish to die, Ryel."

He inclined his head, wrung by the desperate supplication in her voice. With all his Art's strength he willed himself to forget the beauty of her face, the moonlit ravishments revealed by her shift's gossamer. "I promise never to put you in the slightest danger, most exalted."

"Thank you, a thousand times." But then it seemed her voice smiled. "What a pity."

Ryel looked up, astonished. "My lady?"

She was smiling. "It's really too bad. You're so handsome." Her regard slid to his shoulders, his chest, his arms, every glance an appraising caress. "And you look very strong."

He felt himself reddening all over, but somehow replied calmly. "All of that strength is at your service, most exalted."

"Is it. What a pleasant thought." But then her playful smile faded, and she paused as if listening. "I must return, lest my captor suspect."

Ryel had never felt more helpless. "I would do anything to help you here and now. Anything."

With infinite thanks she regarded him. "You are kind, and good. It is a great power in you. But my captor knows of it, and will do all he can to warp it to his own uses. Have no fear for me at this time, however, for I enjoy a respite at dawn. During the hours of daylight my captor leaves me, and my entire being rests unconscious and free of torment until dusk. Tomorrow my father holds audience of physicians an hour after noon in his palace, and I would have you enjoy my city until then, for its beauty will give you strength; and should you by chance pass the temple of Demetropa, I pray you enter and ask the Mother to look with compassion upon her unhappy daughter."

The wysard bowed. "I will not fail, most exalted."

"Don't call me that. Call me by my name."

"If you wish it…Diara." He tasted it on his lips like a kiss.

She, too, seemed to feel it. "Until tomorrow…Ry."

She faded until the night claimed her. Ryel stood unmoving for some time, sternly compelling his memory to blankness. But although with extremest effort he succeeded in blocking out every unique quality of spirit that had drawn him to Diara during their encounter, no effort of will could vanquish the desire aroused by beauty veiled only in a nebulous film of seeming silk. He ran his hands over his arms, cruelly gripping the bare flesh, but the pain only more sharply reminded him that he was male, and fully grown, and save for one terrible time entirely unknowing of pleasure with a woman. And it seemed to him that he had at last discovered the realm of joy only to stand on its threshold quivering and cold, longing for warm limbs yielding to his body's blind need, a mouth wet and searching under his—any limbs, any mouth. His sex oppressed him, and he reached downward not knowing whether he meant to chasten or assuage. But suddenly the night blackened about him, tightened in a strangling squeeze, laughed low and sly.

Ah, young blood. We're hot tonight, aren't we.

The wysard's arms fell to his sides, and he tried to swallow, uselessly. "Get away from me, daimon."

Who were you thinking of, sweet eyes?

"No one."

Not even the delicious little Sovrena?

"I have no feelings for her. You torture her for nothing."

Oh, not for nothing, the voice snidely giggled. It's been most amusing. But if you care as little as you say, then why are you here?

"Because I cannot stand idly by and witness suffering that only I can alleviate."

So selfless. So heroic. Like your dead father.

Ryel leaned against a broken pillar, dazed by comprehension. In the same moment he stood straight, and glared into the darkness. "Tell me how you killed him, Dagar."

I will—after you and I meet.

"You don't deny your name," Ryel breathed. "It is you. The scourge of Elecambron."

And of the World, soon, the voice purred. No need for me to conceal my identity, now that I've brought you this far. Guess why you're here, sweet eyes.

Ryel felt the night like solid ice around him, lightless and haunted like the most secret depths of the sea. It had all come together. The voice that had haunted him in Markul, Diara's torturer, Dagar—all one and the same entity, tripartite malignance. "I know what you want," he said.

The daimon giggled again. Do you?

Ryel stilled a tremor of revulsion. "You won't get it. You're not strong enough."

But I will be, young blood. And you know it. This meeting is only meant to improve our acquaintance. I've been longing for you, beauty. We'll be together soon…very soon, now. Sweet dreams, beauty—sweet and wet.

Before Ryel could reply, the dense air thinned, freeing the moon. Clenching his teeth and closing his eyes, the wysard lifted his face to the silver light, forcing his breath to steady slow rises and falls, focusing his entire concentration on the white glow filling the desperate immensity behind his shut lids. When his pulse had at last slowed and his body warmed to the night, he seated himself again at his fire, and jabbed it back to life, and with fierce effort turned his thoughts to the Analects of Khiar.

*****

Great Almancar was walled high and strong in massive blocks of pale-rose granite carved in fantastic representations of men and beasts that told of the First Birth, when the gods dwelt on earth as brothers with the mortals they had created from air and water. Of these first people the Almancarians claimed descent, and considered themselves set apart from the lesser race of earth and fire that came after. Such had Ryel read while yet young in Markul, and now remembered as he approached the southern gate and watched the wall's carvings leap to life in the first rays of dawn. Never had an enemy army camped outside those walls, nor assaulted their massive ramparts, nor inflicted the slightest harm to their magnificent sculptures, for Destimar had always known peace, and had strong friends surrounding it.

The city was far-famed as a place of wonder and delight. It gleamed in rich soft colors that caught the light of the sun and threw it back in pride: ivory and honey-yellow, pistachio and peach-bloom, new cream and ripe wheat, pure white and palest rose. A further contrast to mist-enmeshed Markul's sober austerity could not be envisioned, and Markul was a mere village in comparison. A hundred thousand people lived in Almancar, and in addition to the citizenry there came swarms of visitors from the world over, to barter and marvel.

Although desert surrounded the city, great natural wells deep underground, fed by unseen rivers, provided Almancar with sweet, pure water—some of which was hot, and some cold. Even the lesser folk had both piped into their houses, a luxury unheard of elsewhere. Canals lined with mosaics served as streets for boat-traffic, and to cool the city—for Almancar's climate was a sweltering one. The loveliest of all these waterways flowed down the middle of the Diamond Heaven, Almancar's renowned pleasure quarter.

In the midst of the city, their proud spires aglow in the never-clouded sunlight, were the palaces of the Dranthene, buildings proverbial for their beauty. The city's rich dwelt in the mansions of the First and Second Districts, and the nearby temple district was said to be the most splendid ever built by human hands. But Almancar's most noted sight was the Diamond Heaven, where the joys of the flesh were celebrated with religious fervor in the name of Atlan, goddess of desire. The only way to reach this licensed quarter was through the Temple of Atlan, which took up the entire end of the broad avenue lined with houses of worship dedicated to Destimar's many gods.

The native denizens of the Bright City were in their appearance and manners remarkably different from all other folk who dwelt about them. Scholars deemed them descended of the White Barbarians that dwelt many hundreds of miles north past the realm of Hryeland in the Northern Barrier, whose rulers had been at war with that savage folk since the beginning of time. Eyes of such a peculiar live aquamarine were not common anywhere save far in the north, so claimed the savants; moreover, Almancarian eyes were not set aslant in the Steppes way, but deep and straight in northern wise. Uncommon, too, was that incandescent fairness of skin, which the citizens of Almancar shielded as much as they could from the endless unclouded sun, to further singularize themselves from the swarthy folk of the grasslands. Like others of the eastern realm, Almancarians were raven-haired, but more luxuriantly and lustrously than Steppe-dwellers. The women indulged in thousand different fashions of plaits and tresses with many ornaments and jeweled pins, while the men most often wore theirs partly gathered back, and confined with a rich wide headband around the brow.

Other differences than physical separated the people of the Bright City from the plainsfolk, differences Ryel had observed as his mother's son in Rismai. Long use of luxury had instilled in Almancarian blood a refinement of spirit, suavity of speech, and quickness of sympathy which graced and favored love of learning and passion for the arts; and these conditions encouraged an equality of the sexes unknown in the surrounding lands. The Steppes bannermen affected to scorn their city brothers' softness of nature, and loudly condemned the use of slaves, but Ryel had well known even as a child that many a yat-wife enduring the privation of the Steppes sighed with unfeigned envy for the happy lot of her Almancarian sisters.

A fabled city, Almancar; but Ryel knew from talk around the Rismai fires that this paradise was governed with an iron hand, and not always wisely. Any theft exceeding the value of a gold piece was punished by death without trial at the hands of the Sovran's soldiers, and any quarrel put down by the same means. Moreover, the Sovran's ministers were exclusively nobles and merchants, and they made no secret of despising the folk of the Fourth District, who worked the jewel-mines of the mountains or toiled at every dirty chore within the city. Strict sumptuary laws permitted nobles and slaves and merchants to wear silk and gems and gold, but those luxuries were forbidden the Dog's Ward, as the Fourth District was commonly and contemptuously termed; nor were those citizens educated beyond the rudiments, lest they conceive ideas above their station.

Nevertheless Ryel did not think of the dark side of Almancar's splendor as he entered the city gates with his senses calmed and open. Mindful of the instructions given him the night before, Ryel put aside all thought of coming trials and dangers, immersing himself instead in the beauty around him, loveliness that revealed itself facet by flawless facet as he passed through broad avenues paved with rich stone, lined with interlaced trees that gave shade from the burning sun, intersected by canals where mosaics of gold and every-colored glass glimmered beneath water clear and sweet as dawn air. Costly tapestries and fragrant flowering vines trailed from the marble galleries of fair houses. Poverty, squalor, meanness, misery seemed to have no existence here, where every citizen went dressed in fresh silk and precious ornaments; and the wysard became conscious of curious and not entirely approving glances directed at his road-weathered Steppes gear as he next entered the merchants' district, where intricate gold-woven brocades gleamed in soft jewel-colors, wine sparkled in bright bottles, rare perfumes made the air sweet for passers-by. Only the most inventive labors of Ryel's spirit-servants might rival the excess and splendor of this city, that gathered together the loveliest of the world's goods able to delight the senses to their highest pitch.

What a wondrous place this is, Ryel thought, remembering the words of Diara as a surge of fresh energy filled him. What a beautiful, perfect place .

Ryel progressed to the market district where spices, almonds, dates, figs, and other edibles spilled out of rough brown sacks under bright awnings, and heaps of fruit lay ripening in their own rich fragrance, and birds and animals both domestic and exotic were tethered and penned. He bought large sweet plums and grapes with the gold money given him by Lady Serah, and enjoyed them as he examined the wealth of goods. Exploring further, he came to the horse traders', where his practiced eye assessed the animals and found them excellent all, but none as good as his own mare, who attracted much attention.

"That's a fine animal you've got there, bannerman," said one of the horse-dealers. "She deserves to be ridden only by one of imperial blood."

Ryel ignored this veiled reflection on his appearance, his attention drawn to another market being held in a building uncommonly elaborate, with a clientele surpassingly bedizened. "What do they sell there, where so many rich folk go in and out?"

"The most precious merchandise in all the city, bannerman," the other replied with a meaning smile. "Exclusive goods … for exclusive buyers, as you see. Not the sort of thing a Steppes brave of your sort would be interested in." The horse-merchant reached out to stroke Jinn's mane, a gesture the horse evaded. "Would you perhaps consider—"

"Not for any gold," Ryel said, turning away. His curiosity piqued, he progressed to the magnificent building and dismounted at a sheltering corner. Opening his journeybag, he extracted one of Lord Nestris' parting gifts, a robe of emerald-green satin floridly embroidered, rich even by Almancarian standards. It enveloped his Steppes garb completely, cinched by a brilliant sash. His tagh he slung over his shoulder, having observed that many of the wealthiest-seeming young men of the city went armed, certainly more for show than for defense. Smoothing his hair, he donned the wide headband that matched the robe. "Now we'll see what's so extraordinary here," he murmured; and mounting the many steps at a run, he entered the open archway.

The vast interior was dark as twilight after the brilliance outdoors. Light penetrated from windows only near the roof, falling in long gold lances. As his eyes adjusted, Ryel took a deep breath of flesh—but not the raw fresh blood-tang of the butchers' stalls, nor the acrid live reek of penned goats and sheep. Human flesh this was, hot under perfume; and the wysard choked on the smell.

"By every god," he whispered. "I'm in the slave mart."

Before he had time to choose between alarm or disgust, several traders even more garishly bedecked than himself converged upon him, all huckstering at once.

"A fresh young maiden, worthy sir? Or perhaps two? I have twins newly arrived from Zinaph, two melting beauties —"

Another dealer pushed forward. "Does the gentleman seek a door-guard, or maybe a scribe? A fine tall Falissian warrior I have just acquired, and a great scholar from Hatim Tilskar who speaks and writes twelve languages including—"

He was shoved aside by a colleague even more insistent. "Such a boy I have for you, most honored young lord! So smooth, so fair and gentle! Never have the White Reaches produced so lovely a—"

Ryel got away from them, meshing with the crowd circulating up and down the platformed rows of richly curtained booths. Only the most luxurious flesh was offered for sale: one might buy a musician but not an instrument-maker, a master-cook but not a scullion, a sculptor but not a stone-cutter, a scholar but not a paper-maker. In another section of the market, youth and beauty sought the highest bidder, and slaves displayed themselves to best advantage before backdrops of gleaming silk, while now and again other curtains would part and disclose nude glimpses as a prospective buyer emerged after a close inspection of a possible purchase. Almancarian rakes of both sexes clustered about especially interesting offerings, loudly critiquing charms and flaws. Sickened, Ryel went on; but suddenly his path was blocked by an armed guard, splendidly accoutered.

"No further, sir, unless you're as rich as the prince you seem, or deal for the Diamond Heaven. Serious inquiries only, here."

"I've seen more than enough," the wysard replied shortly, and would have turned away; but the guard prevented him.

"Wait. How does one of the Dog's Ward dress so fine as that?" And he indicated Ryel's gleaming green robe with a suspicious finger.

The wysard, uncomprehending, thought at first that he was being asked a riddle. "What is it you mean?"

"From your half-blood looks, you can only be from the Fourth District," the guard half-sneered. "Where'd you get those clothes, and that weapon?" As he spoke he half-drew his sword; but Ryel did the same with his own, and readied himself in a stance that made his questioner step swiftly backward.

"Nothing about me is any of your concern," the wysard said, his voice soft but edged. "What right have you to question me?"

The guard bristled. "You know well enough that it's against the law for a toiler of the Dog's Ward to wear silk and bear arms. Go back to where you belong and I won't have you whipped—although you deserve it."

Ryel lifted his chin. "My homeland is the Inner Steppes of Risma."

The guard looked harder at Ryel's face, and then seemed to respect the wysard's answer, though grudgingly. "Well, bannerman, some of your blood at least is of this city—high blood, if your pride is any indication. Were you of the Dog's Ward, you'd not act so scornful, or even dare come here."

"I only entered this vile place by mistake," Ryel said, not courteously. "And my only wish now is to leave—which I will, because I can."

The guard, clearly of Turmaron from his yellow aspect, and a slave himself from his sudden flush and frown, answered snappishly. "You needn't talk so haughty, bannerman. Those who sell themselves here do so gladly. We're luxury goods, and prized accordingly. If you require drudges to haul and scrub, you'll have to hire them from the free rabble of the Fourth District. Yes, wince and condemn, bannerman; but it's well known that the Rismai are slaves to their herds, and their women are slaves to the yat. Your horse would fetch a better price here than you would."

Ryel would have spoken sharply in return, or used his Art to inflict some minor but malignant harm; but he deemed it wiser to turn on his heel instead, and find his way as quickly as might be out of that foul place.

After that Ryel rode distraught and saddened, despite the beauty of the city and the fairness of the sun that lit its towers. His shift of mood made him sensitive to the disquiet among Almancar's citizens, and among the many visitors from foreign lands come to trade and marvel. For all the animation of the markets, gloom and misgiving hung like faint but acrid smoke over Almancar and its fabled magnificence, stinging the eyes, casting a pall over the constant sun.

And as if in response to his mood, the wysard found the city's buildings diminishing in splendor, and the broad straight streets narrowing to tangled lanes. The deterioration seemed to affect even the people around him. The City of Gold's rich folk were of unalloyed Almancarian blood, while their slaves were of many lands. But now Ryel found himself amid a people of mixed heritage, whose traits mingled countless races. The city's wealthy and their slaves were sleekly groomed and magnificently arrayed, but the folk Ryel now found himself among wore plain garments of coarse stuff that only too fittingly set off bodies and faces marked by unremitting drudgery. No one seemed to be any way in want, but their sense of privation and their resentment were very real, to judge by the hostility with which they eyed Ryel's brilliant robe. Disliking the jealous attention he attracted, the wysard at his first opportunity urged Jinn into a quiet corner and slipped off his over-gorgeous outfit, rolling it up and thrusting it into his saddle-bag. He next looked to stop someone and ask directions, for clearly he had lost his way and wandered into the Fourth District, the so-called Dog's Ward. But all at once he heard an extraordinary voice cry out, deep and resonant, echoing from every wall.

"Death! Misery, and shame, and death to this city of dust!"

Ryel instantly turned toward the voice, and saw that a man stood alone in the midst of the square—the first madman dressed in the first rags the wysard had yet seen in Almancar.

"Death is upon this city!" the madman shouted. "Death armed with steel, death with fangs of fire! Even now it clutches at the soul of the Sovrena Diara, who lies raving in her own dirt up in Agenor's palace of gold! Diara, child of sin against the law of kind!"

He spoke the common tongue, with a strange accent but complete fluency. Hardly had the lunatic begun to harangue than people emerged from the taverns and shops and leaned out of windows to listen, and soon an ever-increasing throng of muleteers and jewel-miners and tavern-wenches had gathered about him. Ryel had fully expected them to mock and gibe, but they did neither. Rather they hearkened earnestly, and even murmured approval from time to time. marveling that anyone would seriously attend the ravings of one so obviously deranged, the wysard bent from the saddle to question one of the crowd.

"Who is he?"

She answered with curt impatience. "He is the teller of truth, the prophet of the Master who will break this city's heartless pride. Be silent, and heed his wisdom!"

Taken aback by her vehemence, Ryel stared into the girl's face—a child's face daubed with paint, gaudy and weary, with eyes that shone in desperate adoration and worship as they gazed on the ragged prophet; a face yearning for revenge on the destroyers of its innocence. Shuddering, the wysard turned and considered the mad loud orator more closely.

The seduction of the man's address Ryel had instantly remarked, even before the first sight of him. His voice had all of Edris' timbre and depth—the resemblance had made Ryel's blood leap. The virile peremptoriness of its accent set it far apart from the soft and deliberate Almancarian harmony. One's immediate, all but involuntary reaction after hearing that voice was to look round for the speaker, even as Ryel had done.

Once attracted, the eye widened, blinked, and lingered. In Almancar the Bright, where even the poorest went wholly and cleanly clad, this man stood out starkly. He was barefoot, and wore a single trailing garment of dirty black wool full of rents that bared his arms to the shoulders. But there was something deeply impressive in his destitution. When his features chanced to relax, one might readily discern that under its grime his face was of a forceful harsh handsomeness. Like his face, his head was shaven, baring to advantage the fine bones of the skull and the well-shaped ears lying close to it, and giving great expressiveness to the heavy dark brows. Grim and squalid he undoubtedly was, but his lean form was tall and well-made, and he held himself arrogantly erect. At one point as the prophet gestured, his rags parted over his back and revealed powerful shoulders seamed with red stripes, the mark of whips that he bore as proudly as a lord might flaunt jeweled orders.

Theatrical, Ryel thought, unwillingly impressed. Very effective in its way. This is no mere street preacher, not at all. He's hardly older than me—little more than thirty—and plainly he's of birth far beyond that of the people he addresses, and of great and subtle intellect. But anyone not blind may see that this man is arrogant and violent, as remote from humility as he is from humanity. And strong, very strong.

Scorning to acknowledge his empire over his listeners, the street evangelist lifted the deep male music of his voice yet louder.

"She will meet her end in shrieking torment, and drag countless lives and souls down with her! For her sake hundreds have come to attempt her cure, and all have failed, and many have died for their failure, at the command of your senile impotent Sovran! Thousands have babbled worthless prayers to false gods, imploring mercy from senseless blocks of stone! But the Master will avenge this blasphemy against His greatness, and the line of the Dranthene will die with the Sovrena and her lust-cankered inbred brother! Almancar the Whore with its pride, this cesspit of luxury with its jeweled strumpets and drug-stunned minions and debased slaves, will burn to stinking ash, and the ash scatter to nothingness!"

Ryel had had enough. "You lie."

The wysard had spoken very quietly, but everyone turned to stare at him. The prophet swiftly whirled about, and his fierce eyes—eyes without white or iris, dead black eyes—sought Ryel's. Jinn shied in sudden terror, and even Ryel could not help a thrill of shocked recognition.

You're no madman, he thought amazed. You're of the Art-brotherhood, an Overreacher like myself. You're—

"Michael!" one of the crowd shouted. "Curse the fool, Michael!"

Ryel's blood leapt as the wysard demagogue's empty black eyes burned into his. You, he thought. You, my brilliant unruly rival, Lord Michael of Elecambron. But why are you here, far from your ice-encircled City?

The ragged prophet knew Ryel in the same instant, and took a step backward at the sight of the Markulit wysard's eyes and the black emptiness only he among all that crowd could discern. But then he laughed, baring keen teeth jarringly white against his face's dirt. Laughed as if he'd been waiting long for this moment, and meant to use it cruelly.

"Other hands than mine, hands invisible perhaps, will avenge me for your insolence, Steppes gypsy," Michael sneered. "As for myself, clairvoyance enough I have to know what brings you to this place, and what success you will enjoy. Go, and try to save Agenor's daughter, since you have come for that. And watch her wither and burn, slave to the Master that strikes hard and slumbers not, before your Overreaching eyes!"

Ryel held his ground unmoved. "Strong must this master be, if you deign to serve him."

Michael grinned with fierce teeth. "You will learn His strength, and serve as well. All will serve the Master, one day. But your road lies not here in the Fourth Ward, home to worse than slaves. There is your way, through the streets that sell bright vanities to spendthrift fools, toys beyond the reach of these poor children, orphans of Agenor's indifference. Get you gone by that road, and tell the Sovran and his son that their damnation waits them, after that of their darling girl." His hard bare arm shot forth, and his filth-rimmed finger pointed eastward.

Long did their eyes lock, Markulit's and Elecambronian's, black upon black. Then Ryel bowed low in the saddle. "For your instruction I thank you, Lord Michael," he said, with all the respect due to a great brother in the Art, no matter how bad. The people who had begun to jeer him looked at one another in confusion, and back to the dour prophet so incongruously yet with such strange fitness ennobled by the wysard's word. "I am glad of this encounter. It may be we'll meet again."

Michael did not return the bow save by the faintest inclination of his shaven head, and he spat in the dust afterward. "Ill met you are to me, Overreacher, now and forever. Begone, take your road."

Chapter Six

Michael's directions were accurate, to Ryel's mild surprise. As he rode, the wysard remembered the man he had seen in his Glass years ago, and only once; a man who wore an officer's regimentals as easily as his skin, whose blood-red hair fell clean and well-ordered in thick skeins. Ryel recalled the dragon insignia on the uniform's high collar, the serried double rank of silver clasps, all the metal gleaming, the fine black cloth spotless and flawless; the clean-shaven face as white as ice, and colder. Never would Ryel have recognized Michael as the prophet of the Dog's Quarter, without hearing his name shouted by the crowd that his wild rhetoric enthralled.

"I hope I can find you again, my lord brother," Ryel murmured. "We seem to have much to discuss."

Thus musing, the wysard successfully threaded the maze of constricted streets and emerged into a region of wide avenues and great arcaded mansions. The houses slept under the burning heat of the sun, their latticed shutters folded, but as he passed Ryel could smell the spiced aroma of midday feasts, hear music and soft laughter and the chimes of crystal and silver wafting through the tracery. With a twinge of hunger that went far beyond the body he remembered the Steppes, never more distant from him than now. He thought with fresh regret of his mother, who might have dwelt in a house such as these around him, and of his sister Nelora who longed for such a life. But most of all he thought of the unhappy folk of the Fourth District, inexorably debarred from this luxury so arrogantly flaunted.

At length Ryel reached the broad avenue of the temple district with its garden-encircled buildings of magnificent state on either side. Through each portico might be discerned statues of strange half-animal beings or surpassingly beautiful humans, and people in prayer before them. The wysard heard the name of Diara uttered by innumerable voices with mingled sorrow and, and at one building the orisons were so fervent that Ryel dismounted and ascended its steps, drawn by pain.

In the colonnaded vastness of the temple hundreds of worshippers knelt before a statue unlike any the wysard had yet seen—a wooden image from all appearances immensely old, of a woman enthroned, carved with artless yet compelling simplicity; neither painted nor bejeweled nor richly draped, but wondrously forgiving and tender of expression. All about the image, candles glittered and incense swirled; and a priestess in flowing rust-colored vestments, her silver-flecked dark hair shorn close and her ears and neck hung with great ornaments of beaten gold, offered up a silver bowlful of milk and fervent prayers to Demetropa, Goddess of Life.

"Demetropa," Ryel murmured. Years fled away like scattered leaves, and he remembered how his mother had called upon the birth-goddess when she was near her time with Nelora. In secret he had followed her outside the yat one bright night, and found her kneeling with her face lifted to the moon, whispering what seemed like a plea as she clasped her hands over the swollen belly that he had so entirely feared and resented; and when a month later she held in her arms Nelora newly born and fair as daylight, she had given deepest thanks to the First Mother, and bade Ryel do the same. And Ryel had touched his lips to the softness of his sister's cheek, and inwardly begged forgiveness of the goddess with all his heart.

I no longer believe, he thought, returned again to the present. What humbled me a dozen years ago cannot move me now. But I will fulfill your request of last night, most exalted Diara.

Approaching the altar, he fell to his knees before the silent statue, bowing his head. Scarcely had he offered up his first words than he felt a light hand upon his hair, as if in benediction; and looking up, he met the eyes of the priestess.

"Seldom does a man enter this place," she said, her faint smile relieving a little her worn pallor. "You are a devotee of the Goddess?"

Ryel glanced about, and saw for the first time that indeed all of the worshippers were women; and in that instant he realized that the milk which filled the silver bowl upon the altar must have been drawn from their breasts, for he had read long ago in Markul that no other offering was more pleasing to the goddess. Blood welled up hotly in his face. "I respect the devotion of others," he replied, "and for another's sake I am here."

The priestess' eyes—eyes exceedingly like Diara's, but pitiably haggard—gazed searchingly into the wysard's face, finding the blush and attempting to decipher it. "Ah. A woman is with child by you?"

Ryel felt himself coloring all the more as he shook his head.

"But you have come for someone you love."

Rather than make denial yet again, the wysard cast his eyes down. "I am sent to implore the Mother to grace and favor her daughter, Diara Dranthene."

The priestess said nothing in answer; but she took his hands in hers, and raised him up. Cold hands hers were, achingly cold, and Ryel instantly sought to warm them in his own; and his action, simple as it was, brought vivid color to her cheeks.

"I understand now," she said; and for the first time Ryel saw that she was a woman of great beauty, despite her fled youth and shorn hair and broken health. "You are a healer of the Inner Steppes, come to attempt the Sovrena's cure. Now I realize why I broke my wonted habit of solitary meditation, and left the cloister for the first time in years to officiate today. Surely the Goddess meant for you and I to meet."

"But I am no believer, most revered," Ryel answered uneasily.

Her smile was a mother's, tenderly and utterly forgiving. "All believe in Demetropa, though they call her by other names. You might know her as the life principle." She fixed her eyes on his. "If you hold that principle sacred, help the Sovrena Diara. I beg you help her."

Ryel inclined his head. "I will strive even to the limit of my life, most revered."

She caught his hands and bent her brow to them before Ryel could stop her. "If prayers and tears might help you, take all of mine."

Ryel stared at her, greatly moved. "You hold the Sovrena very dear."

"I love her as my own, sir." The priestess glanced up at the oculus in the temple's dome, where the sunlight fell in a radiant pillar to the middle of the floor; her eyes became anxious. "But if you tarry longer here, you will arrive late for the Sovran's audience, and others will be chosen before you. Go, then. Should it appear that you might not be considered, inform the Sovran that Calantha Diaskiros commends you; and should by chance you encounter the Sovranel Priamnor, greet him for me with the Mother's love."

Thinking now only of reaching the palace as quickly as possible, the wysard thanked the priestess and departed, and hastened Jinn's pace. Then as he emerged from beneath an archway the wysard confronted the palace, a vast edifice raised on a high platform of gold-veined dawn-violet stone approached by long wide ramps. No wall encircled the building, but magnificently armed guards stood at each incline and portal. Above the platform the imperial palace rose in dazzling splendor, its great double rows of travertine columns upbearing galleries of precious many-hued alabaster surmounted by tall ogival windows of marble tracery set with crystal panes. Mosiacs of amethyst and topaz and gold covered the loggias, while equally precious friezes of men and beasts, ornately bizarre, ran the length of the walls. But Ryel marveled most at the gardens that crowned and overflowed every rooftop. Under the fiery sky shimmered lush trees thick with fruit, vines laden with rare flowers, urns of irises and sweet herbs, cool arbors of grapes and roses, all spangled with fountain-spray fairer than diamonds—the fabled paradise that Ryel as a child had made his mother describe again and again, to brighten the barren emptiness of the Steppes at least in imagination. Growing to manhood in Markul he had sometimes stared out at the dank infinities of mist and remembered those stories, and contemned them as idle tales meant only to beguile a restless yat-brat; now he inwardly asked his mother's pardon.

In normal circumstances no personage less than a great noble would have been allowed entry to the palace of the Sovran of Destimar, but the desperate illness of the Dranthene princess suspended all protocol. Anyone claiming a physician's credentials, no matter how mean-seeming, was admitted into the presence-chamber with few questions, only the obviously deranged being turned away. A servitor led Jinn to the palace stables while another swiftly ushered the wysard through ramped hallways to the Sovran's presence-chamber. There Ryel found that the number of doctors awaiting the Sovran's appearance was few, despite the prospect of dazzling reward—barely twenty in all. Most of them were dressed with exceedingly richness, and Ryel keenly regretted not having resumed Lord Nestris' flaunting green robe after leaving the Fourth District. But then he noticed that by far the most bedizened of all the throng were wysards. He at once recognized a pair of flashy Ormalans with their inevitable attendant familiars—in this case a nasty-eyed white cat and a lizard almost as big—and observed three Tesbai even gaudier still, wearing their characteristic enormous hats. These five he avoided with lowered eyes lest they discover and cry out against the Overreacher in their midst, but they paid him no heed whatever, save to eye his Steppes garb with cursory scorn.

Ryel kept his distance for another reason fully as crucial. Cats were universally detested among the Rismai as being the harborers of bad spirits, and he had seen very few in his life; but he would never forget having hugged one as a little child, rapturous with its soft purring tabby fur, only to almost instantly feel his eyes swell shut, his breathing strangle. By the luckiest chance Yorganar had at that moment appeared, seen the danger, snatched the animal away and thrown it out of the yat, where the dogs had torn it to pieces. The hapless animal had belonged to some visiting Cosran princeling, who had been furious at his favorite's destruction and would have exacted costly retribution; but Yorganar as angrily maintained that the cat had almost been the death of his only son. The phratri elders had ruled in favor of Yorganar, the offended noble had paid recompense and stormed back to his country, and Ryel had lain miserably gasping and sneezing with blocked and flooding eyes and nose, his face swollen like a glue-soaked sponge for two entire days. Even worse, his mother could not come near him until his garments had been burnt and his body washed clean of all feline contamination, and the yat's hangings taken out and aired.

But now music sounded, dispersing those memories, and the little throng of would-be healers gave way as the sole ruler of great Destimar approached, borne high in a palanquined carrying-chair on the shoulders of his guard, preceded and followed by attendants and soldiery. Ryel was at first much impressed, for Agenor Dranthene was a gorgeous sight in his imperial finery of purple and scarlet and gold. But at second glance the wysard observed how the stiffly projecting shoulders of the Sovran's billowing cloak failed to disguise his age-bowed back, while a wide many-wrapped sash did little to bind in his corpulent girth. His entire inert body seemed little more than a great mound of jewels from which protruded two limp fat-fingered hands barely visible for their rings and bracelets; and atop this glittering heap the Sovran's unmoving unblinking head seemed nothing more than part of a badly tinted second-rate statue, its hair dyed an unnatural and glossless black, its face bedaubed with kohl and rouge and pearl-dust, with carmine smears on the slack lips, and powdered lapis thick on the lids of the watery short-sighted eyes.

Ryel had observed in his travels through the city that it was customary for upper-caste Almancarians of both sexes to make use of cosmetics, but never this thickly plastered. It was only too obvious that a skin-surgeon's skilled yet futile handiwork had attempted to confer a semblance of youth, and succeeded only in producing a ghastly mockery of it—especially since just beneath the tautly-pulled chin hung two others wobbling full of fat. The wysard with wry amusement further noted that among the jewels encircling Agenor's swollen neck were many amulets and charms surely meant to confer bed-prowess, good digestion, swift recovery from alcoholic excess, and relief from piles.

Suddenly the heap of jewels stirred, the plumes of the lofty crown quivered, and the painted mask twitched. The Sovran sat upright and outraged, sniffing the air. His reddened lips grimaced to reveal bad teeth, and he shrieked.

"Get that—that monstrosity out of here! Now!"

Every attendant stiffened, and blankly stared about them. But the soldiers looked from Agenor's trembling finger to the thing it pointed at, and found the offending object arching and glaring on the pale Ormalan's shoulder.

"Kill the filthy thing," Agenor gasped as he blurted a sneeze, sending his chins juddering. At once the guardsman so commanded tore the cat from its owner despite its deeply-dug claws, then flung the screeching creature out the nearest window. A frantic moment the luckless beast grappled the air before its yowling plummet. Order thus restored, Agenor sank back again into his cushions, peevishly wiping his streaming eyes and nose on his silken sleeve. As if this were a sign, all of his entourage save for the guardsmen genuflected in various degrees of abasement.

A militant hiss scorched the wysard's ear. "You forget yourself, fellow."

Alerted by the soldier, Ryel glanced about and saw that all the would-be healers were likewise on their knees, and some even more servile on all fours. Yet no lord adept of Markul, much less a Rismai of the Elhin Gazal, would so demean himself, and Ryel only watched with impassive disregard as the guard who had spoken now drew his sword.

"How'd you get into the audience-room, Fourth District dog?" the soldier snapped. "Bow down, or be cut down."

Ryel's sole reply was to second the guard's gesture and lift his chin in defiance. With petulant exasperation the Sovran Agenor peered at the wysard through the great table-diamond that hung from his neck on a chain of gold. "Kill the intruding fool," he said at last with faint disgust and utter indifference, far less energetically than he had ordered the dispatch of the cat. But from the doorway a voice rang out, sweet and clear as Diara's but commandingly male.

"Soldier, I order you to stop."

Thus speaking, a young noble strode swiftly forward—clearly a great lord despite the sober plainness of his dress and lack of attendance, for everyone in the assembly bowed more deeply as he approached, and the guard at once lowered his sword.

The austere young man turned to the gaudy old one, his voice now edged with a hint of accusation. "Sire, I thought we had agreed that I would join you this day in choosing a physician for my sister."

The Sovran glared squintingly down at his son, forgetting Ryel completely. The wysard seized that opportunity to eclipse himself in the crowd. "Aware as we are of your habit of sleeping until the hour of noon, Sovranel, we had no wish to interrupt your slumbers."

Contemptuously as this was said, Priamnor Dranthene bowed with impassive calm. "And I thank you for that indulgence, Sire, because I believe it has shown me how the Sovrena my sister may be healed."

As he looked on, the wysard realized that the rumors he had heard in Risma had been utter falsehood. Far from being sickly or deformed, the Sovranel Priamnor was in the full vigor of his years, which numbered close to the wysard's own. His unadorned robes of dusky blue-purple silk were closer cut to the body than was typical of extravagant Almancarian court dress, the sleeves fitted smoothly over the arms instead of flowing in rippling swathes to the ground, allowing Ryel to take clear note of the disciplined strength betrayed by the shoulders' unpadded breadth, the waist's athletic slimness outlined rather than enforced by the plain silver belt, the straight carriage turning middle height to tallness. Not a single jewel or amulet did the Sovranel wear, which permitted undistracted scrutiny to dwell wholly on the singularity of the face and hands. These, Ryel noted with surprise, were not the wonted Almancarian ivory, but the bronze of one who lived much in the sun. Moreover, Priamnor's night-colored hair was shorn close to his head and his face was clean-shaven and unpainted, both likewise contrary to Almancarian custom. The smooth visage drew its beauty, which was great, as much from the keen intelligence of its expression as from the pure regularity of its features. The wysard marveled at the glowing violet-tinged blue of those eyes, all the bluer for the dark lashes that edged them and sun-darkened face in which they were set. And he marked how even Agenor himself flinched under that calm appraising stare.

"Explain what you have said, Sovranel," Agenor said as he glanced away.

Priamnor turned his attention from his father, searchingly scanning the little crowd. When he spoke, it was with manifest reluctance. "I saw my sister in a dream."

The Sovran shrugged. "What of it? We not only dream, but see visions too sometimes."

"But I do not, Sire," Priamnor evenly replied. "Which leads me to think that this occurrence may be of import."

"The gods work arcanely, even through the most hardened of skeptics," Agenor said, though without conviction. "Tell us what you saw, but be brief."

"I saw my sister as she was when in health," Priamnor said. "I spoke with her, and from her lips learned who might heal her."

Agenor's own lips, raddled and weak, quirked mirthlessly. "So. The cynic atheist now puts his faith in portents. And who does this vision of yours suggest as the Sovrena's healer?"

"I was told that he would be among this assembly, Sire."

"Then find him, if you can," Agenor said. "But for this moment we will make use of our own judgment." The Sovran lifted his quizzing-diamond to his watery eye. "We will have these," he loudly and abruptly said after a momentary inspection of the most flamboyantly clad contenders, and with an imperious spike-nailed finger beckoned the two Ormalans, who approached with leering smiles and bent-kneed bows. "Tell us your names, and your stations."

Ryel did not need to learn either. He knew their kind. Both were base scum, offscourings of the least of the Four Cities; both addicted to a variety of drugs, obvious from their glassy and protruding eyes—drugs very probably administered by clyster, the Ormalan method of choice for swift stupefaction. The one seemed not a little sorry for the loss of his cat, but the other's joy was gigglingly manifest.

"Your slaves Rickrasha and Smimir are we, most worshipful," she grinned. She was a plump Turmaronian, citron-skinned and gap-toothed. As she spoke, she patted the oversized chameleon that squatted on her shoulder staring at once toward the ceiling and at the Sovran with its yellow balls of eyes—eyes little different, Ryel remarked, from its owner's. "Great adepts and healers, we. Thousands of cures. Thousands of testimonials." And she brandished a great sheaf of documents.

Agenor bestowed a brief glance on the certificates. "Adepts, you say? That is well. And where from?"

"The great and wondrous city of Ormala, most worshipful."

At the mention of that place only too well known to the World, the Sovran's train murmured alarm. But the ruler of Almancar nodded cool approval from the height of his carrying-chair.

"Wysards, then. Good. You will possess far more skill, and we hope will enjoy far greater success, than any of these tiresome little quacks." And he cast a disdainful sneer upon the disappointed throng of aspirants before turning back to the Ormalan sorcerers. "But we warn you, others of your brotherhood have tried and failed."

Smimir smirked. His pallid Northern looks had a rattish cast, and were framed by limp locks of greasy brass-tinted hair. "May I ask who made the attempt, most worshipful?"

"A witch from the city of Tesba."

Smimir and Rickrasha exchanged glances, and broke into giggles.

"Most worshipful," said Rickrasha, her gapped grin wide, "I regret to inform you that Tesba was never known for its greatness. I'm not surprised that it could not produce a healer for your daughter."

The Sovran's mask-face did not smile in return. "There was an Elecambronian, too, that failed—or rather, we did not allow him to try. He attempted to drug the Sovrena with some deadly concoction, for which we had him summarily put to death."

Smimir paled to tallow, and Rickrasha to chalk. During their abject silence Agenor Dranthene gestured listlessly to Priamnor. "Now make your own choice if you must, Sovranel."

Priamnor did not reply. His jewel-blue eyes had alighted on Ryel, having examined and rejected all other contenders. The crowd parted as he approached the wysard, and the two of them stood face to face. For the first time the Sovranel smiled.

"Keirai."

At that smile bestowed with such grace, and that greeting uttered in High Almancarian, Ryel felt a strange yet pleasurable sensation, almost a shudder, travel down his back—a sensation heightened by the celestial scent that wafted from the prince's garments, ineffably sweet. "Keirai d'yash," the wysard replied, bewildered and enthralled.

But even as he spoke, he felt his face afire at his error. High Almancarian was a language at once exalted and intimate: a ceremonial tongue between strangers, a gentle secret one between friends. Ryel had used to speak it with his mother, and so fluent had he become that he could not fathom why he'd made so gross a lapse of usage now. In his reply to the Sovranel he had involuntarily used the most familiar form of address, a form reserved by law only for use between kinsmen of the blood imperial. His was a grave error if not a capital offense, and the Sovran Agenor was enraged by it.

"How dare you address one of the imperial Dranthene thus?" the bejeweled old man hissed, his painted face aflame. "We will have you—"

"He has committed no crime, Sire," the Sovranel broke in, smiling reassurance at Ryel as he spoke.

Agenor stiffened. "No crime? What, is this fellow known to you then, and of your rank?"

Priamnor bowed his head. "He is, Sire. In my dream my sister described him so accurately that I recognized him at once. As for his rank, the folk of the Inner Steppes bow down to no one, and consider themselves equal to any station no matter how high."

Agenor glared through his quizzing-diamond at Ryel, his neck craning as much as it could under his chins. "Steppes?"

Priamnor Dranthene nodded. "From his dress and his manner—not to mention much of his looks—this man is clearly not of our city, but comes from the southern reaches of bold warriors and fine horses." He turned to the wysard. "Am I not right?"

Before Ryel could reply, the Sovran Agenor slapped at the air with a impatient hand. "An insolent rout of nomads, those Rismai. We think you intend to affront us with this fellow, Sovranel."

"I do not, Sire," the prince calmly replied. "Nor do I question your choices, whatever I think of them."

Agenor snorted. "Yours is a senseless whim."

Priamnor darted a scornful glance at the Ormalans. "Is it?"

The Sovran's cheeks purpled under their paint. "We warn you. Choose better, or not at all."

The Sovranel lifted his chin in a gesture that made Ryel start, so like to his own it was. "I will have this bannerman, or none."

Agenor shrugged with careless finality. "Let it be none, then."

Priamnor's gentle features hardened; but before the prince could speak, Ryel interposed, addressing the Sovran.

"Most exalted, I come at the recommendation of Calantha Diaskiros, votary of Demetropa."

The wysard did not expect so strong a reaction to so simple a declaration. The Sovran froze like a gaudy god-image, and Priamnor went wan under his bronze.

"You saw her? You saw Calantha, chief priestess of the Mother-Goddess?"

Wondering at the sudden change in the Sovran's demeanor, Ryel inclined his head as he answered. "Not an hour ago I spoke with her. She said that her word might have some weight here."

Agenor Dranthene abruptly motioned to his bearers. "Set us down." When he stood facing Ryel, he spoke in a voice much quieter and far more human. "Did she look well?"

The wysard regarded the ruler of Destimar, now shrunk from bejeweled vainglory into paunchy overdressed insignificance—a little man in every sense, ridiculously bedaubed and bedizened. "Concern for the Sovrena has taxed her greatly, it would seem," he replied.

"Never has she left her seclusion before," the Sovran murmured. "Not even I might interrupt her retreat." His eyes narrowed as they studied Ryel's face and gear. "What are you named?"

"I am Ryel Mirai, of the phratri of the Elhin Gazal," the wysard replied.. "Twice six years the Sovranet Mycenas came to buy horses of my father, and gave me his own weapon when I won the Banner Race."

The Sovran's manner suddenly warmed, however slightly. "I remember that visit of my brother's, peace be to his shade. He had much to say of it when he returned, and mentioned that a lady of this city had chosen to wed a bannerman--you are her son, I gather."

"I am."

"The best of your looks show it. I can only wonder that she forsook her native city to dwell among savages. A pity, that your eyes should be so blue, yet slant so ill-favoredly. And where did you learn the physician's art?"

As calmly as he could given such insults, Ryel replied, "At Fershom Rikh, most exalted" Often as he told the lie, he was never at ease with it; but nevertheless he met the Sovran's gaze unflinchingly as he spoke.

"Fershom Rikh." Agenor Dranthene lifted an eyebrow. "It is far-famed for its healers. We only hope, bannerman, that you are as good a tabib now as you were a rider then. But I do not expect my Ormalans to fail me."

Ryel bowed, far less deeply than protocol demanded. "I on the other hand expect nothing less, most exalted."

The Sovran merely shrugged, all his wonted arrogance returned in full, and addressed Priamnor. "So. You have your wish, despite me; but I will put my trust in these great adepts. Guards, disperse this rabble."

Agenor again mounted his carrying-chair, and departed with the Ormalan wysards scurrying behind his entourage and casting poisonous glances at Ryel. In the silence that ensued, Priamnor addressed the wysard, that smile so like to Diara's playing about his lips. "My sister described you exactly. A young man, she said, with looks half Steppes, half Almancar. I noted, though my father did not, that you did not use your patronymic when you spoke your name. Pray accept my condolences for your loss, especially if it was recent."

"It was." Ryel bent his head in thanks, much moved. "You are well versed in the customs of the Steppes, most exalted."

"My sister was fortunate enough to visit your homeland several times. I have never in my life left this city, but I have read much of your people." Again the prince scanned the wysard's features, with the same mild yet keen scrutiny. "My father did not ask your mother's name. May I?"

"She is Mira Stradianis, most exalted."

The prince seemed astonished. "This city had a famous merchant by that surname, Ulrixos, an expert in the rarest antiquities."

"He was her father, and my grandsire."

"I see. And your mother's husband was a Rismai warrior." Priamnor seemed to muse. "An interesting heritage, yours. But come, I have taken you under my protection, and would have you be my guest during your time here. I dwell in the Eastern Palace; let us go there now, that we may talk together a little, and that you may then rest until you are called."

The Eastern Palace was a far different abode from the Sovran's. Its richness was that of simple elegance, its works of art excellently chosen, its opulence chiefly manifest in lush blooming foliage and rilling fountains. Priamnor led Ryel to his audience-room, a fair colonnaded chamber made cool and fragrant by a tree-shaded atrium further beautified by sculpture of marble and bronze shimmeringly doubled in a pool full of lilies, wherein tall cranes and herons stalked in silence.

"I have observed that your command of High Almancarian is perfect," Priamnor said. "I'm grateful for it, because I speak the vernacular badly." He gave an embarrassed little shrug. "My life's been rather a sheltered one…until recently. I confess that I am uneasy in my mind concerning those Ormalans."

"As am I," the wysard replied, glad that the prince had no idea how much.

Priamnor gazed across the atrium to one of the statues. "I doubt those mountebanks have any more learning than their fellows who tried and failed, nor any better methods than the cruel and stupid ones that cost the losers a whipping, and worse. First came the palace doctors with their bleedings and moxas; and when they failed, then came the quacks and the sorcerers who would have employed drugs, mortal if misused; ice-cold baths and dark closets and chains and worse, still worse. Some affirmed that she could be healed only by means of burning irons on the temples, or symbolic incisions in the skin, or…" He lowered his voice. "I cannot describe the indecency. But my father even at his most desperate would never permit such madness. Those who suggested those cruelties were punished severely."

"Eternal burning take them," Ryel muttered.

"My sister's illness is grave, and I expected no easy cure," Priamnor continued. "It has greatly distressed me to find the Sovran's judgment lately swayed by magicians noteworthy only for garish dress and loud boasting. For that reason I today began to join my father in his selection of a physician, for I believe that my views, uninstructed though they are, may be of aid in this unhappy time. I want no wysards."

Ryel replied as calmly as he could. "How can you be sure I am not one?"

In answer to that question, Priamnor smiled a little wryly as he glanced at Ryel's Rismaian riding-gear. "If you are indeed a sorcerer, you are exceedingly unsuccessful. Even the clumsiest conjurer can swindle his way to a silk robe." His smile faded, then. "My sister's derangement is caused by neither weakness of mind nor taint of blood, though all the doctors who have treated her so claim it to be. It is worse. Far worse." The Sovranel's voice faltered and he fell silent, his face deadly pale.

"Tell me what you have seen, most exalted," Ryel said, remembering the voice in his mother's yat, the rant of Michael Essern.

The Sovranel spoke again, but only with visibly painful effort. "It is difficult for me to speak of," he said. "It goes against all that I have become. For the past several years I have sought to rid myself of delusion. I worship no gods. I put no faith in charlatans or fakirs. I scorn all belief in the supernatural. Thus it appalls me to think that my sister's madness is the work of a daimon, but I can believe nothing else." His fine features were very calm, but his voice shook when he replied. "I have seen it glaring behind her eyes. Have heard its voice shrieking the foulest abuse, words my sweet sister would never understand, much less utter… "

"But such is common with madness," Ryel said.

"Perhaps," the Sovranel said. "But I have also seen…horrors. Unspeakable, inexplicable horrors…" His voice broke, and for a moment he turned away to the garden, gazing on the sunlit flowers until he was again calm. "Forgive me," he said, turning back again. "But it is an appalling power, my sister's captor."

Ryel ventured a question. "If the Sovrena Diara is indeed held captive by a daimon, would not a wysard be her best physician?"

At once Priamnor shook his head. "As I said, I have small liking for sorcerers, and no trust. I deeply regret that we can do nothing for my sister until those vile Ormalans have been tried. But at present she is in the sleep-state that mercifully falls upon her from dawn to sunset, and I would not disturb it even if I might."

"Nor would I," Ryel replied.

The Sovranel looked away. "Her captor uses her vilely. She needs must lie in dirt and rags, because no one can come near her; she claws and bites any who dare. Whatever food is offered to her she either flings about or smears all over her body. I loathe the way her tormentor shames her…" He fixed a troubled gaze on the uncertain future, and sighed. "This night may prove long. I would have us approach it rested and forearmed. I always swim at this hour, when the sun is high—join me, and we will talk of any subject save the one that has saddened us so far."

The prince's words were an unequivocal command, but so disarmingly couched that Ryel accepted with thanks. Together they passed through the palace's rooms and courtyards to the rooftop. Before them stretched a marble terrace extravagantly abloom, and a great circular pool roofed with a trellis of flower-laden vines that scattered and sweetened the relentless sunlight. At one end of the pool was a statue in life-size of a young man, his arms swung upward as if readying for a dive. The sculptor had fully understood and realized the strong curves and projections of the shoulders and biceps, the flexed tension of the legs, the lithe inbreathing upstretch of the waist, the deep indentation dividing the taut muscles of the back. The polished bronze glowed like wet skin in the warm light.

"Finally." The Sovranel Priamnor threw off his fragrant robes with no more self-consciousness than he'd have shown if peeling an orange, and stood naked at the edge of the pool, stretching for pleasure of the sunlight. Ryel could not keep himself from first stealing a glance, then staring. For now the wysard saw the bronze image come to life, giving itself up to the sunlight.

On his arrival at the Eastern Palace he had admired all of the Sovranel's exquisite works of art, but the sculptures especially. Some were of strange shape, fantastic extrapolations of natural forms, others of animals and birds; but most were of beautiful human beings, clothed or nude—the first Ryel had ever seen, for such art was shunned in Rismai, and of no utility in Markul. But in the same moment he remembered another sculpture, one he had seen in the Sovranel's atrium—a statue of pure marble delicately tinted, wrought to the dimensions of life in the semblance of a water-nymph dreamily contemplating the smooth reflection of her slender nakedness, lifting back her dark hair from either side of a face soft with revery. It was that statue the prince had gazed on as he spoke.

Ryel had at first looked away from it abashed, but its transcendent beauty had drawn him back to admire and wonder, until the only shame he felt was for his dullard prudery. Yet now as he remembered the pale quiescence of the marble nymph and looked upon the living bronze of Priamnor Dranthene, he saw that the two resembled each other in ways no variance of gender could disguise—the same graces of proportion, the same serene intimation of strength, the same classic beauty of feature.

Then with a start of shock Ryel realized that his wraithlike vision in the desert and the atrium's water-goddess were identically formed, and that the masterpiece of Priamnor's audience-chamber represented none other than the Sovrena Diara, all her beauty unveiled for her brother's private contemplation.

Ryel shuddered. Among the Rismai, incest was an outrageous crime, punishable by death. The words of the horse-tamer Belar came back to him, joking mention of how incest improved the Dranthene bloodline. No, he thought, appalled. It can't be. They can't—

"Is something wrong, Ryel Mirai?"

The wysard looked up to find the Sovranel regarding him with bewildered concern.

"Nothing," he answered, coloring at his lie.

"Why are you standing there? Don't you want to swim?"

"Yes, but…" Ryel bit his lip at this fresh reason for consternation. Never had he stood naked in the presence of another male likewise unclothed, neither in Risma nor in Markul. Even when splashing together in the lakes, boys of the Inner Steppes invariably wore some form of covering however scant, and upon reaching manhood never showed themselves to any but their gods or their wives. Ryel and Edris in their years together at Markul had kept the customs of their land, even as they kept its language.

Priamnor understood, at least partly, but he did not sympathize. "Your modesty shames you," he said. "Half your blood is of this city, Ryel Mirai, and not the strait-laced Steppes—and at any rate, you and I are alone here." He smiled. "Besides, it's terribly uncomfortable, swimming with clothes on."

Ryel did not agree. But lest he seem too hopeless a barbarian, he stripped as far as his shirt.

Priam had walked round him, and now stood at his back. "I forgot to ask—can you swim? I've heard that few of your people ever learn."

Enthralled with the beauty of the gold-spangled water, the wysard abstractedly nodded in answer to the Sovranel's question. "When a boy, I used to splash about in the ponds around the summer encampment," he replied. "But that was a long—"

Suddenly he felt a shove, and water engulfed him. Taken utterly aback, Ryel at first scrabbled and thrashed in the airless realm. But in another moment he became used to the water and only too aware of his Steppes shirt, that trammeled his arms intolerably. He peeled off the hindering garment and threw it from him, then dove deep, feeling only pleasure as he gave himself up to this wondrous new element that absolutely enclosed him, lifting him free of earth. He had been the swiftest swimmer among his play-brothers, but never had he swum in water like to this—water not murky and weed-ridden, but clear as aquamarine crystal, shimmering with sunlit gold. And now he found to his delight that with the Art's help he could dart underwater from one length of the great pool to the other and back again and again without surfacing for a breath. It was like flying. Ryel looked down at the gold and many-colored mosaics that glistened like a fantastic far-off landscape, and at Priamnor's shadow moving swiftly past, and remembered the eagles he had envied as a boy.

When he at last resurfaced, he found Priamnor lifting himself onto the edge of the pool and shaking the water from his face. "I knew you'd enjoy the water, if I could only get you into it," the Sovranel said. "But how could you hold your breath for so long, without your lungs bursting?"

"I came up for air more than once," Ryel said, with all the matter-of-factness he could summon.

Priam accepted the lie, but with clear bewilderment. "Strange. I never saw you. But come out into the light with me, and we'll talk."

Amid the full heat of blinding afternoon they relaxed side by side, giving their bodies up to the unrelenting radiance. "Careful, or you'll burn," the Sovran said, glancing over at Ryel. "You look as if you've never been in the sun all your life."

"For much of it I haven't," the wysard replied.

"Ah. Because you were studying your art."

Ryel froze. Suddenly it was deep winter, teeth-clenchingly cold. "My what?"

"Your healing arts, I should say. Studies at Fershom Rikh are most rigorous, I hear. You must have come very young to that place."

"Yes. I did."

Priam seemed to wait for elaboration, but Ryel offered none. After a silence the prince said, "Tell me, is the temple district of Fershom Rikh as magnificent as I have heard it described? Many think it surpasses even Almancar's."

"It is nowhere near as fine, in my estimation." The momentary cold forgotten, Ryel wiped a skin of sweat from his forehead. "To me, Almancar is the only city in the World."

Priamnor smiled again, strangely now. "Is it?" He did not speak again for some time. "Do you not think we resemble each other, you and I?"

Ryel shook his head in perturbed denial at Priamnor's wholly unexpected question, and evaded the Sovranel's glance. "I would never dream of flattering myself so far, most exalted."

The Sovran fell silent a moment. "We have the same eye-color. The same shape of face, and many of the same features."

The wysard bit his lip. "I had not observed."

"But you have considerably more muscle. I wonder how you got it, pent up as you were studying medicine for so many years."

Ryel felt his nakedness clear to the core of his soul. "A doctor has as much need of his body's strength as his mind's, very often. I never forgot that."

"You'll need all your strength tonight, I fear," Priamnor replied. He looked down with sudden discontent at his own smooth form. "My sister has visited the Steppes, but I have never left this city in all my life. None of my playfellows dared mock me lest they be banished, nor strike me even in jest, on pain of death. Only at sixteen was I permitted to handle a sword or mount a horse, and even though I have since trained almost daily with great masters, I have no real skill of either horsemanship or arms. Your phratri's braves would jeer me as a weakling."

"They might. When I was a boy, the others would mock my blue eyes and pale skin, and call me a weakling; and I had no choice but to fight, or be despised."

"And you won."

"I had to." Ryel hesitated before speaking again. "Should you ever wish to visit the Steppes, I hope you will permit me to accompany you."

"I would like that very much; and I hope my sister will be able to join us. Speaking of family, do you have any living here?"

"I'm not sure. My mother often told me of her brothers, but always said they were great travelers, seldom staying long in one place."

"And your mother still dwells among the Rismai?"

"I wish she did not," Ryel said, remembering dusty winds and teeming yats.

"She has never once returned here?"

Ryel shook his head. "Her marriage made my grandfather furious, and he closed the doors of his house to her. My grandparents divorced soon afterward, and my grandmother became a priestess of Aphrenalta Goddess of Wisdom, bequeathing my mother her house and all her other property."

Priamnor's brows lifted. "A house? Where in the city is it?"

"In the Street of the Wisteria Fountain."

Priamnor nodded in recognition and some surprise. "That's not far from the palace. Your maternal grandmother must have been of the noble class, not the merchant's."

"I believe she was," Ryel said.

"And her surname?"

"Hireus, most exalted."

The prince's surprise sharpened noticeably. "Your heritage grows ever more complex, Ryel Mirai. The Hireus family has long provided the Dranthene with its ablest counselors—most notably Lady Parisina, whose wise advice more than once averted calamity two centuries ago."

"Did it indeed?" But despite his pleasure at the Sovranel's news, inwardly Ryel regretted that the most significant part of his personal history, the Markulit part, had to remain untold.

"I hope your mother will someday choose to live in this city," the Sovranel continued. "What could make her wish to remain with the Elhin Gazal? Does she love the Steppes so well?"

Ryel looked away. "It is my father's memory she loves."

"He must have been an extraordinary man."

"He was. More than I ever knew, until recently."

A silence fell, not broken soon. "I trespass," said the Sovranel at last. "Forgive me."

"Yours is no trespass, Priamnor Dranthene," Ryel replied; and he meant it. "I'm grateful for your concern at a time when your own trouble is so great."

"Others share that trouble, Ryel Mirai. All Almancar prays for my sister's deliverance—you have seen the temple district, and heard the name of Diara on every lip. No one is so hard of heart that he does not sorrow with me—save perhaps Michael the prophet, as pitiless as he is mad."

The name chilled Ryel like a drench of ice water. "Michael? You know of him?"

"Worse. He and I have met." The Sovranel's face reflected faint disgust at the memory. "When he first came to this city several months ago, I learned of him, and was shocked hear of his poverty, a thing unknown and intolerable in Almancar. At once I had gold sent to him, but later learned that he had thrown it away and still lived in utter destitution, begging his food and sleeping in corners, with only a single robe of black rags to cover him. His reputation for spiritual insight roused my admiration, and I summoned him to the palace for an audience, in the hope that I might benefit from his wisdom. But all I found was a ragged and unwashed madman—a highly intelligent madman, yes, and an undeniably compelling one, but nonetheless hopelessly deranged. The Master he claims to serve is hardly a deity fit for this city, much less the realm." The prince's gentle features hardened, then. "Michael's insolence and his pride repelled me, yet I bore it out of pity. But when at last he began to let fall insinuations regarding the Sovrena that no man mindful of his sister's honor could bear, I had him taken and whipped."

"He suffered it? He let you?"

Priamnor blinked at Ryel's astonished alarm; and the wysard hastened to explain his reaction.

"The man to me appeared very strong. I'm surprised he went quietly to his punishment."

Smiling despite severity, Priamnor shook his head. "One man, no matter how strong or insane, has little say against six of the imperial guard. My father was of course furious with me, because Michael is said to be nobly descended from one of the greatest families in the Barrier lands, and is near allied to the Domina Bradamaine; but I could hardly have cared less. Since then the prophet of the Master has devoted a large part of his public discourse to insulting the Dranthene dynasty."

"I've heard him," Ryel said. "He's dangerous. The Sovran should banish him at once."

Priamnor lifted a smooth bronze shoulder. "What harm can one poor fanatical halfwit do my family or this great city?"

"People in the Fourth District hang upon his words," Ryel replied. "The sole aim of his eloquence is to goad them to discontent, then rebellion."

"I can sympathize with some of that frustration," Priamnor said. "True enough it is that the extremes of luxury and pleasure for which this city is far-famed are beyond their reach of the Fourth District."

"Beyond reach by law, I understand."

Priamnor bit his lip at Ryel's implied censure. "Those are bad laws, and must change. If fate ordains that I rule Destimar, I'll see to it that merit and ability are rewarded regardless of station. But the people of the Fourth want for none of the necessities of life, and no one goes hungry or dirty or ill-clad save the prophet Michael. Let's not speak further of that unwashed lunatic. You've been in the sun quite long enough—and we're both hungry, I'm sure."

From among a number of fresh silken robes piled on a nearby chair he invited Ryel to choose one, and selected another for himself. Then the prince called for the servant standing in readiness outside the door, who disappeared only to return moments later with other servants bearing laden trays. These they placed on a table near the water's edge, then departed. Music began, played by unseen citherns and flutes. The third air Ryel half knew.

"That sounds like a Kugglaitai ballad," he said.

The prince nodded. "I have a great liking for the music of the Steppes. What you hear is a Kaltiri herdsman's song that I altered somewhat." He smiled, then, as he passed Ryel the first of the dishes. "But concerning more solid pleasures, my father thinks I've altered our city's cookery for the worse. He never dines with me."

Ryel tasted, and lifted his eyebrows. "He's missing a rare pleasure."

"I'm glad you think so. But my father is hardly of your mind. As you can perhaps infer from his aspect, he is fondest of meat, and sugar, and spirits, and objects to their omission at my table. The Almancarian way of spice and garnishment I seldom taste, save when I must attend one of my father's state banquets." The Sovranel poured out two goblets full of gold-tinged wine. "I seldom drink anything stronger than water, but on occasions of importance I enjoy the vintage of Masir—and this is some of the best." He handed a glass to Ryel, and lifted his own. "To my sister's health."

Ryel raised his glass so quickly that some of the bright drink spilled out. "To the Sovrena Diara."

Never had Ryel tasted anything more delicious. Yet although he greatly savored the wine, so enjoyable was his converse with the Sovranel that the wysard hardly noticed what he ate, excellent though it was. But when the servants brought in the dessert, Ryel with a start recognized the sweets that he'd loved from childhood and shared with Nelora in the Rismai dawn.

Priamnor smiled at the wysard's surprise. "You're fond of lakh? So am I. But try one of these, first." He reached for one of a half-dozen heavy fruits that filled a silver basket—fruits which Ryel had seen displayed in the market as great rarities, and for which vendors had asked the price of a silk robe apiece.

"They're Eskalun pears," Priamnor said, his pleasure evident. "Fit for gods. Seldom do they reach Almancar in this state of perfection." Taking up a knife, the prince began to cut and core the fruit. Simple though the actions were, they made the wysard stare.

"You have equal skill in both your hands," Ryel said.

The Sovranel glanced from the knife in his left hand to the pear in his right, clearly chagrined. "So I do. You're observant."

Priamnor's answer had come reluctantly enough, but Ryel, who had made sure to seem exclusively right-handed since arriving at Almancar, pursued the subject. "Is ambidexterity a common trait of the Dranthene family?"

"No. Only I and my sister possess it." As he spoke, the Sovranel's bronze hue turned copper, and he set down the knife, and the fruit. "In answer to your next question, I too have heard that such a skill denotes capacity for sorcery, and therefore have continually attempted to suppress it lest idle tongues noise it about. But doublehandedness is often as much a gift as an embarrassment."

"I'm sure it is."

They fell into silence that the prince broke hesitantly.

"Your thoughts seem far elsewhere of a sudden. Do you think of the Sovrena?"

The wysard shook his head. "I was remembering a sister of my own, and considering how greatly she would envy me my presence at your table."

The prince seemed glad of a change of subject. "Ah, indeed? Tell me something of her."

"There's little to tell. She's a wild young brat."

Priamnor's smile seemed an envisioning one. "Ah. A Steppes tomboy, then?"

Ryel laughed. "Not quite. Her Almancarian side is stronger. She spends much time poring over Destimarian epics, escaping the Steppes to journey among fantastic lands."

"Does she read them in High Almancarian, or common?"

"High."

Priamnor gave an impressed whistle. "Doubtless she has many admirers."

"More than she merits; but she scorns them all in favor of one she has never met, and can never know."

The Sovranel tilted his head. "And who is this fortunate person?"

"I have the honor of dining with him this very moment."

At those words Priamnor's smile vanished, to Ryel's inner dismay. A long silence fell, broken softly and reluctantly.

"In my life—no long one yet—I have enjoyed the best pleasure that can be bought," Priamnor said. "But never have I known the innocent love of a pure young girl. I cannot. There have been too many heartless beds, too many wasted nights."

Ryel felt pity despite himself. "Have you not atoned for them, after five years of seclusion?"

Priamnor shook his head. "Not yet. I sometimes wonder if I ever will."

They fell into another silence that the prince broke hesitantly. "You say you have seen the temple district of Fershom Rikh. Are you also acquainted with Almancar's Temple of Atlan?"

Ryel remembered the first vision of Diara sent by the daimon, and nodded in bewilderment at the sudden shift of talk. "I have heard and read of it. But—"

"Then you doubtless know that from all over the world men make pilgrimage there to pray for lost virility, women for a change of lovers, rakes for fresh sport. I first entered that temple at sixteen, on my father's insistence. And that same night my first mistress came to my bed, likewise at my father's bidding—a beautiful Zinaphian slave, first of my many loves. I became passionately infatuated with her. I can still smell the spice-fragrance that impregnated all her skin, and her hair … " He darkened faintly, and seemed to breathe faster; calmed himself, and continued.

"But the last thing my father wished was for me to become seriously enamored. She vanished, and I later learned that she had been sent away from Almancar. My heart was broken, but not for long. I consoled myself incessantly, emptily, until by rarest chance I found one whose beauty of mind fully equaled that of her outward form—Belphira Deva, the Diamond Heaven's queen at that time. She was a tiraktia, an entertainer rather than a courtesan, famed for her music and her singing, with the freedom to choose her lovers as she pleased. I hoped to be among that number, but she thought me too young and too wild. Another man won her heart and took her away from Almancar, after which I grew even wilder and more careless, until…"

"Until?" Ryel prompted, when the Sovranel did not speak again.

Priamnor stared into his wine as if some small loathsome thing swam there. "Until I became afflicted with a venereal malady that very nearly killed me; one of those slow scourges from the hot wet lands of the Azm Chak. For many months I lay between life and death. For many months I lay between life and death, fevered and delirious. To avoid scandal my father had it noised about that I had temporarily retired from the world, in emulation of my mother who had at the same time become a votary of Demetropa."

Ryel remembered the shorn woman in rust and gold, her eyes so like to Diara's—and the Sovranel's. "Lady Calantha Diaskiros."

The prince inclined his head. "You astonished my father—and me—very much when you mentioned her. Few save the greatest of the court ever learn the true name of the Sovrana of Destimar. Doubtless you have wondered that her concern has not brought her to the side of her stricken daughter. Believe me, she wishes it. But it the laws of this city enjoin strict seclusion for the votaries of its gods."

"Could not the Sovran rescind those laws, in this urgent instance?"

Priamnor Dranthene looked away. "He could. But he will not, for reasons I may not speak of now. But to continue with my tale. As I said, few of the court ever learn the Sovrana's name. And even fewer of the court, all of them sworn to silence, knew that in her despair at my sickness my mother had vowed to devote her own life in service of the Birth Goddess if I lived. Her prayers were heeded, to my family's infinite loss—although I have since heard it said that my cure was wrought not so much by divine favor as by the skill of a witch who dwells, they say, on the slope of Kalima. But several of my companions likewise stricken were beyond any intercession, including my dearest friend, my cousin Orestens Alistenates, Prince of Vrya—" he swallowed, and blinked rapidly for a moment. "I have never recovered from that illness. Bodily I'm sound, perhaps; but now I find that tears come very easily to me, and that the things I once considered pleasures now fill me with disgust. The last four years I have devoted to study and meditation, shunning the world."

"I am sorry, Priamnor Dranthene," Ryel murmured. "It sounds as if you gave up a great deal."

"On the contrary." Priamnor stood up, wrapping his silk—deep sapphire silk with a glossy sheen—closer about his body, and stared into the spangled crystal of the marble pool. "I am not made of stone, Ryel Mirai. The most beautiful women in the world have lain beside me, so beautiful that to ask for more would be folly; and I was incessantly reassured that my happiness was more divine than mortal. Yet even in pleasure's arms I felt emptiness, as if the beds I tumbled in and the banquet-tables I rioted at were surrounded by black infinity, cold enough to deaden the heart." The prince smiled then, somewhat bitterly. "Perhaps I let some opportunities slip, by fixing my attention exclusively on the female sex. Such stubborn partiality is virtually unknown in this city."

Ryel glanced away, his memory flinching at remembered hearsay around the kulm-fires in his eleventh World-year, muttered hintings of an obscene attack on young Sareb, and Dinrulin's sudden disappearance, and weeks later the discovery of a shallow grave torn up by steppe-jackals, disclosing a faceless body gelded and flayed. Since coming to Almancar the wysard had witnessed a hundred instances of unreserved embracings between men at greeting and parting, and fervent camaraderie in the market-squares and chal-houses. But the freedom between men and women had astonished him far more.

As Ryel considered these matters, his wine-bemused thoughts began to drift, moving from thoughts of pleasure right or wrong to the broad avenues of the Bright City and their treasures; then half against his will into the narrow lanes of the Fourth District where hardship and discontent marked both sexes with equal grimness, and goaded them to the quarrelsome drunkenness that seemed their only pastime. Had these unhappy people dwelt on the Steppes, they would have been contented at least, if not happy; but Almancar the Bright with its flaunting luxury and harsh prohibitions had made them restive, envious, hungry. And from those grudging debased faces Ryel's wine-slowed revery shifted to the dusty tavern-square where Michael loomed like some cruel personification of inexorable destiny, black and wild and utterly without remorse.

The prince reached upward to the lushly flowered trellis overhead, drawing to him a spray of glowing white orchids, breathing the rare fragrance awhile; gently and lingeringly released the blooms. "There has been one love I have kept innocent. It is Dranthene custom to keep fullblood siblings apart until they reach adulthood, and I will never forget how beautiful I found Diara when we met at last. But ours has ever since remained an entirely spiritual devotion."

Ryel let out a silent breath. "I'm glad to hear it."

"I'm sure you are, with those Steppes scruples of yours. But my feelings for my sister are compelled as much by politics as by inclination." The prince's soft voice tightened. "By law, Dranthene siblings cannot wed together if the prospective husband is impotent, or infertile. And my doctors have informed me that I may well be both since my sickness." With a gesture unwontedly fierce he waved away Ryel's attempt at sympathy. "It doesn't matter. When I consider that the Dranthene dynasty is on the edge of extinction, all I can think of is my little sister, tortured to the death by that evil thing within her." Keenly his jewel-blue eyes evaluated the wysard, with the profound appraisal of that first glance in the presence-chamber. His next words came almost sharply. "And you think to cure her? Do you not understand that you run the risk of death at my father's hands if you fail?"

Truth time, Ryel thought. No more masks. "Your sister Diara made me aware of the risk—even as she foretold that you and I would meet."

Priamnor started up. "But when was this? Where?"

"Last night, in the desert outside your city."

"But she was in my father's palace all last night," the Sovranel said, firm in his disbelief. "I was with her. I tell you she was there."

"Her body was," Ryel said. "But not her spirit."

The prince's sun-warmed color whitened. "Impossible. That cannot be."

"Did you not yourself have a vision of your sister?"

"It was no vision, but a dream."

"And you put faith in it," Ryel said. "You will have to believe a great deal more, I fear, before your sister is healed."

"What do you mean?" the Sovranel asked, his soft voice edged.

"That you will have to put your faith in fate if you wish the Sovrena to live." More truth, the wysard thought. No masks, none. "Many and many a one that calls himself a wysard is indeed a charlatan, I will admit. But I am telling the truth when I assure you that I am far more than a mere Rismai tabib, Priamnor Dranthene. And it is your great good fortune that I am."

Ryel had expected at least a flicker of fear at those words, but the Sovran was all anger, coldly reproachful. "Another mountebank, then. Yet I knew you for a liar when you spoke of Fershom Rikh. You could never have studied medicine there, for had you ever visited that city you would have known that it has no temple district of any kind, its people being strong skeptics. I was willing to overlook your falsehood, thinking you had some private reason for uttering it. But now I find that all this time you have mocked me, and taken advantage of my trust. I had heard that your kind were cruel, but this—"

The prince's wrath, strong as it was, could not surpass the wysard's outrage. "Cruel? How dare you call me that, when I have given up my study of the Art and left my City to—"

"Your Art." Priamnor all but spat the word. "Did you use your dirty conjurings to make your looks mimic mine, the better to endear yourself to me? Show me your true face, fakir."

"I'm no shape-changer, Dranthene," Ryel retorted. "And even if I were, the last looks I'd choose to copy would be yours."

Priamnor only glared, and never had Ryel seen ice like to those eyes. "So which foul enclave is your City, warlock? Elecambron? Or perhaps Ormala?"

Ryel surged up from his chair, deadly furious. "I'm a lord adept of Markul, noblest of the Four. My Art is for healing, not harm."

Priamnor's mouth twitched in its first ugliness. "Then heal this." The prince snatched up a knife, so violently that Ryel recoiled. But still greater was his shock to see Priamnor turn the blade on himself, gashing his arm deep on the underside beneath the elbow's crook. Instantly Ryel lurched forward, clamping his hand against the jet of vein-drawn blood as he blurted a word. When he let go, the wound was whole.

Priamnor stared at the red-smeared seam, that even as he watched began to fade. "Incredible. I can't believe it."

Ryel finally caught his breath enough to speak. "Never do that again."

The Sovranel gave a short laugh. "I assure you I won't."

"Are you in pain?"

"None." The prince reached for water, washed the erstwhile wound, and looked again, more incredulous than ever. "Barely a mark. How is that possible? How—"

"The Art healed you," Ryel said, still fighting to breath. "Be glad it did."

"You could have simply let me bleed. I deserved it."

Revolted nearly to sickness, Ryel made no reply. He leaned his head on the back of his chair, entirely exhausted, and closed his eyes. Then he felt Priamnor standing behind him, and one of the prince's hands resting lightly upon his shoulder.

"Forgive me, Ryel Mirai."

At that voice and that touch, both hesitant and remorseful, Ryel felt his strength return. "I blame you for nothing."

"Truly you are powerful in this Art of yours," Priamnor said. "But it seems that my healing caused you harm."

"I've dwelt in the World of men only a short time since leaving my City, and haven't yet grown accustomed to it," the wysard answered. "It's draining, this dealing with the body's hurts."

Priamnor's voice had doubt in it, and foreboding. "But tonight you will need all your powers—unless the Ormalans my father chose prove effectual."

"They are certain to fail. Only I can help the Sovrena."

"How can you know that?"

Ryel let out a long breath. "Because I alone am to blame for her torture." In the absolute silence that followed he continued. "The daimon has used your sister as a means to lure me here, seeking to embody itself in my form."

"But why?"

"For its greater pleasure. And you've seen what gives it joy."

When the Sovranel did not reply, the wysard understood. He pitied this young man born to immense power, indulged in all things. But stronger than his pity was an emotion born of that first look, and strengthened ever since—a devotion more than fraternal, explicable only by the Almancarian word ilandrakia. "I'll fight the daimon to my life's limit," he said aloud. "But I must ask that you trust me entirely, and believe that I would sooner die than do you harm."

A long hesitation. Then very quietly and utterly without fear the Sovranel spoke. "With all my heart I trust you, Ryel Mirai. A thousand questions I would ask, but it is time you rested, while time yet remains. Come, we'll dress and I'll take you to your rooms."

Once they had arrived at the threshold of his chamber, Ryel would have bowed in farewell, but Priamnor forestalled the gesture.

"I expect no deference from a lord adept of great Markul, Ryel Mirai."

"I only show my admiration," the wysard said.

The prince laughed, quietly as in all his ways. "By that logic I, too, should bow."

"As yet you have no reasons. But I hope to give you some, this night." And Ryel took Priamnor's hands in his own, and held them for a moment against his brow, and bade farewell until evening.

Chapter Seven

The wysard did not sleep, but lay in meditation as the blazing gold of afternoon surrendered to dusky purple sunset. One might have thought him dead, or dying. He barely breathed, nor did his eyes, open and focused far, so much as blink a lid. All he had learnt in his youth with Edris he passed in review, weighing and considering those things which might be of use against his enemy. Daimon srihs he had met and quelled, rival wysards he had infallibly foiled. But the being now holding Diara Dranthene was stronger than either…and this was the World, not Markul.

You killed Edris, Ryel thought, his rage icily controlled. Strangled him from within, and I helpless to prevent it. And now you torment another—not a strong man powerful in the Art, but a defenseless girl. I loathe you, Dagar. To my soul's core I loathe you. Come out of her helpless body, here to me. Face me in a man's form, and let me cut you to pieces.

He felt his body heaten, his heartbeat quicken, his face sweat. And then suddenly night fell, bringing with it everything he'd hoped and feared to forget. Everything.

*****

There were several Crossing spells, but none was easy, and Ryel had chosen the quickest and most perilous. The philtres and the unguents to drug his body into absolute stillness had been long in compounding, and the incantations had taken days. But all the preparations ended in a single word. And in the night's silence, in the midst of the lamps and narcotic incense, he had lain down and felt the drugs turning him to stone, and whispered the crucial single syllable through stiffened lips.

And then he died.

It had to be death. Nothing else could be so black and empty, or hurt so much. He could not tell if he was suspended motionless in the icy void or hurtling downward. But he knew he was lost, and might never find his way back. Just as his terror was resigning itself to despair, poisoned claws seized and gripped him, pulling him into shrieking pieces before crushing him to dust; and the dust dispersed on a blast of fire.

But something of him yet remained behind, in a place suddenly beautiful and strange. A little bubble of light he seemed, afloat in deathless peace, dissolved to a spark within a sphere.

I've reached it, he thought. And he glittered with ecstasy.

He was all thought, now. He had survived the unbodying, and had been stripped to his essence, his rai. On the edge of the Outer World he hovered, divided from that place of shadow by a chasm he sensed rather than saw. Beyond the brink annihilation roiled and leapt, but on the other side the spirit-realm of power past all the World's strength vibrated and beckoned.

Everything I risked my life for is there, his rai sensed. There and waiting. But it's too far. I won't survive.

The nothingness compressed, enveloping his spirit-sphere in black lead, and a mocking croon oozed out of it.

"Spoken like a faint-hearted fool. I had expected better of you, Markulit."

The spirit-bubble enclosing the wysard's rai spun on its axis a full revolution, fighting the pull of the lead, seeking the source of the voice.

Who speaks? he demanded.

The voice replied instantly, with the same insinuating smoothness. But now it issued from the other side of the chasm.

"Why did you come here, if not to seek the life beyond death? And yet you hover on the edge in cringing terror, when you might float over it easily and without fear, unbodied as you are."

Poised and yearning Ryel's essence listened. Who are you? it asked.

"One who has been over and back. One who has watched over you with the most tender concern, ever since your birth. One who would teach you wonders. Miracles."

The wysard's rai sparked sharply. Tell me what you are.

"You will learn when you join me, here where immortality awaits you," soothed the voice. "Come. Learn what I have learned, and return to the World a god."

Ryel's bright rai quivered, shimmering between fear and desire. I can't. I'll die.

"You will not die," the voice assured, softly and with infinite seduction. "Come."

The wysard's spark shot over the abyss, hovered above it.

I will be as a god, it thought, trembling and gleaming. I will be—

But at that moment the rai's bright bubble started to dissolve, suspended over the endless chasm. The horror that imbued Ryel surpassed even the dissolution's agony, and he threw himself at the Outer World not caring if it claimed him forever, longing only for release from fear. But he could not move. Immobile, he disintegrated, his iridescence eaten away by the corrosive cruelty of the abyss. And then he dropped.

It was a long fall, long enough for him to yearn for complete death. But he kept falling. Falling and burning, shrunk to nothing but a single scream. All around rang laughter sharp as shattered flint.

But then the laughter stopped, silenced by imperative thunder. "Ry! Get out. Come back."

Hard hands plucked him out of the abyss like a pup out of water. Ryel's ethereal sphere solidified, and sprouted arms and legs. But death clung to him.

"Move, whelp. Wake up."

He was being shaken very roughly, enough to rattle his life out. Don't stop, Ryel thought. Please, please, don't—

"You idiot brat." A brusque finger forced his lips apart, a hard heavy mouth clamped down and filled his lungs to bursting.

Too late, Ryel would have said. Too late. But he was dying at last, and very happy.

His joy proved momentary. With sick regret he awoke to his body's battered ache, his eyes' scorched throb. He could hear a woman singing, but could not tell if she was near or far. Cool fingers soothed his temples.

As he opened his eyes, he heard a gasp, and beheld Serah Dalkith. "Sister?"

Her face was drawn and ashen, but she made a trembling attempt at a smile. "So, brother, you return to us at last. We had thought—"

Ryel ignored her. "I must see Edris. Bring him to me. Now."

"Shh. Wait, young brother. Listen." And Serah took Ryel's hands in hers, and softly told him what had passed.

She had found him in the great chair of his conjuring-room, lying across Edris' lap, caged in the frozen clutch of lifeless arms. Only her strongest spells had availed to free Ryel of that dead embrace. Instantly some of the brotherhood had said the needful mantras to preserve Edris' body, and bore it to the Silent Citadel while others carried Ryel to his bed, where Serah had kept constant watch over his unmoving form for nearly a week.

"You attempted the Crossing."

Serah's words were not a question. Ryel stared at her. "How did you—" But even as he began the question he knew its answer. Seizing her wrist that was covered with a wide bracelet of smooth silver, he used the metal as a mirror, and gave a cry.

His eyes were gone. In Serah's struggling silver the empty orbs of a statue confronted him, black and vacant as the void he had hurtled through.

He fell back, all his body cold.

"An Overreacher," he whispered brokenly. "I am one, now."

Serah reached out to him. "Ryel—"

He evaded her. "Tell Edris I am awake, and must speak with him."

She gazed on him with deepest pity, her eyes welling with tears. "Ah, Ryel…"

"Tell him. I beg you, sister." He caught her hands. "Find him."

"Ryel, no. Don't do this." She pulled free of his grip—it was easy, he was so weak—and cradled him like a child, and like a child he fought her ineffectually until he, too, wept. But out of his vacant eyes no tears fell. The pain racked him like acid, and he sobbed and thrashed, ever shrieking Edris' name, until Serah could hold him no longer and called for help.

*****

"Ryel Mirai. Ryel, awake."

The wysard bolted up as if out of drowning water. "Ithradrakis. I remember. All of it, even to the last breath—"

"You speak to someone else, Ryel Mirai."

The wysard's eyes still ached, and he could not open them straightway. But he knew that voice, utterly unlike Edris'.

"I heard your cries—they were terrible," Priamnor's voice continued. "Was it the daimon?"

Ryel blinked and winced. "No daimon sent my dream." Even as he spoke, the wysard felt strength well outward to his extremities as if his heart were a sun—invincible force. "I have it. All of it."

"All of what?" Priamnor asked, perturbed. "Can you stand?"

"Stand? I can probably fly."

Too relieved to smile, the Sovranel only nodded. "Excellent. But the hour advances. Here, I had clothes of my city found for you. Your Steppes garb, although admittedly picturesque, is somewhat too warm for this climate."

Ryel thought of the elaborate robes in his journeybag, but willingly forgot them again as a servant entered bearing a number of fresh rich garments, muted in hue and plainly fashioned as the Sovranel himself was accustomed to wear. One of the robes by chance was of storm-gray, the mourning color of the Inner Steppes; this Ryel instantly chose and drew on. A loose sleeveless over-robe came next, of the near-black purple considered most powerful in Markul and used there for conjuring-cloaks; a wide jade-clasped belt, closely cinched; and last, soft-soled boots of heavy black silk, loose around the calf.

The garments' caressing rustle calmed and soothed like a sweet voice, but still more pleasing was the scent that seemed to be woven into the cloth, the fragrance Ryel remembered from the moment he and Priamnor Dranthene had first met. He breathed deeply, and strength surged in his blood as if he lived on air.

You can't be dead, ithradrakis, he thought. Not when I feel your rai like light all around me—bright hot light. With that light I will destroy our enemy—burn it hollow, then crush it like the empty shell of some ugly insect. I will—

"Ryel."

The wysard turned to Priamnor, wondering at the wet salt in those sea-colored eyes when there now seemed so little to fear, or mourn for.

"Ryel." The Sovranel blinked hard, and continued with strained effort. "I have other sisters and brothers, but Diara is dearest to me. We have the same mother, she and I. If anything should—"

At that moment the door slammed open and a woman rushed in, one of Diara's ladies in waiting to judge from her dress and her manner. She had been running hard, evident by her flushed cheeks, panting breath and disordered gown; running and weeping.

"Oh, sirs, you must come at once. She's dying. The sorcerers poisoned her."

Suddenly the short distance separating the two palaces seemed infinite miles. Ryel gathered up his trailing robes the better to follow Priamnor, who proved breathtakingly fleet, and together they left the lady to join them as best she could.

But thought's swiftness would not have sufficed. Bursting through the portals of Diara's apartments a few steps behind Priamnor, the wysard halted appalled by the loathsome fetor in the room, a stench only worsened by censers burning strong perfumes. Amid the miasmatic haze he could discern a bed exquisitely wrought of silver, but its linen torn to shreds and soiled. On this rich and vile couch lay a still figure pitiably frail, and at its side knelt the Sovran Agenor distraught even to madness, while gathered around them stood lamenting courtiers, their jewels shimmering in the last of the dusk. But the two Ormalans Rickrasha and Smimir huddled together gibbering in a corner, their glassy eyes desperately bulging as they sought the chance to flee.

"Too late, my lord," another of Diara's ladies said to Priamnor between sobs. "Those foul sorcerers—guards! hold them!—envenomed her with some infernal bane, thinking to afterward instill her body with a feigning spirit that would make her appear healed."

Ryel knelt, and took the Sovrena's hand. It was cold and heavy as marble, with lead-gray nails. Next he lifted one of the princess' eyelids, observing the pinpoint contraction of the pupil, and as a last confirmation of his fear put his face close to hers, scenting her breath. He smelled wet wood and rusting iron.

"Xantal in its purest form," he whispered, feeling his blood run cold. "By every god…"

Mere saffron dust, xantal; and barely enough of it to cover the wet tip of one's little finger would infallibly slay, without hope of antidote. But only a few grains and the sky became as a sea, and one's mind leapt across it from star to star. Only the Two Great Cities knew the true worth, use and peril of xantal; mere Ormalans were never meant to get their inept hands on such a powerful drug. Furiously Ryel considered vengeance on Rickrasha and her henchman, but before he could decide on how best to proceed the Sovran Agenor rushed forward, shoving him away from Diara.

"Don't touch her, Steppes fakir! Guards, cut him down!"

But the guards wavered. At once Priamnor beckoned to two of them, commanding them to restrain the Sovran. He was instantly obeyed. As Agenor wasted his feeble energies in struggle, Ryel turned to the other two sentinels.

"Clear this place. Drive out everyone except for the Sovran and his son, and then return at once. Go." He next addressed Diara's waiting-woman. "Have lights brought—as many as might be found. There must be no darkness here."

The soldiers and the lady in waiting obeyed without question, so sudden and strong was the authority that rang in the wysard's voice and darted from his eyes. Seeing their chance, the Ormalans would have bolted for the door, but Ryel shouted out a word and they froze entirely.

"By the god Divares," Priamnor murmured, stunned into involuntary faith.

The sun was setting, but branches of candles surrounded the bed against the gathering darkness. Each new flicker of light heightened both Diara's beauty and its outrage. It wrung the wysard's soul to find the girl so fair, despite the cruel vandalism of dirt, and self-inflicted blows and scratches, and fevered thinness mocked by heavy jewels and stained satin rags. Unable to look longer, Ryel rounded on the two Ormalan adepts, who cringed and mutely whimpered as they met the empty-eyed stare only they could see.

"You gutter trash," he hissed. "Yes, well you may flinch at the sight of me, for you view me clearly, and know what I am. I promise you'll burn for this."

The air tightened around him, dense and stifling, even as he spoke. And then the one named Smimir quivered violently, his face purpling, and flames spurted from his silently shrieking mouth and frantic eyes. Like a rotten tower set afire from within the Ormalan burnt, and a moment afterward the fear-maddened wysardess, both of them ablaze at their cores until they toppled at last. Out of a fold of Rickrasha's robes the fat chameleon dropped in a clump of staring dead cinders, and then the two Ormalans crashed to the paving-stones like fire-hollowed trees, their blackened ribs splitting open and spilling forth reeking embers and hissing clots.

"You murdered them," Priamnor whispered, his lips white and taut.

"It was the daimon," Ryel said, his voice fully as strained. "Get out, Priam. Go, at once."

"I can bear it," the Sovranel said. But he spoke through gritted teeth out of an ashen face. "I will not leave her when—but look. Look there!"

Diara sat upright, gazing around her. At the sight of the blasted corpses she began to howl and yelp with laughter. In her wasted face the eyes were entire black.

You, Ryel thought, electrically aware. You the tempter, and the murderer. I know you, Dagar.

"Stand clear of it," he said aloud, pulling the Sovranel away. "There's terrible danger here."

Priamnor fought Ryel's grip. "Let go of me! My sister is alive!"

"No," the wysard panted, his lungs crushed by the air's weight. "She is worse than dead. Have the guards take your father from the room, at once."

But he spoke too late. Somehow Agenor broke free of his soldiers and rushed toward the bed, seizing Diara's usurped body in eager arms. The thing flung back its head and howled with laughter, and then clutched a handful of the Sovran's amulets and necklaces, yanking them taut and driving the jeweled chains deep into the double chins. And even as Dagar throttled the old man, he leered sideways at Ryel, his vacant eyes asquint with mockery.

Clearly Dagar expected the wysard to counter with some spell, but in answer Ryel seized Diara's hair, wrenching hard. The daimon screeched in pain and loosed his hold, but with malicious spite he gave Agenor a parting blow that hurled the old man to the other side of the room.

"See to the Sovran," Ryel commanded the guards, never taking his eyes from the daimon. "He's still alive? Good. Carry him out, and don't return. "

Glad of their escape, the guards hastily bore their ruler away. Ryel next addressed Priamnor, lifting his voice over the daimon's obscenity and babble.

"You can't stay here. He'll seek your harm next."

Fiercely the Sovran shook his head. "I will not leave her, or you."

Ryel motioned Priamnor back. "He's rising. Get out!"

Dagar leapt from the bed, still shrieking laughter and blasphemy, and fixed his empty eyes on the scorched remains of the Ormalan sorcerers. With an apelike bound he squatted beside what was left of the one named Rickrasha, thrusting his claws into the steaming entrails. Then he scooped out a dripping clutchful of charred guts and devoured it gruntingly, casting a sly sidewise glance at Priamnor as he smeared Diara's beautiful ravaged face with reeking filth.

At that appalling sight the Sovranel gave a choked cry, then swayed and fainted. Ryel caught him as he fell, and faced the daimon with a rage that left no room for fear or even speech.

Giggling and cursing the daimon staggered toward them, and darted his defiled claws at Priamnor's face.

Ryel struck his arm away. "Damn you, let him alone."

The daimon recoiled, baring its slime-caked teeth in a grin. "He's pretty. "I wouldn't mind playing with him, next."

The wysard lowered Priamnor to the ground, and stood in front of him. "You'll never touch him while I live, Dagar."

The daimon tittered. "Don't you love me anymore, young blood? Perhaps you prefer black women? Or yellow? Or green?" As he spoke, he shifted from color to color. "No? It's taking all my wiles to win your heart, sweet eyes. But resist these charms and graces, if you can."

Rising up in the air as he tore open the stained bodice of the gown and lifted its bedrabbled skirts, Dagar threw Diara's battered and neglected body into a series of weightless contortions so inhumanly grotesque in their obscenity that Ryel's only care was to make sure Priamnor was still unconscious and unseeing. Then the wysard watched the daimon with all attention, lest goaded by his indifference it attempt still worse enormities. Weary at last of his posturings, Dagar sank to earth and stood unsteadily, wheezing and gasping.

"Did you enjoy that, young blood?"

Ryel gave a scant nod. "Enthralling. And so original."

Dagar gave a malignant squint, then a scum-toothed grin. "This weak girl bores me. Perhaps you could suggest a clever way to kill her."

Such overmastering hatred that blazed within him Ryel had never felt before. Unused he had ever been to that evil emotion, and the intensity of what he now felt for this nameless thing all but overpowered him, fused as it was with fear. Seizing Diara's body by the shoulders, he stared unflinchingly into the void of Dagar's eyes and closed his hands around the girl's slender neck, leaning both thumbs into the fragile cartilage barely guarding the throat.

Dagar squealed in delight. "Ah! So you enjoy my kind of sport. That's good. That's very good indeed, young blood."

"I will enjoy any torment that gives you pain," Ryel replied. "When I pulled her hair, you screamed; those airy gymnastics of yours wore you out. To lure and afflict me you have only weakened yourself, and made it easy for me to destroy you."

The daimon was afraid; Ryel could smell it past all the other stinks. But still it sneered. "To destroy me, you must destroy this flesh you love."

"I have no love for Diara Dranthene."

The fear-stench grew fouler. "You lie."

"Tell me if this feels like love." The wysard closed his hands around the girl's slender neck, leaning both thumbs into the fragile cartilage barely guarding the throat. "This will be no more to me than putting a sick animal out of pain—save that in this case I will rejoice in her rai's deliverance. Rejoice knowing there is one part of her you cannot reach to hurt or humiliate or destroy."

The daimon gagged and twisted. "Fool. Death of the body is death entirely—did you not learn that lesson well in Markul?"

"I've since found out the truth, Dagar."

The dead black eyes narrowed at the name. "Thank me for it, then. Give me a kiss, young blood."

Ryel tightened his grip. "You lured me to destruction, hell-born. You laughed as I fell."

"Because I had you, beauty," the daimon panted. "Your body would have been mine—had your fool of a father not interrupted."

Ryel forgot Markul and his mother's blood in a drench of Steppes vengeance. "You killed him!"

"He shouldn't have gotten in my way," the daimon sneered. "His heroics did him no good, after all. They only slowed down the inevitable. You've seen that the Void can't hold me. I'll have you, sweet eyes." Dagar's empty black stare locked with Ryel's. "Yes. I marked you for my own, as I marked Michael, and my Ormalan friend Theofanu. We'll have fun, we four." He grinned as his voice dropped to a vibrant bass, eerie in the girl's mouth. "Soon all will know the name of the Master.

The wysard felt his hands growing slippery against the engrimed skin. "Come out. Take a man's form, and meet me as an equal—if you can."

As if in answer the daimon with speculative malice regarded Priamnor, now regaining consciousness, and Ryel cursed himself; but then the thing sneered.

"Some other time. I've seen what I wanted to see, and now I'm bored with this game. The girl's yours—do what you like with her."

The empty eyes shut, and the bruised body toppled into Ryel's arms even as the stifling air thinned. Drawing a starved breath, the wysard put his ear to the Sovrena's heart, and found to his unbelieving joy that a pulse beat there, although with exceeding faintness. Too spent to lift her up, he dragged her to the bed and dropped her onto it, then called to her in the language of the Highest. The girl made no response, but lay motionless, all but unbreathing. Ryel again called to her, using every reviving word he knew from his study of the Art, but to no avail. He tried various stimulants he had brought, and others he recognized among the many bottles and phials left by previous unsuccessful healers, but to no effect.

"Has it left her?" Priamnor Dranthene stood at Ryel's side, so pale that the wysard forgot the Sovrena momentarily, all his attention fixed on his friend.

"Priam. Sit here, next to me. Are you hurt?"

"Never mind that. How is my sister?"

"Her tormenter's gone," Ryel answered. "She survived."

The prince clasped the wysard's hand, his own fingers strengthless but warm. "My eternal thanks." He smiled, then, wanly. "I wanted to face the thing. Call it out and kill it. But I couldn't even look at it." With his silken sleeve the Destimarian prince blotted the Diara's face clean of its filth, infinitely gentle. "Little sister."

At that whisper the girl stirred slightly, but did not waken. Priamnor called again, and yet again; but still Diara lay entranced.

"I cannot wake her," he said, worn despair aching in his voice.

Ryel felt all the burden of his weariness now, leaden in his limbs. He could not tell Priamnor, could hardly bear to remind himself, that every moment Diara remained unconscious put her ever deeper into danger. "She requires time to revive. Now it remains for me to heal the hurts she has received both in mind and body, while you see to your father." The wysard as he spoke inwardly winced as he recalled the way the Sovran Agenor had struck the wall, the thud of flesh and snap of bone.

Priamnor nodded in resignation. "At last my sister is free. Will she remain so?"

"I believe she will. Her captor has played its play, and obtained what it came for."

With visible effort the prince stood up. "I must go to the Sovran. But I will return, ilandrakis."

At that last word the wysard felt his eyes burn. "My thanks, Priam," he replied.

"Tell me what else you require before I go."

"I ask that you send away the courtiers waiting in the hall," Ryel said. "And I would have you summon a few of the bravest of the imperial guard, and command them to stand outside this door and guard it with their lives."

The prince nodded. "I will. Good fortune be yours, Ryel."

"And yours, Priam."

Before he left, Priamnor summoned several of his escort and had the two dead Ormalans removed, to Ryel's entire relief. After all had departed, leaving Ryel alone with the Sovrena, the wysard drew a long breath and abruptly gagged on it. The room was foul with the stench of steaming dead guts and long-unwashed incontinent living flesh and heavy perfumes gone sour. Uncurtaining the windows, he threw the casements wide. A blossom-laden breeze from the Eastern Palace wafted in, and he closed his eyes as he breathed deeply of its sweetness. The air had lightened deliciously, as if from a sudden sweet hard shower of rain.

Strengthened, Ryel returned to Diara and took her hand, then slid from her wrist to her arm. All her body was cold, and if she were not warmed she might yet die, he knew. His first thought was to use his Art to increase her heat, but his strength had already been overtaxed. Therefore he rose and looked into the rooms that opened out of the Sovrena's bedchamber, and soon found the one he sought—the princess' robing-room, with her dressing-table, her armoires and chests of gowns and jewels—and in another chamber devoted to cleanliness, a great alabaster bath. Two curious taps of wrought gold emerged from the vessel; Ryel pushed them, found hot water emerge from one, and cold from the other, and smiled at Almancarian luxury even as he blessed it. He blended the waters into the perfect warmth, then returned to the Sovrena.

As it had been in his vision, her hair was dressed in many braids, woven with ropes of pearl. But now the plaits were greasy and tangled, and the ropes broken and straggling. Ryel unknit the braids one by one, and cast the jewels to the floor. All the gems at her neck and on her wrists and fingers and ankles Ryel likewise removed and dashed to the ground, kicking them out of his way. Her tattered and stained garments, too, were fastened with many rich knots and clasps. Ryel drew his dagger and cut the knots, and with impatient fingers loosened the clasps. Next he slit the wide sleeves and the front of the gown from neck to hem, and then did the same with the shift, until Diara lay naked.

Ryel had longed for this in some of his dreams, the waking ones he'd steeled himself against time and again. But what he now beheld inspired not lust, but rather desperate pity. Here was no ethereal vision. All the girl's body was mottled with bruises and seamed with red scratches, smeared and crusted with the vilest dirt. The skin was rough and taut with starvation, the flesh wasted. Ryel's eyes blinked and burned at the sight. Taking a little lapis flask from the lacquer case, he opened its coral stopper. Instantly a vigorous redolence wrought of a hundred hues of living green overwhelmed the tainted air, and the Sovrena fetched a deep eager breath. Wetting his fingers with the precious oil, the wysard anointed Diara's cold flesh, seeking the places where the living blood beats quickest—wrist and elbow-crook, throat and temple, lip and eyelid, the inner smoothness above the knee, the instep of the foot—and the girl murmured and stirred. Then he touched her hurts, healing them one by one; she struggled at first as one does in a dream, but then lay quiet save for an occasional flinch. Then, expending the absolute last of his forces, Ryel carried the Sovrena to the bath and lowered her into the water.

Drawing upon his Mastery, the wysard uttered a reviving spell. Diara's eyelids fluttered, but did not open. Searching among the many precious flasks and vials gathered on a nearby tray, Ryel instinctively chose a lovely little carnelian cylinder. Opening it released the celestial fragrance that had imbued Priamnor's robes. The perfume was in solid form, and Ryel gathered some on his fingers, then dipped them into the bath, gently swirling the scent into the warm water.

It worked like a spell. The Sovrena's cheeks colored a soft rose, and her eyes opened drowsily, meeting his amid the balm of paradise.

"Keirai," Ryel whispered.

"Keirai d'yash," the princess replied as she smiled with recognition. "It's you."

From a source hitherto unknown Ryel gathered strength enough to speak. "Yes, my lady. We meet a second time."

"But still not face to face. I feel removed. Here, and not here."

"Because you are not fully awake, but in the dream-realm," Ryel replied, as calmly as he could.

Her lovely eyes became puzzled. "Why?"

"You were for some time not in your right mind," the wysard said. "I have put you in the dream-realm to soothe and heal your wits before you return to the World."

"You're kind." She swallowed. "I'm very thirsty."

"I'm sure you are." He brought her cool water, and she drank deeply, then lay back in the bath looking down at herself with bewilderment.

"This can't be me. Why don't I hurt, when I'm so bruised and torn?"

"One feels no pain in the dream-realm," Ryel replied.

"Apparently one can feel very sticky, however." She scratched her head, then lifted up her hand, regarding it with mild despair. "My fingernails look like talons. And my teeth feel fuzzy."

"We'll start on those," the wysard said.

When her nails were trimmed and her teeth clean, Diara thanked the wysard with a bright sweet smile. "Why am I not ashamed, here with you?"

"You have no cause, in the dream-realm. Are you hungry?"

"I'm sure I will be, soon. I look all bones."

"Take this." And the wysard produced another vial from the lacquer case, pouring some of its contents into her water glass. Diara tasted, licked her lips in pleasure, and drank deeply, until the vessel was empty.

"Mmm. Delicious. If I drank that every day, I'd be fat in a week."

The Sovrena's wasted, famished body changed even as she spoke, filling out into delicate smooth curves and contours. The skeleton became a goddess, and the wysard trembled as he beheld the transformation.

Fortunately, Diara failed to notice his emotion. "And now I'd very much enjoy some wine, if there is any."

On a table in the Sovrena's bedchamber Ryel by wonderful chance found a cool crystal ewer full of the same Masir vintage he had shared with Priamnor. The wysard filled a glassful and held it to the princess' lips as she drank, until she gently waved him away.

"Your turn, now." She wriggled deeper into the water, reveling in the warmth. "I want to get drunk, but you have to join me."

The wysard decided he deserved it, and took a long swallow, and another, until the glass was empty. He refilled it and offered it to Diara, who drank it down and then leaned her head back, eyes closed.

"That first meeting of ours in the desert, under the moon—do you recall it, Ryel Mirai?"

"I never will forget, my lady."

She looked up at the glass lacework of the ceiling. "But now it's day. Day, and I here. With you." Again she gazed at him, and her lovely eyes lit brighter than the dawn, although as softly. "I'm afraid you're going to have to bathe me," she murmured. "I don't have the strength."

The sudden realization of her eyes, the soft sleepy music of her voice, both directed at him alone, had been hard enough to bear, and he had drawn upon all the asceticism of his Markulit Art to look upon her nakedness with dispassion. But now he was asked to lay hands upon it. This is too much, he thought, bitterly resentful. I realize that there are tests and tests, but this—

"You hesitate," she said, coloring deep now, but far more with shame than wine. Tears gleamed in her eyes. "And no wonder. Surely such a request must be disgusting to you."

"What?" Of all things he hadn't expected to hear that. "Oh, no. Never that, my lady. Never." And with the care of a mother, the calm of a physician and the thoroughness of a nurse Ryel made her clean. But first he poured milky blue balm into the water to render it opaque.

She watched him bemusedly while she lifted and shifted as required. "How strange, to have a man giving me a bath."

"I feel stranger yet, believe me," Ryel replied.

"What a marvelous place, this dream-realm. Awake, I would never allow my women to do this much for me. How strange, to feel no shame."

Ryel for a terrible moment remembered another woman, shameless in another bath. He replied brusquely. "Sit up and I'll get to your back."

Diara did so, lifting her long black hair clear of her neck, arching at the wysard's touch. "Ah. That feels good. So good."

Ryel could only think of the marble nymph, and the bronze diver. "The Sovran Priamnor will be glad to see you well at last."

She smiled, and nothing in the world could have been lovelier. "I have missed my brother. He is my dearest friend, and has taught me so much."

Ryel felt his heart catch on something sharp. "Has he. Such as?"

Diara made a face; a pretty one, but wry. "I must admit that I horribly spoilt and uninstructed, when Priam and I first met. My governesses had taught me nothing; my only interests were clothes and jewels. Priam was appalled at my ignorance, and undertook my education himself. I would like this water changed, if you would."

Ryel drained the dirt-murked water and refilled the bath again, his eyes averted; added yet more veiling essence, and perfume from the carnelian cylinder. "What did you learn?" He asked, half afraid to know.

"Everything," Diara said. "Music, because Priam sings and plays with me. Languages, because he can speak six; I only know three as yet. Stars, which we observe together, up on the roof of the palace. History of all the world, which he knows as well as if he'd lived every moment of it. And best of all, poetry—I love reading Destimarian epics with him. He reminds me of one of the heroes—of Diomenor, the brave prince who had the sorcerer Redestens as his friend. Have you read of them?"

Ryel drew a deep breath of relief, despite Diara's last remark. "Yes." He began to wash her hair, lathering the black tresses and massaging the scalp. The way the long black soap-foamed silk felt under his hands was indescribable. "What else have you been taught by your brother?"

The girl reflected a moment. "The ways of ruling justly and choosing good advisors, in case Priam should fall ill again."

"I didn't know a girl could assume the scepter of Destimar," the wysard said.

She turned to stare at him. "I am not a girl but a woman, Ryel Mirai—and far from a foolish one."

Her gemmy eyes held a terrible hint of freeze, and Ryel felt his face burning from a hundred abashed emotions. "Forgive me my rudeness, most exalted."

"Some of Destimar's best years were when the Sovrana Lys ruled on her own. Clearly you have not read of her."

"I promise I will."

That heavenly smile again. "Then you are forgiven. Please rinse my hair and then the rest of me, if you would be so kind."

Once her hair was free of lather she allowed herself to be helped up, and stood innocently, maddeningly enjoying the water that Ryel poured over her. He was very glad when he at last could wrap her up in a great soft towel and have her sit at her dressing-table with her back to him as he continued his duties. It was more of an altar than a table, with candelabra on either wing of its tall triple mirror, and its dawn-hued marble top covered with gleaming arrays of ivory and tortoiseshell combs, silver implements for beauty's every exigency, gold and crystal containers and phials of color and ointment, exquisitely wrought boxes brimming with ornaments. But Diara's unadorned reflection mocked that splendor, shimmering in the glass like a nymph in a pool.

Having massaged smoothing essence into Diara's hair—essence scented with the same celestial fragrance that had imbued Priamnor's garments—the wysard took up a comb and steeled all of his concentration on sliding the ivory teeth through the night-black tresses. He had no wish to meet her eyes again, even in a mirror. Her sea-colored eyes, the loveliest in the world.

But she had other ways to torture him. "I remember you in the desert," she murmured, very softly. "Your body. Your arms." And as he watched dry-mouthed and amazed she slid his left sleeve up past his elbow, never taking her eyes from the glass as she delicately ran her fingers over his flesh. But suddenly she halted, tracing the thin seam that creased the upper flexor. "What is this?"

He had to lick his lips to say it. "A scar."

"From what?"

"A sword."

Meditatively her forefinger stroked the faint line. "Priam has no scars."

Ryel swallowed, remembering the great marble bathing-chamber, the upswung arms of the bronze diver. "I know."

"Did it hurt?"

"Not at first. But very much later on." It had stunned him to feel that searing rip of pain, see the blood welling up like the spring Jinn had drunk from at Markul's wall, hear Edris' jeering shout—"Right! Gawk at it, fool, and get another one worse in the meanwhile!"—And then the clanging slam of blade hurling him back dazed with betrayal until rage seized on him and he no longer remembered the pain or where he was but only fought back with all he had, cursing and panting and feeling every shred of his strength pulled to its limit, drawn into ecstasy. That first fight had been like first love, terrible and sweet.

Diara's hand rounded about his arm. "You're trembling."

The wysard started. "Am I?"

"Who wounded you?" she asked, half whispering.

Ryel met her eyes in the mirror, but looked far past them. "My father."

Diara sighed, her beauty clouding. "Ah. So he hated you, as my father hates Priam."

"No." And Ryel felt the truth in him like a sun. "He loved me beyond his life. He would have thrown himself in fire for me."

"But he hurt you."

"Only to make me stronger."

"You seem very strong. And in so many things you resemble Priam." She considered him closely, with much of her brother's deep surmise. "Why, you could almost be his twin, save for your eyes' strangeness."

He didn't want to hear that. Not now. "My Steppes blood makes them strange to you."

She shook her head. "I didn't mean their slant. I meant their color. Blue like mine one moment, then black the next. All black." Her own eyes widened like flowers opening fast. "You are pale, Ryel Mirai."

He felt so. It was ghastly, this trial; more than daimonic. Had she thrust a knife in his guts and laughed the while, he could not hurt worse. Untwining himself from her as if she'd sought to crush his life out, he stood clear. "Let's get you dressed."

"But why?"

He turned away. His heart was hurting his ribs. "Don't ask. Show me where you keep your linen."

He helped her with her shift, then chose what dress he would have her wear—a light loose gown of pure straw-colored silk, as plainly made as her brother's wonted garb—and dressed her because she would not dress herself.

"I would much rather wear nothing," she said. "The night is very warm, and my hair is all but dry. Look." She lifted her hands to the smooth night-dark heavy silk, pushing it back in a way that reminded Ryel now unbearably of the statue in Priamnor's atrium.

He set his teeth. "Hold still or I'll never finish with these fastenings."

When at last she was clothed, they faced each other again, at a distance Ryel deemed safe.

Her voice had become hesitant, unteasing. "Did you destroy my captor?"

For some reason the question eased his pain. "No," he replied. "I merely routed him."

"Then he may return."

Soft as her voice was, Ryel heard terror in it, resigned and desperate. He took both her hands in his, warming them against his chest. "I will prevent him from ever returning, Diara."

"You cannot. I know you cannot. And you know it too." Tears jeweled her dark lashes. "You must continue to keep the promise you made me in the desert, Ryel Mirai. I cannot speak the words I used then, lest my tormenter hear. But surely you have not forgotten."

The wysard blinked, too; but no tears eased the hurt. "I remember."

"You must keep your word."

He bent his head. "I will."

One of her tears fell on his hand, scalding as molten silver. "I wish you did not have to."

His heartbeat was bruising him. "So do I."

She drew near him, resting her hands on his shoulders. "Hold me close, only for a moment. Warm away the terror and the pain, and make me forget them forever. I have felt so cold, for so long…"

Her voice trembled as she spoke, and Ryel instantly complied, taking her in his arms, gently gathering her against him. He heard her give a little sob as she moved into his embrace, and he murmured her name into her heaven-scented hair as he wrapped her closer, and felt her body warming and calming. They stood entwined for what seemed at once an instant and eternity, and never had the wysard known such joy, or such sorrow, or such fear; and he felt those emotions wind about one another, meshing into bliss that sharpened beyond bearing when Diara slid her hands behind his neck, softly urging him down to her lips. But then she halted suddenly, her delicate touch first starting at the swelling at his neck's nape, then examining.

"What is this?"

He felt as if lightning again ran through him, white-cold, and it was far more than he could endure. He murmured a word that made Diara close her eyes and lose her balance. Her clean dark hair tumbled over his arm as he caught her, and he gasped at the feel of it. But as her head fell back against his shoulder he could no more keep his mouth from hers than he could his heart from beating. Her breath was fragrant with wine, and as if drinking drunk he kissed her again and yet again until he ached from her weight, slight as it was.

He half-carried, half-dragged her out of the room. Priamnor awaited him, flanked by mail-clad soldiers. Eagerly but half in fear he took his sister into his embrace, searching her sleeping features.

"Ryel. Is she—"

The wysard nodded, brusque with fatigue. "She's safe, now." The air before him seemed to darken, and all his limbs began to melt. He fought to speak. "Listen. This is important. She must never return to that room. The best place for her now is in the Eastern Palace, among flowers and water. It will do her good to be near you."

"I'll have her taken there at once," Priamnor said. He nodded to one of the guards, who at once drew near and lifted the Sovrena as lightly as a cloud, enfolding her reverently in gold and steel "But you're not well. Let me give order for—"

"No. Listen." Ryel continued, fighting hard for what remained of his strength. "When your sister awakens tomorrow morning, she'll remember nothing of this night or the days of her torment. Let no one speak to her of them. Have music played for her, soft music with singing. She'll be hungry, but give her only fruit and milk and bread to eat for three days, and at evenings let her have wine to drink—enough to get her drunk if she wants it." He paused to catch his breath, and continued. "For too long she's been in darkness. She needs sunlight. And exercise, too—swimming would be best. She must wear no jewels until three days have passed, and her maidens must not bind up her hair in any way until then, or paint her face. And don't let a doctor near her. Promise me you'll see to these things."

"I will, ilandrakis."

The wysard bowed his head, unable to meet the Sovranel's eyes. "I only hope you will forget what you witnessed this night, Priam."

"You witnessed worse, and neither of us will ever forget," the prince replied. "But we cannot stay here. My father has awakened, and although he is in great pain and very weak, he has asked for you. I pray you come with me, ilandrakis; but I hope there will be no further work for you."

"Go, then. I'll follow."

But Ryel did not follow at once. Unsteadily he walked out to the columned gallery, eager for the fresh night air. His body ached entirely, flesh and bone and nerve, and his head was afire, his eyes burning like live coals. Embracing one of the marble pillars, he pressed his cheek against its polished surface. But no sooner had he touched the sweet cool stone than the air blackened before him and he felt himself sliding, and he never knew when he hit the ground.

Chapter Eight

Music woke him, soft harps and lutes. Ryel struggled to sit up, and failed; but other arms came to his aid, swift and gentle in their strength.

"Ilandrakis. They said you might never wake."

The wysard opened his eyes with tentative blinks, finding Priam's. "They were quacks," he murmured, breathing deep of the clean breeze that stirred the sheer gauze of his bed-curtains, and another scent, exquisitely sweet, that was carried with it. The room vibrated with sunlight, and he raised his hand to shield his eyes, marveling at how thin his fingers seemed.

"Greatly did I fear for you, Ryel Mirai," Priamnor said. "Tell me how you are."

"Only a little weak." Ryel raised himself amid the pillows, and drank gratefully of the water Priamnor offered him. "That music is beautiful, almost as sweet as that perfume in the air."

"You mean this." Priam reached into his robe's sleeve and brought forth the carnelian vial Ryel remembered well, unstoppering it to release that wonderful scent like all the flowers of the earth. Ryel breathed eagerly of it.

Priamnor watched the wysard's reaction, and nodded in approval. "A good thing I thought of Transcendence—it did the work no doctor could."

"Transcendence?"

"Attar of a Thousand it's also called. Its use is forbidden to all save the Dranthene—although every perfumer in this city has tried to imitate it, with no success. Here." He handed the vial to Ryel.

Nodding thanks, for a moment the wysard again admired the lovely banded stone and its exquisite carvings, then again breathed deeply of the fragrance. "It has life in it."

"Meaning you feel better?"

"Very much so," the wysard said, marveling as he spoke. "Completely well, in fact."

The Sovran lifted a dark brow. "Strange. But not on second thought."

"What do you mean?" Ryel asked. But he had from their first meeting sensed an answer. "You seem as much in need of it as I." And he would have returned the scent-cylinder, but Priam waved it away.

"No. It's yours. As a remembrance." He rubbed his unshaven cheek. "Perhaps I've lost some rest from spending the nights of your illness here."

"Nights?"

"Three nights."

The wysard stared. "Three? Your sister—is she—"

Priamnor nodded swift reassurance. "She enjoys excellent health and spirits—and is more lovely than ever before, which is much. And yet…" When he spoke again, it was with much hesitation. "You saved her life, yet she refuses to see you. When I asked her why, she had no answer. But perhaps you could provide me with one."

The wysard understood only too well. Were he and Diara to meet again, it would only make them fall more deeply in love, and put the Sovrena more deeply into danger. "Your sister knows that the sight of me would make her re-live the torments she was forced to endure," he said at last. "I understand her feelings, and will comply with her wishes."

"Very well." Priamnor looked away toward the great windows that let in all the freshness of early afternoon, all the beauty of sculpted towers. "You have observed the color I wear, have you not?"

"Yes," Ryel said, surprised by the question. "Complete white. But why—"

"It is the mourning color of the royal house. The Sovran my father is dead."

Ryel had expected as much. "I'm sorry, Priam."

With visible effort the new Sovran of Almancar at last turned back to Ryel, his face more weary than sorrowing. "For your sympathy, my thanks. He died after the daimon struck him, the next night."

"Does the Sovrena know?"

"I have forbidden anyone to tell her, until she is well enough to take the shock. She loved her father dearly. She was his youngest, and his favorite."

Ryel bit his lip. "I am to blame for his death."

"You are not. You had already exerted yourself to the limit of your life, even as you said you would. And your life is precious to me, Ryel Mirai."

The wysard felt the warmth of those words, and inwardly returned it. "The Sovran Agenor's life was far more so, most exalted."

"Perhaps it should have been." Priamnor stood and went to the window, leaning against the embrasure as he looked out over his city. "My father was a hard man, and proud. My private apartments look out on gardens, and the green plains to the south, but my father's faced the Gray Sisterhood, where the jewel mines are; where he could take pleasure in the sight of his wealth increasing hour by hour, without the slightest regret for the ravages on the land, or the misery of the workers. My own mother always blamed Agenor for allowing me to fall into bad courses—or rather for pushing me into them. She accused him of encouraging my vices, the better to keep me helpless and enable him to reign unquestioned. As for myself, I had given no thought whatever at any time to the fact that I would inevitably become Sovran in my turn. I cared for nothing but my pleasures, and was the most vicious and spoiled young reprobate in a city famed for rakes and wastrels. But my illness changed me for the better, strange to say; thanks to it I distanced myself from my father's influence, and began to study Destimarian history and law, and to read deeply in all matters concerning right government, and to look more critically at those institutions I'd always considered indispensable—slavery, prostitution, usury and the like."

"Such study will serve you well, now," Ryel replied.

"I do not know how I could rule without it," Priam said. "Destimar is a realm uniting many peoples, a land possessed of great riches and strong friends; but our riches are widely coveted, and our friends manifestly envious. Very soon I will appoint new ministers from among the ablest men and women in the realm, regardless of rank—a considerable change from my father's policy."

"Already you prove an able ruler."

Priamnor wryly shrugged off the compliment. "Oh, I'm far more than that, if recent correspondence is any indication. All the kings of the earth seem to have daughters languishing for my sake, to judge from the many letters of mingled condolence and temptation I've received. Even the Domina of the Northern Barrier, vicious and debauched as she's said to be, is all sympathy and sweetness. What think you? Should I marry her?"

"That is a question of state, most exalted."

The young Sovran acknowledged Ryel's reply with a gesture of brusque dismissal. "It is a jest. A poor one." He fell silent, drumming his fingers along the wrought marble of the window-frame; and so drawn and wan had he become, with such silent despair trapped in his unblinking eyes, that the wysard sat up, and would have gone to him.

"Priam, I—"

The Sovran of Destimar shook his head fiercely, warding off the wysard's next words. "I know what you would say. I am ashamed to be thinking of myself, with my little sister returned from the brink of the grave and my father gone to his. But I now rule one of the world's great realms—one that must be administered justly, and bequeathed to able offspring. I am expected to marry and…beget. In the latter duty I run a strong risk of failure, and there are two people who not only know of this likelihood, but rejoice in it because they engineered it: my twin half-siblings, offspring of my father by his first wife. They live in exile with their mother, who was divorced for adultery, and they've long claimed that the throne of Destimar is theirs by right, but there's very strong reason to suspect that they're not of my father's siring. Still, that won't keep them from making an attempt sometime in the future, should I fail of an heir."

"But what of your sister? Could she not rule?"

"Yes, and she'd do so ably and well, I'm sure; but I'd have to die first. It's the law." The new Sovran stood and went to the window, leaning against the embrasure as he looked out over his city. So drawn and pale had he become, with such silent despair trapped in his unblinking eyes, that the wysard's heart went out to him.

"Priam, you're exhausted."

Priamnor's gentle voice held a sharp edge of strain. "I might be. These many days I have scarcely known water save to drink, nor touched food save with loathing in my disquiet for you."

"For all your concern I am grateful," Ryel replied, immeasurably moved. "You have not slept either, it seems."

Priamnor's fingers ceased drumming, and clenched about the stone. "Sleep has been impossible. Scarcely do I close my eyes than I dream of terrible things—of wars and battles, inhuman cruelties of man against man."

"Let me help you."

"I doubt any wysard arts can aid me, ilandrakis. But I would have you rise and join me, if you would. I most require sunlight, now."

Strengthened by Transcendence, Ryel rose and went with the Sovran to the vine-shaded pool. The wysard dove at once into the silent gold and crystalline world he loved, hovering in breathless bliss. But he was troubled by Priamnor's restless shadow hurtling past as if fleeing some sea-born horror, wearing itself out against the water. Later at table, Ryel noted that the Sovran ate little or nothing, but drank much of the wine of Masir—far too much, until at last he shoved his glass aside and stood up, abruptly and unsteadily.

"Am I intoxicated yet?"

"To my certain knowledge, yes," Ryel carefully replied.

"I hate it."

"Then why did you?"

Priamnor gulped and shuddered. "To poison the daimon."

Ryel felt his blood icing up. "The what?"

"Daimon. It's been within me for days," Priam said. "Three days. But I'd mastered it, I swear. Kept it captive—until now. I felt it steal over me as I swam. Tried to outdistance it, in vain. It has me."

No, Ryel thought, his breath coming fast. No. "Priam. Is it the same daimon that possessed the Sovrena?"

Priamnor shook his head in numb negation. "I think not. It isn't cruel. I don't think it wishes my harm. But I want free of it. I can feel it in my blood." He turned to Ryel, his eyes dazed and desperate. "It's killing me."

"I won't let it," the wysard said. "Here, sit down again. Lean against me." And Ryel gently pushed the Sovran into his chair again and stood behind him, cradling and soothing the short-haired skull, murmuring comfort. "No, don't move. It's all right, I'll deal with it. Be still."

Icily Priamnor's fingers gripped Ryel's. "I can't. I'm freezing cold. I don't know this place."

Something indeed holds you, the wysard thought wonderingly. But not the daimon that tortured Diara. I would know by the heaviness of the air, by the breathless oppression, were you in its power.

"Tell me where you are," he said aloud.

His friend's voice came ever more dazed and hesitant. "I don't know. Here and not here." He pressed his cold cheek against Ryel's solar plexus; the wysard felt tears, searing as spilled wax on his bare skin, and a moment later the slight burning abrasion of beard-stubble. "I'm lost. Stranded in the midst of a void."

"No." Ryel warmed Priamnor's hands with his own. "I'm with you. Look about, and tell me what you see."

Priam's voice came ever more dazed and hesitant. "I'm on the wall of a city."

"Almancar?"

Priamnor frowned slightly. "No. No. A place shrouded by mist. Angled towers of green and purple and black and gray, roofed with bronze. Beautiful, but cold, so cold—" He shivered, then suddenly tensed. "I hear someone riding up to the gates."

"Turn and look, and tell me who it is."

For a moment Priamnor was silent. "A man. No, a boy. Slender and tall, with long hair. Black hair. He has dismounted, and looks up at me."

"What color are his eyes?" Ryel asked, his heart racing.

"Blue." The Sovran paused. "Clear sea-blue touched with violet, like my sister's and my own, but slanted in the Steppes way."

"Do you know him?"

"Yes. Perfectly." A long silence. Then Priam's voice deepened and stilled. "I love him beyond my life. I would throw myself in fire for him."

Ryel felt every flame of that fire behind his eyes. Because the voice was the voice of Edris, resonant and profound, speaking in Steppes dialect. The wysard's thoughts came in jolts, as if drugged with quiabintha. "Tell me who you are."

"You tell me, whelp."

"Ithradrakis. By every god—" Ryel brushed his lips against Priamnor's temple, and tasted sweat. Joy made him whisper. "I knew you weren't dead. I felt it. I always knew it."

A sardonic rumble of laugh in reply. "You're happier about it than I am, lad."

"Stay with me."

"I can't. All I have is this bare moment."

Ryel winced at his eyes' burning. "I'll bring you back," he said.

Edris snorted. "You don't have the Art, brat."

"I promise I will," Ryel said, desperate. "But don't go."

"I have to. I'm taking a chance being here—and I'll suffer for it. But I had to find you. You're in danger."

Ryel held Priamnor closer. "From Dagar? But I fought him, ithradrakis. Fought him and won."

Edris could never have been less awed. "Don't think yourself so great, brat. Tonight was nothing."

"But I'm strong. You know that…father."

At Ryel's last word, more breathed than uttered, Priam's smooth wet brow furrowed. "You won't overcome Dagar alone," Edris said. "You'll need help."

"Who is there to help me? Another like yourself?"

Priamnor shook his head. His eyes were still shut hard, his voice still Edris'. "No Art can save you, lad. But one of the World might."

"Who?"

"One of two from the North. Soldiers. Captains of the wars to come."

Ryel felt himself frowning. "Wars? I don't understand. Tell me more."

"Don't plague me, whelp. There isn't time."

"Tell me their names at least," Ryel implored.

"Starklander," came the deep-toned answer. "Redbane. Beware of one of them."

"Which one?"

"You'll learn. Once you go North"

Ryel's heart plummeted. "North? But—"

"I said don't plague me, brat." Edris hesitated, stiffening as if in sudden wariness. "I can't stay."

"Is it Dagar?" Ryel asked. "Has he done you harm?"

"He does all he can. Don't worry about me. Look out for yourself."

Desperate with impatience Ryel shook the unconscious cold body with Edris' voice. "But will we be together again? Can I bring you back?"

"Find Srin Yan Tai, on the slope of Kalima," Edris replied. "She'll tell you."

"But father—"

Priamnor tensed and moaned, clutching Ryel's wrists. When he next spoke, it was in his own voice, now tight with pain. "It's so cold. I'll freeze to death."

"No, Priam. You're going to sleep."

Panic, dazed and thrashing. "I don't want to dream. Don't let me dream."

"You won't." Ryel bent and breathed a word in Priamnor's ear. The prince slid downward, and would have fallen from his chair had not Ryel held him.

You were here, the wysard thought numbly, grazing his cheek against the Sovran's cropped black hair. You were here, father. Truly Priam must have the Art within him, asleep but strong, to have embodied the emanations of your rai however briefly. If your rai is within the Void, and there exists a way to rejoin your body with your spirit, I will find it. But what dangers must I pass through first? And who are these Northern captains, and what is this talk of war?

No answers came. A while the wysard reflected on what had passed, and arrived at the painful conclusion that he was choiceless. He would have to find Lady Srin Yan Tai as soon as might be, which meant the next day, at first light.

The wysard looked down at Priamnor. "You won't want me to leave," he murmured. "So I won't tell you. But I'll return as soon as I can."

As he spoke, Ryel took the carnelian scent-vial and opened it close to Priam's face. Ineffable sweetness overwhelmed the air. The Sovran murmured incoherently, then with a sudden start looked about him, wide awake.

"What happened to me? Where was I?"

Ryel drew his first deep breath for a long time, filling his lungs with fragrance, feeling it give him strength. "I wish I knew, Priam."

"Did I say anything?"

"Talk of strange cities and wars. Don't you remember?"

Priamnor again shook his head. "Nothing." The Sovran appeared to consider a moment, then gave a tentative stretch. "Everything that gave me pain is gone. I was sick with wine, but now I'm well. And I was weary unto death, too, but now I'm as alive as if I'd slept a dozen hours. What magic did you work on me?"

"None, I swear," Ryel replied. "It was Transcendence that restored you."

Priamnor smiled from sheer deliverance. "That's exactly how I feel—restored. Returned to what I was. I'm still cold, but some of that sun will warm me again. Come, join me."

In the delicious radiance they again lay side by side on silken rugs, basking in the cloudless heat. His chin resting on his folded arms, Priamnor gazed out at the rooftops and the towers of Almancar the Bright, now burning gold in the fullness of the late afternoon. "I have heard that Markul greatly differs from this city."

You should know, Ryel thought. You have seen both. But aloud he said, "The richness of Markul rivals that of Almancar, but as night does day."

"I have heard of its eternal mists, and its dark towers," Priam said. "What do they study there? Alchemy, I suppose, and raising of the dead, and the search for eternal youth."

Ryel had to smile. "The citizens of Markul scorn all endeavors to use the Art in the service of gain, and have come to believe after many trials that death is final, and youth finite." But he did not speak of the place between death and life, and he remembered the voice of Edris, that still echoed in his heart.

"And what of Elecambron?" prompted the Sovran.

Ryel considered the right reply. "Its denizens share Markul's contempt for the world's riches and allurements, but they are most ardent in their attempts to probe the limits of death and see beyond."

"Have any succeeded?"

"None, so far as is known. But in other Arts they are most powerful, and dangerous."

"Are not the wysards of Ormala the worst of all? I could tell those two were worthless, even before my father chose them."

For the first time since their ghastly deaths Ryel remembered Smimir and Rickrasha. "The Ormalans are the most active in the World, and of the lowest order. They are the alchemists, and the casters of malignant and prurient spells. But their Art is base and simple, and they have no power to command the spirits of the air for their purposes, a capacity which only those of Elecambron and Markul possess."

"What of Tesba?"

"They employ the Art solely for art's sake—for idle things sometimes, like the creation of huge jewels and strange flowers, the concoction of fantastic drugs, and the continual quest for new heights of pleasure. But they also create wondrous music and paintings and books, which we of Markul greatly esteem. Unlike Markul and Elecambron they come to the Art young, and form unions and raise families like folk of the World; but unlike folk of the World, they live in harmony and peace."

"I'd not object to such a life." Priamnor mused. Watching a butterfly float past in a shimmer of emerald and orange, he held out his hand, where the bright-winged insect settled like a quivering jewel. The delicate iridescence of its wings seemed to color his thoughts. "Now that we speak of pleasures, there's someplace I would take you—someplace I haven't been for a long time, and which I doubt has an analogue even in Tesba. But the clothes we've been wearing won't pass there. We'll need robes of the true Almancarian style, gorgeous and extravagant. I'll find some for you."

Ryel remembered Lord Nestris' parting gift of rich garb, now carefully packed in Jinn's saddlebags. "I have them."

"You should have worn them in my father's presence-chamber."

"I wished to be seen as I am."

"You would have been." Before Ryel could ask what those words meant, the young Sovran gently waved his finger, and the butterfly floated away. "We'll go and dress, and meet again as soon as I'm done conferring with the imperial archivist."

"Some matter of state?" Ryel asked.

Priamnor regarded the wysard steadily. "A matter that might interest you, as it happens. I may discuss it with you tonight, when we've reached our destination."

"But where will you take me?"

The Dranthene emperor smiled for the second time that day. "To worship," he replied.

*****

They scarcely recognized each other when they met again.

Ryel found his voice first. "And I thought I was gaudy."

The new Sovran of Almancar had swept in like another sunset, arrayed magnificently in trailing raiment of deep rose satin brocaded in emerald-blue. A light mantle fell in a rustling torrent of gold-silk mosaic, its collar framing his head, its folds rippling about his shoulders to the ground. Jeweled bracelets clasped his sun-darkened arms, and a rare pearl hung from his right ear, but he wore no rings save one, a fair cabochon spinel the color of his eyes. Ryel noted with astonishment that the Sovran's face was lightly painted in the manner of Almancar, with kohl-rimmed eyes and lips darkened with carmine, increasing his resemblance to Diara so forcefully that Ryel could do nothing else but stare.

Priamnor adjusted a robe-fold, suddenly mindful of Ryel's wonderment, although wholly unaware of its depth. "I hope you weren't kept waiting long for me."

"Not at all," Ryel finally replied. "How was your conference with the archivist?"

"Enlightening." Distractedly the Sovran plucked at an encumbering sleeve. "These will take some getting used to." He rubbed his pearl-powdered cheek. "As will this paint. I would suggest that you use some yourself, did I not know you a thoroughgoing Rismai." He in his turn studied the wysard's dress, critically approving. "So. Excellent, that robe of yours, and almost as gaudy as mine. But where could you have found it? That antique cut is the highest fashion at present. I'm half envious."

"These are quite old," Ryel replied with a smile. "They belonged to one of my City."

Chin in hand—a smooth-shaven chin, now—the Sovran surveyed Ryel. "He must have been notable in my city both for excess of riches and dearth of subtlety. But flame-orange is a color that suits you, fortunately."

"My thanks—I think." Ryel did not mention that instead of the requisite under-robes he wore his Steppes gear, shirt and breeches and boots, beneath the light voluminous silk. He also thought it best not to divulge that he had visited the stables while Priam was with the archivist, and that now Jinn's saddlebags were ready packed for the secret departure he intended to take at first light, with his horseman's coat and Edris' cloak tightly rolled up and fitted easily and unobtrusively into the deep leather casings along with his journeybag. His weapons, however, he kept. Priam did not seem to notice, since he too was armed with a light rapier, quite clearly more for show than use.

"We should be on our way at once," Priamnor said. "We have barely an hour."

"But where are we going?" Ryel asked.

"I told you—to worship. To one of the city's greatest temples."

"When did you become religious?"

"I didn't. Come, we're wasting time." A little while later, Ryel was holding a torch and leading Jinn down an underground corridor, following Priamnor who likewise held a burning brand against the dark as he guided a priceless Fang'an gelding.

"This passage was built many hundreds of years ago," Priamnor said, his soft voice echoing against the walls. "As the cobwebs indicate, I haven't used it for some time."

"Where does it emerge?"

"You'll see."

Uneasily Ryel studied his friend. "You appear very agitated within."

At those words Priamnor suddenly halted and turned about, holding up his torch to Ryel's face, examining it with that piercing scrutiny he had shown at their first meeting. "Do I not have reason? Say you had by merest chance found a treasure beyond price, one upon which your life depended, only to learn that it had been yours for many years though all unknown to you—would you not greet that knowledge with emotion?" His beauty flickered in the torchlight, grave and searching. Then without staying for reply he turned again, and continued down the corridor. Baffled as to what Priam might mean, Ryel followed.

They came at last to a great portal of solid iron, where two strong servants awaited them and opened the door with much effort. The men only with greatest reluctance accepted Priamnor's gift of gold, and wished to accompany their ruler for his greater safety, but were refused.

"You've devoted slaves," Ryel remarked as they mounted and began to ride.

Priamnor shook his head. "I keep no slaves. All my servants are free men and women, a custom I hope will someday be the rule in this city." He glanced at Ryel. "Would that change please you?"

"Very much."

"Good."

He said nothing more. After a time Ryel spoke. "We're among gardens."

"The city's loveliest," Priamnor said as he drew a fold of his cloak around his face. "They adjoin the temple grounds."

Many others were out enjoying the evening air. Under flowering trees hung with lanterns, richly-garbed groups of revelers sang and played musical instruments and heralded the rising moon with lifted wine-cups. The canal along which Priamnor and Ryel rode was crowded with slim lamp-lit boats carrying passengers likewise rejoicing in the warm night.

"This is beautiful," Ryel murmured.

The Sovran laughed, though not with overmuch mirth. "It gets better. Look, and tell me where we are."

Ryel followed Priamnor's indicating gesture, and found a vision made real. "But this is the Temple of Atlan!"

Priamnor reined in, studying the gorgeous scene before him. "The very same. The temple's gates are the entrance to the Diamond Heaven. For the three days of your illness, the Heaven was in official mourning for the Sovran's passing; but now those strictures are lifted, and joy seems unconfined."

"But what if you're recognized?"

"The Diamond Heaven has not known me for five years, and in those days my hair was longer than yours, and my face bearded," Priam replied. "If anything, you will be mistaken for me—we resemble one another remarkably, as I observed earlier. But it hardly signifies, since we'll both be disguised with these." As the Sovran spoke, he took two silken half-masks from his saddlebag and handed Ryel one. They were exquisite and fantastic, hooded and owl-horned, glittering with jewels and precious embroidery. Priamnor donned his and turned to Ryel. "Tell me now if you know me."

I will always know you, Ryel thought. "Won't you be recognized by your smooth face?"

"I think not. The moment I shaved clean, it instantly became the fashion among the young bloods. But come, we're just in time for the night's first ceremony."

Many others had left the park and the canal to ascend the temple steps. But there were some who did not climb the great marble stairs—not aristocrats or rich merchants, but laboring folk of the Fourth District come to marvel and envy. In their midst a compelling voice thundered forth.

"Aye, gape upon them! There they go, the pampered slaves of the Whore-Goddess, to wallow like gilded swine in debauchery paid for with your brows' sweat and life's blood!"

Priamnor and Ryel had been tying up their horses, but now they turned to that voice, which both of them knew well. The prophet Michael stood on a mounting-block nearby, glaring into the torchlit dark with burning black eyes. Already followers clustered about him, and some of the maskers halted on the stairs, to listen and jeer.

"An hour of my instruction would teach you Atlan's mysteries, Michael!"

The wysard monk's wolfish eyes darted to the masked woman who'd spoken, and blazed with devouring fire as they swept across the carnal snares revealed by her clinging satin. His deep voice snarled disdain.

"There speaks some drug-sotted slut, or some drunken adulteress, come to pant at the lewd gyrations of the Golden Whore's slave priesthood, then tumble and roll in a brothel's bed! This is your aristocracy, O Almancar! This, your fabled greatness! This, the filth that the Master will wash clean, and soon!" With consummate scorn his glare swept the glittering maskers on the temple steps, from top to bottom, then fell upon Ryel and Priamnor. His cruel lips parted over his dazzling teeth, and he grinned like a daimon before turning his gaze upward to the pale towers and columned buildings.

He lifted his bare hard arms, shut his eyes, raised his voice. "Yes, unhappy Almancar, this is your royalty, this your greatness, fallen at the feet of brazen strumpets and catamite minions! Even your new Sovran, the chaste Priamnor, comes here to revive his brute lust, his father not yet cold in the grave!" His cruel eyes opened again, raking the crowd like knives, finding Priam and narrowing like a beast of prey. "What brings you here, last of the Dranthene? Was it not enough, the clap that nearly killed you? What would you do with whores, impotent as you are? Or would you now play the woman, being unfit for anything else?"

The listening crowd gasped as one, and Ryel would have spoken in fury had Priamnor not caught his wrist, gripping hard.

"No words. Let him rave." But he was pale beneath his mask.

One of the soldiers of the city guard turned furiously on Michael, half-drawing his sword. "Watch that gutter tongue of yours, ranting fool! The Sovran Priamnor forsook the Diamond Heaven years ago!"

Michael eyes flashed like edged steel. "How can you be so certain, when Atlan's lechers go masked? How would you know if he were at this moment in your midst?" And as the crowd murmured among themselves, high and low alike, the wild prophet spoke again, his voice an echoing shout as his eyes darted from one mask to the next. "You are of Atlan's crew tonight, Priamnor Dranthene, you and your wysard favorite! May these good subjects that you scorn bear witness to your love for a teller of the truth!" And he tore the ragged robe from his shoulders, and with damnable pride bared his scarred back to the crowd. A woman nearby screamed and fainted, and guards at once came forward and broke up the throng, driving Michael from the temple steps with blows and shoves that Ryel knew Elecambron's greatest adept would not bear for much longer. Priamnor would have to be warned of the prophet's real powers, and the terrible danger they threatened.

But now was not the time. "Much as I pity the poor fanatic, I'm glad that's over," the Sovran murmured, regret mingling with revulsion in his voice. "Come, we're late for the service."

Ryel followed Priamnor, forgetting the dirty black demagogue in the feel of the gently jostling crowd, of the soft stray impacts of rich fabric and the mingling of a hundred rare perfumes liberally applied to skin consummately well-washed, of bright laughter and the caressing accents of the city's sweet language. Without exception everyone was gorgeously and fantastically masked and robed, and Ryel wondered at it.

"The laws require, for the better reputation of the city, that Atlan's adherents go richly disguised—a means of encouraging both expense and anonymity," Priam replied. "The worship of Atlan is more than a little costly, but I've come well provided for us both," the prince continued, smiling at the wysard's astonishment as he threw a double handful of gold into the vessel held out by a forbiddingly vast door-guard. "Here's something for you, too, ilandrakis." And he thrust a silken pouch heavy with coin into one of Ryel's hanging sleeves. "Now you'll be irresistible. Let's go in."

Ryel hesitated. "But what if your identity is suspected, and your mask removed by force?"

Under the mask's edge, Priamnor's mouth smiled again, this time somewhat tightly. "I doubt that will occur. The penalty for such transgression is death." As he spoke the last word, he and Ryel entered the temple.

*****

Often in time to come the wysard would remember the Temple of Atlan, and with each remembrance find his Rismaian upbringing and his Markulit training severely tested. He had grown up in a hard land, among a stern people distrustful of luxury. The vacillations of the flesh he had studied dutifully and with as much detachment as he could summon during his study of the Art, and had wondered at their power over mankind. But Atlan's worship made him fully understand the essential sanctity of pleasure, and he was awed and humbled by the depth of that comprehension. Every sense that might bring delight to the spirit was exalted, from the silken scented cushions whereon the worshippers reclined at their ease, to the music of ravishing sweetness, the sensual liturgy declaimed in clear lovely voices; to wine so heady that a single taste brought euphoria, passed hand to lingering hand in cups of gold; in gemmed censers exhaling the most precious of the earth's essences mingled with delicate drugs; in frescos and statuary of breathtaking beauty and unsparing eroticism, amid which the marble image of the Goddess smiled in imperial nudity. Ryel felt his eyes dazzle, his mouth dry.

At that moment six of Atlan's votaries entered the sanctuary as the music slowed: three men and three women magnificently formed, clad in little more than jewels—slaves of the rarest beauty, from distant lands. The women were a tall Northerner with great masses of electrum mane barely held by threads of diamond; a shaven and tattooed Zallan so black that her pearl-draped skin had a bluish luster; a russet-crested Sindrite amazon whose emerald-set baldric divided breasts of surpassing beauty. The men Ryel recognized as a warrior of the Kugglaitan Steppes, golden-hued and densely muscled, with slant silvery eyes; a harsh Wycastrian with the heavy tawny hair and aggressive symmetries of form and face by which his people were known; a slim youth clearly from the Uskan Islands, his skin like copper satin, his gilded eyelids and vivid lips half-parted with voluptuous pleasure as he moved. All were between twenty and thirty years of age, all accomplished dancers; all drugged with mandragora, to judge from the fluid abandon of their gestures, their languorous lost eyes. Their bodies slid and twined and enlaced in ardent exaltation of the flesh, seconding the ever-accelerating music with rhythmic clicks of gems. Ryel felt his eyes dazzle, and his mouth dry; he glanced over at Priamnor, and wondered how the Sovran's masked gaze could be so clear and searching, studying the dance with complete dispassion.

The music died, the dancers dispersed, the rites ended. Ryel released the breath he'd been holding and sank back on his cushions, his wits unsteady, his blood in riot.

"Most edifying. Most awe-inspiring," came the Sovran's voice, controlled and amused, at his side. "Can you walk?"

"Not very well, probably," Ryel muttered.

Priamnor laughed. "Religion has its uses. The sacraments of Atlan are wisely designed to put the worshipper in the correct frame of mind to worthily enter paradise." He stood up, and helped Ryel to his feet. "You seemed suitably impressed.

"Is it always like this?"

Priam considered. "The choreography and the celebrants vary. Every denizen of the Diamond Heaven is of Atlan's order, qualified to officiate at her rituals. I hope your Rismaian sensibilities weren't shocked by the occasionally inventive pairings—and groupings—during the ceremonial. They are meant to honor the three sectors of the Diamond Heaven."

Ryel gave a disbelieving half-laugh. "There are only three?"

"In Almancar love between men and between women is not recognized as perversion, ilandrakis," said Priamnor. "But cruelty is, and the maltreatment of children, and indeed all misuses of the flesh that degrade the spirit. Such enormities were never tolerated by any of the rulers of this city, nor will they be by me. But come, Heaven awaits us."

Heaven it was indeed, to the wysard's already dazzled eyes. Amid the throng of revelers come from every corner of the World, rich litters borne by liveried slaves conveyed indolent glittering favorites to assignations, while in the meandering canal that divided the Jewel Path, lovers reclined at amorous ease in gilded shallops, or pleasure-parties sang and played in lighted barges, scattering flowers in the clear water. Rows of fragrant trees aglitter with lamps lined and lit the broad avenues of inlaid marble and the fair canal, and wandering couples now and again stopped for rest or coquetry at the vine-secluded benches set under the branches. Ladies leaned from the roof-galleries of splendid mansions, trading wit with the passersby below, and often tossing down flowers with artfully folded notes tied to their stems.

Ryel gazed about him, overcome, and gestured to the brightly-lit buildings lining the canal. "What are all these places?"

"Jewel and silk and perfume shops," the Sovran answered. "Gambling dens. Music rooms, chal houses, wine taverns."

"And on the upper floors?"

Priamnor gave his rare grin; it flashed beneath his mask's edge. "Wonder and peril, my friend."

As if the Sovran's words were a summons, a thrown rose softly struck Ryel's cheek. He bent and gathered it, and as he did, female laughter pealed from on high. Looking up, Ryel and the Sovran saw that several masked ladies clustered at a railing on the gardened rooftop of a splendid mansion.

"Come taste our wine!" one called. "It will cost you nothing but a sweet look from your fair eyes, my lords."

"That I rather doubt," Priamnor wryly murmured.

The building was ornamented all over with mosaics and sculptures of a nature that made the wysard first stare, then look away. "There's a paper tied to the stem," he said, dissemblingly indicating the flower.

"Of course there is." Opening and glancing at the note, the Sovran gave a short laugh. "Just what I expected." And he handed it to Ryel.

Scribbled with negligent grace across the spangled fragrant paper Ryel read aloud, "'The silver moon/ Though cold and high/ Falls melting-ripe/ Into a jeweled hand.' What does it mean?"

"You'll learn," the Sovran said, his smile ironic now. "Symbolism here is never too occult."

The ladies had not silenced. "Come up to us, young heroes! We have awaited you all this night. We have wine like nectar, and music like paradise."

"And beauty beyond mortal desert," Priamnor said, to approving coos. He bowed, and kissed the rose with a flourish as the ladies applauded. "My friend and I have errands elsewhere, my beauties," he said. "But we'll return."

"Promise!" one of the ladies called.

"You have my word," he said.

Another beauty gave an unbelieving laugh. "Ah, but is it good?"

"As good as if the Sovran himself gave it," Priamnor said.

Louder peals at that. "The young Dranthene is an anchorite worse than Michael!" cried the one who'd thrown the flower. "But were he here, I'd try his famous chastity."

Before Priamnor or Ryel could reply, another lady gaudier still, whose yellow curls owed nothing to nature and whose full-face girlish mask hinted at youth regretted and age concealed, looked down; and at the sight of two such well-clad young blades she waved.

"Well met, my lovely knights," she called in a throaty contralto that shook the creased neck-wattles just beneath the painted pink and white. "Such noble youth seek royal pleasures, surely; and here in my house you will find them, for the treasures of the Realm of Joy have been the more enriched by a radiant beauty only just arrived, her maidenhood yet in dawning bud, before whom the greatest in the world would bow down. You would think her the exact image of … but I will keep that a secret for your unrobing."

"Gladly will we meet this wonder," Priamnor said, "when we return."

After some other badinage—exceedingly polished and witty for an avowed recluse—the Sovran bade courteous farewell to the ladies of the Joy Realm and took Ryel's arm, leading the wysard further along the street.

"I've amazed you."

Ryel bit his lip at the Sovran's amused tone. "To hear the ascetic Priamnor Dranthene bandy words with bawds and harlots is something of a surprise, I must admit."

Priam endured the reproach calmly. "You see me as I was, ilandrakis. But now..." he looked around him, his mouth beneath the mask unsmiling, his eyes joyless. "I'll thank you to call me by my Heaven-name, if you would. It used to be Atlantion, but tonight it shall be Diomenor, in honor of the stern young god-hero of the epics. And what will yours be?"

"Redestens," Ryel answered, not so much to Priamnor's question as in remembrance of some words Diara had let fall.

At that answer, uttered without a moment's hesitation, Priamnor's jewel-blue eyes shone behind the mask. "Ah. Redestens the Desert-hawk, Prince Diomenor's comrade in arms with the magical powers. Excellent. You're well and aptly read, ilandrakis. If we're to be epic heroes, high time we found some adventure. Follow me—but first I must caution you that the ladies of the Garden of Dreams are the most beautiful and accomplished of all the Heaven. Unless times have greatly changed, they'll require an inordinate amount of gallant wooing. Can you bear it?"

"I can if you can."

They returned to the Jewel Path and paused at one of the many bridges that arched across the water, leaning elbow to elbow on the railing to admire the boats and their passengers.

"Let's cross to the other side," Ryel said.

Priamnor glanced smilingly sideways at the wysard. "Why, Redestens, you astonish me. I had not thought your tastes so advanced."

"What do you mean?"

"Only that to declare a preference for the eastern side of the Jewel Path is to admit oneself fondest of … pleasures unsanctioned on the Steppes, let us say. But many are the devotees of Atlan who ply back and forth across the canal, and if you wish to be so adventurous—"

Ryel pushed away from the railing, glad that his mask concealed his confusion. "I need a drink. Let's go back."

All along the Jewel Path they stopped time and again to sip wine, sample delicacies, and applaud the songs and acrobatics of street entertainers. Many times they traded chat with other maskers—some of them Priamnor's former companions in revelry, as the Sovran later divulged. Courtly and suggestive and lively was that converse, most often concluding with an interlocutor holding out a pretty box of rich workmanship filled with gilded or silvered sweetmeats, inviting the two friends to take a few dainties by way of remembrance.

"What are these?" Ryel asked after the first such incident.

Priamnor tossed one in his mouth, savoring the taste. "Cimrist drops. Derived from mandragora, but not quite as strong or lasting. I'd forgotten how good they are. Go on, try them—it's considered uncouth to refuse."

In time Ryel found himself in a bodily state he'd never before experienced, one that alarmed him; and he was glad to feel Priamnor's arm linked in his, anchoring him to earth.

"I don't think I can stand anymore," he murmured.

"Then sit." And Priamnor gently pushed Ryel down into one of the shaded marble benches under the avenue of trees, and sat next to him. "Better now?"

"No."

Priamnor laid his arm across Ryel's shoulders, soothingly. "Rest, and watch the world float past."

"The world's not floating, it's spinning."

The Sovran laughed. Beneath the jewels of his mask his teeth were like yet another row of pearls, brilliantly white in his sun-bronzed face; beneath the silk his body was slim and strong and warm. The wysard remembered those words Priamnor had let fall about pleasure with males, and for a moment tried to envision the possibility of it—but he could not, any more than he could comprehend the pangs of childbirth that many of those worshippers in Demetropa's temple must have endured. But he could only too easily imagine pleasure with women, the delight Priam had known countless times. Kisses like the ravenous eating of ripe fruit, embraces that wrestled forth delirium and outcry—he knew it all. In Markul he had read every kind of book forbidden in the World, to train his senses; read coldly and with studious application, never surrendering to lust save in dreams, and even then only when he was at his weakest. But now the World wrapped him in seduction unbearably strong, and he longed to fling himself upon the night, clasp it in his naked arms, drive all of his being into it.

Priam's hand on his shoulder patted reassurance. "Cimrist is disorienting, the first time. But you'll get used to it."

"I've taken cimrist before," Ryel said, moving free of the touch. "I've taken every drug you can think of. Every drug there is."

"Then perhaps you'll better appreciate a different order of sensation. The Garden of Dreams awaits us; come."

"I'm not as hot for bed-sport as you think," the wysard replied, more roughly than he'd meant, and sorry just as soon; but Priam only laughed.

"Aren't you? I had not thought to be, either." His smile faded then, and behind the golden mask his eyes took on a glint Ryel had not seen before, a brooding look of revery and hunger. "But the Heaven has its ways." And without another word he rose, and made the wysard do the same, and the two set off down the Jewel Path once again.

They entered the Street of Sighs, and halted before a small but lovely house of pink marble, its columns amorously wrought. No ladies waited in flowery ambush on the roof, but Ryel could hear laughter and music, more sweet and enticing with every step he climbed.

Cool and pleasant it was on the rooftop of the Garden of Dreams, among bowers graced with rare blooms and voluptuous statuary, lush vines tendriling over silver trellises, and lamps glimmering like stars; ravishing harmony added further sweetness to the perfumed air. Ladies and gallants wandered together among the gardens, or whispered under the trellises, or half-reclined on deep cushions and carpets at low tables laden with porcelain dishes full of spiced dainties and rare fruit, crystal ewers sparkling with noble wines and liquors, silver bowls of massed flowers, enameled dishes heaped with cimrist-drops.

But richest of these sights was the bevy of courtesans that made a fragrant sparkling cloud of butterfly-winged masks and gossamer robes and flickering downy fans. The ladies' gowns were all but transparent, baring smooth shoulders and arms and otherwise disclosing exquisite voluptuous forms, nakedness all the more enticing for being veiled as if by filmy layers of soft-colored mist that a breath might dissipate. Their fragile elaborate masks were like ethereal wings hovering over their intricately-dressed hair and painted features, and their different races made an intriguing contrast of color and form, an exotic blend of mood and clime.

As the wysard and the Sovran admired the beauties around them, another lady bustled up, a lady no longer young but gaudily defiant of the fact, clearly the mistress of the house. Her overpainted eyes peered closely at Ryel and Priamnor through the slits of her virginal visor, assessing first their faces, then their garb. Although she seemed not sure of the former, the latter decided her to the utmost courtesy. "My honored lords, all the beauties of the Garden of Dreams are at your beck, impatient to entertain you. Shall I select your company, or have you some particular nymphs in mind?"

"We wish to speak only with Belphira Deva," Priamnor replied. "That is, if she is still an ornament of this house, and is not at present engaged."

The bawd—for so Ryel privately named her—gave a forced smile. "Lady Belphira indeed dwells in this place, my lord, and is its glory. I confess surprise that one so seemingly at home in the Heaven should be unaware. Perhaps it's best to further inform you that she is not one of Atlan's ardent votaries, but a tiraktia with the voice of an angel, and accustomed to the greatest courtesy—and generosity."

Priamnor inclined his head. "We will disappoint her in neither, Madame. I give you my hand on it." Which he straightway did, after first filling his palm with gold coins.

Pocketing the money with a profound curtsey, the lady of the house led Priam and Ryel to a private bower, and gave orders to her servants waiting in readiness. At her word a low table was instantly spread with candles, and wine, and spiced confections, and surrounded by silken cushions. Then with many compliments the lady departed to receive another party of masked adventurers.

Priamnor leaned toward the wysard's ear. "So. Are we in Heaven yet?"

Even as he spoke, the fairest of all the courtesans of the Garden of Dreams approached them, formed like a goddess and clad in purest white adorned with pearls and diamonds, her half-mask's snowy plumes trembling as she rested her eyes on Priam. Clearly her blood was Northern, to judge from the dark green of her eyes, the deep heavy gold of her hair. But the painting that colored her eyelids, cheeks and lips made Ryel think of the statue of Diara in Priamnor's atrium, of borrowed hues conferring feigned life on dead white marble.

Priamnor looked long upon her, and bowed deeply. "I am fortunate indeed to address Belphira Deva, the celebrated queen of the Diamond Heaven."

The lady gazed on him as if stunned, and her reply came slowly. "I am honored by your compliment, most gentle lord. And what am I permitted to call you?"

He did not reply at once, clearly rapt with the sight of her. "Diomenor, by your leave."

She tilted her head at that name. "Diomenor. I might have erred and called you Atlantion, my lord. I thank you for the correction. And what of your friend?"

Ryel bowed. "Redestens, my lady."

Belphira's delicate brows arched behind the mask. "Your name is most ill-omened," she said to Ryel. "Redestens was a sorcerer, my lord, as cold and reasoning as his friend Diomenor was unruly and insatiable. He would never have willingly entered this Heaven's gates."

Priamnor laughed. "I forced him to. Have we permission for more converse with you, my lady?"

"As much as you wish," Belphira replied. But it seemed her voice trembled.

They seated themselves, the men reclining among the cushions, and the lady sitting in the graceful attitude of royal ease. She poured out wine for them both, and Priam raised his glass before he drank.

"To all of your beauties, Belphira Silestra."

The lady bowed her head amid a quivering of plumes. "This is a glad meeting, my lord Diomenor."

Priam met her regard with equal tenderness. "I have traveled far to see you, my lady."

"You have indeed," she replied. "But that distance is not measured in miles."

Ryel had known from the first that Belphira was no ordinary woman. Looking upon her, he was keenly aware that the Art slept within her, very strong. Since his entry into the Diamond Heaven Ryel had felt an uneasy ambivalence, wonder warring with distaste. Much as he admired the beauty of Almancar's courtesans, his Steppes heritage would not allow him to forget that these women were, for all their opulence and sophistication, prostitutes who had lain with countless men, lavishing the same blandishments on all, yet loving none; soulless creatures who submitted their delicate bodies to the lust of the highest bidder. But Belphira was inviolate and immune, chaste as a white rose amid the sultry blooms of the Dream Garden. As she poured more wine and offered delicacies and daintily quartered fruits, Ryel noted her double-handedness, that proved his intuitions true.

Priam dealt Ryel a little nudge, jarring him from his revery. "Among her infinity of arts, Lady Belphira has the gift of divination. She can reveal to you all that you are. Do you wish to hear?"

Ryel knew that hesitation would seem churlish. "Tell me who I am, my lady," he said, half dreading the answer.

Lady Belphira fixed her emerald gaze on the wysard, and it seemed she looked into his very soul. "Like your friend Diomenor you have journeyed far, Redestens," she said at last. "Yours are the Inner Lands of the Steppes. I know it by your accent, despite your absolute mastery of the palace tongue. As I have read, there are young men of the Inner Steppes, the Rismai principally, who vow to forswear all soft dealings and to devote their lives to war—I feel that you are one of those."

Priamnor shook his head. "My friend has never fought in battle, fair one."

"Ah, but there is combat far more bitter than that of sword against sword," Belphira said. "The struggle of heart against mind, of self against world, is unending war to some; and there are greater struggles still, in which men render up their lives for reasons beyond love and hate. Such a warrior I sense in you, my lord Redestens."

Ryel looked into the lady's eyes, and saw great understanding there, and wonderful gentleness. Deeply moved, he took Belphira's hand, and would have touched his brow to it; but he remembered where he was, and carried it to his lips instead. "I am no lord, most fair."

She smiled. "In some city, surely, you are a great one."

"In that City you would be a lady far greater," the wysard replied.

Priamnor looked from Belphira to Ryel, a glint of something very close to jealousy in his jewel-colored eyes. "I well recall our first meeting, my lady," he said. "At the palace of the Sovran Agenor during his sindretin, the great celebration of his fiftieth birthday."

"It was glorious," Belphira said, her eyes lighting with reminiscence. "Masses of flowers and lights, the most excellent music and dance, the rarest delicates and wines. Laughter and talk in every one of the world's languages, it seemed."

Priamnor's gaze also glowed. "And celestial singing, because yours was the voice that sang. Of all Destimar you were chosen, for that art of yours."

Belphira lightly waved away the compliment. "I must contradict you, my lord. I believe I was selected because the Prince of Barrad is rumored to be my father, rest be to his shade, and he was brother to the Sovran Agenor's second consort, Lys of Ralnahr."

"Then it's only fitting that you made a queen's entrance, with six strong Zallans like night made flesh carrying your chair. You were gowned in ivory silk crimped in a thousand pleats, and your arms and throat were bare, save for Sindrite emeralds and Zinaph pearls. Instead of elaborate braidings and pinnings, your bright hair flowed loose; and most ensorceling of all, your incomparable beauty was unmasked. I was enthralled, and when you sang, I was enslaved. My recollection of that night has never faded."

At the Sovran's praises Belphira colored deeply, and only half smiled, and looked away. "Nor have my own memories diminished … even though the rest of me has been less fortunate."

"You have not changed a day, my lady," Priamnor said. "But I still recall the night with some anger, because of the insult offered you by that unmannerly brute, Guyon Desrenaud."

The lady flushed, suddenly and with vehemence. "Lord Guyon never meant insult."

"He became your lover," Priam said, now with an edge of rancor.

Belphira inclined her head in slow assent. "He did. But that was long ago. And Guy Desrenaud was my first love, and my last—until you came into my life. These past four years we have not met, you and I, but in that time I have taken no other admirers, choosing instead to entertain the guests of this house with my singing alone."

Priamnor, although very evidently pleased with Belphira's words, still seemed not entirely satisfied by them. "Tell me about that night in the Sovran's palace, my lady. Tell me what made you favor that ill-bred Northern lout."

"Why would you wish to know, my lord?" she asked.

"To learn if he still has a hold on your heart."

The lady looked down. "He did once, and strongly. But that was before he served in Hallagh's wars, and became the lover of that land's ruler, the Domina Bradamaine. Before he became the famous Starklander."

At that name Ryel caught his breath. "Starklander?"

Belphira stared at him. "The name seems to excite you, Redestens."

"Because it's…because it sounds so strange," Ryel replied, dissembling his emotion by reaching for more wine; but it took all his concentration to hold the delicate porcelain bottle steady.

Belphira intercepted the bottle with deft accustomed grace and filled Ryel's glass. "Did you dwell in the North, you would not think the name an odd one," she replied. "Among the Northern nations Starkland is a sobriquet for the Ralnahrian highlands, in recognition of the dour toughness of the folk who dwell there, amid crags and cold. In recent years Lord Guyon gained fame in the neighboring realm of Hryeland, where he became legendary for his bravery and generalship in the army of the Domina Bradamaine. But his young manhood was spent at Ralnahr's royal court, as the chosen friend of Prince Hylas, son of King Niall. He came to Almancar as Hylas' interpreter at the Sovran's sindretin, and thus fate threw us together."

"I need to learn--I mean, I wish very much to hear the story of that meeting," Ryel said to Belphira.

She stared at him, astonished by his tone, but to the wysard's grateful relief Priam spoke next. "I too would be glad to learn the entire story from your own lips, my lady."

Belphira bowed her head in assent, but she looked away; and she replied slowly, her green eyes gazing far.

"I see him even now."

Chapter Nine

Lord Guyon had drawn Belphira's eye at once, for amid the magnificent attire of all the other guests he made a strange and striking contrast. Indeed, the courtesan had never in her life seen anyone more oddly dressed, or more carelessly—nor, she had to admit after the fact, with more fascination. A black and white Shrivrani headcloth concealed everything of his face save for the eyes, and a worn brown desert cloak half-hid his travel-beaten black Northern riding-gear. But the eyes were most arrestingly piercing, and the rusty garments sat close to a form remarkable for its height and perfection of shape. Nevertheless, it was a singular costume for a sindretin guest, almost insolently negligent, and the Sovran glared it up and down, and demanded who had allowed into the palace a ragged aliante. At this insult Lord Guyon's eyes blazed behind the Shrivrani cowl, for in the tongue of Destimar an aliante was a soldier of fortune of the lowest kind—one that would kill for a crust of bread, sell himself to any master and then as lightly betray him.

"'Aliante I may someday be, but never yours, Agenor Dranthene,' the tall Northerner had replied, angrily prideful. He spoke in perfect High Almancarian only a little slurred by drink, the subtle intonations so much at variance with his rough aspect that everyone began to whisper. But the murmured surprise turned to silent amazement when with abrupt defiance the seeming mercenary tore away the concealing headcloth, letting it fall about his shoulders.

"'You speak to Guyon de Grisainte Desrenaud, Earl of Anbren," he said to the Sovran. And Belphira had listened as if to proud music, unable to take her eyes from his face.

"As you may be aware, my lords," she said to Priamnor and Ryel, "in Almancar physical beauty is considered a visible sign of the gods' continuing presence among men. As I looked on Guyon Desrenaud I could not help but feel holy awe and wonder. He was just turned of twenty-four years old, very tall, and wonderfully well made. His tawny hair was cropped close to his head, drawing all attention to his face, and never before, even in my city so famed for the beauty of its denizens, had I seen features more striking. Pure highland Ralnahrian they were, of the finest cast. They had not known a razor for several days, but the beard-stubble in no way obscured their noble harmony. The eyes were full of intelligence wary and stern—dark celadon as a winter sea were they colored, acute and steady as a hawk's, turbulent and cold as they braved the Sovran's rage. And I marveled; but as I looked more closely my wonder transmuted like gold to iron, and I thought of the wild storm that shakes and lights the heavens with burning bolts, the delicate-limbed envenoming spider, the lustrous fruit whose one taste slays.

"The face mirrors the soul, and often we find beauty of spirit glowing bright beneath features otherwise uncompelling; Prince Hylas' looks were of that kind. But too often still we see beauty of flesh that fully knows its worth and is made proud thereby, and disdainful, and even cruel; or yet more sadly, beauty spoilt and used by excess, and rendered worse than foul. Such was Guyon Desrenaud's, and I hated the self-conceit that cankered his lips' curve, the dissolute slackness that debauched the firm perfection of the features, the bitter livid rims of those wintry eyes—flaws scarce perceptible to the world, perhaps, yet glaring vile to me.

"I did not know then that Lord Guyon was in mourning for the woman he had loved with all his heart, and in his grief had turned to bad courses, seeking to kill the pain within him by wearing out his body in riot and disorder. The Countess Sandrine de Tresk had been one of the wittiest and most learned and gentlest-souled of the Ralnahr court, a faithful wife to her unkind lord; and Desrenaud had worshipped her with pure adoration. But the countess died in childbed, leaving him all but deranged with grief; and his shorn hair and black clothes at Agenor's sindretin were tokens of his desolation."

Belphira paused awhile, in meditative revery. "I will never forget how strange it was to hear the palace language of Almancar in the mouth of this man—to listen to its difficult elegances perfectly uttered, with only the faintest traces of Northern tang and Sindrite brandy, by one so apparently a stranger to any civilization. The kingdom of Ralnahr is distant and small, and fluency even in common Almancarian is not expected of its court, whose wonted tongue is Hryelesh, the trade-language of the Northland. Therefore Lord Guyon's mastery was doubly surprising, and I wondered how and why he came by his knowledge.

"Then by chance our eyes met, and in that moment he threw me a glance that froze my blood with its scorn. Suddenly I saw myself through his storm-colored eyes—saw an empty-headed bedizened doll smiling blankly as she was borne in like a master-cook's fluffy dessert, cloying and insipid. A garish bauble to be chaffered for and used at pleasure, maybe pulled to pieces, by anyone willing to meet the price required. A mindless child I saw, devoid of volition, ignorant of all hardship, empty of any passion. And I further realized that Desrenaud was a man made up of self-will and strong desires, hardened by rough upbringing and aged beyond his years, rankling with old sorrows and recent grief—a man whose entire existence had run entirely counter to mine, whose contempt dismayed me and whose strength I envied…and whose desolation of spirit I pitied with all my heart.

"At that moment the Sovran requested me to sing for the guests. I chose a love-ballad of ancient times, and sang as I had never sung in my life, all of my heart poured into every word. And as I sang, I felt Desrenaud's gaze like an inexorable hand under my chin, and I looked up amid my first tears ever shed in shame or pain only to find his winter-eyes as wet as mine.

"How long we remained thus electrically enmeshed I have no idea. But then all at once he pushed through the listening throng and dropped to the ground before me, wrapping his arms around my skirt, pressing his forehead against my knees as a supplicant does a ruler or a god in the old tales. An inexplicable act of sheer madness—and yet I did not find it so, any more than I heard the outrage of the guests. The world had fallen away from him and me, sequestering us in a sphere of flame. For the first time in my life I comprehended the full force of male strength, the depth of male longing—and all I could feel in return was terror and hunger. I had drunk wine, and my wits swam; I would have given all my other lovers' gifts and fortunes for a single kiss of Lord Guyon's mouth. But I had only enough time to caress his close-shorn hair, whispering that I knew, I knew—yet I could never have explained what I knew, or how…"

Belphira halted, fetching her breath with trembling lips. In that interval of silence Priamnor spoke, his voice hard.

"I remember the fellow's insolence. Had I been armed, I would have cut the ruffian down."

At those words Belphira smiled as her inward eyes beheld the past. "The Rei of Zalla very nearly did."

The Sovran of Destimar nodded with the same memory, but with a smile very different from Belphira's. " He would only too gladly have run Desrenaud through with that evil-looking diamond-hilted dagger of his. But you would not allow it—would you, my lady? No, you needs must fling yourself in front of that Northern churl and dare the Rei to strike."

Belphira saw herself in that remembrance, and laughed. "I admired the Rei's courage, although I deplored his action."

"It wasn't courage Akht Mgbata showed. It was devotion," Priam said. "I don't doubt the Rei would still murder Lord Guyon for your sake—and that you would still prevent him."

"I very well might." Belphira gave Priamnor a near-teasing smile as she turned to Ryel and continued her narration. "Only the pleadings of Prince Hylas kept Lord Guyon from prison, and perhaps worse. He was bodily thrown out of the sindretin, and forbidden ever again to enter the palace."

"But he found his way to the Diamond Heaven," Priamnor said, grudging now.

Belphira met Priam's rancor levelly, with no discomfiture whatever. "Yes, my lord. He found his way to this place…and to me. But before you condemn either me or him, you should know that I was no easy conquest. He did not want me to be. I did not want to be. He wooed me in a hundred different ways, but always with worship. And I, who unlike him had never before known love, accepted his homage with delight—and terror. For love is a tremendous thing, if real. There is no emotion more strong or lasting. The deepest hatred can waver in the light of reason, or fade with time, but the deepest love knows no reason, and is deathless."

Ryel listened awed, and even Priam seemed moved instead of angered. Belphira continued, her voice soft.

"It was strange, to be surrounded by the Diamond Heaven's pleasures, yet to remain chaste. To play at courtship as if it were an elaborate endless game. Strange, yet inexpressibly sweet." Her beauty clouded, then. "But ours was not a harmless paradise, for there was one constantly watching us, who could never comprehend any feelings save the most vile."

In a few words she explained. Among Prince Hylas' entourage there had been a rude puritanical lordling named Derain Meschante, notorious as a stern hater of all things fleshly. He would steal into the Diamond Heaven to berate the courtesans and their clients for what he considered their sins, using language and actions both rough and foul. Again and again he was expelled, only to return again and again.

"He always wore rented finery," Belphira said, not disguising her contempt. "There are many shops outside the Heaven's gates that provide such. It disguised him well enough for him to constantly evade detection. Were not my dislike so strong, I would have pitied him, for he could never comprehend pleasure or know joy, but always despise and mistrust all that was beautiful. And his loathing of Lord Guyon was strongest of all his hates. Thus it fell out that when one night Meschante again sneaked into the Heaven to quarrel and condemn, he and Lord Guyon came to blows, here in this very place."

Priamnor's mouth tightened. "Brawling in the pleasure-district is a capital offense."

Belphira nodded. "True. But the punishment is very seldom carried out, especially if wealth and rank intercede. Prince Hylas pleaded for the lives of both Guyon and Meschante, and his request was granted—on the condition that the two enemies never again enter the Heaven, and never again visit Destimar. But before Lord Guyon departed, he bought my freedom at ruinous cost, and I joined him as part of Prince Hylas' entourage when it returned to Ralnahr."

"I remember," Priamnor said, his umbrage undisguised. "You were gone for years."

"Two years only," Belphira replied. "I was glad to return to my native land. It was sweet to breathe the sharp air of the highlands, and feel the caress of snow on my face."

In Ralnahr she had become one of Queen Amaranthe's ladies-in waiting, and soon afterward she and Lord Guyon were betrothed by sanctioned rites, and passed from courtship to love in all its fullness even as a leaf-sheathed bud becomes a bright blossom rich with fragrance. Folk soon began to whisper that a great change had come over wild Guy Desrenaud: that he had given up his rakehell ways and bad companions, and turned his mind to serious matters. He especially studied statesmanship and diplomacy, and with his skill rendered great service to King Niall. All the court admired the change—all save Derain Meschante, who contrived his utmost to come between the lovers and their happiness.

"I loathed Meschante," Belphira said, her soft lips trembling as they formed the despised name. "Loathed his coarseness, his bigotry, the dirty smallness of his mind. And ever as Guyon's reputation for greatness increased, Meschante's hatred grew with it. Fortunately, all unlike Guy, Meschante had no friends—only Prince Hylas, whose kindness to him was little more than pity and forbearance. But the prince had never been strong in health, and soon sickened of a disease the doctors had neither name for nor cure, and died in his twenty-fourth year. Guyon's heart was broken by the death of the prince, who had been to him dearer than a brother. Once again, as it had with Sandrine de Tresk, grief made him desolate and restless, until in the end he could no longer bear it, nor could I help him; for I know well that in the matter of one man's sorrow for another, a woman's sympathy is useless. He left Ralnahr to soldier in the pay of the Domina Bradamaine, fighting in her war against the White Barbarians. Without him I could no longer bear the Northern cold, and returned to this place. He and I have not met again since. That was seven years ago."

She fell silent. After a time Priamnor spoke, his soft voice tinged with rancor.

"You speak great praises of Desrenaud, but he would have lived and died a feckless wastrel had it not been for you. And I can tell that you are holding back some of your story."

"Only because I fear to tire your patience."

"That brute Meschante insulted you. I can tell."

Belphira colored under her mask. "Both in this place and in Ralnahr he called me vile names, yes, to my face and behind my back…but never within Guyon's hearing. To Meschante I was a common prostitute, and it was useless to tell him that in the Diamond Heaven I had been a tiraktia, a singer and a musician able to choose her admirers freely. But he did not hate me quite entirely, I learned all too soon. For hardly had Guyon left Ralnahr than Meschante tried first clumsy flattery, then outright force to gratify the lusts he admitted he had felt since the night of Agenor's sindretin."

"The hypocrite animal. I'll make sure he pays for it, someday," Priamnor said, his voice harsh with cold." His tone gentled, then. "Continue your story, my lady."

"That is all of my tale, dear my lord," Belphira said, softly and evenly save for the slightest tremor. "To end it, I can only say that to have known the love of Guy Desrenaud was the first joy I had ever felt in my life. And until this moment, I had resigned myself to believing it the last."

Despite his sympathy for Belphira's plight, Ryel could not help a thrill of excitement. So I've found one of the two, the wysard thought, his pulse rushing. Surely the mysterious Redbane cannot be far behind. Aloud he said, as calmly as he could, "And does Lord Guyon still soldier in the North?"

With a sigh Belphira shook her head. "No. He had not been but two years in Hryeland when he committed some impardonable act of treason against the Domina, and fled the Barrier in secret. The high rank he had held in the army, the titles and riches conferred upon him by the Domina--all were stripped from him." Her next words were almost a whisper." Rumors have reached me from the North that he no longer lives."

Ryel remembered his father's words, uttered in Priam's voice. Had Guyon Desrenaud been dead, surely Edris would not have spoken of him. Reaching out, the wysard touched Belphira's hand. "There is always hope, my lady," he said.

"I will be glad to believe you." Returning Ryel's gentle pressure, Belphira looked toward the mirror of the moon. As she gazed, bright silver welled up in her eyes and spilled down beneath her mask's spangled edge. But then she remembered the place she was, and the men she spoke to. Instantly she dried her eyes, and smiled once more.

"I entertain you very badly, my lords Diomenor and Redestens. Let us turn the talk to some other matter. All the news in this city is of the prophet Michael, who in his loathing of the flesh sounds even worse than Meschante. What are your thoughts concerning him?"

"Tell us yours first, my lady," Ryel said.

Belphira smiled wryly. "I think Michael knows full well how much black rags and bare feet become him, and I think every rip in his raiment and every smear of dirt on his face are arranged with care and forethought." Her smile faded, then. "And I think he is very, very dangerous. The folk of the Fourth District hang upon his every word, and with reason."

Ryel observed how Priamnor's lips tightened to a line. "Tell me of that, if you would," the Sovran said.

With a sweeping jeweled hand Belphira indicated the brilliant revels going on about them. "Here we are, my lord, amid all that the world can offer in the way of delight," she said. "But at this very moment, little children of both sexes are being unspeakably used in a place scornfully called the Dog's Ward by the rich of this city. And many others are undergoing every kind of perverse torment and humiliation for a few small coins." She gazed upon Priam's face, seeing past the mask. "That surprises you? You did not know?"

"I did not know," Priamnor murmured. Ryel caught all of the pain in those four whispered words, as did Belphira.

"Few among the elect of this city know of the Fourth District's ills," the beautiful courtesan said. "Few, save for those who take base advantage of them. The new Sovran of Destimar would do well to learn the truth."

"I'll make certain that he does," Priamnor replied.

"I believe you will," Belphira said. At that moment a servant approached, and whispered something in her ear, at which she nodded, and rose to her feet. "I have talked far too long, and forgotten an appointment," she said as the servant departed. "I am expected in one of this house's banqueting-rooms, to sing for the guests."

Priamnor nodded, but reluctantly. "I am well aware of your fame as Almancar's most excellent musician, my lady; and I see that your cithern lies nearby. It would greatly please me were you to favor us with a song before you part."

Belphira met his eyes, and for a long moment neither of them spoke. "Nothing on earth is more precious to me than your pleasure, dear my lord," she murmured at last. And she took up her instrument and tuned it, during which all around her grew silent in expectation; then she ran her jeweled fingers over the strings in a silvery intricate preamble. At that sound, it seemed the entire company of that place fell silent; and when she sang, it was in the sweetest voice Ryel had ever heard.

"He came in the springtime,

In conquering might;

I yielded my lands to him

Without a fight.

He came in the summer,

In fire and in pride;

He burnt up my gardens,

My deep fountains dried.

He came in the autumn,

In rain and rude mirth,

He withered my orchards,

Sowed salt in my earth.

He came in the winter,

In snow and in frost,

Left all my lands empty,

And all my heart lost."

When the song ended, everyone within earshot murmured in applause; but Ryel was too moved to do anything but gaze at Belphira in wonder.

Priamnor found his voice, a little unsteadily. "Was that song of your making, my lady?"

With a soft tremor of wings she inclined her head. "It was, dear my lord."

"It was very beautiful," the Sovran replied. "But melancholy."

"Forgive me," she said. "I should have better diverted you."

"Ravishment surpasses diversion, my lady. For music so divine, this poor token is but small," Priamnor said; and as he spoke he took from his finger his only ring. "But it may serve as a charm to open a door."

Accepting the jewel, Belphira contemplated it silently, seeming to think now of joy, now of sorrow. "One unlocking demands another, lest you later think your generosity ill-advised." With those words she removed her mask, disclosing a face of empyrean beauty. "Such am I now, still unaided by the surgeon's art. But five years ago some thought me fair."

"They were very wise who did," Priamnor said, dwelling on the dark green eyes, the rich hair of amber gold, the noble yet sensuous sweetness of every feature. "And they have yet more reasons now." Taking both her hands in his, he touched his lips to them, but his eyes as they again met hers mingled misgiving with desire. "Five years ago I thought myself a man. But now … "

His voice faltered. She gazed up at him, seeing far past the mask. "This moment was enough," she whispered. "And it will always be, whatever comes after." She freed her hands from his, but only to strip off every one of her many rings and cast them down like litter. She slipped the Sovran's jewel onto her finger, and held out her hand to him. "It fits as if made for me."

"Because it was." Taking her hand, Priam drew her to him, and bent to her lips. Their kiss lasted no more than a moment, but promised infinities.

"Come to me. Soon."

He had spoken in a whisper, and Belphira replied as softly. "I will."

*****

Taking their leave of that house, the wysard and the Sovran once more regained the Jewel Path, which had grown more tumultuous now than ever.

"We'll never last the night unless we have some chal," Priamnor said, blinking wine-weary eyes in recognition of a shop-sign. "And here's just the place to find some."

Soon they were sipping celestial brew from vaporing delicate bowls at a pavilion overhanging the canal, somewhat retired from their fellow revelers likewise seeking a respite from excess.

Priamnor swirled his chal-cup, studying the jade-colored liquid. "Perhaps we left the Realm of Joy too soon? You must have expected something more than conversation from Atlan's fairest nymphs."

Ryel shook his head. "I had all I wished."

"You are a very unusual person, if that be true. None of the ladies charmed you in any way?"

"One did, and deeply. But she made her preference for my companion only too clear."

The Sovran smiled, seeming to muse. "In my years of seclusion I never forgot the beauty of Belphira Deva's singing. I used to hear it in dreams." He looked up, meeting the wysard's eyes. "I loved her, Ryel. Tonight I realized I still do. But I was once able to show my feelings … entirely."

The wysard hardly knew how to reply. "From what I sense in Belphira, the spirit is of far greater significance to her than is the flesh."

Priam gave an ironic laugh. "She is a woman, ilandrakis. A woman of great beauty and strong passions. He that would win her heart—and all the rest—must be a man in every sense." Before Ryel could speak, Priamnor continued, seemingly off the subject. "I had forgotten my father's sindretin. But now I recall that Guyon Desrenaud was remarkably well-made, with an animal virility I remember being jealous of, boy that I was." He swirled the chal meditatively. "Belphira has never forgotten him. But I must. My present concern is for the people of the Fourth District, and the terrible degradations they suffer. It shames me that I never knew until now of their troubles until Belphira's mention of them. No wonder they are discontented, and readily give ear to the fanatic Michael."

"He will only become more powerful," Ryel replied. "You have never entered the Fourth District?"

"Never," Priamnor said. "But I will, and soon."

"To see it truthfully, you should go in disguise."

"Wise advice. I'd be glad of more of your counsel—and I'm sure you think I need it."

Ryel shrugged. "Well, you have, after all, lived an unusually privileged life…"

"Sheltered, you would say."

"In some respects, yes. You'll need to be careful in your choice of advisers. What you most require is an able chief minister, someone you can trust entirely."

Priamnor nodded grave assent, but then he smiled. "I've already found one. But I warn you, you'll have your hands full."

Ryel started, knocking over his chal-cup. Patiently the Sovran of Destimar poured the wysard's cup full again, set the chaltak aside, and continued in all seriousness. "I had planned to ask you after tonight, but why not now? Stay here in my city, Ryel Mirai. Stay, and take your place as my closest counselor. We will rule Destimar together, even as Diomenor and Redestens ruled the imperial realm of Kasrinagal."

The wysard looked away, glad of his mask. "You honor me far too greatly, most exalted."

"Don't call me that. You are more exalted still, in a City far greater than mine. But answer."

Deeply embarrassed, Ryel cast about for a fit reply. "The honors you would confer upon me are befitting only to one of your family, most ex—"

"Never call me that again. You are of my family."

Ryel froze all over; froze and burnt. "Not possible."

"Try to believe that after you hear these facts," Priamnor said. "Shortly after we met, you let fall that your maternal grandmother's surname was Stradianis. As it happens, her name figures in the Dranthene archives."

The wysard could only blink. "But why?"

"You may have heard that your grandmother the Countess Ysandra was a great beauty in her youth. My great-uncle Aristanes was her most ardent admirer, and continued to be so even after her marriage to Ulrixos Stradianis, who was a man in years at the time, and rumored incapable of siring children."

The wysard colored hot. "That proves nothing."

"Perhaps. But it might mean that we are cousins. Would you regret belonging to the Dranthene line?"

"With all my heart would I welcome it; but never at the cost of my own family's dishonor."

Priamnor smiled. "That is the puritanical Steppes speaking, not gentle Almancar."

"What other proof do you have of our kinship, besides the archives?"

"Evidence of a highly specific and physical nature," Priam replied. "Certain characteristics of the Dranthene bloodline breed true in every generation. In the archives it is further recorded that when your mother was one year old, she was presented at the Temple of Demetropa, as are all well-born children of Almancar. The priestess who examined her observed that the little girl had several traits peculiar to the Dranthene."

Ryel swallowed. "And what were they?"

"The eye color, first of all," Priam replied. "They had a hint of violet not common anywhere in Destimar save with my family. You have those eyes, Ryel."

The wysard glanced away. "That isn't enough."

"You might not have noticed the shape of your mother's ears, but this configuration is pure Dranthene." And reaching out, Priamnor gently flicked one of the wysard's lobes. "Mine are exactly similar. More significant still, there's your response to Transcendence. None but the Dranthene are physically affected by the scent. A final conclusive test is severe intolerance for cats—all the Dranthene are deathly allergic to those animals. None are permitted in the Diamond Heaven, but I half wish there were a cat nearby now, so that I might test you and be sure—"

"I'm glad there's not," Ryel said. "I'd sneeze myself silly."

Priam stared open-mouthed, and Ryel laughed, and then they were both laughing. The young Sovran reached out, and the wysard met him halfway.

"I knew it from the start," Priamnor said as they embraced. "Knew it from that first look."

"I felt it, too," Ryel replied, his heart full.

"Then you'll stay."

"I must," the wysard said. "You need me now more than you could ever imagine."

Priam drew away to study Ryel's face, startled by the sudden gravity of his tone. "What do you mean?"

"The prophet Michael is no mere demagogue, Priam. He serves the daimon that took your sister captive."

The young Sovran's smile vanished, and he grayed under his pearl-dust. "But then he is … "

Ryel nodded. "A wysard, even as I am—a lord adept of Elecambron, with strength to equal my own. His Master has sent him here to incite first discontent in Almancar, then insurrection throughout the realm."

The young Sovran of Destimar grew pale. "Then this land is in great danger."

"Not just Destimar, Priam. The World."

"Then what help is there?"

At that despairing question Ryel put his hand on his kinsman's wrist. "There's me," he said. "Me and my Art, as far as both can aid you."

Touch and words both calmed and heartened. "Ah, cousin. What a hollow fiction the demigod Redestens seems compared to you. But come, let us return at once to the palace, that you may tell me more."

They left the chal-shop and once again became part of the reveling crowd on the Jewel Path. But as they made for the Temple of Atlan's broad steps, Ryel halted, remembering words said earlier.

"What of your promise to the ladies at the Garden of Dreams?"

The Sovran's mouth quirked half-exasperated beneath the mask's edge. "I had forgotten them. But I gave my word, after all…and I admit I feel like celebrating our kinship, dire though your news has been. Knowing the ladies of that place, it's best we go forearmed. Here's the shop where I used to buy little gifts for my fair friends of the quarter--I see it's still flourishing. Let's halt a moment."

Thanks to their manner and their garb, they were welcomed exceedingly, shown the best wares available, and left freighted with pretty vials of lip-rouge, inlaid boxes holding exquisite sweetmeats, painted ivory-sticked fans and ornate silver hairpins—exquisitely crafted and dauntingly costly, all of it.

"Where do we put these things?" Ryel asked.

"In our sleeves," Priamnor replied, adroitly demonstrating the procedure. "Heaven-robes have their practical side."

The two friends were welcomed eagerly at the Realm of Joy, where the rooftop was crowded with revelers far less decorous than those of the Dream Garden. The Sovran and the wysard were greeted with smiles and embraces, and their pretty gifts increased the already eager attentions of the fairest. Soon they were drawn into a tumultuous dance, with laughing courtesans on either hand. Sometime during the dance Ryel was wooed away by yet another beauty to join in a glass of frangin. As he sipped the liquid green fire he watched Priamnor, who had called for a somewhat slower tune and now led the others in a stately Almancarian zarvana, partnered by the fairest lady of the house.

"Ah, but he is beautiful," breathed the girl at Ryel's side.

Ryel could only nod. But it was not of Priam he thought. He set his glass aside, that suddenly weighed his hand like lead. Dagar lurked in the darkness, preventing all remembrance of Diara, but feelings took the place of memory a thousandfold. Ryel felt the same torment he had known that night in the desert outside the walls of Almancar, after the vision of the Sovrena had left him. The same helpless, aching need.

The courtesan seemed to comprehend, and took his hand. "Come with me," she whispered. "There is someone who most deeply desires to speak with you."

She led Ryel from the rooftop down the stairs and into a wide columned corridor dimly lit, lined with portals behind which issued sighs and murmurs that made the wysard shudder and burn.

"Here," the lady said. And she opened a door, motioning Ryel inside.

Ryel wavered on the threshold. "What awaits me?"

Soft plumes brushed his face as the lady murmured in his ear. "The fulfillment of your desire, my lord. Stay and make ready, and it will soon come to you."

She departed, closing the door. Ryel found himself in an apartment furnished with flaunting magnificence gleaming in the light of countless candles, its great bed a mirrored altar to lubricity. On a marble table nearby were a ewer and basin, and Ryel filled the silver vessel, then pulled off his mask to dash water on his face with both hands, seeking to quench his heat. But the water was scented with a fragrance that crassly counterfeited the transcendent essence of the carnelian vial, and he wiped it from his skin in disgust.

A tickling hand touched his shoulder, light as a spider. Whirling around, he gave a cry. Diara stood before him—Diara the Sovrena of Destimar, masked and robed in the light livery of the Diamond Heaven.

"No," Ryel whispered hoarsely, recoiling from her. "Get away from me."

She smiled and tossed aside her mask, and let her robes fall. Under a single sheer film of gossamer silk her white body glowed like moonlight. Lifting her hands to her head she removed and cast aside the jeweled pins, freeing her dark tresses as she spoke. "Perhaps this guise is more to your liking?"

Ryel's heart beat hard as a memory-flash brought back that night in the desert, outside the walls of Almancar. But still he shrank from her.

"You're not her," the wysard whispered. "You can't be."

She smiled with complacent pride. "It is my good fortune to resemble the Sovrena Diara as closely as would her twin, and by reason of that lucky chance many have sought me, men and women equally ready to face ruin for a night in my arms. I cede my favors now only to tall young braves with wild blood in their veins. I saw you on the edge of the dance and knew you must be mine tonight; these charms that have brought great fortunes to dust shall cost you nothing." She held out her hand as if dropping alms. "Many a one would kill for a single touch of this."

She had an imperious self-assurance, an insolent vanity, utterly unlike the artless charm of the girl she so unsettlingly resembled. Her voice, too, was chill and thin, devoid of Diara's soft music, and no violet lights added heavenly graces to the ice-tinged transparency of her eyes, that were devoid of intelligence, sweetness, or charm. But nevertheless she was beautiful, fair beyond bearing; and Ryel took her hand, and found it warm.

The false Sovrena smiled again, with Diara's lips and a harlot's vanity. "What man would not wish to lie with the paragon of Destimar?"

Ryel looked her up and down, past the shift's transparency; shook his head. "The Sovrena's ankles and waist are more slender, and her knees smoother," he said. "Her breasts are somewhat smaller, too; and she has a little mole nearby her navel that you have not." His gaze halted at her face. Her resemblance to Diara was uncanny, yes; but her expression was trivial and petulant, spoiling her beauty entirely, and Ryel could only remember the serene nobility of the Sovrena's features, and eyes that mirrored inner graces.

The fair simulacrum sneered. "Oh, yes. I'm sure you've seen enough of her to know those niceties." And she would have snatched her hand away in spite, but Ryel held it fast.

"You're not her," he said. "It's a good thing you're not."

For a time he stood motionless, feeling her smooth fingers warm his own. Then suddenly he pulled her into his arms, so hard that she gave a little surprised cry of pain; but her cry instantly altered to a laugh, and she clutched the back of his head, crushing her lips against his, thrusting her tongue into his mouth. Locked and reeling they fell onto the bed, and Ryel reached down and clutched the hem of her shift, yanking it upwards as her legs opened under his to clasp his sides, spur the small of his back, grind damp heat into his groin.

As the wysard struggled with his robes and cursed them, somewhere on another world came a great crash and a shouting, and then something even stronger than his lust pulled him away from the girl. Blaspheming daimonically he jerked about, and faced Priamnor, and lost his voice.

But Priamnor had all of his and more. "A house full of women, and you needs must shame my sister? Is that your kinship, dog?

Ryel tore off his mask and threw it down, furious as the Sovran and thwarted too. "You fool, she was more than willing. She—"

Priamnor struck him across the face, sudden and blinding as lightning. "How did you corrupt her? How? Or what sorcerer's drugs did you use?"

Ryel licked the blood from his mouth-corner. It shocked like raw spirit, and he grimaced and spat. "Are you blind? This isn't the Sovrena, but a whore that by chance resembles—"

Another blow, harder and angrier yet. Ryel put his hand to his face. I'm drunk, he thought, tenderly feeling the pain throbbing beneath his fingers. Drunk, and drugged, and ready to kill. And so is he. It's…strange.

He stood up and flung off his Almancarian robe, revealing the Steppes garb hidden by the garish satin. Then he turned to the giggling trollop on the bed. "Reach me my sword."

She tossed it to him, shrieking with harsh laughter that rivaled the ring of steel as Ryel tore the weapon from its sheath. For a moment Priamnor seemed to freeze at the sight of the naked blade, but then he, too, stripped off his mask and drew.

As they circled, watching their chance, Ryel spoke. "You're all wrong about this, cousin."

"Never call me that again, half-blood." Priamnor struck aside Ryel's blade and lunged, but the wysard evaded the thrust with no trouble whatever, and could have taken instant and fatal advantage of the Sovran's loss of balance caused by treacherous trailing silk. But something held him back.

I don't want this to end, he thought. Not just yet.

Something had to take the place of lust, while he was still hot— something just as urgent and insane. This would do beautifully. Priam was the perfect adversary, good but not quite good enough, easy to hold at bay, push aside, beat back. It made the wysard laugh, this risky sarabande fought to the shrill music of a slut's laughter.

"Cut him!" the harlot screamed to Priamnor. "Say this!" And she screamed out a word that clanged like clashed metal. With a raw shout Priamnor repeated the word as his sword shot forward. Razored steel drove deep into the wysard's side in a thrust of amazing pain, and Ryel cried out, his echoing howl throbbed in red waves against his eardrums. Somehow his hand found its own way to the wound, and struggled to wrestle back the blood that broke from around its palm in a flood of slow fire. Instinctively the wysard grunted a staunching-word as he dropped to his knees, head bowed, blind with agony. But all at once the air shut in around him, driving the breath from his body.

"Finish him! " the whore screamed. "Gash his throat!"

With sickening effort Ryel turned toward the bed. In the harlot's shrieking laughing face the eyes were entire black, hard as onyx. Ryel stared and trembled.

"Priam," he panted, choking on the blood in his throat. "Priam, look at her. Only look. Can't you see it's the daimon? Can't you—"

Priamnor Dranthene only snarled in reply, and swung his red-drenched blade aloft in both hands for a killing blow. "You bastard," Ryel whispered. But he was not speaking to the Sovran. Flinging himself forward, he drove his shoulder into Priamnor's knees. The Sovran staggered back, hitting the wall and falling hard.

"Murder!" the false Diara screamed. "The Sovran of Destimar has been killed! Help, someone!"

"Bitch," Ryel hissed. But the bitch's eyes were blue now, and the air had lightened. Momentarily regenerated by a few famished lungfuls, the wysard threw on his flame-colored robe, then yanked the cloak and mask from Priamnor's unresisting body and donned them headlong, and made his escape even as the hallway's many doors began to open and half-clad courtesans and their gallants emerged in every state of confusion and undress.

Once again on the Jewel Path the wysard hesitated, catching his breath through gritted teeth. Some noticed him but only smiled, believing him merely drunk. Golden cloaks and owl-horned masks were common wear at this late hour, and the guards of the quarter would have their hands full trying to search all of them. Ryel edged and excused his way through the crush, ever smiling lest he arouse suspicion; but the jolting throb in his side froze his face into a rictus.

In the courtyard of the Temple of Atlan yet another rout of maskers was assembling for the midnight service, and Ryel struggled past them; inadvertent elbows brought the blood to his eyes, and the heavy redolence of perfumes made him gag. Stumbling down the steps of the temple into the courtyard, he found Jinn waiting. Such was the stringency of Almancar's laws that his saddlebags were untouched; but revelers had twined roses in the mare's mane. Unable to mount, the wysard clung to Jinn's neck, guiding her toward the gardens and a deserted grove with its lanterns still burning. With the help of the gay little lights Ryel found that Priamnor had stabbed him just under the ribs of his right side, deep enough to reach any number of crucial veins and vitals.

"Good work," he muttered. "You'll make a warrior yet, ilandrakis."

He flung aside his mask and lay down in the grass to breathe in the fresh air of the night, staring up at the dainty lamps, unsure if a stray breeze or disorienting agony was making them sway. For the first time since leaving the Aqqar, he missed his City.

I can't heal this, he thought, more than a little amazed at his detachment. All I can do for myself is either ease the pain and bleed to death, or stop the blood and lie here trying not to scream. Not a world of choice. Not a World of hope.

He would have liked to sleep. The night air was warm, the grass soft and fragrant as Diara's hair, sweet against his cheek. But it hurt too much to sleep.

"I was going to stay with you, ilandrakis," he whispered, his eyes afire. "We were going to rule Destimar together. We—"

The air crushed in around him, squeezing like a great snake, and he gasped and strangled as the hated voice crooned in the middle of his brain.

You've made this city too hot to hold you, sweet eyes. Time to escape, while you yet can.

"No," Ryel panted. "I'll talk to Priam, and tell him the truth."

The voice only laughed. He won't listen, beauty. I can assure you he won't—not with the ideas I've put in his pretty head. And at any rate, you haven't time to find him. You're dying. But your healer awaits you at the western gates.

Ryel spat yet more blood. "I'll never get there."

Oh, but you will.

Ryel groaned. "How?"

You know how. Go.

Before Ryel could say or think another word, the air lifted and cooled. Drawing a starved breath, the wysard lay and gathered his will.

I know what to do, he thought, gritting his teeth. I only hope my healer does.

Tightening the wide sash of his Almancarian robe hard over the wound, he whispered the pain-allaying spell. Instantly his blood burst forth, but he felt only its spreading heat as he pushed himself up from the ground. Moving as quickly as he might, he swung into the saddle and muttered the staunching-word. The pain came back like a fresh thrust from a sharper blade, and he groaned. Alternating spells in favor of bleeding when torment made him sway too much, he rode half-senseless through a pale blur of streets and walls, a welter of crowds and voices. The streets began to close in upon him, and the voices called out, offering horrible pleasures. Now and again a painted child with drugged eyes was thrust in his way.

Suddenly a wild shouting, deep and strange, wakened him from his pain-dream.

"Blight is on this city! The corruption of courts, the whoredoms of false Atlan! Blight and doom!"

The ragged black fanatic Michael now stood in the courtyard before the western gates, haranguing the crowd, which was large although the hour was late, because of the caravans making ready to leave or enter the city. Drivers and muleteers, drudgers and toilers stood in a rapt throng, enthralled with every loud mad word.

"Death!" Michael exulted. "Death is upon this city of whores and wastrels! Death upon those gilded degenerates, and their vain idols of the guts and groin! Even as you stand here, torn from a weary bed to sweat and haul, your high nobility swaggers and riots in the whore's quarter—but the Master has compassion on your sufferings, and has taken his first step toward vengeance! Your stripling Sovran Priamnor lies at this moment in some house of lust, senseless from debauchery and worse, far worse!"

Risking the blood-loss, Ryel stunned his pain with the right words, halted Jinn and glared at the grim preacher. Michael suddenly ceased his diatribe, and his empty eyes again met Ryel's. His hard lips parted in a daimon-grin, and his nostrils flared as if he scented blood and liked what he smelled. Dismissing his listeners with a peremptory gesture he approached Ryel, who scarce could keep the saddle, and grinned up at him with teeth white as stars, eyes black as empty space. "Well met, my lord brother."

Michael spoke now in his native tongue, harsh guttural Hryelesh. "Get away from me," Ryel muttered in the Rismai dialect, incapable of any other language.

Amazingly, Michael understood. "All in good time, Steppes gypsy." And the Elecambronian said a single Art-word stronger than any of Ryel's, undoing both spells. Torture and blood alike overwhelmed the wysard, and he reeled as the deep music of Michael's voice engulfed him in velvet hell.

"Take it like a man, Markulit. A mere man, this time."

Drained past all speech, Ryel impotently struck at the grimy hand on Jinn's bridle. With a laughed curse Michael pulled him down and slammed him against Jinn's side, ignoring his gurgles of agony. They were alone now in the shadow of a wall, with no help nearby even if Ryel had had the strength to shout for it.

Hot breath and cruel mockery burnt Ryel's ear while hands irresistibly strong tore open his robes. "So what became of you, gypsy? Wounded in the brothel district were you, brawling for a slut? You shouldn't be where you don't belong, sweet brother of chaste Markul. Where's the pain—here?"

Dirty fingers thrust into Ryel's side, deep into the gash, while the other hand clamped over his mouth and stifled both shrieks and retchings. With inhuman cruelty Michael clutched the wound, wringing the lacerated flesh as he growled spell-words in his throat. Never had Ryel known that kind of pain. It was like burning coals being driven into his body. Dirty wool blackness overcame him and he collapsed, but arms hard and hot as white-forged steel hauled him upright again.

"Thank me, Markulit. You'll yet live, and work the Master's will."

Ryel shuddered and gasped. But suddenly the pain vanished like a rat down a hole. Stunned by his deliverance, the wysard felt himself going limp in that loathed yet imperative embrace, too weak to move or think. His mind emptied dry, and the only things that came to fill its void were Jinn's anxious whickering, the acid scorch of vomit in his throat, rank leanness conferring the merciless essential encirclement of cruel sun-darkened arms, and low-toned music soft with rage, borne on breath wonderfully and bewilderingly sweet.

"Your strength is nothing to mine, Markulit. I could break you like a reed. I begged the Master to take me and use me as He would, but He wants only you—a weakling boy who can't even survive a scratch, much less cure it. But you bear His mark; you are destined for His having, as I am for His service. For my Master's sake I sacrificed that which I most loved, and gladly; but never can I forgive your part in it, Edris' bastard. Never."

"I don't understand."

Michael's voice was thunder, low and terrible. "You'll learn. Oh, you'll learn. Do you still hurt?"

"No."

The arms unlocked, leaving Ryel dizzy and cold. "Get out, then, while you still have time. But first take this, that the Master bade me send you."

And Michael seized Ryel's head in both his hands, kissing his mouth with savage ferocity. At that kiss the wysard again blanked into blackness, but in another moment came to and wildly looked about him. His grim tormentor and savior had disappeared. Ryel leaned against the wall dazed and spent, still scenting the reek of Michael's sweat, tasting the baffling sweetness of that breath, licking the bruises on his lips left by those white teeth. Then he put his hand to his side, dreading the pain that would surely erupt from the touch. But none came. With increasing boldness and disbelief he explored the place where Priamnor had stabbed him, that now betrayed no hurt whatever. Jerking his robes away, he found only a dried red smear where the wound had been. He felt no weakness, despite all the blood he'd lost, and none of that blood had left any stain on his Steppes garments, although his torn flame-colored silken robe was drenched with it.

"By every god." He stroked his side, and found all his flesh smooth and whole. But he had little time to marvel at Lord Michael's cure, for the shouts of the city guard reminded him of that he was still in danger. With all haste he flung off his stained Almancarian finery, then re-mounted as a Steppes horseman spurring toward the gates of the city.

Although only false dawn had broken, the western portal of Almancar was open and teeming with traffic of departing and arriving caravans. Behind him Ryel heard soldiers shouting for the gate-wardens to stop anyone who sought to get through, but Jinn's wild gallop forced all who stood near to leap aside.

A commanding shout rang loud, deep as a death-knell. "Stop that rider! He has killed the Sovran!"

The voice was Michael's. But before anyone could mount and follow, Jinn was scouring the desert road toward the mountains, the night-wind her only rival.

Chapter Ten

Stubby thickset trees covered the foothills of the mountains in clumped groves, and into one of these Ryel plunged for cover. Once hidden he dismounted, throwing himself on the ground and burying his head in his arms, his eyes throbbing.

"Priam," he whispered, his heart's torment sharper than any sword-cut as he remembered the fight, and the fall. "Ah, Priamnor Ilandrakis—"

He rolled over, dry leaves crackling under him. Numbly he contemplated the sky, now beginning to brighten with dawn. For some time he lay distraught, his ideas confused and desperate. Then of a sudden he heard the thud of hoofbeats in the ground at his ear. Sitting up and peering through the branches, he saw that the soldiers had not given up their pursuit, and were coming ever closer to his hiding place. Breathlessly and half without thinking he spoke a word, and then another; and the soldiers drew rein and halted, seeming to dispute among themselves. After some moments' conference they again began their chase, but now they veered away from the wysard, wheeling about toward the Baltaigor pass.

Ryel watched them until only their dust remained, inwardly thanking his Mastery as he blotted his brow with his sleeve. He had never felt more tired. Perhaps if he just rested a little while…

When he awoke, he had no idea how long he'd slept. Less than a couple of hours, from the look of the sun in the heavens, but much longer than that, from the way his body felt. His eyes were all but gummed together, his mouth felt like a cave full of bat droppings, and he was ravenously hungry. Jinn stood by quietly as always, giving him gentle nudges apparently meant to help as he sat up. Having forgotten to fill his chaltak while in Almancar, he had no water, but while searching Jinn's saddlebags he found a small silk bag containing a few pieces of lakh and a blessed little flask of frangin, surely tucked there in secret by Nelora. They made a delicious breakfast, and Ryel soon felt a surge of energy from the tart liquor and the sugary sweets. Inwardly thanking his little sister as he remounted, he began the ascent of Kalima, and the search for Srin Yan Tai.

The Gray Sisterhood loomed in silence, piercing the clouds in their height; deep green were their skirts, snowy and gray their heads. Roads leading to the jewel-mines ran along their lower slopes, already trafficked with carts and workers, but roads, mines and men were no more than stray threads, patches and specks in the hem of Kalima's many-folded robe. Save for the miners, the roads were deserted; clearly caravans and messengers were well-apprised of the mountain-bandits lurking in the heights, and sought paths less perilous—an avoidance that pleased Ryel well, for it would make his journey all the easier.

Taking care to make his way unobserved, Ryel cut across the winding roads until he had left the jewel-mines behind him. The road upward stretched forth deserted, and he might make as much use of it as he wished. But instead he steered Jinn into the trees, giving himself up to the woods. He had no desire to make use of his enchanted mare's swiftness. Instead he needed the solitude, the fresh unhindered growth, the shaded coolness, after Almancar's cloudless heat and endless stir of buy and sell. He needed silence and meditation after the violence of the night before. And most of all he needed fresh green hope after gray despair, for his soul's healing.

This was his first forest. All his life, both in the Steppes and in Markul, he had dwelt on empty land. Now he entered the woods with reverence, as if crossing the threshold of a temple. The trees of the desert surrounding Almancar had been dwarfed and ill-formed, but those of the mountains loomed free of any curse. The great-girthed trunks towered upward, mingling together their high boughs, while at their roots long needles covered the ground and cushioned Jinn's gait to muffled thuds. Fully a hundred yards high were those great trees, and between their first branches and the ground was room enough for a horse and rider to pass with many feet of space to spare. The early sunlight pierced the heavy foliage in glowing shafts, making dappled gold patches on the ground, and the still air breathed a clean wild fragrance of pitch. A brook tumbled past, shimmering in the light, and Ryel leapt down for a much-needed drink. When he'd finally quenched his thirst, he threw water on his face, wishing that he might as easily wash away the excesses and evils of the night before.

Huge formations of stone began to surge up among the trees, and Ryel dismounted and examined one of the outcroppings of rock, pulling himself up to its top and using it as a vantage-point, resting there for a time. Below him the younger sisters of Kalima lay in docile heaps, green save where rock-slides made balding patches on their slopes. Here and there a stream rilled down the heights like silver tracery on heavy green velvet carelessly cast aside. The wind moved among the treetops with the slow undulations of an invisible sea, turning the leaves over as it passed to create pale silvery streaks in the mass of darker green; and like the sea it roared and murmured.

All that day and the next Ryel spent among the trees. He began to climb more than he rode, testing his legs against the unaccustomed steepness of the slope. At night he sat in meditation, wrapped in Edris' cloak and clutching a hot bowlful of chal against the keen air of the mountains. Water was plentiful owing to the many snow-fed streams, and food he had enough, thanks to his mother's insistence—horseman's rations of savory dried antelope and thin wedges of grain-dense bread, only a little crumbled from being wedged into a corner of his saddlebags. Quietly he tended his fire, listening to the furtive scurryings of the night-feeders, the cries of owls, waiting for Dagar's loathed voice to invade his mind like some corrupt ooze. But it did not, and relieved at the deliverance the wysard turned his thoughts to Srin Yan Tai.

Ryel had never met Lady Srin, who had left Markul years before his arrival. Of her skill, however, he had heard and read much. Hers was deep thaumaturgy, dealings with the Outer World that went beyond mere summonings and commands. Like him she had seen the edge of the Abyss and been marred by it, and like his, her eyes were empty black. She was of the Steppes, even as Ryel, but farther to the east and north, in the Elqhiri Kugglaitan. Hers was warrior's blood, high and stark, and she had been in her youth, now long past, a redoubtable fighter. Equally accustomed to grimmest hardship as well as most flagrant luxury had she been, in those days: strong of will as of body, yet beautiful beyond telling, and fond of the delights of the flesh—of wine and mandragora, lovers and gold, dainty food and fine havings. But none of these had been able to satisfy her at any depth, and therefore out of sheer restlessness she had come to Markul in her fiftieth year, riding up in armor of bronze and steel to demand entrance.

Many had watched her from the walls, and one of them had been Edris, who had described the sight in his Book. "A voice like the booming of a bell she had, and black hair down to her waist, fantastically knotted. And when she stripped to enter the City we were all of us amazed, for hers was the body of a girl of twenty, but muscled and strong. Too strong for my taste—too much shoulder and not enough hip and buttock, and breasts like the wrist-shields her people use to ward away arrows, hard as the bronze of her armor."

I'll certainly know her when I see her, Ryel thought. Now if only I can find her.

On the second day the slope steepened even more, and when Ryel again came to the road, he found it shrunk to a mere path. Clearly few if any travelers had made use of the Kalima route for some time. But Ryel noted that a horse and rider had journeyed westward to only a day or so before, riding at a headlong gallop whenever the ground allowed. The imprint of the horseshoes bore a cipher, and Ryel knelt to examine it.

"A messenger of the imperial house of Destimar," the wysard murmured, feeling his voice catch.

He went back into the trees, fleeing the sight of those tracks and the memories they evoked, centering his thoughts on Srin Yan Tai.

"You know someone's looking for you," he said, his eyes shut hard in concentration. "That much I can sense. Now let yourself be found. I have to know—"

Jinn halted so hard she nearly threw him. Lurching out of his trance the wysard scrambled for balance, cursing energetically. Then he saw what Jinn had stopped for, and swore again, breathlessly now.

He had wandered into a hollow set in Kalima's side, into a wondrous place. A fair large green field stretched between two embracing arms of rock, and in the midst of this field was set a lake little more than a pond. In the midst of the lake lay a grassy flowery island perhaps fifty feet across, and in the midst of the island rose a single tree that seemed to Ryel a great slim-wristed hand holding aloft a bubble of cinnabar silk. Every color glowed brilliantly in the clear mountain sunlight of late afternoon, intensifying the scene's unreality. The deliberate fantasy of the place made Ryel smile, and he urged Jinn into the glassy water, that he might cross to the island. But scarcely had Jinn ventured a hoof than the water erupted as if a thousand snakes were fighting to the death therein, boiling hot as molten iron. The horse reared back, shrilling terror, and Ryel hurtled through a vivid swirl of blue and green and cinnabar before crashing into deep red darkness.

Steel, sharp and cold against his throat, choked him into consciousness. Squinting upward, the wysard found himself straddled by a tall broad-shouldered figure obscure against the sun, clad in the way of the Kugglaitana Steppes. One of its hands held his sword, the other his horse.

“Talk, you prying whoreson,” boomed his captor's voice. “And say it in three words, or die squealing.”

Ryel groaned. “Srin Yan Tai.”

The sword was tossed aside, the horse set free. Yanked to his feet by an inexorable arm, Ryel looked into empty black eyes set in a wonderful face.

The voice boomed again. "So. You finally showed up. What took you, whelp?"

Ryel stared. No one but Edris had ever called him that. "You know me?"

Lady Srin laughed at him. "Aye, inside and out. I've seen you naked as my hand, lad. But come on--it's time for food and fire. I speared a young boar this morning, and it's been seething ever since."

At those first words the wysard felt his face growing warm. "But—"

"Later, later. In good time. Follow me."

Stepping-stones led to the island's shore—chunks of rock crystal, invisible in the transparent white-sanded water. Jinn hung back, and would not be persuaded to cross.

"Just as well," Lady Srin said. "I dislike the notion of my flowers being trampled—although at least with this horse there'd be no horse apples."

"How could you possibly have known—"

"I know everything, whelp. Let her be, and come on."

The boar stew simmered in an earth oven. Once unburied and uncovered, it sent up a delicious aroma. "Good," said Lady Srin, stirring it approvingly with her dagger. "Bring it and we'll eat."

Fortunately, climbing the tree was easier than Ryel had foreseen, even with the encumbrance of a heavy and bubbling-hot cauldron. Steps invisible to the casual eye accommodated him wherever he chanced to set his foot, and in a moment he had joined Lady Srin on the platform supporting the tent.

"It's fine weather. We'll eat here." And Lady Srin ducked inside the tent, emerging with plates and cups and wine. The plates were silver, the cups gold, and the wine red and strong. Besides the stew, there was fresh flatbread and greens. The two wysards filled their vessels and ate side by side, cross-legged on the platform. Too hungry for talk, Ryel fell to with grateful good will.

"An unusual mode of living for one bred on the Steppes, this of yours," he said after his pangs were blunted. "A tent in a tree, with mountains all about."

Lady Srin shrugged. "A yat's a yat."

"You say you know everything about me. How?"

"I helped your father Edris bring you into the world. I've seen you in my Glass on every one of your birthdays," Lady Srin answered, filling their goblets again with dark red wine, lifting hers to the wysard, and gave a wide flash of grin. "I'm your magic godmother, lad."

A shock of memory struck Ryel like a bolt. "Was it you that—"

"That saved you during a lightning-storm when you were twelve? The very same, lad Ry. But you'll hear the whole story in good time. For now, we eat—and drink."

Lady Srin must have been seventy years of age by now, but her face had barely a wrinkle. Folk in her part of the World kept their youth longer than did those of other places, and she had the advantages of Art to preserve her looks. Her smooth dark-gold visage was slant and heavy of eyelid, jutting of cheekbone, wide across the brow—a beautiful barbaric mask plundered for its jewel-inlaid eyes. Those eyes had been pale gray, like moonstones, according to what Ryel had read in the chronicles of Markul. As for the hair, it still hung in long narrow braids and loops, but now the lustrous darkness was streaked with silver; beads of jade and amber were woven into each plait. Her clothing was manlike and splendid: a slit-sided tunic of the richest and heaviest brocade, with a shirt of finest linen beneath; leggings of thick corded silk, and low boots of embossed leather jingling with silver ornaments. About her neck were many strands of jade and pearl, and around her waist—still slim and flat-bellied—was girded a wide belt of chased and jeweled plates of gold. Bracelets she had on both wrists, almost to the elbow, and more than one ring on every finger; around her brow was a band of silver shaped like a desert hawk with outspread wings, inlaid and fringed with coral and lapis lazuli. An outlandish and gorgeous figure she made as she sat in her silk-tented tree, spearing chunks of meat with her dagger-point and quaffing down her wine.

But picturesque as the wysardess and her home were, Ryel felt disquiet. "You don't seem too well protected in this place," he observed, looking from her to the land beyond, where Almancar lay glowing.

Lady Srin shook her head. "Few eyes indeed think of prying here—although now that I recall it, in the past a few over-curious interlopers were boiled alive in my moat. Since then I've made use of a strong spell-fence to keep undesirables out."

"I felt it. But I got through."

She only snorted. "You were meant to, whelp." She ran a many-ringed finger around her empty plate, licking it with relish. "Will you eat more?"

"I thank you, no," Ryel replied. "But it was excellent."

"It's the juniper berries and raw spirit makes it good; plenty of pepper, too." Gathering up the silver dishes, Lady Srin flung them into the water below. Before Ryel could question her action, he saw its purpose: instantly the water hissed and bubbled, swirling white sand finer than sugar, cleaning the tableware in a moment and polishing it to a brilliant gleam before casting it onto the soft grass.

"I hate housework," the wysardess nonchalantly observed. "Time for talk. Come, let's go inside and drink chal and breathe mandragora."

Lady Srin's tent was much larger within than it seemed without, and its airy silk covering gave no hint of the solidity and warmth imparted by heavy tightly-stitched skins and draped hangings and deep-piled rugs. Furniture there was none, nor any decoration save an array of painted and gilded chests and strongboxes—and a brightly tiled Almancarian stove, which gave Ryel a brief but acute pang of homesickness.

"Yes," said Lady Srin, observing the wysard's interest as she filled a kettle with water and set it on the tiles. "Handy inventions, these."

"You might have heated your tent with the Art."

The wysardess' lip—still full despite almost a century of sneers—curled in disdain. "Bah. It sucks one's powers to waste them on piffling silly trifles. Have you perhaps noticed that the World is not Markul? Besides, I make better Kaltiri flatbread than any srih could."

"As you wish. Tell me about the storm when I was twelve."

"In time, in time. Impatient youth." Srin Yan opened the door of the stove and extracted some glowing coals, which she placed on brazen dish. "Fasten the tent-flap tight."

Ryel did so, and turned back to see Lady Srin throw a gray-green handful of crumbled herbs on the coals. Instantly a thick smoke arose and filled the tent with a provocative redolence somewhere between stench and perfume. Lady Srin knelt over the smoke, breathing deeply with her hands on her knees.

"Ah. Now we can talk as friends, easy and unforced," she said. "I trust my herb is to your liking."

"Seldom have I made use of mandragora," Ryel replied, a little misgivingly. "It's a mystic's drug."

"Bah. It's good for you." Lady Srin Yan opened a chest, extracting from it two porcelain bowls and a silver box. Taking some jade-dark powder from the box, she dropped it into the water on the stove. A subtle fragrant vapor mingled with the mandragora haze. Soon they were sipping excellent chal, and Ryel again asked his question.

"How did you know to come to my help, that day of the storm?"

"Premonition," Lady Srin said, tranquil with mandragora. "We of the Art, especially when advanced in years, sense things mere Worldlings can't. Edris was well aware when your mother was near her time with you. 'I must be at her side,' he said, in that hardheaded way he had. 'I must receive my child into my hands.' But he knew as well as I that in your savage country no man is allowed near a woman in labor. Therefore we disguised ourselves, your father and I, and went to your mother's birthing-yat as beautiful women of Almancar, richly clothed and carrying gifts."

"I had thought shape-changing either a lost Art, or extremely difficult."

"No, no. Deception-spells and drugs are far easier, and take much less toll on the body. We came into your encampment saying we were midwives and distant kinswomen of your mother, and tossed some feia-dust around when no one was looking, and were believed. It was a hard birth, yours, but your mother took the pain bravely, because she knew that it was Edris who comforted her, whispering spells to allay and calm, until you emerged from the womb into his hands. I'll never forget the way he looked at you--the joy, and the awe. And, I have to admit, the regret, because he could never call you his son, and would never be there as you grew up."

"I missed that, too. Even in Markul, I never knew."

"He loved you more than you understood, because he gave up his own studies in the Mastery to further yours. He was a power in the Art, one of the greatest since the First, but he sensed that you would be stronger, and he was right."

The mandragora had spread over Ryel's brain like a thin tingling glaze. "It was a great sacrifice. Too great."

"We'll see," Lady Srin said, with stoic finality. "But let's consider the present. Tell me your news about the death of the old Sovran, and Diara's madness, and your brothel brawl with Priamnor."

Ryel dropped his chal-bowl, and the priceless porcelain shattered. Srin Yan Tai hissed a single syllable, and instantly the broken pieces re-knit. Lifting up the bowl, she examined it. "Good as new. But one has to say the word at once, or the cracks will show. You might be a little more careful with my crockery—it's Sulian ware, at least a thousand years old."

Ryel ignored the magic and the chiding. "How could you have known about my going to Almancar? By what Art—"

"It didn't take Art; just a Glass-chat with Serah Dalkith. You forget how we old witches like to gossip." Lady Srin leaned back, benign with mandragora, and smiled on the wysard as if about to reveal a most amusing secret. "By the way, did you know you're dead?"

The wysard received this news very blankly. "What?"

The wysardess grinned with much self-satisfaction. "At least as far as young Priamnor Dranthene is concerned, you've been a corpse since yesterday, when the imperial guard took your body back to Almancar. Your very dead, horribly mutilated body." In her maddening way Lady Srin poured herself some more chal, sat comfortably with her back against a rug-covered chest, and spoke at complete leisure. "Actually, it was the body of an Almancarian messenger—one of Priamnor's elite soldiery. Some robbers caught and killed this particular courier, but I doubt they enriched themselves much. Imperial envoys ride light. I found him quite by accident, with the letter still upon him. A stupid waste, to kill a comely young officer for a parcel of paper that not one of the thieving illiterate brutes could hope to make sense of. You'll have to excuse the bloodstains—he was carrying it under his shirt, next to his skin."

Ryel remembered the hoof-marks with the Dranthene cipher that he'd seen during his climb up Kalima, and felt his heart constrict with regret for that young officer, galloping headlong to his death. "Who was the letter meant for?"

"No one but you, lad."

Ryel felt very confused. "But Lady Srin, only yesterday I was in Almancar. It isn't possible that—"

"No, no, lad. A couple of days ago you were there, very true."

"But how…in the name of All, did I really sleep two entire days?"

"You did, much to the good of your health. Almancar had worn you out. Too much stimulation, specifically in the area of daimon-dealings and debauchery. I decided you needed a bit of rest, and did the necessary things to make sure you got it."

"I wish you hadn't," the wysard replied, not caring if his resentment showed. "You made me waste time."

"Nothing was wasted, whelp." Lady Srin regarded the wysard's stunned face with serene complacency. "Thanks to your little nap, matters turned out very well. From Priamnor's missive I was able to deduce your activities in Almancar, and thus had your remains ready to hand over to the soldiers when they came searching for you yesterday. Fortunately the courier's corpse was tall and slim enough to resemble you exactly once stripped of its uniform, cut under the right ribs, modified here and there with a touch of Mastery, and left under a hot sun for awhile."

"It'd better be a convincing fraud," the wysard said, looking away. "Priamnor and I have swum together."

"As I've said, I know your every hair," the wysardess serenely—and disconcertingly—reminded him. "At any rate, your advanced state of decomposition will do much to keep the fastidious young Sovran at a safely unsuspecting distance. As far as he's considered, you're an extremely dead man. And I've little doubt he's taking it hard, if this letter's any indication." Lady Srin held out the blood-grimed paper. "Here. It's all yours."

Reluctantly the wysard did so. The first lines made him knit his brows in perplexity.

"It's in High Almancarian, which for most people might as well be code. If you need help—"

Ryel did not look up. "I don't."

The wysardess, warned by his tone, fell silent. But ever as he read, Ryel was chagrined to feel Lady Srin's eyes on him, inexorably assessing every twitch of his face, every change of color. And they were many.

"To Lord Ryel Mirai, greeting:

"The doublehandedness which embarrassed me at our first meeting has proven of great service now, for my right arm is broken and will take long to heal, and I cannot entrust these words to any scribe.

"I write this not sure if you are alive or dead. Every moment I relive the excesses of the Diamond Heaven, my drunken madness, your blood drawn by my blade. The daimon's false illusion deceived me, to my everlasting shame. No sooner did I emerge from unconsciousness, my arm broken and my wits clear, than I saw how grossly the courtesan of the Dream Garden counterfeited my sister. For my injury I hold you blameless, only too well aware that I deserved a far worse punishment. I can only hope your Art has saved you, and that my torment of mind will soon be ended by news that you are alive and in health.

"Although greatness such as yours transcends any earthly title, in recognition of our blood-bond I have conferred upon you the rank of Prince of Vrya, together with all its privileges and appurtenances. This I will make known to all the rulers of the lands with which Destimar is allied, in hopes of hearing some word of you.

"Since your leaving, my sister has learned of Agenor's daimon-wrought death, and is in deepest mourning. Nevertheless her sorrow is nothing to that of your desolate kinsman, Priam."

Ryel felt his eyes scorching. "I broke his arm."

"He hurt you rather worse, from the sounds of it," Lady Srin said. "Although he puts the blame on Dagar. Still, he's made handsome amends by declaring you a Dranthene prince of the blood. Which gives you triple nobility—of the Steppes, of Markul and of Destimar. Not bad."

Ryel wasn't listening. Priam, he thought. Ah, ilandrakis. When you see that body you'll never forgive yourself.

"Ryel, you're smiling."

The wysard started. "Am I?"

"I don't blame you," Lady Srin said, quite self-satisfied. "I thought my ruse very clever, too. Now you won't have to worry about being pursued on your way."

"My way where?"

"You know as well as I," the wysardess answered. "But tell me about that wound of yours. Are you healed?"

Ryel nodded. "Completely—thanks to Lord Michael, late of Elecambron."

He had expected at least a lifted eyebrow, but Srin Yan only gazed musingly into her chal, as if in divination. "I'd never have expected Michael Essern to become that daimon Dagar's servant, preaching sedition and discontent. I thought him stronger than that." Lifting her head, she met Ryel's empty eyes with her own. "Dagar called me as well, long ago. Wanted me for its use, as it wants you; but I resisted, until it decided I was too old, and the wrong sex. It marked me, as it has marked you—its way of putting its seal on those it intends to make use of. That surprises you, I see; but nevertheless it is a fact that no Overreacher was ever marred in the eyes until Dagar's death. Long has Dagar hovered in the Void, seeking a body in which to return and rule."

"Edris is there with him, Lady Srin. I spoke with my father in Almancar. He told me to find you." And Ryel described the encounter, how it had taken place and what was said; and when he was silent, Srin Yan Tai made no remark, but threw more mandragora upon the coals until the smoke swirled around her. After a time, Ryel spoke again.

"Edris said that you would know how his rai might be joined again with his body."

She shook her head, plaits a-clack. "Edris gives me too much credit. That Mastery was of Lord Garnos' making, and was lost long ago. Not even Dagar could find it. But Dagar has its henchman Michael to seek out a stratagem; and Michael's skill in the Art equals yours, surpassing yours in some regards." With contemplative deliberation Lady Srin gazed upon the wysard through the eerie black emptiness of her eyes. "Dagar kept vigilant watch over the Crossing. The old and unable it maimed or destroyed; the strong it singled out as his own. Young manhood such as yours surpassed even Dagar's desire. And don't flatter yourself by thinking it's your purity Dagar seeks, your unsullied soul. He craves your flesh. He has burned for you, believe me, ever since he saw you before the walls of our City."

The thought of that covert vacant scrutiny upon his nakedness gave the wysard chills. "Why would Dagar not choose Michael? He is nearly as young as me, fully as strong in the Art—and from what I've seen of him, far stronger in body."

Lady Srin nodded entire agreement, to the wysard's dismay. "True on all counts; and not half bad-looking, depending on one's taste for his type of tiger-cat charm. I'm sure that Michael would more than willingly give over his body for Dagar's misuse, and damn his own rai to the Void forever. But the bane of the Red Esserns runs in his blood, and makes him of more use to Dagar as a vassal."

"I've seen him in my Glass. His looks are strange, and I could tell he was in pain."

"His elder brother is similarly afflicted. The Curse goes far deeper than mere physical traits; blinding migraines and black moods alternate with malaise, complicated by a variety of digestive disorders."

"What Overreachers are there alive besides you and me, and Michael?"

"One only. Theofanu, an Ormalan wysardess who now masques as a priestess up in the Barrier lands—high priestess of the cult of the Master."

"So that religion began in the North."

"Yes. And has flourished so well that Dagar has seen fit to send his apostle Michael to propagate the faith in Destimar. That's not good, trust me."

Ryel remembered Edris' deep voice, so incongruous in Priamnor's body. He recalled the mention of Starklander, revealed to him as Lord Guyon Desrenaud, and the yet mysterious Redbane—two men who would have to be found, for the World's sake. "When I left Rismai, I told my mother I'd be back in two weeks," he said. Even in Markul he had never felt farther from home.

The wysardess dryly tsked. "Foolish boy."

Ryel half laughed. He felt terribly trapped. "I doubt the rest of the World could care less, Lady Srin Yan."

The wysardess' reply had cold iron in it. "There's no shirking the task before you, whelp. Believe me, all men will have cause to fear the name of Dagar. And don't imagine that you are the only thing it wants. It's begun to lay foundations for civil war in the North, and will soon put in motion insurrection that may or may not mean the end of Destimar. If Dagar is not destroyed—and by that I mean annihilated, reduced to less than dust, tracelessly erased—the World will be made to serve the Beast forever."

Ryel looked out to the plain where great Almancar's gilded spires caught the last of the light, and flinched as he remembered the false Diara, and the drunken brawl. "It's like one of the epics I used to read as a boy, only more fantastic…and far less heroic."

Soberly Lady Srin shook her head. "This is no foolish tale, whelp, but earnest danger. Serah Dalkith may have considered Dagar something overwhelmingly monstrous, to be feared abjectly; my viewpoint is rather less awestruck. If Dagar has his way, the World will simply become too tiresome to live in. Tyrannous regimes never last in the World, because people eventually tire of being always afraid and bored. They grow sick of living in continual dinginess and degradation. They grow ashamed of having to be always mean and vile and ignoble. They grow restless from being deprived of ideas, and having their imaginations crushed. Eventually, whether it takes weeks or centuries, they respond to the call of their higher faculties, and fight to the death for beauty and nobility and peace. But if Dagar achieves incarnation, the tyranny will last forever, and you will live forever—until such time as Dagar discards you like a rotten rag in favor of something fresher."

The wysard shuddered at the crawling of his skin, but then warmed again with the memory of wine-tinged lips, night-black hair falling across his arm, bright water and bronzed nakedness, endless sun glittering on all the treasures of the earth. "Almancar could never be swayed by Michael's rantings."

Srin Yan Tai laughed, short and dry. "You're not seeing enough moves ahead, lad. Once Michael incites the Fourth District to revolt, young Priam will be too distracted to notice his half-siblings' grab for the throne."

Vaguely Ryel recalled Priam's mentioning that he had other brothers and sisters besides Diara. "Which half-siblings are those?"

"The twins Catulk and Coamshi, by Agenor's first wife, a Zegry princess. Red-skinned twins with pale yellow eyes, a striking combination that unfortunately had far more physical affinity with a certain Falissian captain of the guard than with the Sovran, who divorced the wife and executed the lover. Together with their mother the twins rule the poisonous jungles of the Azm Chak, which boast a numerous and belligerent population very fond of jewels. They're vicious, those Zegrys. This won't be their first attempt on Priam's life."

Ryel stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"The Azm Chak is famed as a hotbed of repulsive and incurable diseases," replied Lady Srin. "One of them is jirankri, an especially troublesome venereal complaint. Some years ago the twins envenomed a beautiful woman with this disorder, and sent their pretty fireship to Almancar's pleasure quarter to infect Priamnor and his favorites. Among jirankri's more annoying manifestations is its necrotic effect on the male organs of generation, which after much noisome suppuration and untold agony eventually drop off—a nasty surprise for its victims. I happened to be in Almancar at the time, and managed to persuade Agenor to let me cure his son before the worst could occur. Only the utmost powers of my Art could save him—although Priamnor's mother the Sovrana Calantha, a good but unreasoning woman, gave all the credit to the goddess Demetropa."

Ryel winced as he remembered the counterfeit Diara of the Diamond Heaven, her false flesh surely laced with danger worse than anything from the Azm Chak. "I have to return to Almancar, and help Priam."

"Priam will have to help himself," said Lady Srin. "You've more important business." Turning about, she opened one of her wooden chests and brought out something thin and flat wrapped in a piece of rich brocade. "Here. This might prove useful to you from time to time."

She unfolded the cloth, disclosing several pieces of broken mirror. Taking a fragment up, Ryel looked into it, but found no reflection.

"This is a Glass," he said.

"All that remains of mine," Lady Srin answered, dryly rueful. "It burst into bits when I looked eye to eye with Dagar during the Crossing. I'm lucky it didn't blind me." Carefully selecting one of the shards, she tore off a bit of the golden cloth and wrapped it up, then handed it to Ryel. "Take this with you when you leave. Tomorrow morning you're heading North."

Chapter Eleven

Ryel had thought that Lady Srin intended him to ride Northward, and reluctantly contemplated a long stint on horseback despite Jinn's Art-sped swiftness. As matters turned out he was mistaken, as he'd been with so many things since his return to the World.

"Time's against you, lad," Srin Yan Tai yet again reminded him as they sat cross-legged on the yat-platform, warming their hands on their chal-bowls as their breath and the drink's fragrant vapor mingled with the raw mists of dawn. "Days are as good as months, now, what with so much awork in the World. Only the Art in its purest form can best speed your way."

Ryel wearily blew the steam from his chal. He hadn't slept well the night before. "You well know that my Art isn't that strong, Lady Srin."

"Of course it isn't, whelp. But mine is."

Rolling his eyes and stifling yet another yawn, Ryel peered out through the chal-haze toward Almancar, where now the tallest of the gilded towers—the spires of the Dranthene palace, where the Sovrena Diara doubtless lay still asleep, dreaming he hoped of him—began to glow from the light of the dawn. Gradually the dawn shed its radiance over the great city, lighting the temples and the mansions; dawn warm and clear.

He glanced from the city to the wysardess at his side. "Was it you that sent Jinn to me, there on the Aqqar?"

Lady Srin, seemingly absorbed in her chal, shook her head as she drank.

"Then who?"

Ignoring Ryel's impatience, Srin Yan Tai meditatively licked her lower lip as she gave a half-shrug. "Can't tell you, lad."

"You mean you know, but won't tell me?"

"Meaning I know, but don't believe it. Still, if I'm not being shamefully misled, matters should do well, if all goes as it should. Not that it has to, of course." She, too, fixed her gaze on the great city below, that lay now like a tumbled heap of jewels all agleam in the rising light. "I dreamed of war last night. War down there."

That explained her restlessness, her frequent muttered cries and starts as she slept, which had kept Ryel irritably wakeful. He was irritable still, and gave a surly inward sigh. Part of it must have escaped, because Lady Srin turned to him, drawing his entire attention into her lightless eyes.

"Listen, whelp. Dagar has other business to attend to at present, but I can assure you he hasn't forgotten about those who are dear to you. Wherever you go, Dagar will follow, and therefore it's most opportune that your course leads Northward, away from your mother and sister, and the Dranthene siblings."

"Even if I manage to get there, I don't know where to start. How to begin."

"You'll have friends up North, lad. Friends who'll open doors for you. It was revealed to me last night in a vision that a radiant spirit will guide you into Hallagh."

"Really."

Lady Srin growled a thunder-chuckle at Ryel's nonexistent enthusiasm. "You'll see. Well, let's get started. I'm glad you haven't eaten anything yet, because this spell is guaranteed to wring your guts."

They descended the tree, and crossed the moat to the meadow where Jinn stood with her head up and her mane stirred by the morning breeze.

"Stand next to the horse, and don't move," Lady Srin said.

Ryel eyed the wysardess warily. "What are you going to do?"

"Something I shouldn't. Now be quiet, and let me remember the spell." She shut her eyes, silently murmuring awhile. Then she fixed Ryel with her most quelling glare. "Here we begin, lad."

"Begin what?"

"The Spell of Translation, of course."

Ryel all but rolled his eyes. "You can't. It's worthless even to try."

The wysardess shrugged, ironically affable. "As I said, I get visions. My Art will work, trust me." She paused. "But if it doesn't, and some ill befalls you—like death, perhaps—I hope you'll understand."

"Oh, certainly. Of course I will."

Lady Srin smiled, as grimly ironic as Ryel. "You're young and tough—if the spell takes, you'll survive it. A good road be yours, lad." Suddenly she came close, putting both hands on his shoulders; pressed her cheek against his, hard, before drawing away again. "Now it starts. Move a muscle and you're dead. Think a thought and you're dead. Remember that."

Ryel made no answer either by word or gesture. At his side Jinn stood fully as immobile.

"Shut your eyes."

Ryel did so. He could hear the guttural rumble of spell-words, none of them intelligible, as he felt his body dissolve around his rai. It occurred to him that he might indeed be dying, this time for good, and he tried to open his eyes to give Lady Srin a last indignant glare. But he was utterly unbodied now. He felt as if his rai were being hurled like a burning ball at some immeasurably distant target, and for a long time he hurtled through nothingness; but then he hit. Hit hard, then shattered.

*****

His rai pulled together like scattered mercury, rolling bit by bit into wholeness. He felt bright light pressing on his eyelids like tormenting fingers, and groaned for the pain of it. But little by little it grew easier to bear, until eventually he could blink, and then see. Unfortunately, everything he saw was spinning crazily, a great whirling nowhere of gray and brown. Struggling to stand up—he had at some point crumpled to his knees—he felt a sick rising in his gorge, and sat down again lest he be wracked with retching.

Slowly he looked about him—only with his eyes, for any movement of his head brought unbearable dizziness—and found Jinn nearby, as tranquil as if no spell had ever occurred. Beyond Jinn a great river flowed, murky brown and swift with snowmelt from the great mountains afar off—peaks far more massive and stern than the Gray Sisterhood, heavily mantled in white.

Ryel shivered. He felt very cold. "So," he murmured through uncontrollably rattling teeth. "Where's that good spirit you told me of, Lady Srin?"

At that question a sudden burst of song issued from nearby, making Ryel start. Turning about—he could now move without too much suffering—he saw a swirl of smoke issuing from behind a clump of tall reeds. The smoke thickened, and now and then the singing halted in favor of coughing, but then continued merrily as ever. It wasn't the kind of song Ryel expected from a spirit; far from it. And surely a spirit's voice would be sweeter, or at least more on key.

Peering between the reeds, the wysard saw that the singer was of no apparent gender. It wore male garb in the Northern fashion, but its disordered beige curls fell nearly to its waist, and the timbre of its voice was sexlessly shrill and high. It crouched over a miserable excuse for a fire, trying to coax a pile of damp twigs into a blaze. Out of pity Ryel said a word, and the twigs leapt alight, to the singer's astonished pleasure. Deeply desirous of some of the heat he'd created, the wysard emerged from behind the reeds. At first the singer stared wide-eyed, but then it coughed a curse and snatched at its head.

"Damnation take it, my wig's afire!"

In the next moment the smoldering heap of unkempt curls was being energetically whacked against the grass, and the singer was revealed to be a balding ginger-haired man, closer to fifty than forty. Wig in hand, he squinted up at Ryel, his teeth—yellowing where they weren't missing—bared in either a grin or a grimace. "You're not a highwayman, I hope? No pistols?"

Ryel had heard about pistols, and guns in general, around the Risma fires. From what he could gather, they were unreliable, inaccurate, clumsy and loud. The folk of the Steppes scorned them as newfangled and outlandish, sure to be discarded as worthless novelties. Remembering that scorn, Ryel shook his head emphatically enough that his new acquaintance seemed convinced. Blowing away the burnt hair, the highly unlikely agency of good clapped his wig back on his head and stretched out his hands to the blaze—hands with black-stained nail-bitten fingers laden with garish rings of dubious worth—and rubbed them gleefully.

"Come near and get warm, by all means. I have a great knack for making fires—although of course when I'm at home my manservant makes 'em for me. I was just heating some shaving-water, so that I might look presentable when I enter Hallagh in triumph. Were you perchance listening to my song, sir?"

Ryel nodded, likewise rubbing his hands back to life. "I couldn't help myself. May I use part of your fire to heat some water for myself?"

"Certainly, if you'd be so kind as to hold my shaving-mirror." Ryel's new acquaintance produced that item and others needful from his horse's saddlepack as the wysard rested his chaltak on the blazing twigs, glad that he'd filled the vessel the night before with water from Kalima's clean streams.

As the helpful spirit attended to his toilette with Ryel's help, he sang the song's concluding verses, which were ribald in the extreme. "So you like my little musical trifle, eh? 'The Rambling Trollop' it's called, and all the town will be singing it next week, but yours is the joy of its maidenhead. My last song, 'What The Chambermaid Saw,' was all the rage at court, but I much doubt you've heard it. I infer your ignorance from your aspect, which is most exotically Southern. You make for Hallagh, I suppose."

"I do."

"I'll bear you company—but let's drink first, by way of acquaintance."

"I'd prefer my chal just now, for its warmth. Would you like some?" As he spoke, Ryel filled his cup, and as always, the drink was sheer comfort.

"No tea for me, although I thank you." The musician drew a bottle from one of his capacious coat pockets, uncorked it, and took a long swig. "What might I call you, sir, should I be accorded the honor?"

"My name is Ryel Mirai," the wysard answered.

The poet seemed to reflect as he drank again. "Ah. Of Destimar, perchance?"

"Of Almancar, not long ago."

The songster's bleary eyes lit bright. "Indeed! Almancar! My lord of Gledrim visited its whore-quarter once, when a very young man. He said it cost a fortune and was worth every penny." He was about to drink again, but seemed to remember himself, and passed the bottle to Ryel, who thought it well to decline with thanks—a refusal cheerfully accepted, and commemorated with another deep swallow. "Well, Mr. Mirai, you're in luck. Your traveling companion is none other than Thomas Dulard, poet and musician to three successive sovereigns, and favorite of the highest nobility—in point of fact, I'm just returning to Hallagh after a week's stay at the Earl of Gledrim's country house. And a mad week it was, the quintessence of debauchery. My head aches like a bastard. Speaking of which, may I offer you a drink?"

Ryel with thanks again declined the proferred bottle. "Has Hallagh many poets?"

Dulard drank, coughed, and smirked. "Only one, sir, now returning in triumph. All the rest are false mercenary scribblers, twopenny hacks, novel-botchers. Were I not above such trash, it'd drive me mad." He donned his coat, buttoning it up to the neck to dissemble the less-than-pristine condition of his linen, and reassumed his hat after an unsuccessful effort to freshen its limp plumes, jauntily tilting the brim in compensation. "Well, let's ride." He untied his horse, a pale and unprosperous nag, and clambered into the saddle with a wince and a muttered curse at his aching head.

"Three successive sovereigns is luck," Ryel remarked as they took to the road.

"Not so much luck as sheer brilliance, I like to think," Dulard said, his nose pridefully uptilted. "But I have been fortunate, I admit. The Dominor Ogrian was first, and his son Regnier next and most generous; as for the Domina Bradamaine, I am more a favorite of her courtiers than of the lady herself. I suppose you are familiar with the history of the ruling family? No? Well, the reign of Regnier—a reign lamentably brief—was the great blossoming of the arts in the North, such a flowering never seen before or since. Not that I'm an unfaithful servant to the Domina Bradamaine; no poet who would prosper has ever been false to the crown. But I'll not pretend that the present reign is a paradise. You should have seen Hallagh in its glory, when Regnier ruled! Then were wits, sir! Then were minds! But cruel unfilial treachery brought it all to dust."

"I don't understand."

"Well, Mr. Mirai," the poet said, "the facts are these—but may I first say that you have a most persuasive pair of eyes? They seem to seduce one to confessions, which I've no doubt has helped you in your conquests of whichever sex you most favor. Are you perhaps a spy? You'll learn nothing of me that is not public knowledge, I assure you."

"Please continue with your narrative," Ryel said. "I only seek to pass the time."

"Gladly, sir," Dulard replied, taking another strengthening pull at the wine-bottle. "To continue, then. During much of his reign the Dominor Regnier kept his sister Bradamaine a virtual prisoner up in the mountains we call the Falcon Rocks, lest she contest his power. But as time passed, folk began to murmur at this unfeeling behavior, their resentment sharpened by Regnier's admittedly loose manner of living; and these developments led the Dominor to have his sister and her only too well-beloved lady-in-waiting the Countess of Fayal brought back to court, that he might quickly marry Bradamaine off to some hapless sycophant or other. But before any plans for marriage might be made, Regnier died, and Bradamaine took the throne."

"What was the cause of the Dominor's death?"

"Fever, sir; a pocky rotten fever that devoured him piecemeal," Dulard said with a shudder. "A terrible death, and he had only just turned of thirty. It's commonly supposed that Bradamaine contrived to have him infected, that she might rid herself of her tyrant and become tyranness herself." The poet realized he was speaking in somewhat too distinct a manner, and warily glanced about him. "But that's a stale story; let's speak of you awhile. If I don't trespass by inquiring, what manner of person are you, Mr. Mirai? A poet like myself, perhaps? Or, judging by your picturesque garb, a poetical subject?"

"I'm a physician."

Dulard met Ryel's nod with a wry leer. "Indeed! An honest one? I mean no insult, sir, but most of the doctors in Hallagh make their best money by curing claps, excising inconvenient conceptions, and sewing up sword-cuts."

They continued their progress into the city, with Dulard offering various reflections on the town and its denizens. Hallagh had outgrown its gates many years before, and the wysard and his companion traversed a sprawl of ill-built houses that lined the great road and grew ever more tightly packed as they neared the river Lorn. On the other side of the river the old city of Hallagh crowded onto a jutting wedge of promontory, while on the opposite bank were great houses built around Grotherek Palace for the Domina's court and the most prosperous merchant gentry, so Ryel learned of Dulard. Wide well-built bridges linked the promontory and other points on the south bank of the Lorn to the northern shore, but as the poet warned, one had to beware of the bullies and cutpurses who thronged and jostled there.

Ryel listened with all attention as he looked about him. A sharper difference between the bright paradise of Destimar and this Northern capital he could never have envisioned. Here were no delicate radiant spires, wafted perfumes, suave civilities. Hallagh was a city of squat-built dull gray stone, somber sooty brick and half-timber; of cobbled streets asplash with mud and excrement, of teeming pushing jostling traffic; of cursing drunkards, strolling doxies, screeching fishwives, whining beggars, howling brats; of red-coated arrogant soldiers, and grim gray-clad clerics; of fiddlers, jugglers, rope-dancers, ballad-singers, zanies; of dark overhung alleys, riotous ale-houses, stark stately temples. Street vendors cried their wares at the tops of cracked lungs, offering ribbons, laces, almanacs, lanterns, pins, sealing-wax, gingerbread, combs, eels and onions, their hoarse yells vying with citizen's contentious racket of politics, new plays, and court-scandal. Constantly the peal of bells overcame the general pandemonium, clanging out from steeples and towers that stood out in sharp relief against the flat cold gray of the sky. The wysard drank in the turbulent energy like Dryven whisky, wincing yet thrilling to all those pungently mingled sounds and smells, so many of them entirely new to his rattled senses.

"A lively place, this," he said to Dulard above the din.

The poet shrugged, but with some pride. "Well, it's not as subtle as Almancar, nor as peaceable; but at least it buys and sells no slaves, nor displays its whores' quarter as a source of national pride. And despite its rough edges, Hallagh possesses a rare briskness. The dour puritans of the Unseen persuasion do what they can to squelch the brothels and the taverns and the theatres and the booksellers, but never to any great avail, I'm glad to say, else my songs and my plays would perish. My latest comedy still holds the stage at the Bone Lane Theatre, by the way—Love At A Price , a biting satire on the town's most notable bawds."

Seeking some kind of orientation, the wysard singled out faces in the crowd, as a dancer fixes on a single point to keep from dizzying during a spin. Unlike Almancar, Hallagh's citizenry had no distinct stamp of feature save for a prevalent fairness of hair and ruddiness of complexion, but now and again Ryel observed men and women seemingly a race apart from the rest, conspicuously tall and well-made and pale-skinned, with hair of silvery gold and faces stern and strong. Remembering what he'd read long ago, Ryel turned to Dulard.

"Are those Hralwi?"

Dulard gave a sour nod. "Snow-folk we call them; White Barbarians, to better name 'em. It used to be they kept where they belonged, up in the ice-regions, but ever since the peace they've been swarming to the capital to gape and marvel—and cause trouble. They're good for little else than as door-guards and paramours. The late Dominor Regnier was fully as fair in color, as is his sister Bradamaine—rumor has it that their grandmother was in her youth carried off, willingly enough I'll dare swear, by some Snow-folk braves, and when finally ransomed returned home big-bellied with barbarian get."

At that moment Ryel heard the measured gait of harnessed horses, and turned to find a richly-gilded open coach and four making deliberate progress down the broad avenue, its driver and outriders clearing the way with whip-crackings and oaths. Crowded into the vehicle was a group of young men and women, most of them still in their teens, brilliantly and strangely robed and bejeweled, their gorgeous finery jarring with their pasty blank faces crowned with hair clipped and stiffened and colored in the most strikingly strange of ways. They sprawled languidly, yet with an air of restless expectation in their far-away eyes. The wysard observed that all of these persons were either tattooed or scarred on the cheeks and forehead with the device of a star within a circle—not a star of five points or of six, but like the spokes of a wheel, the spokes adding to eight. Some had the marks on their hands, arms, necks; one of them apparently had his entire body thus gouged and burnt. Such deep and pervasive markings must have indeed been painful, Ryel reflected with a shudder. Dulard noted Ryel's disgust, and nodded in sympathy.

"Servants of the Master," he said. "On their way to worship, so it looks. Often they're a great deal more noisy, but from the looks of them now they're drugged to the roots of their hideous hair. All of them are sons and daughters of great lords and ladies, but here in the North marriages are as cold and bleak as the weather, meant only to join fortunes, and whatever progeny results is left to the care of servants and other ignorant folk, and brought up very carelessly for the most part. The priests of the Unseen are continually inveighing against them, to no effect. Not even the thundering denouncements of the Lord Prelate Derain Meschante can stamp out the cult, so strong it's grown."

Ryel's memory leapt at the name Dulard spoke. "Meschante? I've heard of him."

Dulard made a face. "I doubt you heard much good. He's a scolding lout, Ralnahrian to judge from his accent. For some years he's held great sway among the Unseen's believers—dull sober citizens without exception. If you're curious for a sample of his rant, he can always be heard during services at the great church on Crown Street. He's no friend of mine, as you might guess. Aha, we've reached the Owl and Ivy. Time for a glass of ale and some breakfast—which thanks to your present company will cost you nothing."

To Ryel's more than mild surprise, the poet was as good as his word. Dulard seemed to know a great many people on a boozily familiar footing. Hardly had he entered the tavern and taken the first of many complimentary gulps and bites than the poet was asked to sing, and he obliged with some of the rankest smut Ryel had ever heard set to rhyme and music, which the clearly delighted audience chorused at the top of their lungs. None of his admirers' good cheer seemed to make Dulard much drunker than he already was, or diminished his cormorant voracity.

"You've many friends," Ryel remarked, as he and the poet left the tavern well-fed and possibly too well-drunken, and began again to ride.

Dulard coughed away a belch. "They love me for my art. All the folk in Hallagh—in the entire realm, I would say—sing my songs and know my plays, except that puritan Meschante and his glum followers, and a few other haters of wit. And now that we speak of the latter, here's an enchanted castle I'm sure I'll never enter."

The poet jerked an exasperated ink-stained thumb at a great walled keep of granite that overlooked the river. Ryel observed red-uniformed armed sentries stationed at the gates and atop the walls. "What is it?" he asked. "A fortress?"

Dulard squinted assent. "An ogre's lair, where the grim Count Palatine of Roskerrek has his residence."

Ryel smiled. "I take it he's not a patron of the arts, then?"

"One of the most open-handed," Dulard replied. "Unfortunately his taste is deadly dull, running to grave music and heroical tragedy and metaphysical verse and the like trash. He has no sense of humor whatsoever, a failing which infects his generosity—but that's a theme too dismal for conversation."

"There seem to be a great many soldiers lounging about the courtyard," Ryel said, obligingly changing the subject.

The poet regarded those soldiers contemptuously. "They've nothing to do, the scum, what with the wars over. Many a regiment's been disbanded, but Hallagh still has plenty of idlers in uniform. Those with the red coats are common infantry footsloggers; they that look so haughty in their black and silver, horse soldiers—long coats indicating regular cavalry, close jackets meaning special forces, dragoons or hussars or whatever; they in the blue, the city guard. They fight amongst themselves like cat and dog, murdering each other up on a regular basis. You'd think Redbane would do something to stop it, but…"

Ryel heard only one word that made his blood jolt, and he replied numbly over his heart's sudden uproar. "Redbane? Redbane is the Count Palatine of Roskerrek?"

"It's an odd enough sobriquet, I grant you," Dulard said, only half noting Ryel's amazement. "But believe me, everyone in this land knows it well. His true name's Yvain Essern with many a middle name else, and his office the general of Bradamaine's forces, in especial the cavalry. He has his soldiers whipped skinless at his merest whim, and loves war and carnage the way others less savage and more sane love women and drink. It's a common saying that the reason his skin's so ghastly pallid and cold is because he has no heart in his body and only ice in his veins, and his hair's so freakishly red because he washes it in his enemies' blood. Were I him—which I'm heartily glad I'm not—I'd wear a wig, but soldiers scorn 'em, no matter how high their rank. He's fanatically devoted to the Domina, although she makes no secret of despising him—which I call wisdom on her part, not that she ever shows much in her other dealings."

Ryel felt his heart race. "I understand that Redbane—or rather, the Count Palatine—has a brother."

"He had two, sir," Dulard answered. "The eldest died in battle, and the younger—Michael, styled the Earl of Morvran—left Hryeland years ago, to study the black arts some say. He likewise was a Red Essern, and never until this generation were there two of them living at once. Many folk of Hryeland believe it's a portent of some great catastrophe to come." Dulard suddenly sat upright in the saddle for the first time. "But now that we speak of Redbane—the enchanted castle opens! I swear, I sometimes think I have magic powers. There's Jorn Alleron, a friend of mine. I'd speak a word with him, by your leave. Come, I'll present you." And Dulard steered his nag toward the black-uniformed, flaxen-haired, superbly-mounted officer just riding out of the gate—a man middling tall and ruggedly built, as lithe in the saddle as a Steppes brave.

Dulard bent toward Ryel, speaking in an undertone. "We're in luck, Mr. Mirai. Alleron is Redbane's equerry, and master of horse to the army. You wouldn't guess from his proud looks that he's a mere commoner, would you? But he and his family scorn all titled rank—their honor and pride is to serve the house of Essern, which they have for generations. During the Five Years' War Alleron's father Renaye gave his own life to save that of Roskerrek's sire, the famed Warraven."

"Warraven." Ryel felt Edris' cloak like a sheet of flame about him as he remembered his father's words. Warraven, he thought. So it was Redbane's father whose cloak you stole, ithradrakis. Warraven, who almost killed you—

Dulard continued blithely on. "—and Renaye died stuck like a hedgehog full of Barbarian arrows when he threw his body between his master and the attack—why, well met to you, my brave Captain Alleron."

The flaxen officer leveled a piercing stare at Dulard, but not a muscle in his face revealed the merest hint of willing recognition. A good honest face it was, young for its near-forty years and neither plain nor handsome, but now unrelentingly dour.

"So, scribbler," the captain said. "What do you want?"

At the sound of that voice, dry as alum, Dulard cleared his throat. "Why, only to give you good day, Captain, and ask the news." He flashed a broad though not especially mirthful grin. "As you've doubtless heard, I've been away from the city the past week, as guest of his grace of Gledrim."

The captain's facial immobility twitched. "Gledrim's a buggering wastrel."

The poet flushed, but kept grinning. "He entertains the best company, sir, and I was made welcome among it."

Alleron wasn't impressed. "Meaning you sang for your supper, ate it in the kitchen, and slept in a garret with the footmen and their fleas. Tell me I lie."

The poet chortled at what he plainly considered Alleron's merry jest. "I'm far too wise ever to gainsay a swordsman like yourself, captain. But to somewhat freshen the theme of our talk, how does your noble lord, the worshipful Count Palatine? Was he perchance diverted by the poem I made in his honor? I spent an infinite time on it, polishing it to perfection; not that I expect anything in the way of gratitude, but—"

The equerry almost smiled. "Oh, you'll be well paid, fear not."

Dulard sparkled. "Really, Captain! And in what way?"

The near-smile widened a fraction. "With a horsewhip across your shoulders, laid on smartly and with interest."

The poet swayed in the saddle. "You jest, captain."

"You know I never do," Alleron icily assured him. "I've seldom seen my lord more furious than your arse-kissing doggerel made him. You're damned lucky you weren't in town when he read it."

Dulard goggled in drunken horror. "But Captain, I especially composed that panegyric in the Count Palatine's honor! I made him a demigod, the dearest favorite of the battle-deity Argane. I even put you in the poem, as the hero's trusty comrade."

The officer glowered through slit eyes. "And a fawning ridiculous slave you made of me; but I scorn to let a scurvy jingler's paltry doggerel do me insult. However, the filthy insinuations you made regarding my lord and the Domina won't go unrequited. Expect your next play to be roundly hooted, and yourself tossed naked into the sewer where you belong."

Dulard sputtered. "But sir, I never intended to suggest that the Domina…"

Alleron thrust away the explanation with a savage gauntleted gesture. "Never tell me you didn't mean bawdry, you scrawling lickspit. But stay awhile, for my lord will be here any minute now to give order for your reward."

Save for his ale-blushed nose, the poet paled white as the sickly plumes of his battered hat, which he plucked off his head with an unsteady hand. "Always a pleasure to chat with you, Captain—but I've business at my bookseller's, and cannot stay." He turned to Ryel. "I'm sorry we must part so precipitately, sir. But I hope we may meet again, in more favorable circumstances. And so, your servant—" As he spoke he urged his nag away and effaced himself in the crowd until his bedraggled feathers were lost to sight.

Alleron turned his head and spat. "I can't abide that halfwit. Don't tell me he's a friend of yours."

The wysard was surprised to find himself addressed, and seized what he knew was a chance beyond all expectation. "The poet is an acquaintance," he replied. "We met on the road by chance, this morning."

"Stay clear of him. He's a fool." The captain surveyed the wysard with the razor's edge of his steel-blue eyes. "What brings you to Hallagh, Destimarian?"

Ryel thought very fast, seeing unlooked-for chance opening wide its double door. "I heard that Lord Roskerrek suffers from various complaints."

Alleron shrugged with some impatience. "Well, and?"

"I am a physician of some skill in his disorders, and would attempt his cure, if he so wishes."

This news was met with utmost indifference. "You wouldn't be the first." All the time they'd talked, Alleron's steely eyes had been making a nonchalant but minute scrutiny of Ryel's mare. "That's a fair bit of horseflesh."

"I think so, too," the wysard answered, fully as casually.

"I'll buy her of you, if I like her price."

"You wouldn't, Captain. Trust me."

Alleron's left mouth-corner leapt upward. "You're of the Inner Steppes, aren't you? The Stormhawk phratri, I'd guess."

"You're not far off," Ryel said, surprised and rather pleased. "I'm of the Elhin Gazal."

Alleron slowly twisted his flaxen mustache with his gloved hand, his keen eyes still numbering Jinn's perfections. "The Triple Star. I'm something of a horse-scholar, doctor. The great bloodlines are my especial interest, and those of the Rismai I've committed to memory. Did I put faith in miracles, I'd say your mare seems to be one of the right Windskimmer breed."

Ryel inclined his head. "You've a rare eye, Captain."

Alleron swore violently, but in a reverent undertone. "What physician can afford to bestride a horse so fine?"

Ryel smiled. "Not a bad one, maybe."

Alleron rode closer, pulled off his glove and caressed Jinn's mane with a tender connoisseur's hand; and Jinn gave an almost flirtatious whinny that nearly made Ryel jealous.

"You beauty," the captain murmured, as warmly as if wooing a mistress; then addressed the wysard, without taking his eyes from the horse. "Usually I carry some sugar in my pocket for encounters such as these, but today I forgot, damnation take it."

"Just as well," Ryel said, perhaps a little shortly. "She'd never accept it."

Before Alleron could reply, as he certainly intended to, a soft yet incisive voice broke in, cold as a blade. "Who is this man you speak with, Captain?"

Instantly Alleron wheeled about, sweeping off his hat and bowing low. Ryel observed that the newcomer was a cavalry officer of great rank, to judge from the extreme richness of his black uniform. He was a coolly adroit horseman too, mastering with impatient ease his unruly big roan. But even more singular than the officer's dress or his horse were his looks, which the wysard knew at once. Dulard's description had not exaggerated. Redbane's hair was indeed red as blood, his skin dead white—and those ice-gray eyes with their all but invisible pupils were most certainly unsettling, especially since they were now taking a minute yet absolutely inscrutable inventory of every lineament of the wysard's every physical characteristic, and of Jinn's as well. They lingered long upon the wysard's scarlet mantle, but with no emotion that Ryel could unequivocally read.

"M'lord," Alleron was saying, "this is a physician of Destimar who has healed notables and princes, and claims to be versed in ailments such as yours."

The gray eyes never blinked under the broad shadow of hat-rim, never ceased their cold surmise. "I no longer wish any doctors, equerry. I believe I have told you so before, more than once."

"But m'lord," Alleron protested. "This man—"

"Rides a remarkably fine Steppes mare, which you doubtless noticed first," the Count Palatine replied. "You're an able judge of horses, equerry. I suggest you keep to what you're best at."

As Alleron drew back, clearly bruised by the rebuff, Ryel spoke. "My lord of Roskerrek, I will ask nothing for my services."

The Count Palatine's thin lips twitched in icy derision. "Nothing, you say. Nothing buys few horses." His strange eyes continued their unreadable examination of Ryel's cloak, and the wysard in his turn further remarked the singularities that had so forcibly impressed him at first glance.

Ryel had been much struck by the contrast between Roskerrek's figure and his face. Though the Count Palatine's garb might be rich and his body well-formed to wear it, being both slender and strong, his countenance was ill-favored to an extreme. A sour-lidded bitter-lipped face it was, shaven close save for a narrow mustache adding yet more width to the mouth, and a pointed beard further sharpening the tip of the chin—both ornaments colored the same strange blood-scarlet as the hair of his head, that fell in lusterless skeins to his shoulders. But the wysard saw that Roskerrek's ugliness owed more to a lifetime of continued pain than to any inherent flaw. Protracted suffering had scored slashes deep upon the brow, etched harsh acid around the eyes, carved long furrows athwart the mouth-corners. Even now migraine made the eyelids twitch, and cramped the lines of the lips. What Ryel beheld was defacement that drove to the very soul—and for reasons he could not explain, he sorrowed for it.

Roskerrek felt the wysard's regard, and maybe his emotions. Whatever he felt he was far from showing. But his next words, though couched in the coolest indifference, said all. "That is a military cloak you wear, doctor."

Ryel levelly met that ice-gray gaze, glad that his heart was hidden. "Is it?"

"The highest ranks of the army wore such, years ago. The unfading richness of the color was greatly prized." Roskerrek glanced pleasurelessly down at his own cloak, which was of deep gray guarded with black and silver, then back to the wysard's. "I doubt you served in the Hryeland cavalry when that garment was in fashion, doctor. My father owned one virtually identical to yours—I remember it well. But shortly after his death it disappeared, no one ever knew where."

"I am sorry to hear it," Ryel replied. "But many things thought forever lost may be found again."

Alleron, clearly baffled by their talk and impatient too, broke in. "M'lord, only let him try to work your cure. I know he'll—"

The Count Palatine's soft voice frosted. "Equerry, I command you to hold your tongue."

Alleron turned his face away, blinking furiously as he muttered a curse. Roskerrek regarded the captain a long impenetrable moment, and then addressed Ryel. He was smiling, though ever so barely.

"Who I am, I believe you know. Now I would learn your name, doctor."

Ryel told him. Roskerrek seemed to muse, as if in recollection.

"Ryel Mirai," he murmured at last. His pale eyes searched the wysard's, observing the slant, remarking the blue. ""The Inner lands … and Almancar. You use only two of your names—but I trespass. Tell me the true price of your cure, physician."

Astonished though he was by the Count Palatine's acuity, Ryel replied with calm. "I would have the answer to a single question."

"That could mean little, or too much," the Count Palatine said, again after a silence. "Whatever you desire to ask, I refuse to answer until I consider myself cured."

Ryel bowed his head to conceal his chagrin. "As you wish."

In that interval Alleron muttered fervent thanks to the goddess Argane. Roskerrek heard, and smiled now with all his face, although faintly.

"You're difficult to deal with, Jorn."

"And I'm damned glad I am, sir," the captain replied, his voice rough.

Roskerrek again addressed the wysard. "At present I'm engaged at the Ministry of Arms, Ryel Mirai. But come to me here at headquarters any time after four of the clock, and we will discuss the terms of my treatment—unless you have other appointments."

"I will not fail you," Ryel replied.

At that moment a rider dashed up in a clamor of ringing steel, angry horse-noises and energetic cursings, coming to a rearing halt at Roskerrek's side and saluting perhaps a little too smartly.

"Well met, General."

Roskerrek flinched at the racket and its resultant cloud of dust, greeting the newcomer with a resignation all too evidently habitual. "If you think so, Lieutenant Valrandin."

The young officer thus addressed grinned, showing teeth very white and even. He was at most twenty-three and of unusual good looks, with auburn ringlets framing a beardless face almost a girl's for delicacy, did not the bold hazel eyes and firm-lipped mouth and decidedly arrogant chin lend it strength. His maroon velvet doublet and breeches well became his supple slimness, and rich lace at neck and wrists drew the eye to mark the graceful poise of his head and the elegance of his ungloved hands. Spurs of bright silver rang at the heels of the lieutenant's boots, his fingers glittered with rings, diamonds flashed in both his ears; and from his entire body emanated a delicate yet penetrating fragrance compounded of rare and precious essences. To match this magnificence Valrandin had a demeanor both prideful and insolent, traits well evident in his next words, all the more cutting for being uttered in a voice so attractively resonant and musical.

"You look even more ghastly today than usual, General."

"And I'm sure you're sorry for it, Lieutenant," Roskerrek dryly replied.

Valrandin smiled. "It wrings my heart, General."

Long did they look on one another, with the slit-eyed intensity of predators; but when Roskerrek spoke again it was with no audible emotion. "I see you're not in uniform. Are you idling as usual, or have you some errand here?"

Valrandin became solemn. "I was sent by royal command. The Domina desired me to observe and report to her that place in the city where ruffians and knaves and other worthless persons most congregate. So here I am." Gazing coolly about him, he whistled a tune between his teeth a moment. "Word has it that you called for yet another round of torture yesterday."

"A few incorrigibles among the ranks were disciplined as they deserved," Roskerrek said. "What of it?"

The lieutenant's lip curled. "Disciplined. That's putting it sweetly. Flogged to death is more like it."

The Count Palatine's soft voice stiffened with the rest of him. "You exaggerate, Valrandin."

"And you lie, Roskerrek."

During that wiredrawn interval Alleron cursed the lieutenant under his breath with rare inventiveness; and Valrandin darted a glare at the captain, tapping his sword-hilt. "You grunted something, dog-robber?"

Alleron set his jaw. "What if I did, hell-imp?"

The Count Palatine softly but incisively interposed. "Equerry, I would have you show more civility."

"Why?" Alleron demanded. "Don't I rank the little braggart?"

Roskerrek's quiet tones held a warning edge. "Lieutenant Valrandin is the Domina's especial favorite, and as such deserves your respect."

Alleron only snorted a laugh at that. "Favorite. That's putting it cleanly."

Valrandin went white. "And that's enough of your mouth, stall-mucker. Let's have it out here and now." And he would have drawn his sword, but Roskerrek rode close and grasped his arm with raptor suddenness.

"I'll not have brawling in my district, Lieutenant."

Valrandin struggled and grimaced. "You're hurting me, damn it."

"Am I? I beg your forgiveness." And to Ryel's amazement, the Count Palatine carried the lieutenant's struggling wrist to his lips and kissed the veins of its underside like an amorous suitor before flinging it away. "Someday I'll break it for you."

At this extraordinary scene the watching soldiers lounging about the headquarters entrance snickered, and Alleron flung back his head and barked a laugh. Flushed and furious, Valrandin shot murder from his eyes all about him, but most of all at Roskerrek.

"We'll see what gets broken first, Redbane," he hissed. "The Domina sent me to give you a message."

Roskerrek took his sobriquet very ill indeed, but stayed calm; and now a warm hint of color allayed the dull pallor of his ravaged features. "I await the Domina's word with all alacrity, Lieutenant Valrandin."

"I know you do," Valrandin said with a meaning scorning smile. "Very well, she wishes that you attend her tomorrow night."

"Ah." The pupils of Roskerrek's pale gray eyes dilated a fraction. "In what service?"

Valrandin grinned wickedly. "A church service, as it happens—worship of the Master, which too long you have scanted."

The Count Palatine's bilious eyes narrowed, and his splenetic lips twisted. "Apparently the Domina has forgotten that I am no friend to that religion. You may return her my thanks, and my respectful refusal."

Valrandin's white grin only widened. "The Domina does not invite you, General, but commands you rather. You know the place, and the hour."

Roskerrek drew a long breath, discernibly fighting a qualm. "Captain Alleron, we're late at the Ministry. Physician, farewell until our appointment." Addressing no further word to Valrandin, he departed, and Alleron followed after dealing the lieutenant a final stabbing glare.

Valrandin watched their departure with evil eyes, then spun around in rage to the onlooking soldiers. "And just what are you gawking at, you whoreson swine?"

The redcloaks had already begun to disperse, and at the lieutenant's question they slunk away entirely.

"A burning devil take Redbane, and his dog-robber, and these lousy scum," Valrandin spat. Then he furiously rounded on Ryel. "Who are you?"

Not in the least daunted, Ryel fought back a smile. "I'm a physician, newly engaged in the service of the Count Palatine."

"In other words, yet another scurvy quack." He assessed Jinn next, his dark eyes avid and envious. "Did you steal that horse?"

"I did not." As he quietly replied, Ryel lightly drummed his fingers on his sword-hilt.

"Ha." But the lieutenant noted the wysard's look and his gesture, and became somewhat less belligerent. "So you think you can actually cure Roskerrek of his megrims and gripings? Have you any idea how many others have tried? More than came to heal the Sovrena Diara of your native land."

"Yet she was healed at last," Ryel said.

"Yes—by a sorcerer, so it's rumored. And it'll take a better magician still to deliver Redbane of the sweats and spewings that have plagued him all his life, poor devil."

Ryel was surprised at Valrandin's change of tone. "You sound almost sorry for him, Lieutenant. I'd not have expected such pity, after what I witnessed."

"I take no great pleasure in his suffering—most of the time. But tell me, what is your name, and what land are you from? I've never before seen looks like yours. I'm called Gabriel Valrandin, and am Lieutenant of the Domina's Guard."

"And I am Ryel Mirai, of the Rismaian Steppes of Destimar."

The lieutenant's hazel eyes lit up. "The Steppes! Why, you are the first such I have ever met. And you must be a noble one, with a horse like that."

"The Rismai have no lords," the wysard said; but he smiled, for Valrandin despite all his arrogance possessed undeniable charm.

The lieutenant shrugged. "Be that as it may, you've a look about you that's not ordinary or common, sir, and I like it well. Perhaps you would bear me company awhile, if you're at leisure; I must return to the palace, and there's much I wish to ask you concerning your people."

"I'll join you gladly—as long as you promise to keep the peace," Ryel said.

Valrandin laughed, his diamond-sparks flashing among his rich glossy curls. "You caught me at a bad moment. Alleron and I loathe each other to the blood, and as for Redbane … " he trailed off, shrugging as his smile faded. "Let's be on our way."

As they rode through the streets Valrandin asked Ryel a thousand questions, some of them bizarre, concerning the Steppes and its people. The young lieutenant's thirst for information was of a remarkably sensational kind, and his grasp of geography almost nonexistent. The wysard did what he could to inform Valrandin of the approximate whereabouts of Destimar, and to assure him that the Rismai did not live on raw horseflesh, or have their wives in common, or routinely sacrifice girl babies to the sun-god. During his instruction, he noticed that he and Valrandin were being much stared at as they rode, but no one seemed daring enough to say anything out loud.

"I hope I'm not disgracing you in this rough outland garb of mine," he said.

Valrandin shook his head and laughed. "They're all looking at me, not you. Although I doubt not you'd show to advantage in Northern garb."

Ryel smiled thanks. "I'd never be able to carry off such finery as yours, though. Lace and diamonds seem best suited to a gentleman of the court, as you are."

"Gentleman?" Valrandin's strong dark brows contracted fiercely at that, but relaxed as soon in an oblique little chuckle. "You are a stranger here."

Suddenly feeling as if he'd committed a serious error, Ryel sought to remedy it as best he might. "If I've offended…" But from Valrandin's manner, he very likely had.

"Surely you've noticed how folk stare at me, and how cowed they seem?" The lieutenant demanded. "You honestly have no idea who I am? Why, you must have dropped from the skies to be so ignorant."

Ryel thought back to his abrupt arrival in the North. "Actually, that isn't too far from the truth."

"Never mind. Here's the palace bridge, and we needs must part. I hope we meet again, and that you'll be enlightened by that time."

"So do I," Ryel answered; and he meant it. "But a brief question, if I may. Now that we've spoken of renown, does the name Starklander mean anything to you?"

It certainly seemed to. Valrandin reined in closely, his face paling around his suddenly piercing stare. "Damnation," he whispered. "What are you--his friend or his enemy? Keep your voice down when you answer."

"Neither," the wysard quietly replied. "He and I have never met. I don't even know his real name."

"Guy Desrenaud. Guyon de Grisainte Desrenaud, in full. He was of Ralnahr by birth, Earl of Anbren there; and he was high in the Domina's favor once, but that ended badly. He left this city in deep disgrace years ago, and if he returns he risks death. I was and am his friend, and would give anything to see him again, and do anything in my power to restore him to favor." Valrandin's elegantly gauntleted hand dropped to his sword-hilt and wrapped it hard. "Do you mean him harm?"

"None whatsoever. I only wish to know where he traveled after leaving the Barrier."

"As dearly would I, and many another--most especially the Domina, I can assure you. If you should ever learn, I wish to know of it."

"Perhaps the Count Palatine will be of help to me."

Valrandin's eyes glinted, equivocally amused. "If you hope to pry any truth from Redbane, you're braver than you know, doctor."

Ryel smiled back. "As brave a man as yourself, I hope, Lieutenant."

To the wysard's startled astonishment, the young officer exploded. "I'm not a man, damn it! I'm the Countess of Fayal, and you can tell Redbane when you see him that he's heartily invited to kiss my arse." With a piqued slap of the reins she departed, spurring her horse impatiently through the bridge-traffic, scattering servants, citizens and vendors right and left.

Chapter Twelve

The wysard continued on his way to the headquarters, dazedly attempting to envision Valrandin as a woman, and to imagine how he would have treated her had he known. No physical hints had betrayed the Countess' sex—no swell of breast or hip, no softness whatever either in her semblance or her manners. The clear timbre of her voice, pitched neither high nor low, had been very pleasing, but without any hint of femininity. But there were the diamonds in both her ears, contrary to the custom of Northern males who wore only one ear-ornament, if any; and that rich pervasive scent, and that superlative abundance of lace at her wrists and throat.

"A woman," he murmured to himself. "And Roskerrek knows it well." Again he witnessed the savage eyeplay that had passed between the Count Palatine and Valrandin, now realizing that beneath the seeming disdain ran a current of unwilling esteem, and that under the apparent loathing twisted something far to the contrary.

As he considered those events and all the others that had befallen him since his arrival in the North, a deafening peal of bells made him start, and fight to keep in the saddle as Jinn reared in startlement. Glancing around, he saw that the clanging din came from a great temple; and he further noticed that he was on Crown Street. Recalling the poet Dulard's mention of Derain Meschante, Ryel paused to consider the sacred building's stark and unwelcoming exterior, and then tied Jinn to a railing near the church door where other horses were fastened.

Climbing the steps, he entered into a long bare hall grudgingly illumined by the wan Northern afternoon, where his appearance was uncordially remarked by the congregation, most of it sober middle class, who from long rows of hard benches eyed his Steppes gear askance and murmured among themselves. Their faint noise was the only sound in the great echoing room where meager shafts of pallid light glinted on the dust-motes with chilly disapproval. At length a rustling at the end of the room alerted the congregation to stand; and a skeletal gray-robed priest ascended the steps of the pulpit in the midst of the room's end with slow steps, setting down with a reverberant thud the great book he held, turning its pages with dry cracklings and much coughing. At last he spoke, intoning a prayer through his nose; and the congregation seconded it with the same pious nasality. Fervorless was that orison, which chiefly asked for the downfall of unbelievers; and the rest of the service was fully as joyless and perfunctory. At some point a pair of gray-swathed hangdog acolytes circulated about the auditory with wide brass salvers, into which those assembled were all but constrained, it appeared, to throw considerable amounts of money; the heaped vessels were then placed upon the bare stone altar under the grim and unsatisfied eye of the priest.

Next followed a brief, bitter harangue eloquent only in its denunciation of sin and assurance of eternal damnation were not certain precepts of an exceptionally self-denying nature followed to the letter. Distrust and loathing of the flesh seemed to be the key, indeed the only, tenets of belief. Ryel listened amazed, wondering how anyone could find spiritual comfort in dogma so basely bare of any uplifting philosophy, any tenderness, forgiveness, love; and he could not help but remember the Temple of Atlan and its passionate celebration of pleasure, the jewel-sparked nudity of the dancers, the candlelight and wine and color and music. The worship of Atlan might not be any more profound in its intentions than that of the Unseen; but at least Destimar had other deities—Demetropa, Divares, Aphrenalta—whereby a believer's higher faculties might find nourishment. Hryeland had only this one unforgiving invisible god, to whom its worshippers were no more than vermin, and the world a barren rock.

Bored to disgust, Ryel had no wish to stay further. He was on the point of leaving when at that moment a shiver went through the congregation, an eager current of expectation. Turning his gaze back to the pulpit, Ryel saw that a preacher was mounting the creaking steps with a heavily resonant tread: a priest much younger than the first, his years less than forty. He was almost as powerfully built as Michael Essern, and nearly as tall despite his slack round-shouldered stance. Unlike Michael he was meticulously washed, and immaculately clad in severe gray robes, and all unlike Michael most disconcertingly repulsive of visage. In a man of right mind and clean spirit, the priest's looks would have been unremarkable, and in a man of great intellect and compassionate wisdom, they might well have been deemed attractive. But Ryel only saw the pebble-hard mud-colored eyes, and the bitter-lipped mouth. Even the hair was joyless, hanging in thin lusterless strands of dull brown. Nevertheless, at the sight of the priest the congregation seemed as close to ecstasy as it was capable, and pressed forward to hearken unto his teachings.

After a long moment of haughtily surveying the congregation and further establishing his empire over it, the priest of the Unseen launched into a bitter harangue eloquent only in its assurance of eternal damnation, and its insistence on precepts of an exceptionally self-denying nature being followed to the letter. Although sour and shrill compared to the deep music of Michael's voice, this priest's manner of preaching was, however, incredibly similar to Michael's in its strident coarseness, and apparently had its charms for the congregation, who murmured fierce agreement with every vilification of the flesh, and delighted in each abstruse twist of murky dogma. But Michael Essern had impressed Ryel at once as possessing an intellect both subtle and deep, for all his savagery and squalor. This Hryeland priest was manifestly second-rate in every respect.

"Who is he?" the wysard whisperingly demanded of the plump burgher's wife at his left elbow. When she did not reply, he asked again, more insistently.

She glared him up and down, her overfed cheeks wobbling with indignation. "He is none other than the Reverend Prelate Derain Meschante, the most eminent divine in the land," she hissed. "And an outland reprobate you must be, to intrude here with your idle askings!"

"So that's Meschante. By every god—"

He must have said the last words too loudly, because appalled silence sheer as ice caught their echo. Meschante stood upright at last, darting a furious glare directly at the wysard.

"By every god? None but a benighted heathen would swear so grossly—and such you must be, from your outland looks. A slave to the dirty gods of Destimar—most probably of that deceiving idol of whores and wastrels, Atlan!"

Ryel faced Meschante unperturbed, and only when the congregation's spiteful murmuring had died down did he speak, clearly and quietly. "You once frequented Atlan's temple, I believe. Not only the temple, but the Diamond Heaven."

"You mean the brothel quarter. And I did indeed," Meschante replied, quelling his flock's bleating amazement with a lowering scowl. "And there I preached the truth of the Unseen to the shameless denizens of that filthy wallow. I saved souls there, outlander."

Approving murmurs met this declaration, but Ryel only lifted his chin in scorn. "You basely insulted a woman of purer spirit than you could ever begin to comprehend, and drove into exile a man you could never hope to match."

"I worked the will of the Unseen," Meschante said, sneeringly self-righteous. "Mine is the triumph, and I glory in it."

"The Diamond Heaven still stands, for all your puritan ravings," the wysard replied. "And Belphira Deva is no less fair, despite your bigoted insolence."

Meschante's flaccid pallor colored dark with rage and something more, and his voice rose over the congregation's hissing hubbub. "Never speak that slut's name in this sacred place! Her damnation will come at last—but not before time claws to pieces her painted beauty and leaves her a broken crone! As for that harlot's rakehell bully, he went from her reeking bed to this realm, only to be driven forth in shame at last."

"Driven where?" Ryel demanded, fighting to contain his impatience.

Observing that his listeners were dividing their attention between him and the wysard, Meschante made a gesture of contemptuous dismissal. "To his doom, I devoutly pray. But if I have any means to bring about judgment on that braggart Desrenaud and his proud trollop, believe that I will use them to their limit. Now get you gone, but know that the Unseen will punish with eternal fire your impious invasion of Its sanctuary."

Disgusted and disappointed, Ryel quitted the church under indignant glares, glad to be back in the jostling muddy street. As he was considering a quiet glass of ale in some snug tavern, he was surprised by the voice of Jorn Alleron, its tone harsh and sharp.

"Damnation, I've been looking for you everywhere, doctor. You're to come with me this instant."

Ryel turned and looked up at the mounted soldier, noting the drawn tension around his steely eyes. "But I wasn't to meet the Count Palatine until—"

"He requires you now. I've never seen him worse. He was nearly falling off his horse when he got back from the Ministry, and we had to carry him indoors. Come along, and be quick!”

*****

Impatiently led by Alleron, the wysard made his way to the headquarters and Roskerrek's apartments. The rooms of the lower floor were designated for military business, and officers and soldiers came and went, filling the air with the tread of boots, the rattle of swords, and harsh peremptory commands. Upstairs in one wing of the great building were Roskerrek's private chambers, all deserted and silent, chill as vaults, hung with faded tapestries and darkened by ancient walnut paneling and heavy graceless furniture black with age. It seemed as if the vast rooms lay under some heartless curse that had banished all hope of pleasure, and that laughter had never stirred the dank stony air.

Alleron quietly pushed open a great door. "In through here," he whispered. "Be quiet as you go."

The chamber Ryel entered, ushered by a wordless orderly, was exceedingly warm. A great fire burned in the hearth, throwing erratic shadows on the walls, where beasts and birds and monsters carved in the wood took sinister life from the wavering light. Heavy curtains muffled the windows and partly surrounded the great tester-bed that stood close to the mantelpiece.

"Over here, physician." Alleron's voice, hushed and cautionary, led Ryel to the bedside. By a branch of candles on a nearby table the wysard saw that Roskerrek lay at length and seemingly asleep, but muttering and tossing as if trapped in a nightmare. Alleron looked on with disquiet clearly heart-wrung.

"I've never known him worse," the captain whispered hoarsely. "When he came back from the Ministry he had a vomiting fit in the courtyard, and then fainted; came to when we got him inside, and went mad almost from the pain in his entrails and his head."

Ryel looked closer not at Roskerrek, but Alleron, whose lower lip and right eye were bruised and blackened. "Was he the cause of your wounds, Captain?"

Alleron nodded, but shrugged too. "Often my lord's pain is so great that he loses his wits almost, and lashes out not knowing what he does. I'm used to it—and glad of it, because it always seems to soothe him."

"You never give him calmants?"

"No drugs avail him, doctor, nor ever have. Reach me that basin there—he's about to have another fit."

Starting up on an elbow, Roskerrek began to retch, racked with spasms; and Alleron held his head, pulling back the heavy red skeins of hair until the paroxysm was over.

The silent servant brought fresh water and carried away the basin, closing the door soundlessly behind him. "Ah, Yvain," the captain murmured brokenly, taking a moistened cloth and gently wiping Roskerrek's lips.

Roskerrek gasped and thrashed, hissing a foul torrent of curses as he fought the equerry's care with the seeming last of his strength, backhanding a vicious blow that made Alleron's wounded mouth bleed afresh. Then he gave an anguished moan, and lost consciousness. Lifting Roskerrek up, Alleron gathered him into his arms, and for a moment hid his face in the thick scarlet hair that absorbed his torn lip's blood like clear water. Then he regarded Ryel, his steely eyes rusted.

"I grew up by Yvain's side," he said, his voice unsteady. "If I could take his suffering upon me, I would joyfully. Do everything you can for him, doctor."

"I promise I will, captain," Ryel replied, greatly moved. "Now go, and take the general's servant with you, if you would."

Left alone with Roskerrek, Ryel for some time contemplated the sick man who lay immobile now, faint groans escaping through clenched teeth. The Count Palatine was still partially in uniform, and his boots muddied the bedclothes, and his shirt was still tautly belted into the black cavalry breeches. Ryel's eye was drawn to the spare strength of that overwrought form, kept alive only by iron will. Alone with Roskerrek, Ryel for some time contemplated the sick man who lay immobile now, faint groans escaping through clenched teeth. Roskerrek was only partially in uniform, his coat and hat and gloves carefully arrayed on a nearby chair and his sword slung over its back. Nevertheless his boots muddied the bedclothes, and his shirt was still tautly belted into the black cavalry breeches. Ryel's eye was drawn to the lean strength of the overwrought form kept alive only by iron will, and the perfection with which it was clothed. The immaculate shirt was made of the finest linen Ryel had seen outside of the Eastern Palace, and scented with a pleasing fragrance of lavender and citron, but was wringing with sweat.

"Am I dying, doctor?"

The words were scarcely audible, uttered between parched lips that scarcely moved. Ryel laid his hand on Roskerrek's forehead, wincing at the icy wetness against his palm, the battering throb of the temples.

Roskerrek stared into emptiness. Even in the near-darkness the pupils of his eyes were contracted almost to invisibility, and between the red lids glowed cold gray-yellow light. Again his hoarse whisper barely rose above the crackling of the hearth. "My brain is about to burst in a cloud of blood. My guts are crawling with envenomed snakes fanged in fire."

"You are very sick," the wysard said; and despite his misgivings he pitied this man, whose blood was tainted with inhuman bane.

"I was born sick." Seemingly with all the strength he had, the Count Palatine continued after a long silence. "Sick and weak. All my life I have forced this afflicted flesh to its limit." He swallowed. "But the pain worsens year by year. There are remissions in which I almost know health; entire weeks in which only dull migraine afflicts me. Then there are the cruel times. The times a demon takes me—"

He groaned and panted, his entire body gripped by a raging chill; gave a low half-animal cry, desperate with torture, and caught the wysard about the throat to strangle him, stammering obscenities. But his icy fingers were as weak as a child's, now.

That's enough, Ryel thought. Taking Roskerrek's head in both his hands, he forced his brow to the Count Palatine's dripping one, and uttered a word. At once Roskerrek fell back insensible, although still shuddering.

Seating himself on the bed at Roskerrek's side, Ryel contemplated his next move. He required three spells: the first to take away the pain, the second to rid the body of the daimon-blight, the third to heal the ravages wrought by years of suffering. Having chosen the mantras he deemed best, he drew a long clear breath and began to say the first words, droning them in the back of his throat, sure of his Mastery.

The spell took. Roskerrek ceased his writhing and lay still, his face's tics and twitches relaxed for the first time. Gently the wysard took the Count Palatine's wrist and turned back the cuff of the shirt, and observed with consternation that the hard white flesh of the arm was seamed to the elbow with scars, and with cuts both fresh and mending. Pushing up the other sleeve, he found the same slashed defacement.

"By every..." Loathing the sight, he healed the worst of the wounds and erased many of the scars with the Art's aid, then turned the sleeves down again.

Roskerrek stirred and whispered, his eyes yet closed. "Bradamaine." Convulsively he seized Ryel's hand. "Command me. Anything. Life, death…"

Those slim fingers had the grip of a great cat, and Ryel broke free only with all his strength. Steeling himself, the wysard then slowly spoke the next spell, leaning over Roskerrek to touch mouth to mouth, breathing the last words into the sick man's body.

At that barely grazing contact a virulent sickness seemed to invade his body and brain, dizzying him, making his gorge rise. For the first time in his life the wysard envisioned what it would be like to kill a man in cold blood, to cruelly force a woman to serve his pleasure, to lay waste to cities. Shuddering, he banished those thoughts. But he could not rid himself of the dull throbbing that bound his skull with an ever-tightening crown of burning iron, or the qualms that soured the pit of his throat.

The air grew stifling, nearly strangling him, and then the fire in the hearth leapt up in a burst of sparks. The voice Ryel loathed issued from the flames, crackling with laughter.

Redbane's cure has cost you, young blood.

The wysard doubled over in a throe. "Dagar?" he gasped. "But it's still daylight. How—"

My strength grows ceaselessly, sucked from the spirits of the air. Not even the Void can confine me now. Night and day no longer matter.

"What did you do to me, monster?"

Nothing but give your healing-spells a clever twist, and turn the Bane upon you. Now it's in your blood, sweet eyes. Now the pain that gives my servant Michael his strength will prove your unending torment, Edris' bastard. Now I'll watch you crawl, and beg me to make you mine to end the torture.

In agony though he was, Ryel lifted his chin in defiance. "You'll never have me. I'll find the Mastery of Joining—and I'll bring my father back from the Void, where you'll stay chained forever."

My servant Michael is far more clever in those matters than you, young blood. He'll find it first, count on it. And oh, but I'll be ready.

"You may be able to enter a human form—but only as some frail Worldling with no power in the Art, and never for long."

Changes are already awork, thanks to me. In Markul and Tesba they wonder at the decline of their Art, and consult their great Books; but in Ormala and Elecambron they smile at the uncommon success of their spells. My side is winning.

"What is this talk of win and loss?" Ryel angrily demanded. "We of the Cities are brothers."

Too long have the Cities lived in balance, the voice with a sneer replied. Time for yours to topple. And I'll have the World, too. Destimar will fall, and then the North, and then the rest. The World and the Four will be mine, the voice giggled. The World and the Four, and your sweet young body.

Ryel spat into the flames and turned his back on them. The fire gave a great burst, and the air lightened. Pushing his freezing hands through his hair to ease the ache, the wysard returned to Roskerrek's bedside, and accomplished the final spell.

When it was done, he brought the candles closer. Their light stabbed to the back of his brain. With unsteady fingertips he stroked Roskerrek's face, running them over the forehead, down the cheeks, across the lips; lightly circled the closed eyes. Like yielding clay the furrows and lines faded at the wysard's touch, and a faint flush overcame the chalk-like pallor. All the hard-angled beauty that long pain had destroyed now returned to its right like a long-thwarted ruler to his throne, compelling and noble; and now Ryel observed a scar that ran in a straight faint crease across the top of Roskerrek's left cheek to the temple, as if the skin had been seared by a fine red-hot wire.

"Desrenaud's mark," the wysard murmured. "That I'll leave you, Redbane."

He uttered an Art-word, and Roskerrek opened his eyes. The dilation of the pupils all but crowded out the gray of the iris, conferring a dreaming visionary depth to his countenance.

"I don't know what I feel," he said, his voice distant and wondering.

"It's called health," Ryel said, curtly and bitterly jealous.

Swiftly, with the heedless grace of a great cat, Roskerrek rose and went to the window, opening it wide, letting in the cold Northern noonday. He drank in the chill radiance as if drinking delicious wine. A wondering while he was silent, as if coming to terms with the incredible possibility of a life free of continual suffering. "This would have all but killed me, before," he said softly. He turned to Ryel, not yet daring to trust. "Drugs have no affect on me."

"I used no drugs, General," the wysard replied. "My methods are confidential."

"But can I dare trust, and hope? How long will the cure last?"

"As long as you live. The sickness that consumed you has been routed forever."

Roskerrek gazed eagerly into the white radiance the wysard shrank from. "Forever?"

"Yes."

Roskerrek breathed in the chill air as if drinking delicious wine. "With all my heart I would believe you, Ryel Mirai."

"I tell the truth, Yvain Essern."

Ryel must have spoken sharply, for Roskerrek turned from the window and came to the wysard's side, and silently took his hand, carrying it to his forehead in the way of Destimar. "I will never forget this deliverance."

The wysard flinched, barely able to keep from snatching his hand away. "Neither will I."

Releasing him, the Count Palatine crossed the room, pulling aside another curtain. This one concealed not a window, but a great mirror. Leaning both hands lightly against the glass, Roskerrek stared at his reflection, his features motionless in meditation, his voice still.

"Long ago I vowed to Argane never to marry and beget, lest my blood's taint be perpetuated. But now…"

Ryel said what the Count Palatine did not dare. "Now your offspring will be free of the infection, as will their descendants."

"At last. After long centuries, at last. It seems far too much to believe." A long moment Roskerrek hesitated before speaking again. "I cannot tell how many times in my life I sought death. How many times in my agony I commanded Jorn to run me through and end it forever—the only orders I ever gave him that he disobeyed." As if looking into the face of a stranger the Count Palatine studied his transformed self. "So this is what I really was."

"Yes," Ryel said, unable to quell his envy.

"I look younger."

"Yes."

Impatiently Roskerrek dashed away the wetness rising in his eyes, as one swiftly turns the page of a fascinating book never read before. "I am but thirty-six." He tilted his face from side to side, appraisingly, with a tinge of a smile. "Why, I'm half in love with myself." Catching sight of the scar, he traced it with his fingertips. "Yes. Half in love."

Ryel joined Roskerrek at the mirror, glanced at his own haggard reflection, and turned away. "I congratulate you.

"Name what you will. Anything. I will triple whatever you ask."

"I wish only the answer to a single question, as I said before," the wysard replied.

"Very well. You may ask it and welcome." Roskerrek smiled, then. "But only after we dine. I'm hungry for the first time in years."

Ryel felt a sickening twinge of impatience. "But—"

"I pray you accept of my entertainment, Ryel Mirai. You'll not regret it; my cook Verlande is the best in Hallagh, which is saying much."

The thought of food made the wysard's gorge rise, but he quelled it somehow, and resigned himself. "As you wish."

"Excellent. I'll inform my orderly. But first come with me, if you would."

Roskerrek led Ryel into the next room, a large chamber closely draped and lit by dozens of candles that made the wysard clench his teeth. The Count Palatine swiftly uncurtained the windows, not noticing how Ryel recoiled.

"Away with this gloom! Sir, I am going to dress, and to tell Jorn of my cure; I'll not be long. I trust my library will help you while away the time—or you may make use of my instrument, if you chance to be a musician."

"I do not play," the wysard said through gritted teeth.

Roskerrek seemed to notice Ryel for the first time in a very long while. "You're pale."

The wysard turned away. "It's nothing."

"Sit and rest. I shan't be long."

He left, and Ryel at once yanked the curtains shut again. He was in terrible pain, his eyes squinting with it, his stomach churning. Another moment and he'd be sick. In blind panic he fumbled in his pocket, not knowing why, and found the carnelian scent-cylinder; still not knowing why unstoppered it and breathed of its perfume as if drinking antidote to poison. Instant deliverance ensued, relief so sweet that he dropped into a chair, unable to stand.

"My infinite thanks, Priam," he whispered; and his eyes felt afire.

After a moment he rose, and began to look about the room. Now he could appreciate that it was a fair large chamber excellently furnished, and that every wall was covered floor to ceiling with books, save at intervals where paintings or windows took their place. There were thousands of volumes, Ryel observed, all of them indicating their owner's grave elevation of mind—books of history, music theory, the arts; plays and novels, none of them frivolous; the lives of notable men and women; many treatises on the waging of war, and the science of weapons—especially the sword—and the manner of dealing with princes; philosophy and astronomy and mathematics. A double-ranked harpsichord took up the center of the room, and a great desk covered with papers stood near it. On the harpsichord lay a sheaf of manuscripts for sonatas, canons, inventions, swiftly yet exquisitely penned; Ryel looked over some of the compositions, spelled one or two of them out on the keyboard, and was moved by their beauty. The papers on the desk had been written by the same sharp symmetrical hand—Roskerrek's, clearly. Here were drafts of several poems, and the opening scene of the third act of a tragedy entitled The Queene's Generall. Part of a soliloquy uttered by the protagonist caught the wysard's eye, and he read it murmuringly aloud.

"'Hope of Delighte to come, that never seemes

Nearer than Fantasie or fever'd Thought;

Jewell past price, more treasur'd than all Dreames

Of gaine, though with deepe Sorrowe dearly bought;

Rose of a bleeding Hearte, that never stayes

To bloome, yet leaves its Thornes to know it by;

Mirrour of every Joye, that to the gaze

A false Reflection yields, and mocks the eye;

Islande of Paradise, whose shelt'ring Baye--"

He halted, aware of a door opening. The Count Palatine entered, freshly and magnificently attired in muted shimmering sea-green velvet embroidered in silver and set off by exquisite lace, and soft fawn-colored boots and gauntlets. The hues of his garments sorted well with his coloring, making it less strange to the sight; moreover, the sharp scarlet growth that had exaggerated the angularity of his face was now cut closer. Few would now deny that the general of the Domina's armies was a markedly if strangely well-favored man, the hard-edged beauty of his face in striking harmony with the lithe strength of his form. The face now faintly smiled, and the body slightly bowed. "Island of paradise, whose sheltering bay/ No stranger welcomes that it does not slay.' I see you have a tolerance for indifferent verses, sir."

Ryel backed away from the desk, astonished by the transformation he beheld. "Forgive me. I didn't mean—"

"No harm done," Roskerrek smiled. "I'm sure you've written a sonnet or two in your life."

"I never was so inspired," the wysard replied. "But I would gladly have composed any of that music." And he indicated the manuscripts on the harpsichord.

Roskerrek closed the door behind him. "You tempt me, sir. I haven't touched the keys in weeks." He started to draw off his gloves. "Would you permit me to run over a passage or so before we dine?"

"With all gladness."

Seating himself at the harpsichord, Roskerrek deftly tried some chords, and the instrument spilled forth notes like sharp-cut diamonds. "Alleron's kept this in tune, I see. He's an able executant; we play duets sometimes."

Ryel would have attempted to envision that scene, but the Count Palatine had chosen a sonata and begun to play, his first notes driving out all else from the wysard's mind. Roskerrek's fingers, enriched with rings of emerald and gold, touched the keys so lightly that it seemed the music was wrought by spirits of the air, not the agency of humankind; yet the harmony came clear and piercing sweet, played with a masculine force that mingled in passionate union with the delicate timbres of the instrument. It was exquisitely complex music full of enrapturing invention, passionate in its reflective intensity; and as he listened, the wysard thought of the Count Palatine's house, where one progressed from cold officialdom to colder emptiness, only by great privilege passing into the private world of warmth and beauty; and listening to Roskerrek's music the wysard realized that he had entered the innermost chamber of all, a secret place incomparably rich and wondrous.

"You are an artist, General," the wysard said reverently when the piece had ended.

Roskerrek inclined his head, but only slightly. "Virtually every gentleman in Hryeland has some skill at music. I am most fortunate to have had the best instruction, early on. My mother has great skill at the clavier, and when I was very young she taught me to play, because she noted that music soothed my illness. What you hear in my works is her influence."

The wysard inwardly commended that lady's wisdom. Perhaps it implied Art within her, to understand that demonic forces were repelled by beauty. With greatest pleasure the wysard listened to the wondrous music, until an orderly entered to announce that dinner was readied. The Count Palatine led Ryel to a long large paneled room whose table would readily seat twenty, one of its ends covered with fine damask and laid for two with massy gleaming silver, nearest the great marble hearth where a fire blazed brightly. The candle-branches on the table had just been lighted, and wine had been poured, but only in one of the glasses.

"I from time to time entertain my staff officers here, and members of the fellowship of Argane," Roskerrek said. "My cook Verlande is one of the most famous in the city, but of late he's had little employment. If I continue to give him insufficient scope for his talents, I risk losing him to the Earl of Gledrim, whose fortune is as fabulous as his palate is discerning--far more so than any of his other tastes. Tonight I asked Verlande to surpass himself. Here, try this wine; I'm told it's quite good."

It was, in fact, excellent. "Will you not have some?" Ryel asked.

Roskerrek shook his head. "I've never touched drink in all my life. No, I take that back; when I was ten I stole a drink of my father's glass, and it nearly killed me."

"It would not harm you now."

Roskerrek hesitated a moment, then poured his goblet half full and lifted it. "To your health, Ryel Mirai—which seems to have returned, I am glad to observe."

Ryel returned the pledge. "To your health as well, my lord."

"I owe it entirely to you," Roskerrek said. "My gratitude is not only for myself. From now on my poor equerry will no longer have to serve as my sick-nurse, and suffer from my mad fits." His keenly angled features clouded a moment. "I had no idea I'd blacked Jorn's eye. He tried to hide it from me when we met again, and when he learned of my cure he wept like a child."

Ryel thought of his last meeting with that brave good man. "His devotion is noble."

The Count Palatine smiled. "It is indeed. Let's drink to it." He took first a tentative sip of the rich vintage, then another less wary, then a long savoring mouthful. "But this is delicious. Finally I realize why Verlande always seemed so sorry for me; surely he's been exasperated too, since he chooses wines with great care to compliment his dishes, so everyone tells me. Speaking of which, they're bringing in the first course."

Verlande's cuisine was both robust and subtle, concocted with elaboration and presented splendidly. Ryel, who had expected insubstantial delicacies fit for an invalid, ate almost with greed, and Roskerrek seconded him. As if by tacit agreement the conversation was wide-ranging and pleasant, inspired by the many subjects in the Count Palatine's library.

"It's luck that you have such a good command of Hryelesh," the Count Palatine said as the dessert came in. "My speaking Almancarian is nonexistent beyond a few phrases, I'm sorry to say, although I can read it well enough to enjoy the epic cycles of Destimar."

"I'm glad for you," Ryel said. "They are extremely beautiful, and don't translate well."

"May I ask why you bothered to learn the language of this land, dwelling in the Steppes as you were?"

"For the same reasons you learned Almancarian. Much of the best literature in the world is written in Hryelesh, and reading it has given me great pleasure. Besides, I didn't dwell all my life in Rismai."

As he said the last words, he inwardly cursed himself for his carelessness brought on by the heady wine, but it was too late. "Where else have you lived?" Roskerrek asked, clearly interested. "You must be conversant in the ways of many a land, to judge from your manners; from the first you've seemed far more than a mere wandering healer."

"You're kind, but I've found my manners sorely lacking in this city," Ryel said, glad of a chance to turn the talk. "I blundered grossly soon after you and I parted at the headquarters, and inadvertently insulted the Countess of Fayal by calling her a gentleman."

Roskerrek's eyes widened. "Blest Argane. I wish I'd been there to see that. You're lucky she didn't challenge you to a duel."

"Luckily for me, there wasn't time."

"I should have warned you at the outset. My apologies." Having poured more wine for them both, Roskerrek sat back and seemed to ruminate aloud as he held his glass to the candlelight. "A more quarrelsome vixen I've never had the misfortune to contend with. A brawling debauched hoyden, so ignorant and untaught that she can scarce write her name, or read a sentence without stumbling, or find Hryeland on a map…and the only female member of the Brotherhood of the Sword, which makes her all the more prideful and arrogant."

"By every god," the wysard said despite himself. "I never expected that last bit of information."

"It hardly overjoys me, either," the Count Palatine said, his tone grim. "Many think that royal favor played a role and coerced her joining, but I have to give Valrandin her due, and admit that she passed the initiation solely on her own merits. Her adversary was the Earl of Rothsaye, who has no love for her and showed no mercy during their combat. Despite his advantage of size and years, she held her own and got in the first cut."

"Have you ever dueled with her?"

"No. I never will, no matter how much and loudly she petitions." Roskerrek reached for an apple, holding it up and admiring its polished blush; and his frown faded. "Man's garb becomes her well. But you should see her gowned, with a touch of color to heighten her looks. I recall one of her dresses—a plum-colored satin that makes her shoulders and her neck seem white as a swan's… " he broke off, coloring slightly, and hastily set the apple down again. "I'm speaking foolishly. Perhaps I'm getting drunk."

Ryel had noted that the Count Palatine seemed in no way affected by the wine, despite now having drunk three glasses of it and more. "I'd say that you're speaking like a man in perfect health."

Roskerrek half smiled, and seemed to debate inwardly a moment. "There is another who would benefit from your healing powers. Come with me, if you would."

And before Ryel could reply, Roskerrek pushed away from the table and stood up. Leading the wysard back to his study, he abruptly threw open the doors of an inlaid cabinet set into the wall. A double portrait, life-sized and half-length, of two young soldiers in rich black uniforms and armor of gold-chased burnished steel, gazed back at Ryel with proud challenging eyes. They were both of a height, although one was perhaps twenty-five, the other just out of his teens. The eyes of both were unsettling pale gray, their skin was all but bloodless, and their hair was strange scarlet red, falling in long heavy skeins. They stood side against side, the elder with his arm about the younger man's shoulders, the younger's hand on the elder's waist.

"My brother Michael and myself, when we first entered the army," the Count Palatine said.

"It is a magnificent painting," Ryel said, unable at first to note anything but the workmanship.

"I commissioned it. The artist is greatly famed, and I believe this work to be her best. She never flatters her subjects, as should be evident." Roskerrek contemplated the painting awhile before speaking again. "Save for his coloring, Michael had the good fortune to resemble my father, who was considered one of the handsomest men in the North. As you might have observed, my brother wears the battle-jacket of the Ninth, famed as the Black Dragons, the cavalry's elite force of which he was colonel—a regiment that neither gave nor accepted quarter in the field."

Ryel nodded slowly, remembering that encounter in Markul. It was as if he stood at his Glass once more; as if the painted semblance would at any moment glower a frown, and address him rudely.

"His abilities were superior to those of officers twice his age," Roskerrek continued. "A braver soldier never held command." He glanced at Ryel. "You might have heard of my brother while you were in Almancar."

"I saw him there."

"I envy you." After another silence, Roskerrek spoke again. "We have been apart many years, and I have missed him more than I have power to express. We were devoted to one another as boys, and our shared suffering only tightened the bond. We never quarreled, save when pain drove us to violence we regretted immediately afterward. Because my illness was graver than my brother's, I was educated privately; but Michael was able to attend the university of this city, where he studied natural philosophy, in which he had a capacity approaching genius. However, his skepticism incurred much exasperation among the theological faculty, who were plagued by his continual asking of questions to which there were no ready answers. His was a great and restless intellect that scorned all dogma." The Count Palatine's cold eyes had warmed as they gazed upon the portrait, but now grew somber. "They say my brother now goes about unwashed and in rags, with his head shaven. Is this true?"

"I regret to say it is."

"How that could come about I've no idea. He was always so cleanly in his person, so elegant in his dress. But that was a long time ago, before… " He turned to the wysard, suddenly. "What is your City, Ryel Mirai?"

There was no mistaking the implicit capitalization of the word. Taken aback by the question, Ryel sought refuge in evasion. "I don't understand what—"

Roskerrek made a fierce gesture like the tearing away of a veil. "Enough of this dissembling—Lord Ryel. Both you and I know that Michael is a lord adept of Elecambron. I have not his talents, but I assure you I know a wysard's work when I see it." He pushed back his sleeve to resentfully bare his now all but unmarked forearm. "Nothing less than the Art could have healed my sickness, and nothing less could have effaced the evidence of my sacrifices to Argane, Queen of Swords. You are a Markulit, are you not?"

Ryel lifted his chin. "I am."

Ever with his searching pale eyes on Ryel, Roskerrek slid the sleeve back down to his wrist, settling the lace of the shirt-cuff. "You're very young to be of that City."

"I was born to the Art," Ryel replied. "My father was a wysard."

"What was his name?"

"Edris Desharem Alizai."

The name ensorcelled Roskerrek into white stone. But when he at last could speak his voice rang with unprecedented warmth. "Edris was your father, and a wysard? But when did he turn to the Art?"

"At the age of thirty," Ryel said.

"And when did you?"

"At fourteen," the wysard replied. "I dwelt with him for twelve years in Markul."

The pale eyes glinted. "But this is incredible! Did he ever tell you of Warraven?"

"Only in passing," Ryel said. "But your father was a great fighter, as I understand."

Roskerrek gave a wry half-laugh. "So was yours. Not once but often I heard my father speak of his friend, the wild Steppes brave who in the thick of battle had saved his life, and was one of the most honored of Argane's faithful." Roskerrek's expression, hitherto eagerly alight, darkened again. "But I recall that you did not include his name when you first told me yours. Was his passing recent?"

Ryel swallowed. "Yes."

"Ah. That's hard."

"It has been."

They were both silent, remembering and mourning. "That cloak of yours was my father's," Roskerrek said at last. "I knew it from first—and your wearing of it was the only reason I engaged you as a physician. I had no hope whatsoever that you would cure me. There is a tear near its hem, small, three-cornered, mended so neatly one can scarcely find it—am I not right?"

Ryel stared, surprised. "You are."

"That tear was mended by my mother's hands," Roskerrek said. "How did your father come into possession of Warraven's mantle?"

"Edris used his Art to bring it to Markul," Ryel replied. "It became my own at his death."

"By rights it should have been mine. But I'll not deprive you of it."

"I thank you, because I would sooner part with my skin."

Another silence, broken slowly. "Ask your question, Lord Ryel."

The wysard lost no time. "I believe you have knowledge of the whereabouts of Guyon de Grisainte Desrenaud, Earl of Anbren. I wish to find him."

"Find him? And why?"

"My reasons are private," Ryel replied.

"I cannot tell you where he is."

The wysard felt a sharp jab at his brain's core. "But I thought you knew."

"I do know," Roskerrek said, emotionless now. "But I cannot tell you."

Ryel stared at him, fighting a cramp somewhere deep. "You would have died without me, damn it."

The Count Palatine calmly nodded. "I am sure I would have, and very soon."

"And out of your mind."

"I have no doubt of that."

Ryel struck the wall. "You gave me your word!"

"And I deeply regret having to take it back; but I gave it first to Guyon Desrenaud, who has no wish to be found. I cannot betray an oath I swore in the Temple of the Sword."

Ryel turned away, bitter with frustration, as Roskerrek went over to the table where they had both left their swords, reaching for the wysard's weapon. "May I look at this?"

"If you must."

The Count Palatine carried the sword to the light. "I've always admired the Steppes tagh, but have never fought against one."

"I'd be more than glad to give you a chance," Ryel replied, with hard irony.

Faintly Roskerrek smiled. "Would you." His pale eyes narrowed as he read the runes on the blade. "This is a Brotherhood sword. Your father's, I take it?"

"Yes."

The Count Palatine eyed the wysard keenly awhile before speaking. "You well realize, I trust, that you have no right whatever to wear this. But you might earn that privilege. And were you a member of the Fraternity of the Sword, I by the Brotherhood's laws could keep no secret whatsoever from you in the Temple of Argane."

"Then I ask to join the order."

Roskerrek swung the slim blade in a smooth arc, noting the way its brilliant metal caught the light. "You must swear to abjure all other gods."

"I swear it readily."

The Count Palatine lowered the blade level with his waist, trying a difficult twisting sideways thrust, executing it to perfection. "And you must promise to use no Art. This really is a remarkable weapon."

"I won't need my Art," Ryel said. But watching those trained and expert movements, he was far from sure.

Roskerrek continued to examine the tagh with calmly intent interest. "Brotherhood swords are wrought not of steel, but of metal infinitely stronger and signally rare, its chief component found only in Argane's temple. Surely you have observed the brilliant luster, which never dims? The way the blade is always keen as death, and never rusts? The way it weighs almost nothing? You'll also find that it can very quickly be brought to white heat, and hold that heat for what seems a distressingly long time, without the least loss of temper." He gripped the hilt in both hands, trying its balance, his stance and guard those of a Steppes tagh master. "This unique alloy is forged and wrought by the ateliers of the two armorers of the Order, men more jewelers than smiths, more artists than artisans. I can tell which of them made this one by the lamination of the metal. A Brotherhood sword is the work of many months and extreme expense, and not until the aspirant passes the initiation can runes be inscribed upon the blade."

"And in the case of failure?" Ryel asked.

"The sword is hung in Argane's sanctuary, there to remain forever."

Ryel gave a low whistle. "I daresay the aspirant feels some regret at that."

"One is past regret when dead—a condition in which an aspirant now and again finds himself," Roskerrek answered with meaning irony. "The ritual concludes with a combat in honor of the goddess, the aspirant's adversary being chosen by the chief priest; the bout is fought stripped to the waist, and swords white from the fire can inflict terrible brands early in the combat. Are you quite sure you still wish to join?"

The wysard smiled. "Quite."

"Then I'll confer with the Brotherhood officers tonight regarding your fitness to join the order. Such deliberations customarily span months, but the singularity of your case merits an exception."

"For that consideration I thank you." And Ryel held out his hand for his weapon, but Roskerrek shook his head.

"This is no longer yours. It will be kept in Argane's care until such time as you are worthy of it. If you require a sword, I'll lend you one of mine."

"I'll wear none but my father's," Ryel replied, fighting down his indignation. "My Steppes dagger will serve me in the meanwhile."

"As you wish," said Roskerrek. "But one thing more. Did Lord Edris ever tell you of his initiation into the Brotherhood?"

"He never spoke of the Brotherhood," Ryel replied, coolly now.

"I see he kept his oath," Roskerrek said, in the same tone. "Well, perhaps you may have observed he bore a scar."

Ryel lifted his chin. "My father had scars all over his body."

The Count Palatine palely half-smiled. "But only one on his left side, a deep diagonal running from under the arm nearly to the navel—I see you remember it. Warraven gave him that."

"And how did Edris reciprocate?"

Roskerrek regarded Ryel steadily. "My father had no scars save those he gave himself, in Argane's service." As if to mitigate the severity of that statement, he added, "I wish you to stay in my house as my guest for as long as you wish, unless you have other obligations."

"I accept with thanks," Ryel said, giving a slight bow, but both chagrined and unsettled within. To be without his tagh was bad enough; to have to deal with initiation into a Northern blood-cult was still worse; and to have the demon-bane of the Red Esserns throbbing in his veins was little short of live damnation.

At that moment a sharp double knock sounded at the door, and Alleron entered. Bowing low first to Roskerrek, the captain strode forward and dropped to his knee before Ryel. "Physician, from this moment on I worship you as a god." And to the wysard's astonished embarrassment, Alleron grabbed his hand and kissed it.

Seeing Ryel's consternation, the Count Palatine spoke sharply. "Equerry, get up this instant. I command you."

"May you always, m'lord," Alleron said, obeying at once. His normally impassive features glowed nevertheless. "I confess I'm still amazed to see you in complete health, after these many years. It's news too green to digest yet."

The Count Palatine laughed for what the wysard realized was the first time since their meeting. "I'll be forever grateful that I let you force me into accepting the services of Ryel Mirai, who has truly proven a great doctor."

"He's further famed than you know, m'lord. And greater than either of us might guess."

"What do you mean?"

Both Ryel and Roskerrek asked that, almost in unison, both abruptly. Alleron glanced from his master's face to the wysard's, plainly taken aback. "Well, the physician has been summoned to Grotherek Palace without delay, for a private interview with the Domina Bradamaine."

The Count Palatine frowned. "Why?"

"I don't know, m'lord. But only this hour a messenger came from the palace and gave the order."

"If word comes from that quarter, needs must comply," said Roskerrek; but he seemed perturbed. "I'll not trespass by asking what business the Domina might have with you, Lord Ryel, much though I'd like to know. Nor will I detain you, for I have business at hand. My equerry here will attend you until our next."

The Count Palatine and the wysard parted, and Ryel followed Alleron down into the courtyard for his horse.

"I should have known you for a lord, with a horse so fine," Alleron said in his dry way; and then he gave a sharp whistle, at which Jinn emerged from the stables led by a duly respectful groom, gleaming like fresh gold, her silken mane partly braided, her tail bright as a comet's.

"I took the liberty of looking after your darling whilst you were working my lord's cure," Alleron continued, taking the reins from the groom and handing them over to Ryel. "A gentler sweeter creature I've never met. And I'll say this for her—she's a true lady in her ways. In fact, I've met many a lady considerably less refined."

"What do you mean, Captain?" the wysard asked.

"Well, she won't eat anything. And the straw beneath her has stayed clean and dry ever since she was stabled, if you take my meaning."

Ryel smiled to hide his disquiet. "She always had good manners."

"More than most humankind I've met. Permit me, doctor." And Alleron held Ryel's stirrup, humble as a stable-hand.

"There's no need for that, Captain," Ryel said; but the captain insisted. Damp gratitude flickered in the corner of his blackened eye. "You saved my lord's life, sir. I don't know how to thank you."

"I can think of a way," Ryel at once replied. "What do you know of a man named Guyon Desrenaud?"

The wysard braced himself for the kind of reaction that question had elicited from Valrandin, and was surprised and relieved when Alleron seemed to consider a long moment, then swing into the saddle of his own horse before replying quietly.

"I knew him better than most, doctor. I was his dispatch rider during the late wars, carrying letters between him and the Domina."

"I thought you served the Count Palatine."

"I carried my lord's messages as well. Some there are that might tell you I'm the best rider in the realm, and can get more speed out of a mount than any other. And those sayings may well be true—but that's neither here nor there. Starklander was a man whose greatness fully matched that of my lord's, although I admit it much differed in kind. It wrung me sore when he was exiled from this land, and my one desire is to have him back in the Domina's good graces again." He dealt Ryel a wary glance. "Do you wish him good, or ill?"

"Neither as yet," the wysard answered. "But whatever you can tell me concerning him, I would be glad to hear."

"Showing's better than telling," Alleron said. "Come on and you'll see what I mean."

They rode from the headquarters to the bridge that joined the city to the promontory. Once across, they came to broader streets, cleaner air, and some beauty. The dwellings increased in magnificence and pretension, as did the liveried servants who lounged within doorways or self-importantly bustled past. Then came the boundaries of the palace itself, great smooth walls of stone interspersed with panels of wrought iron, through the tracery of which one might espy wide graveled walks leading to the white and gray-rose vastness of Grotherek. Here were no gilded towers, no heaven-seeking spires; the palace stood in a massive rectangle that branched out into wings of like design. Its air of heartless frivolity struck Ryel forcibly: perfect symmetry dominated, an exactitude enhanced rather than relieved by a bewildering multiplicity of columns and pilasters and swags. The gardens surrounding the palace exhibited a similar combination of restraint and opulence: trees took geometrical forms, their natural shapes contorted with such ingenuity that the eye turned away exhausted, and the first leaves of yet-unblooming flowers were marshaled and serried in tight ranks. Despite the leafless severity of the park, citizens strolled about the gravel-walks enjoying the rare appearance of the sun, which had just found a chink among the prevailing pall of cloud and was shining brightly.

As they rode up to the palace, they passed a band of horsemen all in the height of Northern fashion, the most comely young men Ryel had seen since Almancar, all of them tall and delicately formed, their beardless faces lovely and bold, their long locks curling in minion ringlets. Booted and spurred they were all, with swords and daggers at their sides; but as they rode by, Ryel observed their rich jewels and their excellent lace, and breathed a mist of delicious perfume, and remembered the mistake he'd made earlier in the day.

"The Companions of the Domina," Alleron said, noting the wysard's attention. "Officers of the royal guard, all of them. Duchesses, countesses and baronesses, every one—and all of them horsebreakers, hard drinkers, and stark deadly swordswomen, so be mindful. I marvel that Valrandin isn't with them."

"You and she didn't seem friends."

Alleron grunted a laugh. "Not much love lost between us, I'll admit. She and I have crossed blades in the past, but never as much as we'd like. Someday we'll have it out for good and all, and she'll get what's been coming to her."

"I think the Domina might disapprove, Captain."

"Indeed she might. There are tales abroad concerning those two, but I'll not repeat such greasy hearsay—especially since Valrandin's a devotee of Argane, and a high-ranking one at that."

"Yes, I learned from the Count Palatine that she's a Swordbrother."

"Well, a Swordsister to be exact, though we have other names for her. But here's what I wished to show you before we enter the palace grounds. A sorry sight, but needful for your instruction."

They had come to one of the outbuildings of the palace, seemingly a garden-house ringed round by a thick hedge. Behind the hedge stood a number of statues, apparently discarded or awaiting repair. All were of life size, and they made a strange deformed assembly, silent under the cold leaden sky: undraped goddesses lacking noses and limbs, headless unarmed heroes. Alleron led Ryel to an entrance amid the shrubbery, and the two men dismounted and passed through the gateway.

"Here. I once knew this statue when it stood at the Domina's very chamber-door. Now it's as discredited and abused as the man whose likeness it was meant to be—although none of the world's art could hope to come near Starklander's self."

The statue Alleron indicated had been decapitated. The captain sought for a moment among the high weeds that surrounded the statues, gently cursing as he did so. Then he straightened up slowly, holding a bronze head in his hands. "Help me with this, if you would."

When the head was balanced atop its body, Ryel looked upon the semblance of a warrior leaning on his sword, as if surveying a field of combat after a battle. Weariness sat on every limb, yet the head was as proudly upheld as if the trumpets were but now sounding the attack. Tawny bronze had been wrought to resemble life in proportion and gesture, while gold rubbed into the hair approximated the effects of sun and wind. Muted silver gleamed on breastplate and wrist-guards—its only armor—but the face needed no such embellishment. Such had Ryel envisioned the hero Drostal, in the epics he had read as a boy. He had to look well upward to fully admire the proud immobile face. "By every god," he breathed, marveling.

"He was god enough for me," Alleron said, his voice suddenly rough. "Many a time I've seen him standing in that selfsame way, catching his breath after the fight was done. And if by chance you're wondering, he really and indeed resembled this image in looks and size, save that all the world's art is helpless to catch the way his eyes lit, whether in kindness or in anger."

"It's truly a great work."

Alleron nodded. "Randon Ithier's masterpiece, and the only known likeness of Guyon Desrenaud extant in all the Barrier—he forbade any artist to portray him whilst he dwelt here. Ithier was forced to disguise himself as one of the soldiery, the better to observe his subject. And he did well; made the resemblance faithful to a hair, save that Starklander never wore this much armor, only a breastplate and wrist-guards."

"He seems a born leader."

"A reckless one, however, without a thought of death for himself; but he had the tenderest care for his men, who'd have followed him through hell if he'd led them. It passes belief that he received no more hurt during the wars than some scratches and bruises, for he was always in the very center of the fight. Great Argane loved him well."

A voice issued from nearby. "Such a bootlicking dog-robber you are, Captain. If Redbane heard you, he'd be jealous."

Instantly Alleron whirled about, hand on sword-hilt, eyes furious. "You're not wanted here, Valrandin."

The Countess appeared from behind a statue, and tossed her dark curls. "As if I gave a rat's arse. The Domina sent me to escort your friend to her audience-chamber. She's now at leisure, having just driven away the Tyanian ambassador." To Ryel she swept off her plumed hat and bent in a deep bow, surprising him much. "The word's up all over the court that you've wrought Redbane's heal. I never thought you'd succeed."

Alleron's glare would freeze fire. "Call my lord by his right name, vixen. I swear, if you weren't a Swordbrother…"

"Sister. Give Redbane a kiss for me when you see him next, dog-robber, and be sure to use your tongue."

With some of the foulest curses Ryel had ever heard, Alleron jerked his sword halfway out of the scabbard, but the wysard halted it from issuing further with a swift hand-grip and a quiet word of Art.

"I'll not keep the Domina waiting. Captain," he said. "And I feel very sure that the Count Palatine wouldn't want you quarreling with this lady."

"Lady." Alleron spat feelingly. "We'll finish this up another time, Countess." He deliberately and indecently mispronounced her title, but Valrandin only laughed.

"The time will find itself, dog-robber. I look forward to it. Bannerman, come with me." But for a long moment she stood regarding Desrenaud's statue. "He looks a hero," she said softly. "Just as he should."

Alleron ignored her, and addressed Ryel. "Shall I wait for you, m'lord? I'll be glad to."

"I'll find my way back, Captain. But thank you."

They parted, and Ryel followed Valrandin to the palace. The guards looked askance at Ryel's Steppes gear, but Valrandin's piercing glare and a very few words elicited instant deference. The Countess led the wysard through vast halls lined with travertine columns and ranks of statues in bronze and marble, halls thronged with courtiers and their hangers-on loitering to no apparent purpose. Heady, riotous richness belied the chill symmetry of the palace's exterior, for here every wall was glazed with gold-leaf or draped in tapestry and brocade, or paneled with mirrors that reflected the brilliant costumes, mannered demeanor and boredom of the court; every floor of inlaid stone or intricate parquet, polished to perilous smoothness; every ceiling thronged with fabulous beings sporting in nacreous billows of cloud; every statue caught in some ecstasy of violence, half the body lost in tumultuous drapery, half emerging naked-limbed and wild-eyed, gesturing in every variation of high emotion. Energy and impatience had been translated into architecture and ornament; everything seemed on the point of flowing or flying.

The colors furthered the effect in their rich acidity of glowing crimson and flame-orange, cobalt and citron, peacock and magenta and hot violet. Yet in the presence of this superabundant richness and energy Ryel could not help a shiver of unease; the coldness he had sensed in the palace's exterior now seemed to penetrate his being. The sameness of the deformities, the unvarying elongations and distortions of the human forms and the mindless agitation of their facial expressions, the repetitious irregularity of decorative motif, were both wearisome and disturbing, as was the insistent emphasis on harsh light, unshadowed line, impossible attitude, perverse subject matter. It set his teeth on edge, unstrung his nerves; he remembered Markul's antique blacks, malachite greens and slate grays, the smooth and somber austerity softened by the uncertain misty light, and sighed at the recollection.

Valrandin heard the sigh, and followed the wysard's glance to the ceiling, which was covered with an apotheosis boiling over with naked winged figures and gold-glowing clouds. The lieutenant grimaced in sympathy.

"Trash of the last reign," she said. "That's Regnier, the Domina's brother who reigned last, being carried up to bliss in the arms of his catamite favorites—each a faithful portrait, I understand, even to the prick. The beasts … "

They came at last to a pair of tall portals carved with the royal insignia. Two Companions stood without, swords drawn; Valrandin returned their salutes and smiles with offhand courtesy. Knocking thrice at the door she entered, Ryel following.

"M'Domina, here's the man you wished to see."

The figure at the end of the room looked up from the papers covering the work-table. The room was windowless, its darkness relieved only by a cluster of candles; their light fell full on Bradamaine, Domina of Hryeland. Coming as he had from the brilliance of the palace and the day, Ryel's eyes were unused to the sudden change; the Domina, at first a blur, took on form but gradually, as if surfacing from deep space, reminding the wysard eerily of his first encounter with Michael Essern. She wore complete black that melted into the shadows of the chamber; only her head was visible, and that only by slow degrees. Ryel saw the hair first of all: hair of pure silver, without curl as it was without color, falling unbound to her shoulders in straight heavy masses. The face next, its still-youthful features at odds with its silver frame; a marble mask, equivocal in feature, aquiline-nosed and deep-eyed, of that uncanny pallor that colors hot red at the least provocation and freezes white as suddenly. Then like a stab the mouth—brooding red, voluptuous, commanding, carnal, set in the marble and the silver like a living jewel part flower, part ruby, the bloom poisonous and the gem false. But the eyes, last of all to emerge clearly, held Ryel fixed: ice-eyes the blue of diamond-glitter, fringed with pale lashes. The image, slow to form, seemed to rest suspended in the darkness like an alien moon; and then the red lips parted, speaking in a voice low and a little rough, like the after-tang of honey.

"Sir, tell me who you are."

"I am Ryel Mirai, a physician," the wysard replied, bowing.

The voice was unimpressed. "What else?"

"A Rismai of the Inner Steppes."

Again that harsh indifferent voice. "What else?"

"Nothing else, most exalted."

"Are you sure?" The woman rose from her work, coming around to join him and Valrandin, and the wysard saw that the Domina Bradamaine wore men's clothes, black velvet doublet slashed with crimson satin, black velvet breeches, and boots of supple black leather downturned at the knee. She had none of woman's superfluity in her flesh; all was hard, tight, planed smooth, sudden and strong. Save for the fullness of her mouth and the curve of her eyebrows, no woman showed in her face; yet her voice was that of an enchantress—a Northern one, speaking a form of Hryelesh more rugged and archaic than Ryel had yet heard. And she was very tall, so tall that she met Ryel's eyes levelly as she stood close to him and spoke again. "Naught else? I would think you something more. A wandering prince of Destimar, belike."

Gabriel Valrandin laughed as Ryel did what he could to control his astonishment. "He must be a magic prince out of one of his people's epics," the lieutenant said, "for he appeared from nowhere, and undertook to cure Redbane of those ills he's had since birth."

The Domina's ice-blue eyes arched their brows a moment before pierced the wysard to the quick. "And did you succeed, Ryel Mirai?"

"I did, most exalted," the wysard replied.

Bradamaine stared him through. "And how did you work his cure, when all other help has failed?"

"My methods are confidential."

Valrandin broke in. "However it's come about, I'm glad. I've always wanted a fair fight with Redbane, but always held back because of his sickness. Now I'll get my heart's content."

Bradamaine laughed, rough and short. "And he'll have your heart's blood if he can, sweeting. Or perhaps he'll draw it from someplace else." She leaned to Valrandin's ear, burying her lips in those rich abundant curls, whispering something that made the Countess first start, then make a face of deepest disgust. "And with that happy thought you may leave us, Gabriel, for I wish to speak with this bannerman alone. Try to stay out of trouble until I see you again, and come gowned to the service."

Valrandin made an impatient mouth, but shrugged acquiescence. "As you wish, m'Domina."

"Wear that new frock I sent you." And she took Valrandin in her arms, embracing her warmly.

Valrandin winced, but nodded. "If I must, m'Domina."

Bradamaine watched her favorite's departure for some time after the door had closed; then turned to Ryel.

"Well. Sit you down, Prince Ryel of Destimar, for we've much to discuss. Nay, not that chair— 'twill hobnail my coat of arms all over your back. It's reserved for my treasurer. Take you the other." She poured two goblets full of wine from a table that stood near, handing one to the wysard. The drink was as red as her mouth, and fiery strong; Ryel took only a sip, but Bradamaine drained half of hers at once, then dropped into an armchair, stretching out her long booted legs, throwing back her head to fix her watchet stare on the wysard's face. "So. You are surprised that I knew you?"

Ryel inclined his head as calmly as he might. Word of his elevation to imperial rank could not possibly have reached Hallagh in so short a time, even with the swiftest of messengers. "How did you come by your information, most exalted?"

"That I've no way to tell you," the Domina replied. "The letter was upon my work-table this morning, gold-sealed with the crown of Destimar, writ by the new Sovran's own hand. From this same letter I've learnt that you wrought the cure of the Sovrena Diara, which argues you a doctor of skill. The Sovran also let fall that you quit Almancar abruptly, and some doubts he had as to whether you were still alive. No particulars did he give, nor will I trouble you for any. But I marvel much that you wander in search for a dead man, when the Sovran's letter makes plain that he desires your return to Almancar, as forthwith as may be."

Ryel looked away. "I would prefer not to answer, m'Domina."

"I'll not force you." Bradamaine poured and drank more wine. "So. Finding Guy Desrenaud is your aim."

"It is."

The Domina's mouth tightened. "You'll not have an easy time of it, I do assure you."

Ryel felt his insides cramping. "I realize that the earl is no longer in this realm, but—"

"Neither in this realm nor this world. Lord Guyon's dead." Bradamaine's last words came rougher than all the others, but her ice-eyes never thawed. "He died as he lived. In battle. After fleeing the Barrier, he sold his sword to Wycast, fighting in their unending war against Munkira. In some border-skirmish or other he fell, it's said. A witless, worthless death." She reached for her wine, and drank deep.

Ryel set his own glass down, rather too hard. "Who told you this?"

"Roskerrek," said the Domina, the word rough in her mouth.

"You believe him?"

Bradamaine nodded, although with manifest reluctance. "Whatever wrong he's wrought in his day, never has he lied to me."

Fighting to conceal his reaction, Ryel felt the daimon-sickness well outward from his inmost spirit, cramping his entrails, savaging his brain. Feverishly he reached for the scent-cylinder, opening it in sweating haste. The exquisite essence overcame the air, and his pain. But Bradamaine seemed not to notice it in the least.

"What's that? Some medicine?"

Ryel's astonishment overwhelmed his other emotions. "You can't smell it?"

She shook her head. "Mine's a blind nose for scents, Prince Ryel—which I've been frequently glad of, what with all the perfumes my courtiers reportedly soak themselves in."

The wysard thrust the scent-cylinder into his pocket again. The fragrance had not only cleared his wits but sharpened them, and he sensed deception; whether it was the Domina's or Roskerrek's he resolved to learn, whatever the cost, in the Temple of the Sword. But he knew the price would come high, for the daimonic blight was strong within him, and the combat would take place at night, with Dagar there.

Bradamaine was speaking, her tongue loosened by wine. "I never knew Starklander," she said, mostly to herself. "Never did he seem a man of human making. I never learned him. Like something out of a fable he came to me." She opened her eyes not looking at Ryel but far away. "Know you the story of how Starklander and I first met, my lord prince? It's a famous tale hereabouts."

The wysard leaned forward. "I would very much like to, m'Domina."

"Very well. It has long been Hryeland custom that whenever the ruler of the land passes through the palace gates, folk may assemble there to beg favors or offer petitions. One winter's day some years ago as I rode up to the gates, the people thrust forward as always with their endless askings. But all of a sudden, one among the crowd, a great strong Barbarian disguised, dragged me off my horse and pulled out a dagger to run me through. I'd have been instantly spitted, had not a tall ruffian in dusty black flung himself on the assassin and knocked him down, wresting the knife away. Whilst some of the guard dragged the assassin off for questioning—a soft word for torture and execution—I had my savior brought before me. Reeking dirty he was, his face bearded, his hair all unkempt. But anyone not stone blind might tell that he was of no ordinary making, nor was I surprised to learn that he was none other than the notoriously famed Guyon Desrenaud. As it happened, in struggling for the Barbarian's knife Desrenaud took a hard cut on the forearm, and it further so chanced, as too often it does in the North, that the blade was poisoned. It was Desrenaud's great good luck that Roskerrek had experience in the treating of envenomed wounds; the Count Palatine is more learned in the art of poison than any other in the North."

Ryel stared. "The Count Palatine healed Lord Guyon?"

Bradamaine gave a harsh laugh. "Not of his own wishing, I can assure you; 'twas at my express command. And thanks to Roskerrek's care, Desrenaud survived, and regained his health and all his looks. An idle foolish romance-book might say that Desrenaud was formed by nature to beguile. He had come to Hryeland to fight in my wars with the Snow-folk, and he proved himself so able a soldier that in two years he rose from mere captain to second in command only to Roskerrek. But he overstepped his authority beyond forgiveness when he made that treaty with the White Barbarians; he engineered it himself, against my orders and Roskerrek's opposition. Trekked alone across the mountains through the snow to the camp of the Barbarian chief, and effected what thirty years of struggle could not—an end to the pillaging and rapine, and quiet at last."

Ryel listened enthralled, as to a tale of wonder. "Brave," he murmured.

Bradamaine shook her head, her eyes focused far, into memories. "Witless, rather. But ever since then, the peace has held. I was furious with Starklander for taking matters into his own hands, and for putting himself in so much danger, but when he returned to Hallagh in triumph to the cheers of the entire populace, I could hardly punish him."

She had looked away from Ryel all the time she'd spoken, but for a bare moment he caught her eye. Instantly he compelled his Mastery to hold her gaze, fixing it immovably on his own.

"You loved him, or thought you did."

The Domina's pallor colored suddenly, startlingly. "I'd wanted him from the first sight. But feelings for me he had none. Only a mere soldier's service he rendered me, and I wanted all of him. At last I besought Theofanu for a love-philtre that would bring him to my bed." At Ryel's shocked astonishment she lifted her hand, then let it drop again. "I had no choice. He would never have lain with me otherwise, so besotted he was with that whore of his, Belphira Deva. But I thought that if he could so lightly leave her for no other excuse than the death of Prince Hylas, he could just as lightly become mine."

"And then?"

She tried to look away, but could not. "It took strong drugs to sway him. Soon he became fonder of them than of me. We quarreled, and I commanded him to leave my realm at once. No sooner was he gone than I learnt I was with child by him; but it was born before its time, and born dead. No one knows of that but me. Would that I had Guy Desrenaud's cold corpse beneath my foot, and his traitor heart bleeding in my hand...but now even that pleasure is denied me."

Silence fell awhile. "Might I know what caused your brother's death, m'Domina?"

She would not look at him. "A fever."

"You do not sound entirely sure," Ryel said.

"Regnier lived a life of riot and excess. No one was surprised at his death."

"Least of all the Count Palatine, I have a feeling." Those words made Bradamaine look up, eyes narrowed, and once again the wysard locked them with his own, and searched them with his Art. "Did Roskerrek kill the Dominor on your orders?"

It did not seem possible for the Domina to turn any paler, but she did; and as she did she nodded an answer. "My brother more than merited his death. But Roskerrek never asked reward for that service, and I often wonder what he will demand of me someday."

"His devotion to you is spiritual, not carnal."

"That's scarcely reassuring. It's said that the goddess Argane's statue in the Sword Brotherhood's temple looks uncannily like me, and that Redbane draws his own blood as offerings to it. I find that…disgustful. I wish he and I had never met…" Her eyes welled up wetly, and blinked hard once or twice. It broke the Mastery-spell, and the mood, which turned so cold the wysard shivered and drew away from her as she pushed back from her chair, rising as she swiped her eyes with her doublet-sleeve. "That wine's damnably strong," she said; and Ryel knew their interview was over. "You'll guest at Grotherek tonight, my lord prince?"

Her tone held no cordiality, and the wysard was happy to decline. "I thank you, most exalted, but I have already accepted the hospitality of Lord Roskerrek."

Bradamaine's eyes narrowed. "Ah. Have you." I have expressly commanded him to be present with my court at the Temple of the Master tomorrow. Join us, if you would; even if we can make no believer of you, I've small doubt you'll find the rites of interest."

"For that invitation I thank you, most exalted," Ryel replied, calmly dissembling his surprise at this new bit of luck. "When do the rites take place?"

Bradamaine glanced at the cased clock by her work-table, that had accompanied the conversation with sepulchral monotonous insistence. "Three hours hence. If you have no other clothes than those you stand up in, more suitable I'll have sent to you at the Count Palatine's quarters."

At this less than veiled reflection on his dusty Steppes gear Ryel gave a slight bow. "No need, most exalted, although I thank you. I have better with me."

"Good. I'll have a coach sent for you, that you may appear at the Temple of the Master in a style befitting your rank."

As quickly as he could, Ryel took his leave. But for a moment he stopped at the yard where the statues stood in broken neglected disarray.

Despite its having been created by an artist unquestionably great, the statue of Lord Guyon Desrenaud had received rough treatment, scratches and dents, and the pedestal's inscription had been roughly chiseled away. Alleron was no longer there, but at the base of the statue lay a fresh little bouquet of the few flowers that grew wild around it. You've come down in the world, Starklander, Ryel thought. I only hope you're still falling, and haven't yet hit.

Chapter Thirteen

On his return to the headquarters Ryel was ushered by Roskerrek's orderly to his quarters, which by their rich appointments seemed intended for visits from heads of state. The Count Palatine's rooms overlooked the courtyard and the city, but the wysard's faced the Lorn and the mountains beyond it. As Ryel was examining the rooms, a platter of the Verlande's delicious cuisine was sent in accompanied by noble wine, and Ryel fully enjoyed both as coppers of steaming water and a bath were made ready in front of the blazing hearth.

Just as the wysard had sank into the bath with a contented sigh, with a perfunctory knock Jorn Alleron entered the room, carrying a large long cloth bag over his arm. At the sight of the enbathed and embarrassed Ryel he bowed with punctiliously averted eyes. "Forgive the intrusion, m'lord prince—and rest assured that I know your Steppes ways well, and won't abash you by staring. My lord thought you might find use for some clothes in the Northern fashion. They're fresh from the tailor, never yet worn. If you don't want them, I'm to leave them here nonetheless."

"How did you know to address me by that title?" Ryel demanded, surprised at how matter of factly Alleron had uttered it. "I thought I was incognito."

"No chance of that, thanks to my lord's spies at Grotherek," Alleron replied, almost in apology. "Speaking of which, here's his letter."

Opening the crackling silver-sealed paper, Ryel quickly scanned the sharp-angled symmetry of the writing.

'The Count Palatine regrets that he knew not the wandering Prince of Vrya in his incognito, and wishes to make amends for his oversight by taking advantage of the old Northern custom by which guests are made welcome with fresh raiment. He further asks that the Prince command whatever he wishes for his ease and comfort.

In all recognizance,

Roskerrek.'

Ryel folded the letter again, inwardly debating. Gorgeous Almancarian robes would more suitably adorn the Prince of Vrya than Northern dress—and attract the most inconvenient kind of attention. "The Count Palatine's generosity is not only thoughtful, but remarkably well-timed," he said at last. "I accept it with pleasure."

Alleron nodded approvingly. "Good. You and he are just of a height, and much of a size, so these should serve. I'll give order to have your own things laundered, by your leave." He dropped the bag on the bed, somewhat exasperated. "You might have told me you were a prince of Destimar, sir—but I should have guessed as much from your horse. Will you need help in dressing?"

The question surprised Ryel, but then he realized it had been asked because of his exalted rank, a status he knew would be hard to get used to. "I can manage on my own, Captain. Have a seat and try some of this wine; it's remarkable."

The flaxen captain nodded thanks as he removed his hat and tossed it aside. He had changed out of uniform, and was now handsomely outfitted in lapis-blue shorn velvet and finely pleated lawn. "I have time for a glass or two. Then I must attend my lord at that heathen service—damnation take it." He faced the fire, and jabbed it into roaring life with the poker.

"You have little sympathy for the cult of the Master, it seems," Ryel ventured.

"I serve one master only, sir, not some low tinsel blasphemy that dares call itself a religion. Let me get you a towel."

Ryel made a declining gesture. "Thank you, but it's within my reach."

"So it is; but I've orders to wait upon you." Removing his gloves, Alleron took the towel from its rack by the fire, holding it open discreetly screenwise.

Ryel stood up, allowing himself to be enfolded in the warm thick-napped fabric, and reached for another towel to dry his hair. "What do you know concerning the cult of the Master?"

"It's naught but rank witchcraft—babbled nonsense, bewildering drugs, lewd mummery."

"Then how did it take hold?"

Alleron barked his quiet laugh. "To comprehend, you need only have been to a church service anywhere in Hallagh."

Ryel remembered the cheerless stark rites he had witnessed earlier, and nodded. "I can well understand."

The captain opened the bag on the bed and took out a rich silk dressing-gown of deep maroon brocade, helping Ryel into it. "Religion's sadly altered since I was a lad. I used to enjoy attending worship service with my lord, because the music was always so fine and grand, and the colored glass windows were splendid to behold, and the priests wore such fine robes. The rites were full of ceremony, and grave and stately. I always felt as if man were a noble thing at those times. But the reforms put down all of that, as you've seen. The puritanical observances now in fashion might be well enough for the citizens, but the court, being for the most part licentious and unbridled, grew heartily tired of the Unseen—weary of the unvarying dull rigmarole, sick of an invisible god who did nothing but threaten and demand and forbid. Then comes Theofanu with her jigs and her drugs and her fleshly delights, all of them scot-free, and the court leapt on the Master's way like an old lecher on a fresh doxy."

Ryel laughed. "The rites of the goddess Argane are different from both, I hope."

"As unlike as sunshine day from dirty night, sir," the captain replied, most decidedly. "But you'll find that out soon enough. For now, let's see to that hair of yours." As he spoke, he took up a comb. "Sit there by the fire, if you will."

Ryel complied, but hesitantly. "Thank you, but—"

"It's no trouble." And Alleron with a gentle patience born of dealing with many a mane untangled the wysard's clean damp locks, pulling never a strand as he combed it smooth. "You've good hair, sir," he said approvingly. "Fine, but thickly set. I daresay it'd curl well with a little help—shall I call in a barber?"

"I think not," Ryel replied; but he had to admit to himself that he enjoyed being so skillfully looked after. "Grateful though I am for your services, captain, I would not further inconvenience you. Therefore—"

"I'm glad to. It takes me back," Alleron said, his tone reflective, his fingers infinitely apt as they combed and ordered. "I used always to take this care of my lord, during the wars; and I still have, during those times his sickness afflicted him more cruelly than usual, days now gone forever thanks to you. They're a mutton-fisted parcel of louts, his orderlies." He hesitated. "Speaking of my lord, I would thank you again for your care of him. It's altered him much—not only his mood, but his looks too. He might even wed if he wished, now."

"As ill as he's been, I can't imagine that."

"You'd be surprised. Women in the northlands look for solid merit when it comes to men, and several ladies, great ones in this realm, would gladly be wife to my lord because he's learned in so many arts, and poetical, and a steel-nerved soldier too. Often when his health's allowed he's taken part at the Duchess of Craise's famed gatherings, where the best minds of Hallagh convene; Her Grace is a rare and lovely woman still young, and would marry him in an eyeblink if he asked. I doubt she'd mind changing ranks, either; here in Hryeland a count palatine is worth fully as much as a prince of Destimar, by your leave."

Ryel smiled. "And what of yourself, Captain?"

Alleron shrugged. "I'll not wed until my lord does. I've three brothers, two of them my elders, all of 'em wived and childered. Not every man's a marrier, and I'm in no hurry. Now that your hair's dry, m'lord prince, here's your clothes." He opened the bag, drawing forth a suit of pearl-gray corded silk exquisitely made, and body-linen of dazzling whiteness. Shaking out the shirt, he held it to the fire to warm it, and a delicate fragrance of lavender and citron rose upon the air.

Taking advantage of Alleron's discreetly turned back, Ryel pulled on a pair of soft cambric under-breeches. "Speaking of skills, I've also heard that the Count Palatine is expert in the healing of envenomed wounds."

Alleron handed Ryel the shirt. "Ah. So we're speaking of Guy Desrenaud now?"

Ryel nodded. "I believe we should."

"What would you know of him, m'lord prince?"

"I've heard he's dead," the wysard replied.

Alleron did not reply at once. "That's scarcely common knowledge hereabouts."

"Do you believe it?" Ryel asked.

The captain looked the wysard in the eye, true as steel. "I believe anything my lord tells me, sir."

"What do you remember concerning the Earl of Desrenaud?"

At Ryel's question Alleron half-smiled in his wry way. "I recall that the first part of my lord's cure was to order that the earl be thoroughly washed, privately murmuring that a more reeking fellow he'd never been near in all his life. He had no love for Starklander from the first; yet he could not help but admire him for his bravery and coolness in the face of danger when the wars came."

"Did they ever quarrel?" the wysard asked.

Alleron ironically nodded. "Oh, many a time. Here's your stockings--it's custom to wear a couple of pair, against the cold." As the wysard donned them, Alleron shook out the suit's breeches with a sharp snap and set them within reach. "My lord would kill, I think, merely to kiss the tips of the Domina's fingers, and it gave him untold pain to see Bradamaine prefer a wild Ralnahrian lordling to himself. But that's no more than common knowledge."

"Tell me something that isn't, captain."

"Very well," said Alleron. "But only because you saved my lord's life. Desrenaud was never more in danger than during his first week in the Barrier."

Ryel's blood quivered. "Why is that?"

Alleron held out the suit's waistcoat for Ryel to slip into. "Because my lord nearly killed him."

"Tell me more," the wysard said; and it took all of his will to keep his voice detached and calm.

The captain handed Ryel a pair of boots of supple black leather, and gauntlets of the same. "Well, during the earl's cure my lord stayed at his side the clock round. But one night I chanced to enter the room very softly, and saw my lord watching over the earl not with care, but as a ravening lion eyes a sleeping child—I hope those boots fit you without galling. They were delivered from the cordwainer only today, and aren't broken in."

"They're perfect," Ryel said, somehow mastering his impatience. "Continue."

"Well, my lord drew his dagger, and felt its edge awhile, never taking his eyes from the earl, who slept heavily because drugged. And then my lord pulled aside the bedclothes and bent over the earl as if to strike, and I was on the point of rushing over to prevent him. But all my lord did was to suddenly halt, and fling the dagger away, and cover the earl with the bedclothes again, and sink into his chair again with his face in his hands."

Ryel drew a relieved breath. "That's an interesting story, captain."

The captain shook out the coat and held it ready. "I expect you to keep it to yourself, m'lord prince." Unpacking a rich lace collar and cuffs, Alleron adjusted them at Ryel's neck and wrists; then took a round box from the bottom of the bag and produced a dashing wide-brimmed black hat embellished with a rich brocade band and a panache of gray plumes, which Ryel carefully donned. "You're a fine sight in Hryeland garb, sir," the captain remarked, standing back and frankly admiring after giving the hat a touch more tilt. "I've noticed that your ears are pierced; here's a jewel for your left lobe, as is the custom with our young blades, and some rings for your fingers, gifts of my lord."

Ryel hung the pearl pendant in his ear, and slid the rings—elegant circlets of gold and sapphire—on his fingers. "The Count Palatine's generosity is as impressive as his taste."

"It's his way, m'lord prince. The Domina's sent a coach for you; it's waiting at the door."

"We'll go together, if you like."

Alleron grunted refusal. "I never use a wagon unless I'm wounded. Horseback for me, or nothing; but I'll ride at your side and bear you company. Best that we go now, for if we don't get to the service before the Domina arrives, it'll be considered disrespect. Here, don't forget your cloak."

Ryel donned the dashing black mantle, and the two men left the headquarters and made their way through the streets to the great park that spread out at the back of Grotherek Palace. In a retired part of it, Ryel descried a sheer wall of dark stone topped with sharp spikes, pierced by a narrow gate watched by two sentinels fully armed. Many coaches waited, all of them finely made, well-gilded, and emblazoned with coats of arms. The sentinels, noting the Domina's quarterings on the doors of Ryel's conveyance, bowed low as the wysard alighted and passed unquestioned through the gates with Alleron.

A smooth pavement of marble and mosaic led to the temple's stairs, which were few and wide. The building itself was an overwrought edifice built of garish red-tinged unNorthern stone, strangely and unpleasingly built up of layer upon layer of carved concatenated fantastic beings, animal and semi-human. Further unsettling to the eye were columns too slender for their capitals, windows of jarring shapes and styles, overly attenuated pinnacles.

"Ugly, isn't it? This way." And Alleron led the wysard into a long nave half-lit with fires suspended from the vault on slender chains, and murky with the incense of civet and ambergris vying with the musky perfumes that exhaled from the assembled and impatient court. At the end of the nave stood not an altar, but a great marble dais like a low stage, heavily decorated; and facing this dais at some distance was a rich chair, the only such furniture in all the room.

"The Domina's," Alleron said. "Everyone else needs must remain on their feet, aching though they be."

Present in sullen numbers were the Servants, who stood apart from the rest of the congregation, pallid, evil-eyed, scarred and defaced. To Ryel they seemed more like srih-automated corpses than living youth, so dully glazed were their sunken eyes and so waxy their faces; and he could tell by their fidgeting febrile impatience that they were starving for Theofanu's drugs, all but mad for them.

Alleron dealt the wysard a nudge. "There's m'lord arriving, and you can be sure all know it."

Roskerrek had just entered the nave like a red wolf among peacocks, and courtiers moved well aside as he passed them. His progress to the Domina's empty chair set off a sensation of amazed murmurings and up-leaping eyebrows that he acknowledged with neither word nor look, save for a reluctant dash of color in his pale cheeks, and the proud denial of a smile on his stern sensual lips, and ineffable serenity welling in the depths of his strange-colored eyes. Approaching Ryel, he gave a soldierly bow.

"Most exalted Prince of Vrya, greetings," he said, well knowing that all around him were listening. "Our Northern habit suits you very well indeed."

Ryel returned the bow, in the suave manner of Almancar. "My lord of Roskerrek is as liberal with compliment as he is with gifts; but he does no more than praise the excellence of his own taste."

As their courtesies were being discussed in whispers by those watching, a beautiful young woman rustled in, gowned in shimmering rich plum-colored satin that closely sheathed the slimness of her waist, and proudly bared the swan-white smoothness of her shoulders. A strand of great pearls encircled her throat, and gold drops hung in her ears, and her luxuriance of dark curls was half caught up in a golden comb; her lips had been made yet redder with a touch of carmine, and her hazel eyes were enlarged yet more with a suggestion of kohl. She barely glanced at Roskerrek, and made her way straight to Ryel.

"So. The Prince of Vrya, eh?"

The wysard smiled back. "You make a perilous beauty, my lady."

She only grimaced. "Bah. I detest skirts, and don't much like having my neck half-naked." A fan hung from a ribbon at her waist, and she snapped it open with a deft flick of her wrist. "Sweltering in here, as always."

Surely she was aware of Roskerrek's stare, but she made no sign. Far from narrowing in feral ambiguity, his eyes gazed in searching fascination at the slender court beauty in rich damson satin, and he drew near. "I have often observed, Countess, that in male habit you seem one of the handsomest youths in Hryeland; but in woman's dress you are indisputably the fairest lady. Would that you had the vanity to perceive where your real strength lies."

Instead of replying with a taunt, Valrandin looked up into Roskerrek's face, examining every feature. "You are greatly changed, my lord."

He smiled. "It seems to unsettle you."

Some of Valrandin's old mutiny returned. "I fear no man," she said, with proudest emphasis on the last word. "And if you think—"

Sudden unseen music of trumpets rang in the vault, and the court's restless chattering subsided as the Domina Bradamaine entered, stalking through the throng that fell back on either side with a soft roar of rustling silk and sweeping plumes. Valrandin and Roskerrek moved as one to attend her; but the Domina noticed Ryel first, and after a moment's surprise waved him over to her side, her manner unexpectedly welcoming.

"Our Northern style of dress becomes you handsomely, Prince Ryel," she said. "Yet even in your Steppes gear you seemed more than a mere Rismai physician. It's bad manners indeed that a Destimarian prince of the blood should have to stand, but such is the protocol here. Lean against my chair, if you grow tired."

"My thanks, most exalted." Ryel lifted his eyes to the temple's vault, where concatenated harmonies rained down like a shower of gold. "That music is very beautiful."

Bradamaine only shrugged. "I've a blind ear for it. To me it's naught but noise." She turned to her left, and started at the sight of the Count Palatine, gazing up at him half in bewilderment, half in shock. "Yvain Essern, is that you?"

Roskerrek bowed low. "Eternally at your command, m'Domina."

"I'd hardly know you. You're so…changed."

He gazed on her with a look Ryel could only describe as ardent. "Thank the Prince of Vrya for it. But whatever else about me alters, my zeal in your service never will. You may command me in anything—as you well know."

Bradamaine only stared at him, her ice-eyes mistrusting. One of her hands clenched the chair-arm, and as if inadvertently Roskerrek as he spoke laid his own hand upon hers. But Bradamaine recoiled as if from a venomous sting, wincing in momentary loathing. At that naked revulsion murmuringly observed by many onlookers, the Count Palatine showed no emotion; but he caught the Domina's hand in a grip inexorable for all its gentleness, and kissed the pale smooth skin with a lingering fervor that made it redden. Finally Bradamaine wrenched her hand free, clenching it as if longing to deal Roskerrek a blow; but the look in his eyes made her fingers slacken. Not even in Almancar, not even in the temple of Demetropa, had Ryel seen that kind of adoration.

A whisper of music wrought by unknown instruments materialized out of nothingness. In the complete silence two equivocal figures in trailing copes emerged from a scented mist, tall priests neither male nor female, young nor old, their painted faces patched with diamonds, their eyelids purple and gold, lips a silvered scarlet. Both were slender and incandescently fair. Pearls and moonstones streamed in ropes from their tall diadems, and their hands and wrists glittered with a galaxy of ornaments; copes of opalescent orphreyed silk trailed in long folds behind them. They moved with a mannered grace, their looks haughty and distant.

"Two of the former ruler Regnier's former favorites," Valrandin whispered for Ryel's edification. "Eunuchs now, as they deserve."

They bore in their hands each a salver of gold in which burnt an incense which Ryel recognized with a start as mandragora mixed with feia and hrask. He forced himself to resist the seduction of the smoke, whose bittersweet reek of salt marsh and dead roses soon filled the whole of the temple. But the Servants craned forward, breathing deeply and avidly with the rest of the congregation, sighing in pleasure as their wits began to shift, and the two priests darted sly glances at each other, their painted mouths suppressing smiles.

Next came two men naked to the waist, clad to the ankle in many-colored silk belted with gold and precious stones—black men both, muscled and shorn, Zallans from all seeming, and if so, far indeed from their hot homeland. Each bore in both hands a globe, one made of black glass, one of white. The four priests stood abreast, leaving a space in their midst. The music grew ravishingly sweet, and the congregation, the Servants especially, trembled in near-frantic impatience. All at once a great flash of light darted from the temple's dome to the center of the dais, and out of the radiance materialized a figure with uplifted arms, a woman with her head draped and her body robed in brilliant gold-cloth. At her gesture the music died away, and amid the after-ringings in the vault the Servants shrieked her name and the Master's as if burning up in fire.

Another gesture of Theofanu's and the Servants quieted, dropping down in full prostration while the rest of the congregation fell to its knees, until all were in postures of adoration save for Ryel and Roskerrek. Upright and unmoving they stood on either side of the Domina's chair, awaiting what next would come. But Bradamaine had left her chair to kneel with bowed head next to Valrandin, her silver hair hiding all her face, raining around her shoulders like a shower of stars against a moonless night. Ryel caught the clove-amber scent of her gloves that lay draped over the arm of the chair, heard the muffled come and go of her breathing behind her face-concealing hands. A sudden tremor shot through him, annoying, uncontrollable, like the shudder after a taste of green fruit. The drug was taking him, for all his struggles.

Theofanu gazed complacently upon her followers. She was a woman of the wet mountain regions of the Azm Chak, lean as a stick, smoky yellow-brown of skin. Her nose lay flat against her face, and her large fleshy mouth parted over prominent teeth filed to sharp points. Her cheeks were tattooed with the luck-symbols of her people, but the center of her forehead was scarred to the bone with the Master's sign, a circle enclosing an eight-rayed spark. Her age could not be told with any exactitude; she might have been thirty, or sixty. Long and narrow and absolutely black were her eyes, that scanned Roskerrek with suspicion and resentment, but met Ryel's in complete satisfaction.

"The Master moves among us," she said, the resonance of her voice weirdly incongruous in her dry little body. "The Master lives within us. The Master is the source of all joy."

At that last word the congregation stirred in electric animation. The music changed to savage throbbing drumbeats, shrill pipings—the music of the teeming jungles of the Azm Chak. Theofanu and her half-naked priests began to sway to the fierce rhythm, and the onlookers eagerly seconded them until everyone in the room was rocking back and forth in ever-quickening unison—everyone but Ryel and the Count Palatine. The rocking became a dance, and the dance grew wild. It was strange to see Bradamaine's bedizened courtiers screeching with wild-eyed ecstasy, rumpling and ripping their silks and laces.

At the dance's height Theofanu seized the white globe from the priest on her left, and as she did so the congregation shrieked in impatience. With a laugh Theofanu lightly tossed the bright sphere high into the air, out above the congregation. It hovered awhile above the eagerly gazing crowd, and as it hovered it began to glow within, brighter and yet more bright. Then it burst soundlessly, and a myriad glowing sparks drifted down. The shadowy nave filled with light brilliant as noonday, and the air changed to mist heady with high summer. As he breathed, Ryel felt his memory flood with everything he had ever held dear in his early years—acts of kindness shown him by others, places whose beauty he had reveled in; times he had spent riding across the steppes with his mother, and times he had walked with Edris in the dark of night about the walls of Markul, talking of the Art. Amid his revery music began, a singing of many voices, the words incoherent and ecstatic, the harmonies intricate beyond unmeshing, the voices inhumanly sweet.

His eyes felt afire, and he opened them to find that every face about him was bathed in tears, save for Roskerrek's.

Theofanu's purple lips parted in a dangerous grin. Taking the black globe from the other priest, she held it forth, and a shivering gasp moved among the assembled courtiers.

"The Master calms all fear." And she hurled the globe high above the upturned anguished faces. It floated over the congregation with deliberate slowness, and everyone it passed shrank from it; and in its dark depths glowed a dark light like the death of a far-off star. Then suddenly with a numbing blast the funereal sphere exploded, hailing down a shower of scorching soot, and instantly the nave was plunged into eclipse unearthly cold, clammy as grave-dirt. A stench of putrefaction poisoned the air, and upon the miasma a horde of loathsome forms floated in a glow of corpselight. No music sounded now, but ghastly laughter and maddened howls mingled with the swelling hysteria of the congregation.

The Domina quivered in terror, and at her side Valrandin clenched back cries; but in the half-darkness the Count Palatine stood upright and unmoved, save for the contempt that twitched in the corner of his mouth. Ryel likewise scorned such puerile foolery, but nonetheless could not shut out the stink and the noise, nor quell the visions—image after ghastly image of war and torture, inhuman cruelties, monstrous atrocities far beyond anything Ryel had ever dared imagine even during his Markulit studies. The horrors brought back all the sickness the wysard had taken from Roskerrek, wringing his brain, shredding his entrails. Fevered and cramping he scrabbled in his pocket for the carnelian perfume-flask, and took a desperate breath. But no fragrance whatever rescued him from the air's stench, or made any impression upon the pain.

The frenzy in the room was on the point of giving way to madness. A bare moment before unbridled lunacy reigned, Theofanu's tumid mocking lips moved in a single word. And as she spoke that word her empty eyes locked with Ryel's.

Deliverance came sweet as death. In the agony's ebbing the wysard clutched the arm of the Domina's chair, unbalanced and asweat; and all around him he could hear sobs of relief, the Servants' loudest.

Theofanu made a graceful sweeping gesture, and the darkness lifted. Looking down, Ryel saw that not a single speck of black dirtied his garments, although the dark globe in its explosion had scattered burning sparks and reeking soot throughout the temple's nave. With the lifting of the darkness, the congregation's anguish evaporated. Now hungry expectation penetrated the chamber, lust chafing with impatience.

The priestess laughed low in her throat, and lifted her voice a third time. "The Master confers…pleasure."

Delicious yet disturbing images, passionate and sensual, drifted across the wysard's perturbed imagination with electric immediacy. Again he beheld Diara, sighing with delight as she gave herself up to his hands. It seemed he could never get enough of the silk of her, that sense-dazing fragrance. His flesh trembled, stiffened, ached beyond enduring.

But in that moment the air grew thick and sour, making him choke on the breath he fought to draw, and Dagar's voice dripped into his brain like acid.

So hot, young blood? it lewdly giggled. But so dull, too. Here, let me show you some livelier sport.

"No," Ryel choked. "Get out."

But although he fought against them, his thoughts grew lubricious and wanton, their lascivity made cruel by the daimonic infection of his blood and Dagar's exploitation of it. In a red vision he took Diara ravenously, ripping away her silken robes, scattering her ropes of pearl, forcing her down and clamping his mouth over her outcries. His breath quickened, his body tensed; but then a stern hand clutched his arm, hard as an iron vise.

"Stand straight," hissed Roskerrek in his ear, wiltingly cold amid the assembly's collective throb.

Ryel's eyes burnt with desperate shame. All about him men and women whined and panted, but at Ryel's side Roskerrek stood cold and unyielding as carved stone, his attention fixed on Bradamaine who now sat slumped and breathless, her ice-eyes heavy-lidded and fixed far, her red lips moving inaudibly.

New music sounded, beguiling and soft. Weary but not yet sated, ladies and gallants brushed against each other with suggestive deliberation, exchanging languishing glances, whispering trysts. Theofanu surveyed her work and seemed well contented. She spoke a word, and one of her acolytes brought her a great deep bowl of gold—an empty bowl, Ryel saw.

"The Master heeds your prayers." Holding forth the vessel, the witch waited silently. In another moment courtiers approached to cast into the bowl not money or jewels, but folded papers. Theofanu welcomed each offering with smiles, and then handed the bowl to another of her priests.

"The Master gives all and asks nothing. Go, be joyful."

She disappeared, not in a blinding blast but little by little, her substance seeming to dissolve into the mandragora haze as the congregation watched in awe and made various signs of devotion. The priests left the dais with stately steps, retiring behind the hangings as the music continued to play in soft languorous measures.

Slowly and unwillingly Bradamaine rose from her chair amid the dazed obeisance of her court. Her face was flushed, and her breath came fast.

"Ah, Gabriel," she said thickly, embracing Valrandin's slim-laced waist. "Let's leave this place, and lie down a little."

Valrandin, acutely aware of Roskerrek's relentless presence, whispered something urgent in the Domina's ear. Those words worked like a spell, causing Bradamaine's wonted pallor to return, her eyes become ice again. She released her favorite, and addressed the Count Palatine.

"Roskerrek, I would speak with you tomorrow morning, in my audience-chamber. Alone."

At her last word the Count Palatine visibly started. "On what business, m'Domina?"

"A private matter. You have said that you'll never fail to render me absolute obedience—I've an asking for you that will require it." As she spoke, she glanced at Ryel, but the wysard could not read her look.

The Count Palatine bowed, visibly mastering his astonishment and joy. "I will not fail you, m'Domina. You have my word."

Her harsh lips coldly tightened. "Do I indeed? We'll see. Until tomorrow, then." Abruptly she turned to the wysard. "My lord prince, most glad I am that we met."

Ryel observed that her gladness seemed very slight, but he inclined his head. "As am I, m'Domina."

"This will likely be our last encounter, I regret to say. I will be much busied with affairs of state henceforth. But if I can render you any service whilst you're in Hallagh, you've only to ask. Farewell, my lord of Vrya."

Without another word Bradamaine departed, her arm once more around Valrandin. Ryel watched her going with misgiving, but he placed the blame for his mood and the Domina's on the dangerous drugs still impregnating the air.

Then something seemed to sting him between the shoulder blades. Jerking about, he saw one of Theofanu's androgynous acolytes beckoning to him from the dais. At that moment Alleron, who had been standing throughout the service as near the door as possible, approached with a message for the Count Palatine, and the wysard took occasion to slip away.

The silent priest led Ryel behind the hangings, through iron-bound doors and a somber antechamber, from thence into a great room filled with every luxury, lit by many lamps and warmed by a dozen braziers wrought in silver and jade, where precious essences burned among the coals. Ryel had expected to find appointments of barbaric magnificence in the wonted style of the Azm Chak, but saw nothing of the kind. Dawn-mauve, muted peach, soft green and ivory were the only colors, while the furniture was all deep-piled couches designed for intimate converse, and little tables carved of crystal and sweetwood, whereon stood dishes of perilous delicacies, phials of sense-obscuring drugs, ewers of bright wine, precious vases filled with narcotic flowers. Paintings of a suavely lascivious nature covered the walls, and statues of exquisite yet disturbing beauty peopled the room with maidens and dainty boys, clad lightly if at all. From one of the couches Theofanu smiled at Ryel.

"Over here, brother." And she patted the cushions next to her with a spike-nailed ochre-hued hand. Most incongruous did she appear in those soft surroundings, monkeylike in her cloth of gold, her oiled hair skinned back from her scarred face in a great black knot stuck full of long lacquered pins. "Over here, for pretty talk."

Ryel joined her, and the acolyte silently took his leave, bowing low to both wysardess and wysard.

"Wine?" Theofanu asked. "It Masir. You fondest of Masir."

Ryel remembered his lewd imaginings of only moments before, and felt himself coloring hot. "I want no wine."

"Drugs? I have all drugs."

"No. Why did you wish to see me?"

Theofanu bunched herself up, hugging her ankles, tilting her head as she studied his face with her whiteless eyes. "So. Ryel Edrisem Mirai, lord adept of Markul. You like my rites?"

"I found them childish."

Theofanu laughed in shrill simian peals, hugging herself. "Yes! It take me much time to find something fool enough for the court of the Domina. But I find it. You know how? I look at the Unseen. I find the Unseen hates all sweet things. Loves money, much money, always money. No music, no drugs, no dirty, no danger in temple of the Unseen. Only talk, talk, ugly talk. The religion of a cold land, a cold people. I bring the sun. Color, all colors. Pleasure. Music, very sweet good music, because they love music here in the North. And I ask no money, not one copper coin money, never. Today is best so far; today, everyone have pleasure." She winked, slyly. "Even you."

Ryel quelled the hot blood that would have shamed his cheeks. "The Count Palatine of Roskerrek resisted your foolery, at least."

"Ha. Redbane." She said it as if spitting out sucked poison. "One day he suffer. One day soon."

Ryel quelled the hot blood overtaking his face. "Dagar uses you like a foolish toy, Theofanu of Ormala," he said.

"I make this city my toy. Its queen my toy. Soon, all the land."

"So it's nothing more than a game to you?"

"The Master gave me a great gift, brother." She poured herself some wine. "You sure you not want some? No? Well." She sat cross-legged, and drank. "In Azm Chak, all women treated like slaves. Beaten. Married too young, to old men. Their pleasure cut away before marriage." The opaque eyes narrowed in memory. "My sister die of it. Many girls die of it. But me, I live. Then they want to marry me to some man I hate—I hate all men, after that—and I run away from the Azm Chak, to Ormala. Learn the Art very fast. But nothing bring back my lost pleasure. Ormala not enough; I go to Elecambron. Dagar I find when I Cross; and Dagar gives me back my pleasure."

"Dagar restored the excised flesh?"

"Not restore. Return the feeling. Make it more." She licked her lips, her tongue like a slug on a fungus. "I have much pleasure, much, thanks to Dagar. I am grateful."

Ryel stared at her. "Grateful enough to aid in the destruction of the World?"

She only nodded. "The World and more." She reached for the golden bowl at her side, and brought up a handful of folded notes. "The World destroys itself. Gladly, daily." She chose a note and began to unwrap it. "Here are askings. Bribes, offers." She began to read. "A great lord in difficulties need gold. Offers his two children to serve the Master—boy and girl, lovely, both virgin. Another, from a lady who wish her false lover made impotent. Here another lady want her husband dead."

"Surely you do not fulfill such requests."

She tossed the papers away. "No. Foolish askings. I tell them that Master answers all prayers, but only prayers spoken in the temple. So they come, and bring others."

"If you keep using strong drugs in your rituals, Hryeland will soon have a pack of idiots and madmen for its court."

Theofanu's fleshy lips drew back in amusement. "So the Master hope."

"Dagar's methods are well-suited to his auditory," Ryel was forced to admit. "Fleshly excess for the Hryeland aristocracy, and grim threats for the lower orders in Almancar."

Theofanu nodded serene assent. "Much happen since you left Almancar. New religion there now, most stern—most like the Unseen. The dirty folk of the Dog's Ward worship the Master. Some rich ladies, too, find the priest Michael pleasing. Wise are the ways of the Master."

"I have failed to see Dagar's wisdom in any of our encounters," Ryel retorted.

Theofanu laughed at him. "How wise you? You that took Redbane's sickness to yourself?"

Bitterly self-disgusted, Ryel made no reply.

The sorceress leaned forward, locking her empty eyes with Ryel's. "We have both Crossed, brother. Both Crossed, both seen, both come back marked with Dagar's seal. We know."

The wysard tried to look away; could not. "I don't understand you, sister."

"Let Dagar have you. Fight no more." Her hand moved to wrap Ryel's wrist, but he evaded that touch, revulsed.

"I will fight to the last of my strength, Theofanu."

The witch frowned. "But why?"

"Because my Art is in the service of life." As Ryel spoke, his stomach cramped and queased. "Because there is too much pain in the World already." His skin burnt and sweated. "Because I know … what love is." A hammering ache pounded his brain to gray mash, forcing him to silence.

Theofanu's chattering laugh added to his suffering. "I feel your thoughts during the rites, brother," she chuckled. "Much violence, much."

Ryel fought the chill that tried to shake him. "I am not well. But I will find a cure."

"The Master will heal you," said the witch. "Let him."

"No." The wysard stood up, and the swiftness of his action made his head burst almost. Clutching his head in his hands, he spoke again, even though his voice seemed to fracture his skull. "Dagar cannot succeed, Theofanu."

She only sneered. "The Master will sway all soon, brother. The World. The Cities. The stars."

Ryel trembled, all his blood burning. "No."

The witch snickered, shrill and contemptuous. "No? Someday soon, worship of Argane be heresy. And someday you join me and Dagar, soon."

The wysard moved away, clenching his teeth. "I've had enough of this."

"You in pain, brother." The sorceress reached out her skinny arms, her long gilt nails. "Here, I help."

"Don't touch me!" Turning away violently, Ryel fled staggering from the room, Theofanu's scorning tittering laughter echoing behind him.

Desperately pushing aside the hangings of the dais, the wysard lost his balance, and clung to the cloth as he swayed. Unable to master his guts, he vomited onto the precious mosaic pavement. Blind with excruciation he stumbled down the temple steps and into the open air, never so sweet to him before, and shoved past the guards into the park. Dropping down on the grass, he numbly groped in his coat pocket for the Transcendence scent-cylinder.

He never expected it to help him, but the merest whiff of the Dranthene fragrance took away the pain. Gasping with the deliciousness of that salvation he sat up, leaning his back against a tree and blankly staring up into the grudgingly budding branches for a time. Only thirst racked him, now. Looking about, he saw that one of the ornamental fountains spurted a thin jet of water. This he made for, and drank deeply after splashing his face and rinsing his mouth.

A known voice addressed him. "You look as if you could use something stronger." And Jorn Alleron, materialized like some helpful spirit, handed Ryel a silver flask.

The wysard tilted it to his lips, tasted pure Steppes frangin, and sighed with sheer delight. " I never expected this."

"I'm fond of the stuff. It has a rare tang to it." As he spoke, he captain sat down next to the wysard at the fountain's edge.

"Why are you here?" the wysard asked.

"My lord bade me wait for you," Alleron replied. "Are you all right? You look ghastly."

The wysard took another pull of frangin, feeling like the trees about him, tingling with sweet strong rising sap. "It must have been the incense of the Master's rituals."

Alleron spat. "Wasn't it foul, though? All of it was foul—except the music, I'll admit. That yellow slut jerks the court about like puppets, playing their passions like strings, scaring them the way a nursery bugbear tale frights a child—and like children they clap their hands even as they shiver and squeal. The incense you speak of is some filthy drug, no?"

Ryel nodded. "A compound of several powerful narcotics."

"Addictive ones, I doubt not."

"Yes," the wysard replied. "The strongest known."

"I thought as much. That's why I stood next the door, to breathe clean air."

"The Count Palatine seemed unaffected," Ryel said. "I must confess that surprised me."

"His body is impervious to all drugs, sir, even as his faith in Argane Queen of Battles withstands all arts and wiles. You look half dead from that witch's filthy smokes and stinks."

"I'm well enough, now. But I must say I envy the Count Palatine's powers of resistance."

"As do I," Alleron said. "On that subject, my lord bade me learn what the yellow-eyed bitch wanted of you, when you stayed behind after the service."

"Her eyes are yellow?"

"You didn't observe? They're like a snake's, or lizard's, or whatever other creeping vermin you please. She aimed at your conversion, I suppose."

"She did," Ryel replied, grimacing at the memory.

"And she failed?"

"Most miserably."

Alleron lifted his flask to the wysard before taking another swig. "My congratulations. I knew she'd never make a convert of you; but had she done so, you could never try for a Swordbrother tomorrow. The goddess Argane admits no divided loyalties. She's a jealous mistress, is Argane."

Ryel smiled. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I've asked to be your Preceptor, if that suits you," Alleron said. "The rites are straightforward, but you'll still need some instruction."

The wysard inclined his head in thanks. "I would be honored, Captain." He accepted the re-proffered flask with a nod of thanks. "Are you really going to fight with the Countess tomorrow?"

Alleron nodded unshakeable assent. "At two of the clock, in the headquarters courtyard."

"Your strength against a girl's, Captain?"

Alleron blushed with nothing but frangin. "The girl you speak of is one of the wickedest bladesmen—bladeswomen, I should say—in Hryeland. She's been the death of more than one poor devil hereabouts."

"But she's your sister. Swordsister, I should say."

"This is a private quarrel, m'lord prince, and has naught to do with the Brotherhood."

Ryel kept his reply neutral. "The Count Palatine might object."

Alleron grunted a half-laugh. "He hates the little slut as much as I."

Ryel raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I much doubt that, Captain."

"He'll be glad to see her taken down a bit. Well, I don't doubt you're blood-weary after so much rank mummery, and looking forward to a drink and some dinner, which we'll have at headquarters in the best style thanks to my lord's order. He's meeting with the Brotherhood council tonight, which is certain to rule in your favor, and I'm to instruct you regarding some particulars of the ritual. Whenever you feel like moving, I'll escort you back to headquarters. Your little Jinn's on hand to take you there—I sent away that gaudy whorish coach that awaited you."

Ryel turned about and was glad to find his mare quietly standing next to Alleron's not far away. "My thanks, Captain."

For a moment Alleron paused. "I don't know if you know, m'lord prince, but you're very likely the first man not of military rank ever to join the Fraternity."

The wysard considered those words, but could not help likewise recalling the words of Belphira Deva in the Diamond Heaven: words concerning the battle of heart against mind, self against World, that was unending war to some.

"In my own way I'm a soldier, Captain," he said aloud. And for the first time, he felt like one.

Chapter Fourteen

Thanks to the healing fragrance of Transcendence, Ryel was able to savor to the full both the excellent dinner concocted by the Count Palatine's cook Verlande, and Alleron's equally enjoyable conversation. It began with legends of Argane's origins, deeds, and miracles, but moved to the matter at hand once the table was cleared and only the wine remained.

"Now comes your instructing, but first a pledge." The captain lifted his glass. "To my lord's continued health, and long tenure as Commander."

Ryel seconded the toast. "How did Lord Roskerrek become priest of the order?"

"The only way possible—he bought the right with blood," Alleron replied, with more than a hint of pride in his voice. "Upon the resignation or death of a Commander, succession is determined by single combat, and the candidate must vanquish all other challengers. It's a violent ordeal, as should be obvious. Of the five who contended for the right, my lord killed two and most seriously maimed the others, himself receiving no more than scratches."

Ryel blinked. "Was he not brought to law for those killings?"

Alleron shook his head. "The Fraternity has its own laws, which by tradition supersede those of the realm; and by those laws my lord's bloodshed was no murder, but rather honorable sacrifice to the goddess. He's defended his priesthood with the same energy against all adversaries for seven years, the longest term of anyone in the Fraternity's history."

"You've witnessed some rare combat then, I take it."

"Indeed I have. The best I ever saw—well, the second best—was the Earl of Rothsaye's bout with Valrandin when she joined the Brotherhood, two years back. All the more entertaining since she's the first and so far only woman to be of the Fraternity, and needs must fight like all the rest of us, stripped to the waist. I confess I was afraid for those pretty breasts of hers—not much for size, but high-set and firm as apples. As good fortune would have it, they took no harm, and she ended by giving Rothsaye a smart nick on the shoulder, something he was far from expecting."

"The Countess is a law unto herself," Ryel said, his Steppes upbringing slightly scandalized by Alleron's narration. "I wonder who I'll end up fighting."

"Oh, you can count upon your initiation to be a mere formality, and whoever you face will let you off with the lightest of scratches, since you cured my lord's illness. Speaking of which, as bad as that sickness made him, only once did I ever see my lord commit an unworthy action, when he was goaded beyond even his wonted self-command."

"Who did he fight?" Ryel asked.

"Starklander." Alleron's edged-steel eyes glinted in revery. "Now there was a bout. I've never seen a braver duel. And I'd have never wished it ended, either, but at last Desrenaud dealt my lord a wound that survives to this day as a white scar at the top of the cheek just under the left eye, stretching to the ear, neat and delicate. I daresay you've seen it."

"I have."

"A love-cut, we call such dainty scratches. But I doubt my lord thinks over-fondly of Guyon Desrenaud every time he spies that sword-token in his shaving-mirror. He took it hard, believe me. For by Brotherhood rules the combat must terminate as soon as blood's drawn, but my lord would not stop, so furious had Lord Guyon made him. Lashing out wildly, he hacked Starklander through the right ribs, a cruel deep blow. We had to part them by force, and throw some stun-dust on the fire to drug Desrenaud into calm—but not my lord, for whom no drug has effect, as you've seen."

Ryel yet again recalled his weakness during Theofanu's rites, and Roskerrek's cold impervious admonition. "I'm glad I'm on your lord's good side," he said, with an attempt at a smile.

"I'd be very sorry for you if you weren't. Well, the hour's late and you've listened long enough to my droppings, and require rest. I'll light you to your rooms, by your leave, and may you sleep like a baby."

*****

That night Ryel indeed slept as Alleron had wished; slept like a child with night-terrors, tormented by countless appalling visions—for visions and not dreams they appeared to his racked unconsciousness, prophetic of a future looming near, and unspeakably terrible. When he at last found real rest the hour was close to dawn, and when he at last rose, the sun was high in the sky, as he discovered when he began to open the window-curtains. The light hurt his eyes damnably, and he could barely stand upright, he felt so sick. Had it not been for the aid of Transcendence, he would have been weary of his life.

A quick-eared orderly heard, and entered to wish him a good morning, and to inform him that both the Count Palatine and Captain Alleron were absent from headquarters and not expected to return until later in the day. A plentiful breakfast was brought in, the fire in the hearth was roused to life and replenished, and the curtains thrown wide. Luckily Ryel could now bear such disturbances, thanks to the inestimably precious powers of the Dranthene scent. He could enjoy the fire's warmth, the chill wan sunlight, the food set before him—excellent, as dinner had been the night before.

As Ryel chose among the several dishes offered him he discovered, to his surprise and pleasure, that breakfast included chal. It was a little weaker than he preferred, but of the finest quality, as the wysard had come to expect from all that belonged or pertained to Yvain Essern. Fresh clothes were laid out for him, newly made and quietly elegant.

Feeling well again, Ryel washed and dressed, then had Jinn saddled for a ride. Visible on the other side of the Lorn was a range of stately stone buildings set in deep lawns leading down to the river, and the wysard felt a sudden keen interest in them. Crossing the bridge and arriving at the gates, Ryel learned that he'd found his way to Hallagh's famed university. Entrusting Jinn to the care of the porter, he wandered about the arcaded courtyards, listening to snatches of lectures on all subjects, admiring the statues and monuments, and watching the students as they hurried to and from classes in their black gowns. It was lively and learned, and he savored the inquiring energy of the place. The great library was full of long tables well-stocked with scholars, but its books were jealously kept, and not available for casual browsing. When Ryel expressed disappointment at that regulation, the librarian suggested that the wysard visit the observatory-tower, which had a fine view of the city and a collection of scientific instruments both rare and costly.

The wysard had no great interest in what seemed a long upward trek, and would have gone on to other explorations of the grounds; but he felt inexplicably pulled to ascend the tower's winding stairs. Having climbed the many flights to the top, Ryel glanced out over the city, comparing it unfavorably with Almancar and Markul; then duly noted the gleaming array of machines and implements carefully shelved behind glass cases or displayed upon pedestals. They seemed to his Art-trained eyes touchingly naïve in their attempt to quantify the immeasurable. As he smiled in tolerant sympathy, he was not surprised to find the great circular room's treasures guarded, or at least watched over by a man sitting at a desk in the chamber's midst. This person was very apparently a professor—an intense hawkish man seemingly in his middle sixties, well wrapped in a scholar's gown of mouse-colored velvet lined with squirrel-fur, regarded the wysard unwaveringly over his leather-bound book. Very keen and clear were his light-brown eyes, peering out benignly but searchingly under a grizzled thatch of hair and a very large academic cap; most ironically mobile his mouth, partly obscured by a graying scrub of beard; and when he spoke, it was in an accent twangingly Ralnahrian.

"Welcome, sir," the professor said. "Your polite indifference to these priceless instruments could only come from an extremity of ignorance, or a superabundance of knowledge. Now, as you are a young man not yet thirty, I might well suppose the former condition; many an idle gallant wanders in here, glances about, perhaps in his ignorance mishandles one of the astrolabes, and is summarily ejected by myself or some other vigilant member of the faculty. But your appearance betokens knowledge of a highly specialized kind."

Ryel glanced down at his elegantly plain Northern dress. "I don't understand."

The don's kindly bright regard sparked yet more. "You would require my eyes to do so, my lord."

Suddenly restless, Ryel wandered over to another of the instruments. "Why do you call me lord?"

"I freely admit it would be my error to thus misname one of the Rismai—which most of your looks proclaim you," the professor said. "But to an adept of one of the Four, and an Overreacher at that … "

The wysard dropped his hat and spun around. "Who are you?"

The scholar set down his pen and musingly rubbed his scraggy beard. "Scholar Jeral I'm called, sir; and since I last spoke with Lady Srin Yan Tai in my Glass concerning you, I must assume you are Ryel Mirai, erstwhile famulus to Lord Edris of Markul, rest be to his shade."

Ryel reached down and picked up his hat, but did not resume it; and he assessed the scholar's own egregiously outsized headgear. "And you can be none other than Lord Jeral Colquhon, formerly of Tesba."

The leathery cheeks colored, the otterish eyes glinted. "You name me rightly, sir. But how might my name be known to you?"

Ryel bowed low. "Lady Mevanda Reggiori had dwelt in Tesba before she came to Markul, and she knew you well, my lord brother, and often mentioned you."

The cheek-tinge became a flush, the eye-glint a glow. "Mevanda. Now there's a name I haven't heard for many a year." His fingers drummed the desk-top. "Mevanda Reggiori! I knew her well indeed! Hyacinthine curls, and eyes of melting fire, and charms like—but once I get started on those, I'll never stop. Ah, those delicious nights, deep in the flowering forest …"

Ryel dissembled his confusion with a cough. "But I thought Tesba was more a jungle than a forest."

"Why, so it is," the scholar affably agreed. "A wilderness of luxuriant vine-twined towering trees, spangled with a thousand bright colors of blossom and fruit, glittering with rills and fountains, alive with brilliant birds and rainbow-hued butterflies; and set within this paradise a City harmonious and fair, not as grand perhaps as Markul but far more pleasantly situated. Imagine a city built entirely of glass—glass of a thousand hues, crystalline or opaque, twisted like barley-sugar or planed in prisms, graced with ornaments spun thread-fine or embossed jewel-bright, glowing and gleaming in the light—an earthly miracle, kept everlastingly lovely by the same srihs that constructed it so long ago. Many years I dwelt in Tesba with pleasure and joy, learning the beauty of the Art."

"How could you leave such a place?" the wysard asked, enthralled. "It sounds like a paradise."

Lord Jeral gave a wryly reminiscent grimace. "Because it was killing me by inches--delirious, deadly inches. Air too rich, too warm; drugs too seductive, spells too extreme; and sensuality far too strong and frequent, with an exhausting number of partners. Delicious for a time, nonetheless. Having taken my fill of Tesba, I toyed awhile with continuing my studies at a higher level in Markul, as Mevanda had done; but I was worn to the bone. I required the bracing cold of my native North, a rigorous mode of life. Some philosophy I had learned at Tesba worth teaching the youth of the World; therefore I came home, to the great relief of my health." The Tesbai adept spun on its spindled axis one of the gold and enamel planets of the exquisite little orrery that adorned his desktop, setting all the rest of the precious orblets in lazy motion. "Here I have given much thought to the origins of life, and our purpose in the scheme of existence—an old man's puzzles."

"You are not yet old, Lord Jeral," Ryel said.

The professor bowed slightly in reply, then said a few Art-words, and smiled as the five planets of the orrery with their attendant moons detached themselves from their spindles and gently floated upward, gyring slowly in mid-air around Ryel's head some six inches from his eyes. "There. How does it feel to be the center of the universe?"

Ryel did not smile in return as he watched the tiny planets float past. "I could get used to it." Blowing a puff of breath, he knocked one of Drihatyn's moons out of orbit. "But it has its risks."

"I know it well, sir," Lord Jeral said wryly. Another word, and the elegant precious little spheres obediently returned to their machine. With a gentle forefinger he caressed the fairest planet of the orrery, malachite and pearl and lapis Cyrinnis. "I assume you know of the Black Strife that afflicted this unhappy globe some centuries gone?"

Ryel nodded, repressing a shudder. "Yes, I read of it when young, and wish I hadn't. It cost me much sleep, imagining that holocaust." As he spoke, he remembered how it had infected his dreams the night before.

Lord Jeral's lips cramped. "No imaginings, however lively, can ever come close to it, which is fortunate for our sanity. More than one half of all humanity perished in the Black Strife, by wars, atrocities, disease … and suicide. Appalling weapons they had in those days—great explosives that could level cities, dropped by winged machines. The dead have been buried, the ruins rebuilt or razed, but still we have not recovered from that devastation, and perhaps never will. No daimon had a hand in the destruction, my lord brother; all, all was solely the work of man. Which, when considered philosophically, is most impressive. But the Black Strife will seem a mere boys' battle of sticks and stones compared to what will transpire when Dagar returns to Cyrinnis from the Void, with the armies of the Outer World at his beck."

Ryel was silent a while. "Lady Srin told you everything, then."

"She did indeed."

"Then I doubt this meeting was by accident."

Lord Jeral nodded, his eyes sparkling. "Not in the least. I Called you, and I have to say I wondered if you'd show up; I wasn't sure my Art would be strong enough."

Ryel gave a slight laugh devoid of mirth, took up the orrery, and flicked one of the planets, rather too hard. "Pent up as I was in Markul, I devoted no time to the study of pure evil. It is a fascinating field, the abnormal. The daimonic." He turned away from the window and its punishing light, pressing a hand to his temple. "I have witnessed since arriving in the North a great deal of cruelty, depravity, and the like; but coldly detached compulsion is a peculiarly Elecambronian achievement. My Art-brother Michael Essern enjoys a great capacity for it."

Baffled, Lord Jeral blinked. "Why would you wish to become as corrupt as he is?"

"Corrupt? Not corrupt, but deeply learned. I envy his knowledge. I wish it were mine." As Ryel spoke, he felt a thrust of yearning for those ice-white towers, an overmastering impatience that pulled him like a moon with a tide; and in his irritation he slapped at the orrery, sending Cyrinnis flying from its spindle. The rich spherelet bounced twice before smashing against the wall. But his vandalism gave the wysard neither regret, nor pleasure; only a strong desire to wreck something else. The room was full of fragile instruments, and Ryel reached out to seize a sextant, next; but Lord Jeral was at his side that same moment, catching his wrist in a gyrfalcon's grip.

"The destruction of worlds is not enough for you? Mevanda ever told me of your gentle ways, your sweet spirit. What ails you, boy?"

Shamed to the quick, Ryel pushed back the hair from his throbbing forehead. "There's nothing wrong with me." Even as he spoke, he searched his pocket for the Dranthene scent-flask; and Lord Jeral prevented him from opening it, snatching it away.

"Hold hard a moment, my lord brother." The Tesbai adept examined the carnelian cylinder with a suspicious sniff, his eagle nostrils flaring in recognition. "So. Attar of a Thousand. If this eases your pain, you must be very sick indeed, young Lord Ryel—sick even to the last drop of your imperial blood."

The wysard grabbed the perfume-vial away from Lord Jeral, unstoppering it with a wrench, breathing its fragrance like a drowning man, drawing at last an even deeper breath of relief. "How could you know that?"

Jeral Colquhon inspected what was left of Cyrinnis, and clucked dismally at the wreckage before gathering the pieces and muttering something under his breath; replaced the planet, now whole and entire, in its wonted place in the array’s heavens. "Attar of a Thousand, or Transcendence, is a concoction of my City, compounded by a wysard of the Dranthene line hundreds of years gone. Its healing properties reach far beyond the flesh, and were originally intended to counteract the poisonous effects of daimonic infection."

"I was not aware of its origins, but its powers have been my salvation."

"Where did you acquire this drug? It is one of the earth's rarest, next to xantal."

"In Almancar," the wysard replied. More he did not wish to say.

The scholar's keen eyes met the wysard's in deepest sympathy. "And how did you contract your sickness?"

Ryel drew and exhaled a tired breath. "By healing the Count Palatine Roskerrek of his."

"That was a mad risk, Ryel Mirai."

"I didn't know I was taking it."

"What possessed you to help that evil man?"

"His evil grew out of his illness, and I pitied him for it. And Dagar taunted me, daring me on. And then…"

"Then?"

"Then I attended the rites at the Temple of the Master, yesterday. I haven't been the same since."

Lord Jeral grimaced in sympathy. "Theofanu's drugs are terrible, my lord brother. Added to the illness you already suffer, no wonder you're twisted by them."

The wysard shivered as a crawling wave of fever seized his blood, and turned away to the window, breathing deeply of the scent-flask as he scanned the gray slate roofs, the darker lowering clouds. As he spoke, he felt his voice shake and stall. "Lord Jeral, I swear to you upon my Art that I take no pleasure in cruelty, none; I loathe it, and have done so all my life. But this sickness subverts my nature, fight it though I try. I cannot describe to you the shame I feel at being so compelled to destruction and malice—but compelled I am. Nor can I describe the pain; the Transcendence alone makes me able to bear it."

Jeral Colquhon gazed on Ryel with raptor fixation. "It can allay only your bodily suffering. Inwardly you will worsen, and soon it will not be enough for you to smash little toy planets."

Ryel gripped the carved cylinder tightly. "I fear that."

"I am not ignorant of the danger enwrapping the World, my lord brother." Lord Jeral joined Ryel at the window. "All the Cities feel it; two welcome it. Tesba and Markul are now in constant communication regarding this menace—which is how I have learned of you, and your importance in the scheme of fate. Dagar of Elecambron will poison the World, even as the curse of the Red Esserns infects your being. And because you are destined for the World's help, it is imperative that you find your own cure as quickly as may be."

"I am aware of that, Lord Jeral," Ryel said through his teeth.

"Would that I might help you. But there are great healers not too far away, in Ralnahr. Of greatest help would be Gwenned de Grisainte, like myself formerly of Tesba—she and I were acquaintances there. She is a great lady, the Markessa of Lanas Crin; she dwells by the sea along the Dryven Marches."

Ryel searched his memory. "De Grisainte. I know that name."

"It was one of the names of Guyon Desrenaud, who was so famous here some years ago," Lord Jeral said. "The Markessa is his grandmother."

Ryel's ears twitched. "You knew him? Do you know what became of him? I've been trying very hard to find out."

"He quarreled with the Domina, left the Barrier without her leave, and got himself killed in Wycast, according to popular report."

"Do you believe it?"

"I would rather not, for I admired the man," the scholar replied. "But his grandame the Markessa has not heard from him since his departure from Hryeland, he that never failed to send letters to her fortnightly at least, so she says. That bodes ill. But it is your welfare that concerns me, my young lord brother."

Ryel considered Lord Jeral's words. "If my path leads me to Ralnahr, I will find Lady Gwynned and seek her help in my cure."

"What determines your path, Ryel Mirai?"

"Information I hope to gather tonight from the Count Palatine of Roskerrek," Ryel answered. "I'm to be initiated into the Sword Brotherhood."

Lord Jeral's bushy gray eyebrows leapt upward enough to lift the brim of his cap. "You'll be the first outlander ever to join, if that be the case."

"I had thought Hryeland had no gods but the Unseen, and that the worship of Argane is no more than a cult."

"Hryeland used once to have many gods, most of them cruel, centuries ago," Lord Jeral said. "And among them, Argane was foremost; but she and all the others were supplanted by the less savage religion of the Unseen. The folk of Hryeland are nonetheless still notorious for being the most belligerent people on the face of the earth, never happy unless there is some quarrel at hand. Still, even their truculence was exhausted by the Barbarian wars, which incurred great loss of life and drained the treasury for more than a decade. Only the fanaticism of the Sword Brotherhood kept the struggle afoot—its members being all of them great officers of the army, lords of the realm, and implacable warriors, with Roskerrek the greatest, highest and deadliest of them all. When the Earl of Anbren--Guyon Desrenaud as he's better known--successfully negotiated an end to the conflict, Roskerrek was furious, but it must be remembered that he lost his father and his eldest brother to the wars, and is by nature vindictive."

"It's the daimon in his blood," Ryel said. "And he owes his strength to it. His power. Which reminds me—may I borrow that telescope over there?"

"Only if you promise not to break it," said Lord Jeral. "But you won't find many stars this time of day."

"Damn the stars." Ryel rested the telescope on the window-ledge, trained its sights on the headquarters of the army, and focused on a red knot of soldiers gathered in the courtyard.

"By every god," he exclaimed under his breath. "Lord Jeral, what's the hour?"

"Near two of the clock. What do you see?"

"Something I almost forgot," Ryel said, pushing away from the window. "I'm late for something important."

"In the name of All, what?"

"A death, maybe." The wysard abruptly turned, oversetting the telescope, and without farewell left the room amid the crash of fine-ground lenses and the groans of the Tesbai adept.

*****

Clamor and riot met his eyes as he entered the headquarters courtyard. A swirling mass of red mingled with shouted curses, the ringing clash of steel against steel, the scuffle of boots, the grating of spurs against flagstones. Ryel elbowed aside the soldiers that blocked his view, and found Valrandin and Alleron hard at it in the chill drizzle. Alleron had wrapped his gray cloak about his left arm, but Valrandin fought bare-guarded to the elbows, scornful of precaution. Both were ruddily asweat, both mud-spattered, yet Ryel could see that the Domina's favorite had the better of the fight. Strong and quick though Alleron was, he could not match the speed and address that were Gabriel's. The girl seemed all air and fire; her tangled curls flew wildly about her flushed face, and her wet shirt clung to her slim strength. Alleron bled much from his left side and right forearm, and panted for breath, but Valrandin was unscathed and tireless; and it seemed that the duel would be decided in swift and fatal fashion.

"The Captain's finished," one of the soldiers muttered to a comrade. "I give the poor devil one more minute to live, no longer."

"Maybe not," Ryel said, only half to himself; and the second soldier heard him, and grunted a laugh.

"So what's to save him? Magic? Use some if you have it."

The wysard smiled. At that moment by malign chance the countess caught her heel in the paving-stones and lost her balance, reeling backward and falling with all her weight. A roar went up among the soldiers as Alleron kicked the sword from her hand.

"Stay where you are, bitch." And the captain shoved her down, his booted muddy foot planted between her breasts, defiling the immaculate linen, tearing the precious lace. "It's over."

Through unmoving lips Valrandin cursed foully. "The Domina will hear of this, stall-mucker. She'll have you gelded if you're not already."

Alleron spat, not quite missing Valrandin's hair. "I'm fouling my breeches with fear, m'lady."

The red rankers howled their laughter. Furious and desperate, Valrandin glanced wildly about her, seeking any help; found Ryel. But the stark appeal in her eyes affected the wysard no more than it affected the soldiers around him, and he awaited the event with the same impatience, even as he despised himself for his eagerness.

Alleron pressed the blade's point to Valrandin's bloodless cheek. "I'll start here. And then … "

"Jorn!"

Roskerrek's voice, louder than Ryel had thought it capable, cut sharper than any sword, parting the soldiers at once; and the Count Palatine thrust through the red fissure. Although in uniform, he was bareheaded and uncloaked, as if come in haste from his apartments. Under the menacing sky his face held a deadly pallor, and his eyes were cruel winter's.

"Equerry, if you so much as grazed her I'll have you racked." He lifted Valrandin to her feet, keeping her hands in his. "Gabriel. Did he hurt you?"

"I hurt him, Redbane," the countess snapped, snatching her hands away. "Best have him looked to." She cast a glare at Ryel. "Thanks for your help. I'll remember it."

The Count Palatine eyed Alleron coldly. "Explain this, Captain."

Alleron shrugged, but uncomfortably. "The little bitch had been—"

Roskerrek's voice was dangerous ice. "Keep a civil tongue in your head, equerry."

Alleron bowed his head. "She'd been baiting me to a bout. We had one. That's all."

"You know it isn't, dog-robber!" Valrandin cried. "Your life wouldn't have been worth a rat's arse had I not slipped on those filthy stones." She fixed her fury on Roskerrek, then. "What right had you to stop me, Redbane?"

"You know the law," the Count Palatine replied, flinching a little at the name she'd called him. "It prohibits brawling in the public streets."

She flung back her head. "This is a private courtyard, Redbane."

He nodded sternly. "Yes. Mine. And now I request you to leave it."

Valrandin's left upper lip leapt in a sneer. "Not until you finish what you started. Your stable-hand only warmed me, Essern. Now for us."

The watching throng tensed, but Roskerrek only shrugged. "If you haven't yet noticed, I'm unarmed."

"Have your dog-robber lend you his blade."

Roskerrek shook his head. "I choose not to engage in street fighting with boys, or girls, or those who would be both." And he turned away as if the matter were settled; but over the redcoat roar Valrandin's shout snapped like a lash.

"Afraid you might lose, Redbane?"

In the absolute quiet that followed those words, Roskerrek slowly turned back again, and regarded Valrandin with a long, wonderfully calm stare; a look new to him perhaps, one that he could not have given in those days of pain now forever past. "Yes," he said finally. "I fear I might lose more than I could bear, my lady." And he would have spoken to Ryel next, but Valrandin raised her sword, slashing the air like hated flesh.

"You're a craven coward, Redbane."

The soldiers pressed forward, scenting more blood; Roskerrek stiffened, but did not turn round.

"I think it would be better for us to go indoors," he said to the wysard. "It'll be much more quiet."

Valrandin's wild shout drowned out his last word. "Defend yourself, you whey-faced son of a whore!"

She bolted forward in a lunge, but quick as a great cat Roskerrek spun around, snatching Alleron's weapon from the equerry's hand at the same instant; intercepted the girl's furious thrust and beat it back as if lightly batting a shuttlecock.

"That wasn't gentlemanly, Lieutenant," he said, tranquil as ever, even almost smilingly; but to the wysard he had never seemed more dangerous. "A moment, by your leave." And while Valrandin waited restless and breathless, Roskerrek stripped off his black coat and threw it to a sergeant standing by, and turned up the sleeves and loosened the collar of his shirt, revealing the arms and breast of a statue of white stone that scarce seemed human flesh at all save for the breast's rapid rise and fall, and the muscles' knotted tension.

"Remember that you wanted this, my lady," he said. With smooth grace he saluted, but Valrandin thrust forward to swat his blade aside and the fight began in earnest, overjoying the soldiery.

"They'll rip each other to pieces," said one.

Another shook his head. "My money on the girl."

Another laughed. "You'll lose. Redbane's playing with her."

He is indeed, Ryel thought, half amazed at his detachment. Playing like a cat with something vicious, but small and tired. I wonder when he'll kill her.

Against Valrandin's venomous assault Roskerrek did no more than parry and avoid, never taking advantage of the girl's ever-increasing recklessness. But it was clear that he was waiting until he saw his time. The moment came, inevitably. Again Valrandin struck, wild and unbalanced in a delirious lunge, and Roskerrek dropped his own sword to seize her wrist, wrenching it with a force that flung her clean over his arm and onto the paving-stones. Yet even before Valrandin struck the ground, the wysard had heard the grind and snap of bone, heard Gabriel's blurted scream.

A savage cheer broke out among the redcoats. As if awaiting that moment, the rain began to fall in heavy earnest. Curled and quivering Gabriel lay clutching her wrist, her face hidden by her wild wet hair. Roskerrek stood over her, his face still calm as ever, though deathly pale; and now he addressed the soldiers.

"You've seen enough. If any mention of this incident should reach the Domina, I'll have every man here horsewhipped to the bone. And now get out, all of you."

The soldiers slunk away like a pack of red jackals, and Roskerrek knelt next to Valrandin, drawing the dagger at his side. Ryel wrapped his cloak tighter about him as he watched, yearning for yet more blood, heart-blood.

But Roskerrek used the weapon only to cut off a strip from his shirt's hem, and then to use it as a splint as he bandaged Valrandin's wrist. The countess let him do what he would, giving over her arm as if it were no longer part of her, never moving from the muddy stones.

"You must get up, my lady," Roskerrek said, gently as if she lay pillowed and asleep in a great white bed. Expressionless but with the tenderest care he raised her, patient with her limp weight; and she slumped in his embrace as if tied dead to a tree, her back against his chest, her head listless on his shoulder.

"You broke me," she whispered behind the straggling curtain of her dark hair. "You killed me."

Roskerrek gathered back her dripping tangles, baring her face; it was pale gray, drawn taut. "I saved your life," he said. "Someone had to."

Her voice was a numb whisper. "I hate you."

The Count Palatine only held her closer. "I understand."

"I'll make you sorry," she murmured with her last strength. "I'll—" Her eyes rolled back, then fluttered shut as her head fell forward.

"I know you'll make me sorry, Gabriel," he said, barely audible over the rain. "Be sure you do your worst." He turned to Alleron, then. "Go find doctors, at once."

Heedless of his own bleeding hurts Alleron obeyed, clearly glad to be gone from there. Roskerrek next addressed Ryel, looking at him for the first time. "I have already asked much of you, my lord prince, but I needs must ask yet a little more, for this lady's sake. Pray you come with me."

Disregarding his orderlies' offers of assistance Roskerrek carried Valrandin into the house and upstairs, and laid her on his own bed. He issued a series of sharp commands to his waiting servants, and soon the fire in the chamber was blazing afresh, with towels and fresh clothes warming at it. Medicines and Wycastrian brandy arrived as well, and Ryel took a long glassful of the latter, feeling his flesh start as the drink heated him through. Pouring some for Valrandin, he added some drops of opiate, and would have gone to the countess to administer it; but Roskerrek stopped him, taking the glass from his hand.

"Let me."

Seating himself on the bed at Valrandin's side, the Count Palatine slipped his arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her up, holding the glass to her lips. At first she grimaced at the taste of the spirits, but at last drank, resting her head against the Roskerrek's chest afterward. As if entranced he gazed down into her face that was so close to his; and then slowly he closed his eyes, and bent to her mouth. But in the same moment he abruptly halted and drew back.

"I will never forgive myself for this," he said.

Ryel smiled. "Oh, I think you might." He went to the other side of the bed, and less than gently he reached for Valrandin's splinted wrist, removing its swathings and examining the extent of its injury. Torn from her swoon she gasped and writhed, but the wysard muttered a word to still her again, less out of mercy than irritation.

"Well?" Roskerrek asked, his impatience harsh. "Will it heal?"

"Never completely," Ryel replied. "The bones are crushed to fragments." As he spoke, he studied Valrandin's face. Pain had eroded the braggart edges, the bold lines; had beaten down the free and mocking curve of the mouth, the challenging tilt of the brow. "You broke her," he said, taken aback by the total indifference in his voice.

Roskerrek reached for a towel hanging near the fireside, and gently pillowed the lieutenant's dank curls with the warm folds. Lovely and sad the young countess lay, pale as a battered bride. "Yes, Countess. I broke you," he murmured, gazing sorrowingly but without regret upon her beautiful bloodless face. "And what would have happened had I not, Gabriel? Was I to allow a proud, vain, impudent girl to recklessly slaughter yet more fools, until she herself was at last cut down?"

"Your solution was a stern one," Ryel said. "I wonder what the Domina will think of it."

"She'll be furious, naturally, when she finds out, and matters might go hard with me, unless…" The Count Palatine fell silent, but it seemed some dark shadow hung in the air, formed by his unspoken words.

Ryel broke the silence. "Since we now speak of the Domina, how was your meeting with her this morning?"

"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information." Roskerrek lightly wound a tendriled tress of Valrandin's dark hair around his fingers, and seemed next to speak only to himself. "The Countess risks grave danger, now, from those she once bested in fight and who still rankle at their defeat and seek revenge. It is my duty to protect her from insult, and worse." Roskerrek shifted his gaze from Valrandin to the wysard, questioning now. "I marvel you do not heal her despite me."

"I will not go against fate in this matter," Ryel said. "Let simple destiny suffice."

Roskerrek did not reply for some time. "When first I met you, my lord prince, I did not think you cruel."

Ryel felt a twinge of regret, but only barely. "When first I met you I was not, General." A sudden access of fever shook Ryel's blood, and a sickening migraine sunk its claws deep into his brain.

The Count Palatine's strange eyes narrowed. "You are unwell. I observed it earlier."

"It comes and goes," the wysard replied shortly. "I'll be in complete health by the time the Rites occur."

"By all means rest. My orderly will look to your wants." He hesitated. "You are a difficult man to comprehend, Ryel Prince of Vrya."

The wysard smiled, feeling the bitterness hard on his lips. "We are well matched, you and I."

At that moment Alleron appeared at the door, leaning heavily against the jamb. "The doctors have arrived, my lord."

Roskerrek did not look round. "Then send them up."

The captain nodded, but did not at once obey; clearly he was in great pain of his wounds, the blood of which stained his shirt and his coat, and his next words came slurred and weary. "M'lord. If I might have freedom of leave for the rest of this day, I—"

The Count Palatine shook his head in cold denial. "You forget that you are on duty until nightfall, equerry. And there is still the matter of our discussion of this late swordplay of yours."

Alleron gulped a breath, wiped the riding-grime from his face; mortally pale he looked, his flaxen hair and mustache dark with sweat, but his steely eyes glinted. "Damn it, m'lord, I didn't harm her as you did, and well you know it!"

The Count Palatine whirled about, furiously enraged; raised his hand to strike. Alleron lifted his chin to the blow, shutting his eyes and setting his teeth. But something in the gesture—its resignation, perhaps, or its exhaustion, or its look of having been made many times before—caused Roskerrek to halt in mid-cuff. For the first time he seemed to notice the captain's injuries, and his next frown was one of concern.

"You're cut worse than I thought, equerry. When the physicians have done what they can for the countess, I will have them see to you. Your wounds are cold; sit here by the fire and warm them, and take a glass of wine. And you are relieved from duty for the rest of the day, since I now observe you seem to need it."

Alleron's astonished steel-blue eyes blinked hard. "My thanks, m'lord."

Without replying to Alleron, Roskerrek turned to Ryel. "For all you have done for me I thank you, Ryel Mirai. Whatever else befalls us this night, I ask you to remember me as one who would have been your friend."

He reached forth his hand, and Ryel took it. It was warm, which the wysard had not expected, and smooth as a luxurious woman's, and hard as iron; and in its uncompromising grip Ryel sensed fatal danger.

He smiled. "Whatever befalls, Yvain Essern."

*****

"It's time, sir."

Ryel reluctantly emerged from meditation, taking his eyes from the flames in the hearth, returning the stopper to his Transcendence-vial, and glancing up at Alleron. "Time?"

Alleron stood in the doorway, a lamp in his hand. "It's near ten, and—and you look a great deal different."

The wysard glanced down at the magnificent Almancarian silk in which he had robed himself after his bath. "In what way, Captain?"

"Most noble," Alleron replied. "Like a great lord of Destimar, which is naught but truth."

"My thanks. How are your wounds?"

"Smarting still, but likely to mend." Entering the room, Alleron aimed a savage kick at a log in the fireplace, sending sparks flying. "How was I to know he held the little slut so dear?"

"You're in disgrace, I take it," Ryel observed.

"Deep and severe, sir, believe me," Alleron replied. "But it won't be the first time, nor the last."

"Would you really have cut her?"

"Only a bit. All my lord gave her was a slap on the wrist…she'll live, I suppose?"

"Not as dangerously as she once did," the wysard replied. "You needn't expect another challenge from her ever again."

Alleron was briefly perplexed. "What do you mean?" A pause, during which his brows stiffened above a stare. "Don't tell me my lord's maimed her beyond cure."

"I marvel that the news doesn't give you more pleasure, Captain," Ryel said.

Alleron groaned an oath. "You can do nothing for her?"

"Nothing. You should be grateful."

"I hope I'll never be so base as to rejoice in the destruction of a gallant heart and brave, sir." The captain for a time turned his entire attention to the fire. "Damnation," he muttered at last. "The poor little…" Brusquely spurning another log, he cursed the exploding sparks. "Well. Tomorrow I'll look in on her, and see how she does."

Surprised though he was by Alleron's sympathy, Ryel had other concerns. "Did the Count Palatine meet with the Domina earlier today, as she had wished?"

"He did, and I wish he hadn't." Alleron seemed to ruminate reluctantly. "He got up this morning more cheerful than I've ever seen him, and arrayed himself brave as a bridegroom to ride to the palace—I've never seen him finer, all in purple. You'd think he ruled this land—which some indeed think he should, myself among that number. And he was as kindly as anyone might wish, too—far beyond what he's ever been to me before, which I most gratefully credit to your cure. But when he came back around noon, he was pale as death, and would speak to no one, and shut himself up in his study. I could hear him pacing up and down, as is his way when angrily moved, and now and then I could make out a few words."

Ryel leaned forward. "What were they?"

Alleron reflected. "Protests. Exclaimings that he would not, he could not, that it was too vile, too treacherous, and the like."

"Do you have any idea what he might have meant?"

The captain lifted his shoulders. "The Domina's commanded much of my lord in time past, whether for good or ill, and he's obeyed without question in every instance. But this time, whatever she wished of him he took hard. Were it not for that interview with the Domina, he'd never have been angry enough to fight with Valrandin, so we may blame her hurts on Bradamaine, in my way of thinking." He was silent awhile, his eyes fixed on the flames of the hearth. "Well, whatever her askings and his answerings, it's no concern of yours or mine. Time now to get you into uniform."

Before Ryel could question, the captain issued another command, and an armful of garments was brought it and arrayed on the bed. They were clothes of a military cut, beautifully made and deepest black, accompanied by the finest, whitest linen.

"Brotherhood regalia," Alleron said. "Tailored to your measure, and likely to become you well."

It was battle-dress of the manner Lord Michael had worn in the double portrait with his brother—cavalry gear of a demanding cut, that made the most of broad shoulders, a slim waist, taut loins and straight legs. The only difference was the insignia: instead of curling dragons, the high collar bore silver circles in which four swords met in the center, point to point.

Ryel examined the garments with some surprise. "I thought this sort of uniform was worn only by the elite forces."

"And so we are, that pass the Brotherhood initiation," Alleron replied. "Letting you wear it now is an honor beyond any other in the realm."

But once he'd donned the requisite garb, Ryel felt even more distanced from himself. Standing before the mirror—a tall glass that reflected his entire form—he saw a stranger. The unforgiving garments held him in, forced him to stand upright, strictured and hampered him where his Steppes garb had allowed him complete freedom. He felt chafed, squeezed, oppressed. It occurred to him, with a touch of envy, that Michael Essern had in both his Glass and in his portrait looked supremely at home in such gear.

Alleron was considering the wysard with a doubtful eye, head cocked warily to one side. "Well, perhaps Steppes warriors can't be expected to be easy in Northern regimentals; but it's required for Argane's rites, and there's no getting around Her rules."

At that moment a knock sounded at the door, and a soldier looked in toward Alleron, then departed. The captain stood up from his chair. "It's time, m'lord prince."

With little pleasure Ryel began dressing. It occurred to him that Almancarian garb featured few or no buttons, whereas Northern clothes seemed to glory in them. "I'm looking forward to the Rites, if only to get out of uniform once they're ended."

"Many another man would envy you that uniform, m'lord prince, even were he only to be buried in it."

The wysard, irritated by the battle-jacket's high collar, gave up trying to fasten it, and Alleron reached to aid him, his fingers deft and light. "We'd best be on our way."

"With all my heart. Lead on."

Alleron gave a disbelieving impressed head-shake. "You've got nerve, m'lord prince, I'll give you that."

"I've nothing to fear according to you, Captain."

"Well, but I never said you'd emerge unscathed."

They went downstairs, and then through a little dark passageway and down another flight of stairs, from thence through yet another door and yet another passageway lit with torches. At the end of the passage arched an iron-bound portal, squat and ancient, blocking the way; in its midst was set a timeworn plaque of silver arcanely wrought.

"This is the last of the doors," Alleron said. "You may have observed that it has no lock—but open it if you can."

None of the wysard's World-strength could budge that massive barrier, and after a time the captain motioned Ryel to stand aside.

"Here's how it's done. Keep well away, my lord; you're not to be privy to this mystery until you've passed the initiation." And as Ryel watched, Alleron whispered something into the door, his lips almost grazing the burnished silver inset. With a cascading rattle of concealed tumblers the portal swung open.

"They were clever, Argane's first worshippers," the captain remarked as he stood aside to let the wysard pass. "But they weren't nearly as tall as we, so watch your head as you go through."

They entered a torch-lit landing enclosed by a balustrade like a screen of pierced stone. A long flight of stone steps led down from it, hewn out of the live rock. Alleron motioned Ryel to the screen. "Look here. Best that you see first what you're getting into."

The wysard peered through one of the lace-like reticulations. Far below him opened a great circular chamber, in the center of which burned an ardent fire of massive coals red as fresh-spilled blood. A clutch of swords bristled in that fire, their blades aglow with heat. Around the fire seven men knelt with bared heads, their arms crossed over their chests. Naked to the waist were they all, and sweat gleamed on their skin.

Ryel's eyes adjusted to the light, and began to discern that all about him were tall plinths and pinnacles of rock hanging in swordlike draperies, surging up in palisades and spear-shafts, meeting in slim-waisted columns and heavy pillars. "You didn't tell me we'd be in a cavern."

Alleron half-smiled at Ryel's wonder. "I kept that for a surprise."

"But all the formations are carved! Dragons, spirals, serpents …"

"Demons aplenty, too," Alleron added.

"What makes the designs glow?"

"Some substance natural to these depths, that we call corpselight. Ancient work all of it, done by the First."

Ryel started. "The first what?"

"Why, devotees of Argane," the captain answered. "Who else might they be?"

Who indeed, Ryel thought, astonished by the up-leap of his pulse, the sense of belonging to this strange place. The sense of fellowship he felt was not with the men who knelt about the fire. It went deeper, clear into the blood and beyond…

His blood quivered and his rai flared within him like the throb of an exploding star, and he knew.

This is wysard ground, his thoughts pounded. A sanctuary of the Art, doubtless built by adepts of Elecambron. And the Art is strong here, impregnating the stone, time-cleansed to its essence.

Alleron's interrogatory elbow nudged him out of reverie. "What is it you stare at so hard, m'lord prince?"

Ryel replied, but only after drawing a long breath. "Them." He gestured downward. "They're the Brotherhood core you spoke of?"

"The very same. He with the yellow hair nearly to his waist is Marin Dehald, Earl of Seldyr; only thirty-two now, but Warraven himself gave him that burnt furrow athwart his cheek. A most bloodthirsty fighter, is Marin—and lover of half the easy shes at court, so talk goes. The great tall graybeard next to him is the redoubtable Duke of Raven Weald, near sixty now but still fearsome in battle; mark those hacks and seams all over his breast, dealt by Snow-folk, old enemies, and Brotherhood combat. And the young brave across from him with his black hair cut Ralnahrian and with the Munkira tattoos down his sword-arm is an especial friend of mine, the Markess Theron BanDalwys of Covencraig; I gave him that scar under his right forearm during Brotherhood combat a few years back, and he returned the favor by nearly lopping off one of my ears. Then there's the Count Palatine of Hallor, the Earls Falkengren and Rothsaye, and Sir Payne De Sartriss. All of them know you; last night they met with my lord to debate your fitness for the Order. Some disliked your descent from your mother's side, for Hallaghan nobility scorns the merchant class, but all admired your Steppes origins, and respected your rank as Prince of Vrya."

"I'm glad it went well." The wysard looked harder at the men around the fire, and winced. "They're...they're all cut, up and down their arms." Cut exactly as Roskerrek had cut himself, fresh red seams mingling with livid scars.

"Those are proud wounds, m'lord prince; blood-sacrifice to great Argane. You'll get your first one tonight, if you lose the combat—a forgone conclusion to my mind, I say with all due regret."

Ryel felt an icy twinge, but it wasn't fear. "I hear something. Music, is it?"

Alleron tilted an ear to the sound, that breathed down from above in slow sighing notes unordered yet harmonious, moving among the spiky stonegrowth like wordless disembodied singers. "The spirits of the slain, we call it," he replied. "But in truth it's the wind passing over and through airshafts sunk many years ago. As night falls the wind rises, and the music grows louder. It's a great aid to meditation, and celebrates the element of air. As for the other three, there's earth piled high above us, fire most hotly evident, and water adrip everywhere—that little cascade next to the sanctuary falls into a pool deeper than a man's height, and is cold as Bradamaine's heart. We of the Brotherhood take our names from the elements—something I neglected to tell you. Mine translates into Iron Rock. My lord's is Steel Ice. The Countess of Fayal's is Edged Inferno."

"Frinàl Dras, Sivred Rikàn, and Hrithan Krôr," Ryel translated under his breath into the secret language of the Fraternity, the hidden tongue of Elecambron. Aloud he said, "That niche where the steps lead up—that's the sanctuary, I believe you said last night."

Alleron bowed reverently toward the place so indicated. "Even so, now curtained by the Veil."

The Veil was made not of cloth but chain mail, that made a chill rustling chime as the cave-breeze stirred its folds. Ryel could only just discern two human outlines beyond, one standing and one kneeling before it. "The Count Palatine's there now?"

"Remember to call him the Commander, in this place," Alleron warned. "He's been for some time—the last hour, I doubt not—behind the Veil in meditation and prayer. When he emerges, the service begins—which should be soon, now."

He led Ryel down the steps. With each stone tread the air grew warmer and more dense, with a salt musk of fresh sweat mingling with the sharper reek of hot steel—a dangerous yet fiercely intimate redolence, one that put the wysard at once on guard and at ease. And the deeper down he went, the more the Art of the place seemed to envelop him, wrapping him like Edris' cloak.

Thirty steps later they had reached the chamber. The music of the winds had grown louder, more eerily sweet, the harsh scent of swords and bodies close as mist. At the foot of the stairs Alleron motioned Ryel to a lamp-lit recess cut into the rock, where the upper garments of the brotherhood hung in soldierly order. Alleron continued his instruction as he, too, took off his jacket and shirt. Chafed by the heat, Ryel reached to unfasten the top clasps of his jacket, but the captain prevented him.

"No, m'lord prince. You're the initiate, so you stay dressed." As he spoke, Alleron drew his own shirt over his head, catching his breath at the pain of his pulled wounds.

Ryel wiped sweat from his forehead, and tugged at his uniform's irritatingly high collar. "You have some terrible scars."

Alleron nodded matter of factly as he glanced down at his lean muscled torso. "None from tavern brawls or brothel skirmishes, I can promise you. All of 'em gotten in wars, save for this one that I prize most." He indicated an ugly red rip above his left breast. "Four years ago, dealt by my lord in this very place."

"And let's not forget Valrandin's little love-cuts." With the glancing tips of his fingers the wysard brushed the red-blotted bandages on Alleron's forearm and side. "They look as if they smart."

"My lord's anger pained me worse," the captain said. "I strained the stitches, as usual—but I'm not in overmuch pain." A look of profound puzzlement crossed his face as he glanced down at his wounds. "None whatever, in fact." The bewilderment dissolved into suspicion, and fixed upon the wysard. "How did you—"

"I didn't, Captain." But Ryel had; and he breathed easier for his victory over the evil brooding cruelly within him.

Alleron gave Ryel a steely-eyed stare, then shook his head. "I wonder. But to continue. You must kneel before the Veil there, over the circle of swords."

Ryel nodded. "I remember."

"Then you're also mindful that as you kneel, you're to clear your thoughts of everything earthly, and await whatever visions are destined you. Then the Commander and the rest of the Brotherhood will put questions to you, none of them easy to answer."

"What if I give the wrong replies?" Ryel asked.

"I doubt you will," the captain replied. "And at any rate, everyone here will look kindly on you, since you healed the Commander of his sickness—I was glad to make that known to them all."

Ryel nodded thanks. "And the combat takes place directly after that."

"Instantly. At a given signal—which I've been assigned to confer—you'll both go for your swords. Remember, they'll be good and hot after their fire-bath, so have a care." A noise like the rippling of a hand over a harp made Alleron glance up at the hanging spikes of the cave-ceiling. "It's time. Argàna khreth sìnn —Argane have mercy on you."

With a hard hand-clasp Alleron took leave of the wysard and joined the circle of the Fraternity. Once there he took the dagger at his side and gave his forearm a long fine slash. Holding his arm above the lambent fire, he let the blood drip onto the coals, feeding the swords that hissingly licked up the offering, watching with face utterly impassive; and then he took his place among the others. Neither he nor anyone else of the Brotherhood looked up from meditation as the wysard approached the initiate's circle, wherein four swords met point to bloody point, and slowly genuflected.

At the meeting of the swords the wysard knelt, and crossed his arms, and bowed his head. But meditate he could not.

You knelt in this place, ithradrakis, he thought. Tonight I will avenge that scar Warraven gave you, and win your sword. And in time I will raise you up from your bed of death...

He drifted into the world of his most deep desires, for how long he was unaware until he heard the sudden faint clanging of chain mail, and felt something coldly hard touched him under the chin and made him lift his head, even as Edris' hand had done in front of the gates of Markul. Ryel opened distracted eyes to find Roskerrek standing before him with sword outstretched, the flat of its point delicately urging the wysard to consider the here and now.

"Your contemplation is profound," the Commander said. "That is well."

The wysard regarded Roskerrek down the shining length of steel. Black, white, red—the cavalry breeches and boots, the bared skin, the scarlet hair… and a fresh sacrificial slash over the right wrist. At the appearance of their high priest the Swordbrothers rose as one, forming a semicircle behind Ryel. The wysard felt the shift of mood among them, and understood that although Yvain Essern might be hated and feared elsewhere, here he was esteemed, even loved. And here he was fully in his element, in this dark temple of blood and war.

Manifestly secure in that knowledge, Roskerrek greeted his comrades with a faint smile before returning his attention to the wysard, coldly now. "Stranger, explain your presence here."

"Ranor Argàna krân rin," Ryel replied in the secret tongue.

One of Roskerrek's red brows lifted at those words, but otherwise he appeared unastonished. "Krân rin Sirth, Argàna n'raght," he replied. "The challenge is accepted." He turned to the sanctuary now unveiled, and Ryel saw that at the topmost tier of a marble dais a woman stood immobile under lamplight, a woman armed head to foot in gleaming silver, her features stern and pale—a warrior queen of chill alabaster with hair of white-gold wire hanging fine and thick from the helmet's edge to the elbows. The marble pedestal beneath her feet was covered with blood—dried purple smears, clotted gore, fresh bright splashes. Cradled like a child in her arms gleamed Ryel's Kaltiri tagh, bright as the lancing spark of a star.

High in the stony recesses of the vault, the wind crooned and hummed. The Count Palatine's voice barely rose above it. "I ask of Argane Queen of Battles the sword of he that the Brotherhood called Rukht Travàdh, Blood Flame."

Another word he spoke, that rose rough and guttural above the crooning air. The statue quivered as if alive, and slowly its folded arms unlocked until it stood with hands outstretched, Edris' sword now lying across its open palms. Taking the weapon reverently from the image, Roskerrek called upon Alleron, who carried both Ryel's sword and his lord's to the vessel of glowing coals, and plunged both blades therein. The Brotherhood watched in silence, awaiting the Commander's next words. Ryel could hear the blood-beat of each heart above the chill deliberation of Roskerrek's voice.

"Thirty years ago this man's father and mine strove in combat to give pleasure to great Argane. This night Ryel Mirai son of Edris seeks to win the weapon of his sire, and the Queen of Swords will decide between him and me."

Sir Payne de Sartriss' quick dark eyes glanced from face to face. "Who seconds him?"

Jorn Alleron stood forth. "I do."

Coldly Roskerrek inclined his head. "And I will have Tebran Koskàth, Blade Rain, for mine."

The Swordbrother so named—the wild young Markess of Covencraig—came forward to stand beside Alleron. Ryel wiped the sweat from his face with his bare forearm, and blinked it off his eyelashes; but the Commander was dry as desert stone, hard as trust betrayed, cold as love denied.

The ritual commenced, stern and unadorned as a court martial. In the middle of the circle of swords Ryel stood, facing the Brotherhood that flanked their Commander on either side before the statue of Argane. A lengthy interrogation began, with many questions put to the initiate wysard, nearly all of them oblique and obscure; but Ryel had endured far more searching catechisms in Markul, and answered the Brotherhood's inquiries with a smooth readiness clearly unexpected by any save the Commander. At the conclusion of the inquest profound silence fell, save for the strange near-music breathing in the heights of the cave; and then Roskerrek spoke.

"Give me your judgment on this man, my brothers. Is he fit servant for the Queen of Battles?"

With one voice assent was given. Motioning Ryel to stand beside him, Roskerrek turned toward the image of Argane, bowing low; and the rest of the Fraternity did the same as their Commander reverently addressed the armored deity.

"Strongest and most fair, You that love the clash of sword and the cry of battle, look with favor upon this man and me, that fight in Your name for Your honor. Accept the blood of combat that we offer as our highest worship, and crown he that serves You best with victory."

All the time he spoke, Roskerrek's eyes fixed upon those of the idol; but though that fair statue gave back stare for stare, its gaze was cold and far, its eyes of blue topaz further chilled by glints of gray. The Count Palatine regarded his goddess-image with adoration fervent as a lover's; but the statue could not have been less moved had it been Bradamaine herself.

His orisons done, Roskerrek turned slowly about, and with Ryel at his side descended the dais-steps and stood before the fire wherein their swords shimmered white. Amid tension that snarled the air like snakes, Alleron gave the word.

"Sivred Rikàn, you are challenged. Ryel Mirai, claim your weapon if you can."

Shoulder to strained shoulder the two men stood before the bristling vessel of burning coals. Then Jorn Alleron shouted the signal.

"Argàna drakh nâl! In the service of Argane!"

Roskerrek caught up his sword, snatching it forth from the coals even as Ryel grabbed for his Kaltiri tagh and leapt clear to dodge his adversary's white-hot steel. Amid the stern silence of the watching Brotherhood the combat began.

But it didn't seem like combat. Not when Redbane came on like a driving blast of ice, sending the wysard stumbling backward, barely escaping a searing slash across the chest. The ice that was Yvain Essern filled the whole of the cave, and Ryel shrank back shuddering even though he could feel his sweat trickling down his ribs underneath his stifling uniform-jacket. All of his concentration converged on staying clear of that glowing death-edged steel, knocking it away again and again with both hands wet and desperate on his sword's scalding hilt. And in time—seeming hours drawn out like racked sinews—Ryel felt his patience tiring even faster than his body.

You're good, Redbane , he thought. I didn't dream you'd be this good. If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were trying to—

Into his thoughts a daimon-whisper slipped like a covert stab.

Very true, young blood. He seeks your death this night. And he'll have it, unless you finish him first. That knife at your side is well within your reach—use it.

"Get out," Ryel hissed between set lips as he staggered up the dais-steps to block yet another blow.

He's been ordered to destroy you. Kill him.

"Damn you, no!"

Allow me to persuade you.

A blinding jolt seared the wysard's brain-core, and he grunted a cry as he crashed backward into the stiff-spread arms of cold Argane. At once the goddess enwrapped him with inexorable silver and stone. Caught and struggling, Ryel watched in pain-bleared impotence as Roskerrek leapt the dais-steps like a red panther, his feral eyes gleaming deathlust. The watching faces faded, the shouts silenced. Existence shrank to a pair of poisoned eyes, a lethal length of steel.

"Now I have you." Seizing Ryel by the hair, Roskerrek jerked the wysard's head back, baring the throat. "Now it ends."

Ryel shut his eyes, ready for the gash, panting for it. "Go on. Make it stop."

But no release came; and the wysard opened his eyes to meet not ice-gray, but complete black. Horror transfixed his pain.

"You," his thoughts whispered.

All of me, beauty, the loathed voice of Dagar sneered behind Roskerrek's lips. And no weak girl, now.

"But still too weak to take me, worm-lord," Ryel panted. "The Art of this place is my protection."

Enjoy it, then, the voice sneered. I will have you later, at my leisure. You might thank me for saving your life a second time; I will accept as payment the body of this redhair. You can reach your dagger easily—one upward thrust and it's done.

Fiercely Ryel shook his head. "Never."

The voice snickered. Such a proud young warrior. So defiant. Get on with it, fool .

A rending excruciation seemed to tear Ryel's heart in half, too agonizing for any outcry. Frantic to be free of that pain, the wysard clutched at his dagger-hilt. But before he could strip the blade free of its sheath and drive it into his enemy's body, Dagar's black glare shimmered and altered in Roskerrek's set face, dissolving to reveal long eyes of clear dark brown, the whites of them dazzling. The Count Palatine's fingers suddenly gentled in Ryel's hair, and Dagar's thin sneer deepened and roughened as the cruel lips relented into a well-remembered grin.

"Fight it, whelp. Don't give that hell-daimon a chance."

Ryel stared in half-idiot amazement, his grip convulsed around the knife-hilt. "Edris. Ithradrakis," he gasped. "You, here. But how—"

"You acquitted yourself well enough in Almancar, lad. And you're not doing so badly now. But this is nothing next to what's to come. Keep fighting."

Ryel tried to seize Edris' hand, but the imprisoning arms of the statue prevented him. "Stay with me, father."

"You know I can't, brat. You'll have to go it on your own."

Ryel struggled. "Ithradrakis, don't—"

"There was smart swordplay here, that night Warraven cut me up," Edris said. "Give his son a nick for me."

The moment—the space of a few seconds beaten thin enough to cover an hour at least—dissolved. The dark eyes paled and hardened, the voice iced over. "No," Roskerrek whispered, jerking his sword-blade from the wysard's throat. "Not this way. Not in Her arms."

With an infuriate shove the Count Palatine released Ryel, knocking the wysard's head against Argane's silver-clad breast. A concealed spring clicked, and the image's arms unlocked, and Ryel pushed free. The combat resumed furiously, but it lasted only a moment longer. His Steppes blood up and his strength renewed and vengeful, Ryel hurled himself at Roskerrek, attacking for the first time. Between his clenched teeth he hissed a single word, inaudible amid the clash of swords and the sigh of winds. One word was all it took. In the half-second that Redbane dropped his guard, Ryel seized the moment with a gasping lunge, shearing high into his enemy's left shoulder. The Kaltiri blade hardly seemed to graze Roskerrek's skin, but the blood gushed forth out of a gash riven clear to the bone. Reeling away with a cry as his sword dropped clanging to the paving-stones, the Commander fell against the impassive image, smearing the gleaming silver from breastplate to ankle with hot wet red.

Appalled silence ensued, but only for a moment before the Brotherhood crowded to their Commander's help. Some raised him up while others brought water from the pool, or ransacked the vestibule-recess to for bandages and staunching-salves and pain-allays; in mere minutes the Earl of Rothsaye had found needle and suture, and expertly stitched the wound shut. The wysard looked on numbly alone, drawing long breaths to ease the racking ache in his chest, wishing he could do as much for his agony of mind; but then he felt a sweaty arm wrap his shoulders and pull him against a slippery set of rockbound ribs.

"Damnation take me, but that was a sweet bout," said Marin Dehald. "Never before have I seen a two-handed blade wielded so light. We none of us ever doubted that the Commander would make cat's meat of you, but—"

The Count Palatine of Hallor, lean and dour, broke in far less jovially. "You have well avenged your father, Ryel Edrisson. Lucky for our Commander that your blade was cool when you cut him; but it's a cruel bad wound nonetheless, and may cost him the use of his arm."

"No, Rân Hràkor." Roskerrek, now on his feet again although ghastly with torment and blood-loss, his left arm swathed and slung, waved away his Swordbrother's concern with a wan right hand. "I'll survive to make you sorry, our next bout." He fixed his drained gaze upon Ryel, seeming to call upon all the strength he had left. "Come… brother. As Argane's latest champion, you must be presented fittingly." Seizing the wysard hard by the wrist, Roskerrek led him to the dais-steps and knelt before the image, roughly pulling Ryel down beside him as he lifted his voice to the goddess-image.

"Queen of Battle and War, in Your wisdom You have deemed Ryel son of Rukht Travàdh worthy of Your worship and his father's sword. And since he has fought with the wind's swiftness for Your sake, I give him the name Rukht Avràl, Blood Storm, sealing him as my brother and Your servant."

Drenching his fingers with his own fresh blood that lay spattered about the feet of the goddess, the Count Palatine marked the wysard's forehead with four lateral smears, not gently. Then neither long nor lovingly he embraced Ryel with his unhurt arm; his body against the wysard's was cold as any succubus.

With far more warmth the Brotherhood greeted Ryel as one of their own, beginning with Alleron, who hugged him hard. "Rare work," he muttered in the wysard's ear. "I'd given you up for gone."

Mindful of their new brother's origins and conversant with outland customs, several greeted Ryel in the Steppes warrior's way, cheek against cheek; and all praised his skill. "I had thought only witchcraft could prevail against the Commander," said the lord of Raven Weald. "You have surpassed your father, my lord prince; for despite his address, which was brilliant, the dread Warraven cut him shrewdly—I was witness to that combat, the memory of which no passage of time will ever steal so much as an instant. I pray you tell me of your father's passing; was he fortunate enough to die in battle?"

"He was," Ryel said; and the words made his temples throb. "In mortal struggle, with his most hated enemy."

Theron BanDalwys pushed forward, all eagerly. "Tell us how he won."

Sick and wincing, the wysard pressed his hand to his forehead. "He didn't win."

"Then you will avenge him, with his sword," said Marin Dehald, breaking a tense silence.

"I will try," Ryel said. "But he is strong, that enemy. You have no idea how strong—"

Jorn Alleron's voice crackled through the haze of pain. "Throw some water on him. He's fainting."

Ryel came to his senses wet and shivering, lying against the serpent-coils of a carved mound of stone, the Count Palatine looming above him.

"Help him stand," the Commander of the Sword Brotherhood said, colder than any water, harder than any rock; and Alleron and BanDalwys took each an arm and lifted the wysard up.

"You are not used to this heat," the Count Palatine said to Ryel. "It oppresses you. But you will not be kept long in it; the time has come for dismissal."

After profoundest obeisance to the goddess, the Brotherhood joined their Commander at the cascade, where Roskerrek drew their white-glowing swords one by one from the fire and quenched them in the deep water of the cave-pool, then gave them back still vaporing to their owners, who one by one stood before Argane and recited aloud the verses inscribed upon the blades, proud in their reverence. Then as a final rite Roskerrek filled a silver goblet with the sword-tinged water, which was passed from hand to hand and drunk deeply of. When the cup returned to Roskerrek, he filled it again and lifted it toward the wysard, his eyes more piercing than splinters of steel.

"To you…brother."

He drank barely a sip, then thrust the cup at Ryel. Exhausted, the wysard drank greedily, savoring the tang of steel, the coldness made bearable by the late heat of hissing metal. With every swallow he felt the Art-imbued water revive his strength and clear his wits.

After this last ritual the Fraternity reverently took their leave, withdrawing to the anteroom where Ryel heard them as they resumed their upper garments and murmuringly discussed the combat they'd witnessed. Alleron, however, stayed behind.

"M'lord, you must be suffering much. Let me help you up the stairs."

Roskerrek declined Alleron's offered arm. "I'm feeling no hurt whatsoever, Captain. And besides, the Prince of Vrya and I have some matters still to discuss."

"But m'lord—"

"You need rest, Jorn." After a tentative instant, the Count Palatine held out his hand. "I treated you badly this day; I always have. Forgive me. And may this be the last time you ever have to."

After an uncertain moment's hesitation, Alleron took the Count Palatine's hand; and it seemed he recalled a time long past, when they were both boys growing up together. "Yvain… " His voice trailed off roughly, and he would have let go, but Roskerrek held fast, drawing Alleron to him. Hard they clung to one another, cheek against cheek like Rismaian warriors; then the Count Palatine let go, his haste unwilling.

"I fear to worsen your wounds, Jorn." He reached out, testing Alleron's brow. "You're overweary, and fevered. Get you to bed, and don't report for duty until you find yourself fully healed."

Clearly unable to reply for emotion, Alleron only bowed low, first to Roskerrek, then to the wysard, heedless of his bandaged wounds; then he took his leave slowly up the stone flight of stairs.

Roskerrek watched his equerry's departure with visible regret; but when he turned back again to the wysard, the ice had returned to his eyes, more cruel than ever. Across the fire-pit they faced each other, wysard and soldier, and Roskerrek's face in the hell-light was like some exquisite demon's, and his voice rose above the fire like smoke, soft and lethal.

"You swore to use no Art."

Ryel never blinked. "Yes. I did. Now give me the answer to my question, my lord—the answer you promised me. For I know that you cannot refuse me the truth, now, in this place."

Roskerrek shook his head as he wearily seated himself on a fallen cave-pier. "I'm in extreme pain of the wound you dealt me, and would rest."

"I don't have time for that." Ryel circled the fire and rounded his hand on the linen that wrapped Roskerrek's injured shoulder. The Count Palatine fetched a sharp breath at the wysard's touch, and would have pushed Ryel's hand away. "Let go."

Ryel caught Roskerrek's wrist. "Not just yet." With his free hand he ripped away Alleron's field dressing, and with the tips of the fingers he traced the stitches. "Good sewing. I don't doubt all the Brotherhood is deft with a needle."

Roskerrek stiffened and clenched his teeth at Ryel's ungentle exploration. "When first we met, you said you took no pleasure in giving pain."

"I did?" The wysard grinned. "Yes, I believe I did. But—"

He grabbed the wounded shoulder, squeezing hard. Convulsed, the Count Palatine gave a wrung cry and struggled violently, but Ryel got behind him and held him fast. Strong and desperate though Roskerrek was, the wysard mastered him easily; and he remembered the gates of Almancar, the resistless cruelty of Lord Michael Essern.

"Be still," he hissed, fighting the desire to clutch the wound yet harder. "Shut up. I'm helping you, fool."

Finished, he let Roskerrek struggle free. Snatching up the dagger that had splinted Valrandin's wrist, the Captain-General backed away to the wall, coldly enraged and combat-ready, Desrenaud's scar burning scarlet across his bloodless cheek now glistening with a film of sweat.

"Keep away from me," he hissed.

Ryel only laughed. "Why, what's the matter?"

"Matter?" Roskerrek demanded, outraged. "Did you not try to kill me?"

"I healed you. That's twice."

Roskerrek glanced at his shoulder, unbelieving and still very much on his guard; saw his skin smooth and whole, all unmarked, the stitches vanished. "This can't be possible. Nothing. Not even a scar."

"And no pain, very probably," Ryel said dryly. "You might thank me." Returning to the other side of the fire, the wysard improvised a chair from the shattered trunk of a stalagmite. "And you might have tried a little less hard to kill me for your idol's sake, there on the combat-floor."

Hard-bent flame-dark brows at that. "I never sought your life."

"Not for yourself, perhaps. But in the service of the Domina…"

Across the trembling red of the glowing coals Roskerrek glared wraithlike. "I will not suffer my queen to be so grossly maligned."

"It doesn't matter," the wysard said. "Neither you nor the Domina have any power over my life, or my death. Now tell me what I wish to know about Guyon Desrenaud."

Only after a long silence did Roskerrek reply. “He went West.”

“How far?”

“Ormala.”

Of all the answers he'd awaited, for Ryel this was the least expected, and the worst. “Ormala ? What would Lord Guyon do there?”

“Learn the Art,” Roskerrek said, looking away again.

“But why there, in that filthy sty? How do you know he made for that City?”

“Desrenaud himself so informed me, on the eve of his departure from Hryeland,” Roskerrek said. “Or rather his flight, for he was a hunted man after he offended the Domina as he did, in a quarrel needless to discuss here. Although I bore no love for him, I could not refuse a fellow Swordbrother my help. I assisted him in his safe escape, and have kept his whereabouts my secret ever since.”

“You acted nobly,” Ryel replied.

Roskerrek shook his head. “Call it self-interest rather, which it was entirely. I wanted Desrenaud gone from Hryeland forever.” For some moments the Count Palatine fell silent, caught up in memory clearly painful. “He possessed every quality that my inborn sickness had killed in me. I loathed him. With all my heart I hated and envied him, from that first sight at the palace gates. He'd taken a poisoned wound from a Barbarian blade, and the Domina chose me as his healer, for I have some skill in such matters. But it was not his cure I intended. Far from it.”

“You would have killed him?”

“Readily.” For a moment Roskerrek seemed to draw breath only with greatest difficulty. “It would have been the work of a moment. Desrenaud was unconscious from the venom, and had no power to resist. And I was goaded by even more than my hatred. The sickness in my blood must have driven me mad awhile, for I swear a voice whispered to me.”

“A voice?” Ryel leaned forward, disquieted and eager. “What kind of voice?”

Roskerrek stared into the flames, that burnt slow fitful red. “A wonderfully calm one. Most pleasant, I recall. It assured me that if I killed Desrenaud, no harm whatever would befall me. That I would straightway become the Domina's favorite. That…that I would be healed at last of my long malady.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “You cannot be expected to understand how powerfully that voice moved me, Ryel Mirai. With all my strength I strove to obey it.” Roskerrek had grown pale. “But I could not. I flung the dagger away…and then I believe I wept.”

As if exhausted by revelation, he leaned his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his hands. Ryel came to his side, standing close, rounding his fingers about the hard white shoulder he'd so recently healed. “You resisted terrible temptation,” the wysard said, infinitely moved. “The World will thank you, Yvain Essern.”

Roskerrek looked up, his eyes questioning and no longer cold. “Thank me? And for what?”

“For helping to save it.” But then the wysard sat next to the Count Palatine, and stared into the fire as if seeking for answers. “What could have driven Desrenaud to Ormala?”

“Desrenaud was constantly in attendance at the Temple of the Master, and was enslaved to the priestess's drugs,” Roskerrek said, his voice slow with weariness. “In Ormala he could likely find ones even stronger.”

“He could. But if he has … “ Ryel pushed back the sweat welling at his hairline. “Theofanu's Master is a malignant daimon that seeks the World's ruin. If Lord Guyon has become a thrall to that power …” Sickened by an infinity of possibilities, Ryel could speak no more.

Roskerrek, too, seemed shaken. “Has this daimon a name?”

“Dagar. Once a wysard of Elecambron, now a wraith seeking human form—my form. And there's worse still. Dagar is the Master your brother Michael serves in Almancar.”

The strongest consternation met those words, the bitterest horror. Lest it find voice, Ryel continued. “You can do nothing for him. He is beyond all human aid, and only the Art can help him now. Dagar's black wings have brushed you as well, because it was the daimon that urged you to kill Lord Guyon.”

"Tell me what I can do to help you."

Ryel met the Count Palatine's eyes, firmly and in warning. "Try your utmost to keep Bradamaine and her court away from Theofanu's drugs and wiles. Theofanu is an Ormalan witch, and the Master she serves is a malignant daimon that seeks his chance to return to the World. Your brother now serves him with all the power of his Art."

The Count Palatine turned as pale as he had been before his cure. "Only tell me how I can help him."

Ryel shook his head. "He is beyond all human aid, and only the Art can save him now. Dagar's black wings have brushed you as well, General. It was Dagar that urged you to kill Desrenaud."

Numbly Roskerrek considered the wysard's words. "But what is Desrenaud's part in this?"

"I have yet to learn it," Ryel said. "The same voice that spoke of him also told me of you, in the same breath."

"And whose voice was that?"

"My father's from the Void, the place between life and death. This very night I heard him again, when you and I fought; and it was through your lips he spoke."

A long silence intervened before Roskerrek replied. "I remember. My old madness seized me, and I thought the demon-bane had returned; but then the evil seemed to melt away, and a wondrous peace came over me. It lasted only a moment, and when it faded I felt lessened. So that was your father's spirit, speaking through me."

Ryel nodded. "He escaped the Void once before this, in the body of the Sovran Priamnor. It was then he spoke of you and Desrenaud, and called you captains of the wars to come."

"But the wars with the Hralwi are over."

"The wars of the Master are even now being set in motion by Dagar, here and in Almancar."

"I'll do all I can to prevent them, starting with the arrest of that witch Theofanu." Roskerrek hesitated. "I look forward to seeing Lord Guyon again, and asking his forgiveness, and fighting at his side."

The wysard blinked burning eyes. "For what you have revealed to me—long though I had to wait to hear it—I am most deeply grateful. But we must talk no further of this. The hour's late, and I must leave Hallagh tomorrow at dawn."

Roskerrek made a swift staying gesture. “One moment more, Ryel. I cannot keep the truth from you any longer. When I met with the Domina this morning, she commanded me to bring about your death as soon as might be.”

Ryel froze, despite the heat. “My death? But how—why—”

“She felt that she had divulged far too many of her secrets, and feared that you might use them against her. I have in all things obeyed her unquestioningly, but this command was a cruel one.”

Ryel's mouth-corner gave a hard quirk. “Nevertheless you complied with it.”

“It went against my heart, believe me. But my service to my queen, and my desire that Desrenaud's whereabouts should never be known—I was pulled many ways, Ryel, and never did I welcome pain more than when you gave me the wound that ended our fight.” He lifted an askance eyebrow. “But I still wonder how you managed it without the Art.”

“I didn't,” Ryel said. “Without the Art there was no way to defeat you.”

That admission gave Roskerrek evident pleasure, but it faded fast. “The Domina will be furious to learn I failed in your murder.”

“Then tell her you succeeded,” Ryel said. "I leave Hallagh tomorrow; tell her you dispatched me by ambush and threw my corpse in the river."

"Excellent idea." They both smiled, but not long. "You could easily have killed me," the Count Palatine said." I wonder that you did not."

"For the same reason that you did not kill Desrenaud." Even as the wysard spoke, he felt a qualm assail him, a strong impulse to repeat that deadly attempt. Fighting it made him sway with pain.

The Count Palatine swiftly stood, and caught Ryel by the arm. “You're not well.”

“Don't concern yourself,” Ryel said, shuddering at the touch. “It's nothing.”

“Let me be the judge of that. Look at me, Ryel Mirai.”

They were almost exactly of a height, and their eyes met levelly. Long did the Count Palatine regard the wysard, with searching acuteness; and when he spoke, his voice shook.

"You took my affliction upon yourself," he said. "I can see it in your face. My healing was your doom, and I will never forgive myself for it. To think that you now suffer the agonies that killed me every day I lived—"

Against a wave of vertigo Ryel clenched his teeth. “I fight it. But it finds the evil in me, and makes it strong. Seeks every place where I am weak, and cruel, and contemptible, and goads them to fury.” He felt as if his bones were dissolving, agonized calcined drop by drop. He staggered, and would have fallen had not Roskerrek caught him.

Ryel felt as if his bones were dissolving, agonized calcined drop by drop. Roskerrek caught him. "You suffer terribly."

"This will help me." And Ryel reached for the carnelian cylinder, unstopping it and drawing a long breath of surpassing deliverance. Roskerrek gave a little start as the precious scent rose upon the air, joining with the ethereal hovering harmony.

"I never knew anything so celestially sweet," he said. "Surely that is the fabled embrocation called Transcendence."

"Yes," Ryel murmured, intensely grateful that it was. "How did you know?"

"Because I know that none but a member of the Dranthene succession can be Prince of Vrya; and that Attar of a Thousand is said to have medicinal benefit to those of your line."

The wysard was almost taken aback. "You are greatly read."

"For a Northerner, perhaps." Roskerrek hesitated. "I realize I trespass exceedingly, but may I ask for a drop from that vial? It is said to be uncommonly lasting, and I would be glad of so pleasant a remembrance of our acquaintance to balance out the bad."

"By all means." Ryel handed the vial to Roskerrek, who rubbed a little of the perfume onto his handkerchief's snowy cambric, breathing deeply of it before carefully folding the cloth and replacing it in his pocket.

"Do you now feel in better health, Ryel Mirai?"

The wysard nodded. "Immeasurably."

"I am glad to hear it."

"I truly believe you are." Ryel went to the dais where his sheathed tagh lay next to Roskerrek's at the feet of Argane, and slung his hard-won weapon over his shoulder. "Let's go back up. You could use some rest, too."

"I could indeed," Roskerrek said. "But I greatly doubt I'll sleep much this night, my friend."

At that last word Ryel halted, turning back in his climb up the stone stairs. "I never expected us to be friends, Sivred Rikàn."

In the same moment their hands reached out and joined. "Until death and after, Rukht Avràl."

Chapter Fifteen

He had walked out onto a jut of rock, picking his way over the slippery patches of seaweed and the sharp-edged barnacles to a place where the waves broke. In the pelting spray he stood, closing his eyes to the cold salt splash, seeking any relief from the gray ache in the back of his brain.

The wysard had journeyed westward, over the great road that ran from Hallagh to the port city of Disgren; but he had felt no desire to sample that town's rough maritime charms, and still less eagerness to make its greasy harbor-waters his first view of the sea. Turning southerly some miles from the shore, he had made for the marches of Ralnahr. Every day he sickened worse, until now he kept the carnelian vial almost constantly in his hand to quell the pain. The wild beauty of the Ralnahrian frontier, its towering pines and aspens, its mossy crags and wild waterfalls and swift whitewater, had given him no pleasure.

Worst of all, the sea that had been part of his dreams for so long, desired and awaited with such hunger, now seemed nothing more than so much restlessly churning dirty water. He'd traveled many a weary day since departing Hallagh, unable to endure Jinn's preternatural speed for long, forcing her to a World-horse's slow pace. Now that his Art had all but left him, he could no longer command the air for anything. At nightfall he most often forsook the flea-ridden beds of dirty inns in favor of his own camp made some distance from the road, where he huddled in his cloak over a twig-built fire, sipping chal and nibbling at food bought from markets and farmer's wives along the way; but now everything he ate made him retch, and sleep came fitfully if at all. No luxurious srih-attended encampment could he conjure, now that his Art had all but left him; and now every night Dagar's loathed voice whined in his ear, not to be swatted away, as the air smothered him in cold lead.

Soon, young blood. Very soon, now. I await you.

Each morning Ryel consulted the bit of Glass given him by Srin Yan Tai, and every new day brought fresh disquiet. Ryel saw Priamnor, no longer an indolent prince but a harried ruler trammeled with affairs of state, and the ever-increasing resentment of the folk of the Fourth District. Again and again their outbreaks were put down by the soldiery, only to flare once more with worse depredation urged on ever more wildly by Michael of Elecambron, who now used the persuasions of his Art to sway the mob.

And there was worse. Ryel saw Lady Serah Dalkith caring for the sick, of which Markul now had many, and saw the dead being carried not to the silent citadel but to burning-pyres, for their bodies were leprous and noisome. Only the very old were dying, but that would soon change, he knew. In the Steppes among the Rismai many were unsettled by rumblings of the fire-mountains and tremblings of the earth, for such disturbances, though faint as yet, had become all too frequent.

"It has begun," the wysard murmured, flinching as the salt spray dashed his face and stung his eyes.

That very morning he had consulted his Glass to view events in Hallagh, and had found Theofanu and her minions more dangerously empowered than ever. Now the Domina's court assembled every day in the Temple of the Master to witness miracles ever more incredible, and fall yet more helplessly under the spell of drugs increasingly addictive, and eye with greater contempt and hostility the worship of the Unseen.

It will not stop, the wysard thought. And now even thinking gave him pain.

Night was on the point of falling, the sun no more than a faint gray glow on the thickly-misted horizon. The air had grown cold, but in his fever the wysard welcomed it. "It has begun," he said aloud, feeling each word like a stab in the back of his head. "Everything's moving too fast—everything but me."

The air thinned and tightened, and the voice of Dagar, which now infected his thoughts sleeping and waking, laughed at him yet again. Yes. Soon, young blood. Very, very soon now.

"Some help will come to me," Ryel said, more to himself than to Dagar. "I feel it."

Do you then, sweet eyes? Feel this, first.

With a spiteful thrust of agony Dagar departed, leaving the wysard swaying and moaning, clutching his head. As the worst of the pain began to ebb and his sight returned, Ryel observed for the first time a stick that leaned against a rock as if there for his help—a rich walking-staff of black smooth wood, ringed and headed with bright silver. In great need of such support, he reached down for it.

"Not so fast, knave." A brown hand darted out from the midst of a jagged boulder, grabbed the stick and gave the wysard a stinging rap across the knuckles. "That's mine." With a clatter the rock stirred and stood, and the wysard in numb astonishment saw that what he had supposed yet another lump of stone was in actuality a vast black cloak studded with barnacles and draped with seaweed, wrapped about a being fully as fantastic as its garment. Its long hair was bleached by the sun and tangled as a fisherman's net lost and washed ashore, still with shells and flotsam entangled in its seines. The wrinkles in its face were like tide-marks in wet dark sand.

The rock-creature's voice rasped again. "Stand clear, scoundrel." Staff clutched in one of its driftwood-gnarled hands, a wet burlap bag full of lumpy small objects in the other, it leaned and stared at Ryel with slit eyes green and fathomless as the sea, and croaked the fisher-dialect of Ralnahr's coast. "Why dost thou gawk at me, thief? Dost think me a beauty? Wouldst be the first. What dost thou here?"

Ryel stared a long while before speaking. "I wish I knew."

A seal-bark of a laugh in reply. "Bah. Thou seek'st something—or mayhap someone. And it may be thou hast found it. Or him. Or, more likely, her."

Confused, the wysard blinked against the tormenting salt of the air. "Who—or what—are you?"

The sea-being brandished its staff and glared. "That's naught to thee. But for thy enlightenment, which thou sorely seem'st to require, I'm the Markessa of Lanas Crin, and thou standest upon my land, where robbers get a whip's welcome."

"I'm not a thief. But…" he threw all reason to the winds. "Would you by chance know of a woman named Gwynned de Grisainte?"

The sea-being's glare intensified. "And what wouldst thou have of the beldam hag?"

The wysard winced at that look, and the tormenting salt of the air. "I understand she is a great healer."

"And who was it lied to thee so grossly concerning that crone?"

"A professor of the university at Hallagh, named— "

The strange creature snorted. "Jeral Colquhon, more than likely. A babbling old fool, Lord Jeral."

His wits still pain-bound, Ryel swallowed his rising gorge to make a crazy guess. "You're her. You're Gwynned."

She brandished the staff and glared. "Dame Gwynned, thou ignorant knave. Markessa I am of this land, where robbers get a whip's welcome."

"Forgive my mistake. But I'm very sick, Markessa."

The sea-green eyes brightened in interest. "Art thou now. How sick?"

Ryel pushed back his salt-dripping hair with trembling fingers. "To the death, I think."

She wasn't in the least impressed. "Bah. Thou'rt a tall strong fellow, likely to live. Come, we'll get some good eatables into thee, and put thee into a clean bed— for neither hot broth nor white sheets hast thou known for many a day, it seems—and see how thou dost afterward. That's a notable horse thou hast—we'll ride together, thou and I. Hold thee my staff and bag a moment."

Jinn, unused to bearing double, would have quarreled with the arrangement, but the Markessa would have none of the mare's neighing indignation. "Peace, nag. I'm lighter than I look." She vaulted upon Jinn's back, settling gracefully astride amid a clatter of limpets while making sure that none of the sharp-edged shells gave Jinn the slightest unease. Baffled, the horse stood quivering, her great dark eyes wary.

"Come here, thou." Taking her property again and stretching forth her hand, the Markessa swung the wysard up behind her with manlike strength. Dizzily Ryel clung round her waist, that was as solid as the strut of a pier and fully as bumpy with barnacles. She smelt of tide-wrack and storm, and her legs were shod to the knee in fisherman's boots. She steered Jinn like a boat, pressing her silver-topped staff against the mare's flanks as if handling a tiller.

"On, my pretty sure-hoof," she crooned as she guided the mare down to the hard-packed sand of the shore. "On to my wee housie, for a bite of flowery hay and a sip of spring water. On to a dry stable, little goldcoat."

Idly in his fever Ryel wondered what kind of madwoman den that housie might be—a dank sea-cave, or a haphazard hovel of beach logs? But he no longer cared.

"I'm dying," he murmured, his voice inaudible over the roar of the waves. And he was happy. He leaned his head against the Markessa's unyielding back, and would have smiled had he strength. "Good. I will be at rest, Dagar powerless, and the World safe."

But the voice he hated with all his blood only mocked him again, echoing endlessly.

Fool and double fool. My servant Michael will find the Joining-spell, and will be more than glad to give over his body for my rai's use.

Ryel tightened his clasp around the Markessa's waist. "No. Never that."

The Markessa turned in the saddle. "Who is't thou mutterest at?"

Shuddering with fever, Ryel coughed. "No one."

She replied astoundingly. "Tell me no lie, Ryel Mirai—and excuse a bad rhyme, and don't fall off the horse. It was the hell-imp Dagar thou spokest to, am I right?"

He all but toppled. "Lady Gwynned, how— "

Matter-of-factly she prevented his fall with a strong steadying grip. "I knew thee at first sight, my young lord brother; but I'm a roundabout old body, fond of a jest no matter how scurvy," she chuckled. "Thinkst not I knew an Overreacher by his eyes, entirely black as a sea-eagle's? Doubt not that I have conferred by Glass with that wild woman Srin Yan Tai, and know only too well what's gone awry. But we'll speak of that in due season."

Ryel would have replied, but at that moment the salt sea air choked his breath, crushed him to his inmost core.

Kill that hag. She's already lived too long. You'll feel much better when you've done it, I promise you.

Ryel tightened his clasp around the Markessa's waist. "No."

Dagar's whine hardened. I command you.

Ryel blurted a groan as a blinding flash of pain tore into his nape. Of all the agonies he'd endured since taking on Roskerrek's daimon-sickness, this was the worst. He had to end it or die. Desperate and far from his right mind, he fumbled for the knife at his side.

The Markessa instantly reached behind her, clamping her hand on his wrist and forcing the dagger from his strengthless fingers. "Nay, Ry Mirai. We'll have no such tricks, in spite of Dagar's wiles." Matter-of-factly she prevented his fall with a strong steadying grip, and spoke some commanding words into the air. The air lightened around Ryel, and a little of the pain. "Only a daimon's arts could drive one like you to sneakingly murder up a great lady who only wishes thee well."

Ryel trembled with shame. "Forgive me, Markessa."

She patted his hand. "No harm done. Here we are at my dwelling—let me reach thee down."

Lifting the wysard from Jinn's back as if he were a slender damsel, Dame Gwynned led him into a house of black stone hewn from the rocks of the strand, roofed with gray slate and seaweed. It was hardly the dwelling of a great lady of the land, nor yet the ragtag hut of a half-mad recluse—only a plain cottage, but one built to withstand every threat and onslaught of time, tide and mankind. The Markessa opened the door and led Ryel into utter darkness, her arm firmly about him to steady his steps.

"Come in, tall gallant. Here's a chair will fit thee."

Ryel gave himself up to the deep cushions with a groan of relief, inhaling the Transcendence vial with closed eyes as the Markessa bustled about him lighting lamps.

"Dank as a tomb it ever is in here, until well warmed," she said peevishly, after waking the blaze to bright life with a few impatient Art-words. "There. Get thee closer to the fire. Thou seem'st in sore need of it."

Ryel shuddered, but not from cold. "What I almost did was unthinkable, Markessa."

"No matter, young brother. 'Twas not thy wish to have me dead, but that hell-daimon's."

"I almost obeyed," the wysard whispered, grinding his teeth at his eyes' burning. "I thought I was stronger."

"Thou'rt at thy strength's end, I fear. How long does that sweet drug thou'rt smelling at work for thee nowadays, tall Ryel?"

"Mere minutes at a time, now," the wysard answered through set lips.

"Hm. Th'art in a perilous case, brother. Thou found'st me just in the nick."

"I didn't find you," Ryel said. "You materialized."

She was amused, but complimented too. "Bah. I'm not a witch of that skill, Lord Ryel. Meditating I was. All day I had wandered gathering shellfish, my thoughts bent on thee. And when I sat down to rest thou didst appear according to my wish."

Ryel felt renewed respect for his savior. "You've more skill than you know, Markessa."

"I'm a better cook than witch," she said, with unexpected modesty. "And if that's all the Tesbai Art I ever learnt, 'tis enough."

"You were of Tesba?"

"Many a year ago. But the sensual frivolity of the place I could never abide. Imagine thee a City all of glass, in colors beyond those we can hope to envision in the World, set amid flowering forest deep as dreaming, and its dwellers given up entirely to pleasures of mind and body beyond all reach and power of unArted kenning—oh, I could tell thee tales, child, that would make thy wits swim were they not already so staringly awry." She gave the kettle a vigorous stir. "The browse begins to heat. Take that wee flask from thy nose and smell my kitchen-sorcery whilst I look after thy horse and our supper, and make myself somewhat more sightly to the eye."

After a time Ryel sniffed with interest at the air now growing ever more redolent with the aroma of rich broth, and felt his stomach give a yearning growl. Opening his eyes, he looked about him. Fire burned brightly in the rustic hearth, and a heavy iron kettle warmed on the hob, yet between the two coarse benches of the inglenook a little farmhouse table had been laid with a cloth of the richest lace. His scrutiny whetted as much as his appetite, the wysard discovered a similar quaint inconsistency in all the room's appointments. A rough-hewn hutch cupboard's shelves gleamed with silver vessels. The flagstone floor glowed with bright rugs of opulent thickness and exquisite weaving. The tiny salt-rimed windows were curtained in silk damask, the rough dark walls covered with gold-framed mirrors and fantastic tapestries.

The Markessa returned, entering from one of the side rooms with a wide basin in her hands. "Thy mare has been looked after like a wee queen, and our supper's well scrubbed. We'll dine royally, and forthwith." So speaking, she emptied the contents of the basin—all manner of shells and sea-creatures—into the broth. "Thou seem'st more in health now, my young lord."

Ryel realized that ever since he'd entered this odd house, the worst of his torment had lessened. "I feel much better indeed, Markessa. Although I don't know why."

"Th'art in a place of peace, young brother. Strong are the spells that guard this wee hut of mine. Art hungered now?"

Bemused by what looked to him a perfect witches' brew simmering on the hob, Ryel nodded. "What in the name of All is that dish you're making?"

"A repast fit for the highest blood of Ralnahr—which I happily am. Sit you here, young Lord Ryel." The Markessa had readied the table with white beeswax candles in holders of vermeil, two large shallow bowls of flower-painted eggshell-thin porcelain, two spoons and forks of heavy sterling, a pair of delicate crystal goblets sparkling starlike in the firelight, and fine linen napkins white as foam.

She had put by her barnacled cloak, and now sat opposite the wysard in a black silk gown that fitted her with glassy smoothness, embellished with a falling collar of fair needlework, and chains of silver. Her sea-bleached hair she had combed free of flotsam and braided orderly, pinning it in a coil at the nape of her neck. She was somewhat past sixty years of age, Ryel now observed, but never in her life could she have been a beauty—not with that long large nose, that jutting jaw and those small scant-lashed eyes. But the eyes' color could not have been a more lively, intelligent or humorous green, nor the mouth above the aggressive chin more delicately full and firm. Even the nose was well-shaped, however outsized. Her hair must have been glorious in younger days before its bright color faded, for even now it was exceedingly thick, with a rich gloss. Bodily she was of middle height, and more strongly built than a woman usually is or likes to be, with broad shoulders, a sturdy waist, and sinewy limbs powerfully apparent under the sleeves and skirts of the gleaming gown; but hers was a female strength all unlike the androgynous muscularity of Srin Yan Tai. Strangest was her voice— its timbre of neither sex, throatily deep but wonderfully melodious and warm.

The voice gave a short laugh. "Surely thy mother who taught thee a gentleman's manners taught thee not to stare at folk, Ryel Mirai."

He felt himself blush. "I trespass. Forgive me."

"No need," she replied. "I myself have stared exceedingly at thee, and thy strange eyes so emptily black, that seem to look upon nothing, and see into everything—eyes that might well make pale one less firm of will and Art-hardened as myself. But enough of that; our dinner's ready."

Dipping into the kettle she filled the bowls, then poured amber brew from a silver pitcher into the goblets, and passed Ryel a silver salver heaped with slices of new brown bread, thick-sliced cheese and fresh-churned butter.

"Now taste my magic, young brother."

Ryel looked down uneasily into his bowl, that brimmed with bumpy seashells and tendrilly tentacles. "I fear I'm not very hungry, Markessa."

She smiled in amusement. "Only taste. 'Twill do thee good."

Much in doubt the wysard tried a half-spoonful of the broth, then a brimming full one, and fell to hungrily after that. The Markessa watched approvingly as she daintily pried at her mussel-shells with strong brown fingers covered with silver rings. "Thou seest now what use the Art has in kitchen matters. Thou great ones of Markul have thy air-sprites to provide thee dainties, but we of humbler talents needs must make homelier shifts. Butter thy bread and wet it in the browse. Eat thee the shellfish, too; shuck them neatly, this way, and toss the hulls into this dish, so." Having instructed him, she watched him awhile, approvingly.

"Plain it is that thou wert brought up to move high in the world, with good manners at table— though tables thy people have no use for, I now recall. Not a great deal of sea-fish they eat on the Steppes, I suppose."

Ryel shook his head. "None whatsoever, I'm sorry to say. What are the things in this dish, Markessa?"

"Whelks and mussels, shrimps and scallops, lobsterlets and squidlets, all thrown into a broth of my own devising, prinked with herbs and saffron and citron. Dost like sea-fare, my tall young brother?"

"Very much. And this is excellent bread."

"Kneaded and baked with my own hands this very morning, with the right words said to lighten it," the Markessa replied with a spark of pride. "The butter and cheese I buy of farmwives at the village market, however, and the drink too."

The wysard took another sip of the tangy sweet brew. "What do they call this drink, Markessa?"

"Scrumpy cider from fine ripe apples, made strong and stinging. T'will do thee good. Even now I see color returning to thy cheeks."

After clearing the table for dessert, the Markessa brought in a warm apricot pastry so delicately crusted and spiced, its tartness so lusciously tempered with clotted cream, that the wysard asked for seconds, then thirds. Having eaten sufficiently and well for the first time in too many a day, Ryel took breath awhile, relaxing in the warmth of the fire. "I can't remember when I felt this good. Thank you, sister."

"Would that my cookery might cure thee; but it cannot." Pushing aside her empty plate, the Markessa of Lanas Crin leaned her elbows on the table, regarding Ryel closely. "The Bane of the Red Esserns has weakened thee sore, young brother. Against that black daimon Dagar thou hast no more strength than a wee babe's. Thine Art has been weakened, leaving thee strengthless to combat the daimon-sickness thou tookst from the Count Palatine. And the sickness devours thee, because thou hast not that resistance to the disease which the Red Esserns possess, they that have battled and survived its ravages for centuries. Th'art pale as sand, thine eyes circled purple as a sheldrake's; thy fingers shake like white coral branches in a strong swell."

Ryel met her eyes helplessly. "But Markessa, Lord Jeral told me that you were my best hope. That you could heal me."

She sighed. "My skill is indeed celebrated hereabouts, but birthing babes and setting bones and easing fevers are not the same as curing a devil in the blood. My Art suffices for the help of mere World-folk, yet may prove too little for thy illness."

The wysard felt his stomach cramp, his temples wring. Grabbing the scent-flask he took a panicked breath, trying desperately not to think of the strange sea-life he had so greedily consumed, terrified lest he disgrace himself all over the exquisite lace tablecloth. At once the Markessa rose and came to his side, putting her hands on his shoulders.

"Calm, young brother, calm." Her fingers moved upward to his temples. "Alack, th'art fevered hotter than fire." Dipping into his water-glass, she wetted his brow, then breathed on it softly to cool the skin. Instantly, inexplicably, Ryel felt his pain abate. "All that I can, that will I do for thee. I'll help thee to a bath, and then a good bed for a night's rest, and on the morrow we'll see how thy cure has wrought."

Ryel looked up at her, puzzled but hopeful. "Cure? What cure?"

"One that I've studied on since our meeting at the shore," she replied. "A notable bed thou'lt lie in this night, tall brother Ryel—my grandson Guy's, where he slept every summer as a boy until young manhood."

"Guy." Ryel swallowed, his wits aswim. "Guy Desrenaud?"

The lady nodded amused assent. "The same. Guyon de Grisainte Desrenaud he's called in full. As for myself, I am Gwynned de Grisainte, styled Dame Gwynned in this land, and Guy is my only son's only child, and the last of our line. From Srin Yan Tai I have learned that Guy must play a part in thy help, and Dagar's destruction. I know not what that part may be, and I've had no word of my grandson for several years. But his spirit is strong in this house, and may work thy weal."

"I don't need sleep, now. Tell me about your grandson, Markessa."

Dame Gwynned resumed her seat at the table, pouring them each another glassful of strong cider. "To tell thee of young Guy, first I needs must speak somewhat of myself. Fear not, I'll be brief. I was born the Markessa of Lanas Crin in my own right, the sole legitimate issue of Colbrent Pharamond de Grisainte, Prince of Lettrek. If thou shouldst chance to read the history of Ralnahr, thou wilt learn how great his name is in my land, and how ancient and honored his lineage. When very young, scarce entered into my teens, I was wedded to the Jarl of the Dryven Marches— wedded against my will to a rammy fusty blockheaded old man. At seventeen I bore him an heir after three day's racking labor, and, that duty done, never again would I bed with the Jarl. It mattered little to the Jarl, for he had wed me for my fortune, which was great, and for a son, which in three marriages before he had never gotten. Thereafter he diverted himself with greasy kitchen-maids, whilst I mothered most unwillingly the brat I never wished to bear.

"Ill-favored and brutish as his father did my son grow up, do what I might to better him. Then my husband the old Jarl dies, and my son the new Jarl decides at the age of twenty that he needs must marry Theranne the Duchess of Hantaigne, an overgrown orange-haired half-Wycastrian slut six years his elder, a rampant hoyden that loved nothing but hunting and fornication…and gold coin. My son being rich in his dead father's money and lands, the duchess was glad enough to wed with him, for no other man on earth would have her, such a shrew she was, and penniless, and a known whore—no man but my idiot son.

"Like hogs they lived atop the rocks, them and their dirty pack of hangers-on, and never once did I visit them, nor did they ever darken my door, to my great content. Feeling the Art's pull, I journeyed to Tesba and spent ten years there; but while I learned many things useful in that glassy City that have served me well in the World, I never could abide the sensual frivolity of the place. I returned to Ralnahr, and elected to live sparely, even roughly. As Markessa I had a little palace of my own near Dorellar not twenty miles inland from here, which I still dwell from time to time. But I had grown up along the Lettrek sea-strand, and missed the cry of the gulls, the lulling of the waves. Some miles of shoreline possessed, and whilst riding along it one day shortly after my return I found this house all empty and neglected—a witches' house men called it, and shunned it, but to me it spoke of home, and a home I made and have enjoyed ever since.

"After settling into my new dwelling, I sent to Dryven to learn the news, and discovered that I had a grandson eight years old. In late springtime I rode up to see the brat, expecting to find either a carrot-haired halfwit— Theranne was no more famed for brains than my son her husband—or some stable-groom's get. Great was my surprise to behold a lovely well-grown child with eyes of sea-green, and hair of that tawny gold found nowhere but among the de Grisaintes—eyes and hair of my own color. But only too clear it was that no one cared for him. The dogs were better looked after, for they were fed well, and washed clean of fleas, and never beaten; but ragged and starved and snot-nosed and dirty as a beggar's bantling was little Guy, with a fresh welt on his cheek where Theranne had struck him— and I can tell from thy face so pale and amazed that thou never knew the like when young, lucky lad."

"Never," Ryel said, blinking burning eyes.

"Thou'st been blessed more than thou canst know, Ryel Mirai," the Markessa said. She smiled, then, kindly. "And it shows, I might add. But to continue. A weaker and less highborn child would have meekly borne his parents' cruelty, glad to avert blows with submission; but not my grandson, in whose veins the blood of the de Grisaintes ran pure and hot— not Guy, who never shed tear no matter how much he had the right, but grew ever more defiant and unruly and mutinous with the every evil word, every bruising cuff. With such upbringing it could only follow that his heart should harden, that his manners be coarse and vicious, that he should love to kill little birds and beasts. Filthy language he'd learned aplenty of grooms and scullions, but not one word whether fair nor foul could he read or write. Ignorant animal though he was, I felt something for him that I'd never felt for anyone before, and I made up my mind to take him back with me to Lanas Crin for the summer, and try what I could to make a gentleman of him. My son and Theranne opposed me not one whit, glad to be rid of the brat; but the brat himself kicked and squalled the whole way downmountain. Only when we reached the ocean side did he grow quiet, awed by the wonder of so much water.

"A wild wee handful he was awhile. It cost me much labor to break him of his swinish speech and behavior, and still more work had I to teach him that crabs and fishes and plovers are creatures to be wondered at, not tormented and terrified. Soap and hot water he loathed at first, nor did he take any care of the fine clothes I had made for him, clothes fit for a young lord; he much preferred to riot about the beach and splash in the sea, naked as a savage Zallan child. I treated him gently always, praising him when he by some miracle was deserving of praise, never speaking harshly nor lifting my hand to strike him no matter how much he deserved it, for too many hard words and blows he had already gotten at home; and in time I saw my methods work upon him. Then at last one day he came home from his beach-roaming carrying a cripple-winged bird he'd found, beseeching me to help him heal it. I believe that was the first time I felt like giving him a hug, and it was certainly the first time he allowed me to.

"A gentleman's education I provided him, and my pains were not thrown away. Seeing that he took pleasure in tales of love and honor, adventurings and quests and other such nitwittery, I had him instructed in the high tongue of Almancar, the better to read the epics he loved. And to further his education, although I was loath to part with him, in his thirteenth year I sent him to dwell at the royal court of Ralnahr. My kinswoman Queen Amaranthe liked him well, as did King Niall—and Guy became sworn brothers at once with Prince Hylas, who was just his age. But the Prince was as sickly as Guy was strong, and died too soon, poor lad."

"Yes," Ryel said. "I heard that unhappy story in Almancar."

"Then thou knowest the rest, belike. About that trollop Belphira Deva, and that slandering ruffian Derain Meschante."

"Unfortunately, I do. But you must not call Belphira by such a hard name, Markessa. She is a great and good lady."

Dame Gwynned tossed her head and gave a scorning sniff. "That's as may be. But from what I last heard of my grandson, he left her to serve in the army of the Domina Bradamaine, and the Domina's bed too, then deserted both. Since then I've heard naught from him. Alas, that one so well-created should fall so low."

Ryel had no wish to tell Dame Gwynned that her grandson might have fallen even lower still, in Ormala. "Did you instruct Lord Guyon in the Art?"

"Only wee bits and scraps, for he was, after all, only a child when we met, and barely a man when we parted. If I ever thought he'd so vilely misuse what little he knew…" Her face grew somber. "I've sought him in my Glass, often and often, since he departed Hallagh. All in vain." For some time she was silent, rapt in gloomy misgivings. But at length she straightened, and made a valiant essay at a smile. "Sad talk has this been, young brother. Enough of my scapegrace grandson. High time it is that I show thee to thy chamber, help thee to a bath, and bid thee goodnight. Tomorrow thou shall tell me what thou'st dreamt."

Although hardly of Almancarian or even Hryelandian luxury, the deep copperful of hot water sufficed for a thorough and much-needed wash, and the bright fire, heavily-napped towels and jasmine-scented soap made it a pleasure. As he bathed, Ryel looked round the room that had been Guyon's, finding the little foursquare space somewhat embarrassed by its lordly appointments, which in their turn sorted oddly with the ranks of raw oak shelving crowded with shells, coral, bits of rock and other sea-treasures. On another shelf, books ranging from boyish adventures to knightly romances to the histories of great lands and famous personages made a tattered dogeared show.

Dame Gwynned's voice issued from behind the closed door. "Wouldst have thy clothes washed? I've a little maid comes in daily for the work of the house, a rare laundress who's never shrunk silk nor spoilt wool in her life."

Ryel considered how his Almancarian love of cleanliness had suffered from days of dusty riding. "What would I wear in the meantime?"

"Some of my grandson's gear," the Markessa replied. "At fifteen he was of thy height, and surely much of the clothing left in his press should fit thee."

From among the folded garments Ryel chose a long shirt of fine linen only a little time-yellowed. Past the fragrance of dried thyme and roses Ryel detected an all but imperceptible trace of a wild scent, cleanly animal. The wysard drew on the shirt, and no sooner had he done so than the airless aching oppression that had drained him for weeks seemed to lift entirely, losing itself in the little room's rafters. An irresistible desire to sleep, the first such desire he'd known in many a day, gently but inexorably pushed him down onto the bed's edge. Never had he felt a bed so deliciously welcoming, sheets more caressingly soft and white, pillows more cloudlike.

"Dost dream, young brother?" came the Markessa's voice at the door.

"Almost," he answered slurringly.

Dame Gwynned's voice was close by, now. "I had this bed newly made up only yesterday, not knowing why— but thine eyes are already shut tight as rock-scallops! Here, get thee in."

She helped him lie down, and lapped him warmly in the covers. "Good dreams be thine, my young lord brother."

The wysard felt the imprint of a kiss, faint yet warm on his forehead, and heard whispered words, Art-words all of them but strange, unknown to him. He would have asked what they meant, but sleep rolled around him like a wave of the sea, pulling him down into deep green silence.

*****

The silence turned liquid, and he sleeked through it without need of air, moving neither his arms nor his legs. Clouds of fishes darted back and forth like showers of indecisive finned prisms, catching the diffused sunlight in a thousand hues. A great ray shuttled by in soundless undulation while striped and spotted eels mutely knotted and unwound their scaly skeins. Corals and anemones waved languid jewel-hued fingers as Ryel slid past. Here was the hulk of a ship, its cargo of ancient amphorae storm-jettisoned and forgotten lying in a heap, their precious vintages and oils and perfumes still sealed tight. Ryel broke open one of the amphorae, and red wine issued forth like blood-smoke. Into the smoke he swam, breathing it deep, tasting its heady strength with slow delight.

Drunkenly he glided through waving fields of seaweed that stroked his naked skin with ragged ribbons of live green satin. Rounding a spar of rock, he discovered the ruins of a temple rising up from the white-sanded sea-floor in an ordered forest of fluted columns, roofless yet with its altar still intact. Some queen's megaron it must have been, daintily built for the soft forgiving religion of a sunlit sea-girt land now forever lost. Between the columns stood statues of pure marble, which Ryel swam around in slow circles. Never had he seen men and women so well-created; surely they were deities. One of the statues carried a shield of polished silver, and Ryel waved at the swimmer who floated with such luxuriant ease just inside the bright metal, night-black hair waving about his head and his naked shoulders in long smooth strands; and the swimmer waved back, his sea-jewel-blue eyes bright and lazy.

Next the wysard observed that behind the altar yet another pedestal stood empty. This he swam to and stood on, nobly attitudinizing, playing the god. But when he tired of his posturing a moment later he found himself unable to move anything but his eyes. Bewildered, he would have struggled, but was suddenly aware of a procession entering the temple-portico. Two priests and two priestesses approached the altar with deliberate steps, the men trailing long copes of white damask over albs of the same, the women draped in myriad-pleated white silk that bared their shoulders and their arms, all their garments billowing in the deep current. Another moment and he knew them: Priamnor and Michael, Diara and Belphira. The two ladies were as he remembered them, both beautiful; but Priam's cheeks were shadowed with the beginnings of beard, and his close-cropped hair had grown. Even more changed was the Northern adept, whose once-shaven head was now covered with long locks that swung about his face in heavy scarlet masses, and whose eyes were no longer blank Overreaching black, but cold gray. On either side of the altar the four stood paired, awaiting the hierophant who came forward slowly, a great crimson mantle swathed close about him against the water's pull.

That's my cloak, Ryel thought; and his heart leapt.

The priest was hulking tall, long-limbed and unshod. The hood of his cloak shadowed his face, but the water blew it back, disclosing features large and harsh yet imbued with the deepest intellect, the profoundest compassion. Within his marble prison Ryel's heart battered. Uselessly he tried to shout. Wild with frustration he quivered and sweat, desperate inside the unyielding stone.

Edris Desharem Alizai folded back the hood of his mantle, baring his cropped grizzled hair, his grave face strangely devoid of the ironical humor that had always lurked ready to spring at the corners of his wide mouth and long eyes. Those eyes moved somberly to first one, then another of his acolytes, each of whom bowed in silent reverence. Then deliberately as one unwilling he climbed the steps to the altar, where Ryel now observed a human form shrouded in white lay outstretched. Parting the waving folds of the winding-sheet, Edris revealed a young man not yet thirty, seemingly asleep. His hair was raven black, his naked skin warm golden white, and his visage of classic Almancarian cast, save that his closed eyes slanted upward, and one or two other subtleties of his features further betrayed the Steppes.

Edris gazed long on the motionless face, his own face sorrowing. With a gentle hand he smoothed the dark sea-stirred locks, and bent to kiss the still white face upon the temple. Then he pushed back his blood-crimson cloak, unsheathing the weapon at his side, cleaving the water with its razor-edge.

But that's my sword, Ryel thought, terror gripping him even harder than stone as his comprehension grew. That's me on the altar. Father, you can't—

Holding the Kaltiri blade vertically with point down, Edris lifted the weapon high, his hands on the hilt inexorable. In that instant the swathed victim opened his eyes and stared at his executioner in pleading horror, but too late. The sword's point drove into the breast, rending the heart, and a cloud of blood erupted from the fissure.

Instantly Ryel broke free of his stone Dagar, only to find himself stripped of his sea-magic, turned mere mortal in a world of water. Leaping upward with convulsive instinct, he clambered for the surface that now loomed impossibly far, gagging on the hot red haze swirling about him as he strove to rise, escape, breathe again. For a suffocating fraction of a second he glanced down to find the five celebrants gazing at him with wondering eyes, but even that instant was too much to spare.

I'll never get there, he thought as his lungs began to collapse, his vision to blur. I'm going to die.

He thrashed and choked, panicking in drowning horror, stretching out frantic arms to the unattainable air.

I'm going to dr…

*****

The sheets were tangled about him like a net. He lay trammeled, looking wildly about him. Sunshine glowed bright through the salty windows of the little room, falling on familiar things, things of land and life. Never had colors seemed so rich, light so fair.

"Let go."

At his rapped command the sheets unwound, spreading out flat and tight. Ryel laughed softly. His blood vibrated, his body glowed like a fire-surge on the sun's surface. Too much in haste for the niceties of buttoning and tying, he flung one of his Almancarian robes about him and rushed from the room. Not finding the Markessa, he hurtled outdoors into warm brilliant noonday, racing barefoot down to the sea, impatiently rucking up his long silken skirts to plash through the cold hissing tidewater, reveling in his speed, laughing out loud, re-learning the sound of his joy.

"Dame Gwynned!"

The Markessa was walking the sands in her black barnacled cloak, her head lowered in profoundest meditation. Startled she whirled round, staring at him with wide eyes. "Ryel Mirai, is it thou indeed? Thou, alive?"

The wysard caught both her hands, spinning her about with him in a crazy dance. "How could I not be? How, when life is this beautiful?"

Joyously she danced with him, her cloak all a-clatter. But at length she forced him to stop, and caught his face in her silver-ringed hands. "Ah, young lord, how glad I am to see thee well. What fears I have felt for thee. What terrible— " meeting his eyes she went pale under her sun-brown, and her voice failed her.

"But Markessa, why? I only slept late, nothing more."

Her hands trembled. "Thou hast lain abed not one day, Ryel, but three. Lain unmoving and unbreathing, though warm. None of my Art did thee any good, and I was e'en at my wit's end. I have walked here the last hour in torment, not knowing where my help might come."

For a moment his strength failed him utterly. He dropped to his momentarily nerveless knees in the sand, deafened by the shrieks of the gulls wheeling overhead. "Not one day, but three."

"Three endless days, young brother," Dame Gwynned said as she slowly sat down beside him. "I had said spells for thy healing, but I never looked for thee to lie entranced so long. After the first day I became afraid that I had mis-said the words or otherwise spoilt the charm— for it was greatly beyond my skill, being of Markul's Art—and I spoke with Jeral Colquhon in my Glass; but he said that all was well and the spell would take, and to let thee lie."

"It seems to have worked my cure," Ryel said.

Dame Gwynned's reply came slowly. "I think not; any more than it has worked another great change in thee, one I neither expected nor understand."

Something in her voice unsettled him. "What do you mean, Markessa?"

She looked away. "Thine eyes are no longer those of an Overreacher."

For a long time Ryel sat quiet, feeling a little puzzled frown puckering just between his brows. Then he felt that frown dissolve in sweat, and heard his words come hoarse and slow. "Tell me again, Markessa."

"They are changed, my lord brother. I never thought their true color might be so light, or so lovely. Look thou here." She unclasped the broad silver brooch of her cloak, and held it up to his face.

Eyes of Almancarian blue met Ryel's in the mirror-bright metal. "This can't be," he whispered as he stared. "How— "

Helplessly the Markessa shook her head. "Naught had I to do with it, young brother."

"What spell did you use?" Ryel demanded.

Lady Gwynned looked uneasy. "They were words beyond my skill, words I had no right to speak. Words from a book."

"What book is that? How did you acquire it?"

The Markessa reddened momentarily. "I ... well, to call it by its naked name, I stole it three years ago from the great church of the Unseen in Hallagh."

"You what?"

"There was naught else I might do, once I saw what it was. I had journeyed to celebrate the Blest Oranda's Day, the holiest of the year—'tis expected of the great folk of the land. After the rites, I lingered awhile to view the treasury, which is famed for richness. Behind a locked grating in the sacristy were great store of books all bound in gold and gems, and as a simple woman fond of pretty things I asked to see them, and of course as Markessa of Lanas Crin I was obeyed. They were all of them missals and breviaries of the Unseen—save for one wee volume that I knew instantly as an Art-book, to my great wonder and indignation. When the priest turned his back, I made bold to pocket it, lest some fool find it and wreak harm thereby. I found I could read some of its spells, but by no means all—for though some of the book was written in the common tongue of the Cities, most was beyond my poor understanding. Had the Lord Prelate Meschante known of my theft, matters would have gone ill with me, I do assure thee; but he never discovered it, thank luck."

A premonitory shiver seized the wysard. "I must see this book of yours, Markessa."

"Thou wilt, and welcome."

The wysard looked out to sea. Never had he known a day more fair, a sky more heavenly blue, clouds whiter. The waves and rocks were so beautiful that he could not bear them. He felt his eyes fill with warm salt wet, then shivered as it spilled down his cheeks and was cooled by the wind.

"You elude me," he murmured to the life-giving warmth. "Close as my skin, distant as a star. Were we together these past three days, you and I? Make me remember."

The wysardess stared at him, still apprehensive. "To whom dost thou speak, great brother?"

"My father." And slowly the wysard told Dame Gwynned what he had seen during his trance-state.

After a long silence the Markessa gave a sigh. "Let an unlearned old woman make what sense she may of this, young Ryel. I do suppose that this vision, or visitation, or whatever it may be, has no evil in it, but great good. I have learned from Srin Yan Tai that thou art bound by destiny to the elements of water and air. Certainly those elements that have shaped thy fate have played a part in thy dream. And thy dream's meaning is thus: thy former self has been destroyed, thy new self freed."

Ryel was not convinced. "But what of the appearance of the Dranthene siblings, and Michael their enemy among them?"

The Markessa shrugged in Artwise acceptance. "It may mean that he is not their enemy, but their friend."

Ryel saw again the tall Red Essern reaching out his hand to Diara that he might guide her up the altar-steps, standing next to her so close that his sea-tossed scarlet locks mingled with her waving black tresses like fire and smoke; and now Ryel remembered that Michael had made so bold as to bend to that lovely hand, and touch his brow to its back. Again he felt his heart stabbed and split by a poisoned blade. "He is no one's friend, now. Markessa, I must leave as soon as may be."

"And where wouldst thou go?"

He couldn't say Ormala. "I must take the road that leads to Dagar. At once."

"And if thou canst not find it?"

"No worry. It'll find me."

"Stay this night at least. I'll ready a bath for thee, and dinner. Nay, I'll hear no refusals; for all thy return to health, th'art weak from lack of food, and real rest."

They rose, and walked back to the house in silence. When Ryel at length emerged from Guyon's room, washed and dressed in his Steppes gear, Dame Gwynned glanced up from the fire and raised an eyebrow.

"A hero from one of my grandson's foolish tales of romance thou lookest in that rig, but it suits thee well—even better than Hryeland dress, in which thou art a complete gentleman. The table's set, and dinner readied; I've small doubt th'art hungered after three days' starving. That wee book can keep awhile longer yet."

Suddenly feeling famished, Ryel found himself unable to resist broiled fish of such delicacy, herbed and sauced and surrounded with new-gathered garden vegetables to a perfection only attainable by Art, any more than he could refuse a second slice of strawberry cake afterward—or another glass of pale golden wine deliciously reminiscent of the Masir vintage. The drink awoke memories, and again the wysard saw Priamnor Dranthene slowly pacing toward the altar at the side of Lord Michael Essern, robed in the mourning color of the imperial house of Destimar.

It was my death you mourned, Ryel thought. You, and your sisters . Diara next entered his memory, her night-colored hair rippling in the current, the snowy pleats of her gown now billowing about, now clinging to beauties only too well remembered; the wysard could not bear the sight of her, and fixed his recollection on Belphira. But the remembered face of the queen of the Diamond Heaven, its loveliness paled by years of inward despair, only gave him greater pain.

"Thou art recalling thy trance's sea-journey ?"

Ryel nodded in answer. "That journey, and the one to come. The one that cannot wait."

"Well I understand, my young lord," she replied somberly. "But fain would I harbor thee for as long as thou didst choose to tarry. " Setting her glass aside, the Markessa rose from her chair. "And now for that thing I promised thee."

Unlocking a cabinet, she after some searching moments took out an object wrapped in a silken scarf, handing it to the wysard. Untying the silk, Ryel found a little book not as big as his hand, bound in wrought silver embossed with precious stones of ancient cut, its pages written and illuminated in exquisite silver script on midnight-colored parchment, all the metal gleaming bright in defiance of the centuries.

"Beautiful," Ryel murmured. He cast a swift surprised eye over the first pages. "This book is indeed of Markul. It looks to be very old. I marvel how it came this far."

"And to end up in a church, no less," Lady Gwynned said with a wry head-shake.

"Is this the spell you used—Skiasos? Shadow Rescue?"

"It was. I presumed shamefully, I know. But I pray thee take the book, for 'twas wrought for greater skill than my poor own—for wondrous skill, such as thine."

"You are giving me too much to thank you for, Markessa," the wysard said, greatly moved.

"Thou wilt return me a thousandfold, young brother."

That night as he lay abed Ryel more closely examined Lady Gwynned's gift. The first half of the book was written in the common tongue of the Four Cities, and among its several spells Ryel found the healing Art that Lady Gwynned had used in his cure—a brilliant and dangerous incantation, surely far too difficult for a mere Tesba wysardess to successfully cast. This Mastery Ryel read carefully, committing it to memory, more than grateful to have found it.

But when he turned to the second half, he discovered marvels.

"By every god," he exclaimed, nearly knocking over the lamp.

Here, written in the pure elegant script of Markul, were the great Masteries of Lord Garnos, thought forever lost. Page by trembling page he read their titles— Translation, Or Thought Travel. Meditations Toward Invisibility. Daimonic Contagion: Causes and Remedies. Elemental Affinities. To Send The Spiritual Essence Into The Emptiness. The Joining of Bodily Form to Spiritual Essence.

"The Joining," Ryel whispered unbelievingly as he deciphered the argument of the last spell. After a long moment's amazement he lifted the book to his forehead in awed reverence.

He dared not read that incantation, because night had come on dark, and Dagar was abroad and in the fullness of his strength, at any moment able to invade the wysard's mind. Just now it was a distracted, stunned, euphoric mind, amazed at the turn of fate that had brought this inestimable treasure into his trembling hands; astounded that the spells were there for all the world to see, written with neat, controlled, almost insolent legibility by the hand of Lord Garnos himself, First and Greatest of the Best and Highest. Slowly Ryel gathered the book to his heart, feeling the hectic beating of his pulse against the smooth silver.

"I have it," he whispered, his blood burning. "It is mine, ithradrakis."

He would return to Markul at once. Return, and reunite his father's body with his rai. Nothing else mattered, nothing. Let the World wait.

Testing the book's truth, Ryel slowly whispered the mantra that harnessed the element of air. Hardly had he intoned the last syllable when he felt himself gradually rising. He would have thought it a mere illusion, had he not bumped against the room's rafters, knocking his head against all too solid wood.

His heart battered within him, in awe and terror. Involuntarily he said the releasing-word too soon, and plummeted back onto the bed with a crash. A moment afterward he heard Lady Gwynned's concerned voice through the door.

"Is aught amiss, young brother?"

"No, Markessa," he called, rubbing a banged elbow as he spoke. "Everything's … perfect."

With greatest concentration and care he memorized every one of Lord Garnos' Masteries save the last. Then hugging the book close he fell asleep, expecting to dream joyfully.

But only scattered images drifted past, in ever more ugly succession. He saw a green plain studded with soft little hills and swift horses turn in an eyeblink to an endless field of molten rock, black cones vomiting fire, stampeding mad animals. He saw a beautiful woman beheaded and despoiled, her intricate dark-gold braids and tresses torn and stripped of their jewels, eyes gouged to raw sockets behind the butterfly mask. He saw a man burning silently in ardent fire, watched vacantly by a crowd of elegant loungers, many of whom either smiled or yawned. And he saw a dark-towered mist-enshrouded city with every one of its denizens rottenly dead. This last image Ryel entered, wandering the stinking streets. But the horrors he passed by or stepped over had no more effect on him than any of the sights that had gone before. Climbing the steps of a high tower, he entered a room where a man lay with half-open eyes, lips parted ironically over large teeth.

"Edris." Ryel rushed to his father's side, taking his hand. But to his untold horror, the hand detached from the arm. Recoiling, the wysard flung it down, but with that action Edris' entire body fell apart in a crawling welter of stench, the torso cracking open, the rotten limbs dropping heavily on either side of the stone bier, the head thudding to the floor and rolling until it stopped at Ryel's feet. And then the eyes opened—eyes without white or iris, empty black—and the wide mouth grinned in savage mockery, and a whining sneer issued from it.

"You won't get away from me, young blood. Soon. Very soon, now."

Ryel jolted awake, gasping. Dawn was up, red as his eyes felt. The design of the silver book's jewel-embossed cover was embedded on his chest where he had slept on it. Exhausted, he rolled over on his back and lay immobile as the memory of his dream again and again unfolded in his mind.

But the rising light gave him strength. He got up and readied for the road, keeping Desrenaud's shirt for the sake of the raw animal energy he felt within its cloth, wearing his Steppes gear over it. Between the shirt and his skin he thrust the silver book, shivering as the cold metal iced his flesh through its thin silk wrapping. After a last look round at the little room, he went out.

Early though the hour was, the Markessa was busy at the fire, her gray-gold hair wrapped in a kerchief and her strong form draped in a dressing-gown. She glanced round at him and smiled. "Good morrow, tall hero." Then she looked harder at him, frowned in concern. "Thou look'st bone-weary. Didst sleep last night?"

"Yes," Ryel answered shortly. "And I wish I hadn't."

"Come thee here by the inglenook and get warm, and take thee a cup of good hot chal, such as thy people drink. I have here some of the best."

It was perfect chal, strong and fragrant, the most delicious Ryel had ever tasted. Hands cupped gratefully around the bowl, he drank in long slow sips.

Dame Gwynned watched him approvingly. "It's a wholesome drink, is chal, and enstrengthening. I've taken the liberty of putting a few small things in thy horse's saddlebags, brother—food and drink for thy journey, and a flask of whisky from the Dryven lands. Have a care with the last, for 'tis wondrous strong."

"You are a good and great lady, Markessa," the wysard said. "I owe you infinitely."

She shook her head vigorously. "Thou owest me nothing, my lord brother, nor ever will."

"You do not ask me what I dreamed," the wysard said.

"I do not dare," Lady Gwynned replied. "Thy cries and groans hinted at no soft repose."

Ryel quivered. "I dreamed terribly, Markessa. I never want to dream that dream again. Never as long as I live—"

He lowered his head, overcome. Lady Gwynned took the chal-bowl from his hands, and then gathered his head upon her shoulder, ruskily whispering.

"I know, dear lad, I know. It is a terrible task, thine; a stark battle thou must wage alone, against an adversary cruel beyond the ken of mankind. Would that I might aid thee."

"You have, Markessa." He felt the silver book against his breast, warmed now to his blood-heat. "You cannot know how much." Taking one of her sun-browned hands, he lifted it to his forehead; and she knew the gesture, and clasped his hand with hers.

Chapter Sixteen

He traced the shoreline southward, sometimes upon the hard-packed sand of the waterline, sometimes upon the crags. Save for fisher-folk, themselves not numerous, he met with no one. Now in health, he could at last take pleasure in the beauty of the sea. The luminous azure had neither beginning nor end, but lay before him limitless, horizonless, as if the sky had interfused with the earth to form an indissoluble bond of land and air. It was entirely too beautiful for haste; and despite his impatience for Markul he lingered a day, sure of his Art's strength, needful of peace. Stripping naked, he swam far out, then lay upon the water drifting as the tide rocked him and the sun warmed him. When the tide carried him landward he did not resist, but lay beached as the waters swept over him, digging his fingers into the sand to anchor himself.

He lay there until the sun had climbed high, then rose and walked along the beach, letting the warm winds dry him as he sought for wonders cast up on the sand by the prodigal tide—shells like plump Cosran turbans striped in gleaming pink and scarlet and violet, or blunt cones with markings like to some forgotten script, or long spikes swirled with delicate rainbow bands; pebbles worn smooth and satiny, that shone opalescent as jewels until they dried and dulled, their sea-born beauty unable to exist away form its source; tiny sea-creatures and shore-birds that scurried away on delicate legs at Ryel's approach; the white bones of fishes, seeming rings and rods of polished ivory; branches of trees stripped bare from the wearing of the waves, their wood gray-silver and smooth and fantastically twisted.

Night was quiet, with never a word from Dagar; too quiet. Ryel sat by his fire expecting any moment a tightening of the air, the whining whisper of that hateful voice; but neither occurred. Glad though he was of the complete peace made even sweeter by his deliverance from the blood-bane of the Red Esserns, the wysard could not help but wonder at his adversary's forbearance.

"You're waiting," Ryel murmured as he again halted Jinn and again looked seaward, where the waves flung themselves shoreward and were dragged back again and yet again by some immense unknown power that men were always trying to give name to, and by naming to understand; and like the sea, man's hopes rushed forth only to be pulled back again and yet again by doubt, disbelief, eternal unknowing.

"Soon. It will come soon." And it seemed to Ryel that his whisper rose far above the wrecking crash of the waves, all but deafening him. Grimacing, he reached for the priceless cylinder that had been Priam's gift to him, and let its fragrance overwhelm the salt rank leavings of the tide.

The day began drawing to an end, cloudy and threatening rain as the shrouded sun dipped ever closer to the world-rim, resignedly making way for the night. Ryel had all the day looked seaward; but now he turned, and faced the land. It came as no surprise that he should suddenly become aware of castle walls just visible behind a heavy veil of climbing weeds, lining the cliff-edge to the east.

There, he thought; and he could give no name to his emotions, that were mixed to the point of flatness. You're there.

He found a road cut into the rock that led from the beach to the clifftop. To judge from the untrodden grass and uncleared stones, no one had ridden or walked that path in a very long time. And when the wysard arrived at the gates, he found them flung wide in derelict abandon.

"My thanks for your welcome, Dagar," he said beneath his breath.

He dismounted to harbor Jinn under an archway paved with moss-furred cobbles, and approached the entrance-portal of the castle that led to the great hall of the dwelling. Broken windows admitted the last dark hints of daylight. In the hearth a few gray sticks still remained, and at a word of Ryel's they sprang aflame. Bunching some of them together to serve as a torch, the wysard continued his explorations

All of the many rooms were empty and wrecked, plundered long ago of whatever riches they might have boasted, and deserted by whoever had owned or stolen them. But if nothing living remained in the castle, something dead only too evidently did. Ryel's nostrils flinched as he neared the midmost room of the ruin.

"Human," he murmured, analytical even in disgust. "Human, and only too apparently unembalmed. I doubt you'll want to get too close to that, Dagar."

His first instinct, too, was to move far from that disgusting reek; but for some not readily explicable reason he sought the source of it. He doubted greatly that he'd find an enthroned mummy surrounded by fabulous treasure, but he cared nothing for that. What most drove him was memories of his Steppes upbringing. To allow the dead to lie above ground and unburied was a terrible crime among his people, and one was constrained by ancient custom and fear of divine retribution to perform death-rites for even one's worst enemy, if it were only to toss a handful of earth over the remains. Ryel had long ceased to fear the wrath of his people's many gods, but custom was strong. Steeled by Markulit training, he gathered up some dust from the floor and entered the chamber where the dead waited, muttering a workaday spell to mitigate the stench.

In the room's center rose up a long slab of rock, large enough for a recumbent figure of considerable size. But the corpse stretched out upon it could not have been a tall one even when fresh. Withered, shriveled and shrunken it lay, its skin clinging to its bones like scraps of badly glued time-dirtied parchment, its grim mortality wrapped in a tattered winding-sheet. Even the worms had all but finished with it.

"No signs of desecration," the wysard said to himself as he studied the remains. "No marks of wild beasts, or of pillage—"

But then he caught his breath, for another reason far more horrific than the stench. The dead man's face—for the corpse was male—was scarred upon the cheeks, and the scars were as fresh as the corpse was not. Holding his torch close to the skeletal face as he bent near, Ryel deciphered first a circle, then the rayed symbol set within it: the spark within the sphere. At that sight he stiffened wholly around his battering heart.

"You," he breathed. The corpse's eyelids fluttered over empty sockets, and instantly Ryel began to utter a protective spell; but in that moment arms like white steel wrapped him from behind, crushing the breath from his lungs, the words from his mind. A voice like deep music burnt his ear. "Not fast enough, Steppes gypsy." The arms tightened inhumanly, and the last thing the wysard heard was a laugh like thunder, borne on breath transcendently sweet.

*****

He awoke to darkness. A smell of wet stone and molding decay hung on the brooding black air. Disoriented, he blinked his eyes, and as if by signal a faint light began to issue from the ground. Looking down, Ryel found that the floor was strewn with that phosphorus-dust called corpselight. Its pallid embers barely flickered, affording not so much illumination as a foil to the darkness.

The floor was intolerably cold. With that realization the wysard discovered that his feet were bare. A chill took his body, and he saw that he was naked. Alarmed, he took a step, and was pulled up short. His wrists were chained.

He made himself stay calm, think slowly. The word, the word, what was it— he remembered, said it, waited for the snap of broken metal. But none came. Angered, he said another word far more powerful, superfluously strong; and still the chains held fast. A thrill of sickness pooled in the pit of his stomach, but he ignored it, whispering carefully with painstaking enunciation a great word of freeing, a word that would make the very gates of Markul burst from their hinges. He closed his eyes, steeling himself for the shock.

None came.

Blinking and empty of any thought Ryel stared down at the corpselight, at his bare feet now numb from the icy stones of the floor. Licking his lips, he said a few more spells, almost playfully, as a child blasphemes—spells of earthquake and fire, words to bring the walls down around his head, melt the floor from beneath his feet. All to nothing.

An odor nastily foul stole into the room, dragged by a shuffling form only just recognizable as human. "Good words, young blood. But you need better." The shape drew nearer and stood before him, enveloping Ryel in ghastly miasma. The corpselight intensified, illuminating the bald scalp peeling away from the skull, the scar-gouged leathery cheeks hanging in creased folds, the gaping holes of the orbits.

"Comfortable, sweet eyes?"

In answer Ryel wearily held up the irons on his wrists. "Don't you find chains and dungeons rather elementary?"

Dagar thinly giggled. "Those were my slave's idea, not mine."

"Your slave, is he. But I thought Michael was in Almancar."

The corpse tsked. "That was your downfall, young blood. He's served me well, has Michael. He not only stole your little spell-book, but learned from it. Everything it held, he learned. The hidden language of your City he knew long ago thanks to me, and he had no trouble reading—and fixing in his memory—every one of Lord Garnos's Masteries. His first action was to embody me."

Ryel grimaced. "I can't say I'm impressed."

"This form was all that was available at the time. My servant found it in the crypt of this place, along with many other remains in conditions far less well-preserved. But it hardly matters, since I'll soon be wearing your lovely warm body." The eyeless sockets studied Ryel's nakedness with cold concupiscence. "You have been much in the sun. But I hated the light of the sun, when I lived in the World."

"I believe it."

"I was more beautiful than you. Hair of white gold. Eyes like sapphires with stars in them, white-blue— " The dual abysses contracted in sudden observation. "I sealed you as mine. Who dared take away my mark? Who turned your eyes back to what they were?"

Ryel had no answer. But Dagar's stunned him.

"That bitch again," the lipless grimace hissed. "That meddlesome slut. But you've never been without some woman to save you. Let her try to stop me. Let the witch try."

Ryel forgot both danger and pain. "Who is it you mean? Serah Dalkith? Srin Yan Tai? Gwynned de Grisainte?"

The grimace widened in scorn. "A greater than any of those old whores, sweet eyes. Greater than you dream." A stinking skeletal hand pressed its pronged fingertips against Ryel's mouth, quelling any attempt at conjecture. "Don't bother to guess, beauty. It won't do you any good even if you get it right." The hard phalanges traveled spiderlike to the wysard's cheek, and Ryel could not dissemble a shudder. "We should have known each other in Elecambron. We would have been lovers." And the fleshless reeking death's-head thrust itself close, pressing its rotting grin to Ryel's lips.

The wysard jerked away and spat. "What could you have ever known of love, corpse-stealer?"

Dagar giggled. "I've seen what fools it makes of men. How weak it made Michael—but he's been cured of it. Perhaps you remember the visit paid you by his mistress? I had plans for you, beauty. But this way is quicker."

The wysard resisted the useless urge to lunge for Dagar's throat, and snatched at a chance instead. "Michael's form would be much better suited to your aims."

The corpse considered this. "Perhaps. But I am somewhat fastidious, and have a dislike of red hair. He's a little too large for my taste; too sinewy. I prefer graces more supple. Charms more lithe." And Dagar's osseous forefinger trickled from Ryel's shoulder down his arm.

"Where is Michael?" the wysard asked as he twitched away from that loathsome touch.

"Making sure that no interloper mars our communion. He has proven himself very useful, has Michael; witness the ease with which he captured you." A whining titter welled behind the daimonic rictus. "How I will enjoy myself in your form, in ways your queasy rectitude flinches from so much as imagining. And you'll feel it, beauty. Part of your consciousness will survive—just enough for every one of your undeveloped and deprived senses to experience my kind of pleasure."

The wysard's guts revulsed. "Sooner would I kill or unman myself."

"You haven't much choice in the matter, sweet eyes." The gaping orbits once more scanned Ryel's nakedness, unspeakably lascivious. "Tomorrow night I'll wear your smooth young body, and have my way with the World…starting with your little Dranthene princess."

From some hitherto undiscovered source Ryel called upon strength that made him stand at his full height, and stare his entire scorn into Dagar's barren sockets. To his inutterable joy, the daimon took a staggering backward step.

"To my last I'll fight you," the wysard said. "Were I nothing but dust, I'd choke you. Go and have your play with the World—but what will you do after you've broken your toy to bits? Cry for another?"

"I need more respect from you, young blood." The undead thing reached out its mummied fingers; its long yellow nails, so long they curved outward, lightly clawed Ryel's temples. The wysard fought to evade the contact, uselessly. A hard dry agony sliced his brain into sections wonderfully thin and fine, and he heard the walls echo with his shrieking.

Slowly the fingers withdrew. "You must be civil, pretty brother."

"Death's whore," Ryel panted. "Spider."

"You learn slowly." The curling nails slid down to the wysard's breast, and immediately Ryel felt his heart constrict, driving out the blood as if an inhuman hand had squeezed it dry. He fell, hanging by his wrists in the iron cuffs, seeing nothing before him but a wall of red that became black shot with sparks, feeling nothing but his heart's convulsive struggle to beat again. Then at last he could see, and breathe, and hear Dagar's voice falling around his ears like cold earth.

"You were great in Markul. Great wherever the Art was known. And now you are mine. All mine." The fingers slid again until they reached the wysard's groin.

Fire and fangs rent him, but only for the little space before the blackness wrapped him like a winding-sheet. When he came to he was alone. The iron galled his wrists, the floor froze his knees. Head, heart and groin burned and throbbed. The corners of his eyes were tight with caked salt, his lips cracked and dry. He stared into the darkness, shivering in the dank air, remembering the years spent in the perfection of the Art, the years with Edris, the months alone; of the colloquies with air-spirits and nameless beings of other stars; of the awe and fear he had commanded in Markul, diamond of wysard-citadels. He had been great.

He remembered what he knew of Dagar. Dagar the brilliant, Dagar the dark light of Elecambron, Dagar the half-daimon androgyne. Dagar, brilliant in the Art, yet addicted past cure to the sense-madding drugs that bring on frenzy and phantasies; Dagar more beautiful than any other of the brotherhood, and a thousandfold more base. Death and the Void had burnt away the petty degradations, the niggling inhumanities; had burnt away, too, the beauty and the grace that had been another facet of its fame, until all that remained were the most refined of evils: lust and cruelty only, and those emotions no longer wildly driving deliriums, but things of cold and detached compulsion.

He has squeezed me dry, Ryel thought. Now he toys with the shell, crumbling it into fragments.

More time passed, how much he was unsure. Then again he heard approaching footsteps, but this time steady and swift. Ryel as he knelt saw not withered yellow-nailed feet shuffling amid dusty rags, but straight-kneed stark-muscled legs booted and breeched in cavalry black. His eyes straining upward in ever-intensifying hope, the wysard recognized the dark uniform and silver insignia of a high officer of the Hryeland army, worn by a tall man whose long hair fell to his shoulders in heavy straight masses. The corpselight caught the hair's color, strange blood-scarlet, and the pallor of the harsh-angled well-favored face.

"You're fairly caught," Michael observed, his deep mockery reverberant against the cold stone walls. "Aren't you, Edris' bastard."

Ryel made no answer.

"Stand up."

The wysard stayed where he was. With a muttered curse Michael hauled him to his feet, slamming him against the rough icy stones of the wall.

"If you knew how much I want to cut your heart out," he said, his voice soft now with rage. "If only you knew."

Ryel found his voice, croakingly. "But you were in Almancar. I saw you in my Glass. How— "

"I left Almancar a month ago, at the summons of my Master," Michael replied. "We've been tracking you, He and I, and I've been waiting for you here. For I knew you'd come at last, tame as a mindless child."

"But you were in Almancar only yesterday," Ryel whispered. "I saw you. In my Glass."

Michael laughed. "That wasn't me, gypsy."

"Then who was it? Who—"

A ringing hard slap in reply. "You'll learn. That is, if you live long enough." The Red Essern seized Ryel hard by the hair and under the chin, forcing his face up, compelling a meeting of eyes. A long time did Michael's impenetrable regard lock with the wysard's. "So. Blue again. The blue of Almancar, token of your half-breed blood." Bending close he licked away the salt remains of Ryel's tears, drinking them hot-tongued, sweet-breathed and slow. "Delicious. I want more."

Ryel endured it, lids shut tight. "Your own would taste better to you. The Art that freed me from Dagar's power would free you as well."

Michael only laughed. His empty eyes dropped to Ryel's nakedness, narrowed in scorn. "Right. You certainly look free now."

Ryel would not flinch. "I know the pain you endure. It became mine, when I healed your brother. How you could endure it all your life I cannot understand."

"I require no cure of you, Markulit. Not as long as I can serve the Master."

Ryel would not flinch. "Dagar will destroy you, Michael."

"Let the Master do as He will with his servant, as long as His purposes are fulfilled."

"Your brother will mourn you."

Michael's abysmal eyes blinked once. "I have no brother."

"You and Yvain are doubly brothers, by blood and by the Fellowship of the Sword," Ryel said. "And you and I are doubly brothers as well."

"By the Art and what else, Edris' bastard?"

"Call me by another name," Ryel said. "Call me Ruhkt Avràl."

After a wiredrawn moment Michael pushed Ryel from him, and harshly snarled a word into the air. The chains dropped from Ryel's limbs, clanging to the stone floor.

"Here." Michael materialized a Steppes journeybag, and thrust it at Ryel. "Get dressed."

The wysard threw on his Rismaian garb. "Where is my horse, and my sword?"

"Your horse ran off. I'll take you to your sword."

"Where is the spell-book you stole?"

Michael gave a jeering grin. "Safe from you. Come on."

He gripped Ryel by the arm, leading him out. Through long corridors and up many stairs he led him, until they arrived at the room where the corpse had lain. Chill salt wind and lowering gray dawn issued through broken windows once draped in rich cloth, now in colorless rags. Shrouded and faint though that sunrise was, it made Ryel's eyes dazzle. The light seemed to fill his veins. He felt neither hunger nor thirst, weariness nor weakness, cold nor pain. He felt invincible.

Michael discerned this. It amused him. "You feel your Art's strength returning, blue eyes? I gave it back to you. Enjoy it while you can. Between the hours of sunset and dawn the Master rests, drawing to Himself the power of the Cities, the energy of the Outer World. You He will take this night. But for this space of daylight you will feel your Mastery in all its force, that you may contend with me."

"Where is Dagar?" asked Ryel.

Michael looked about him contentedly, breathing deep. "Everywhere." Crossing over to the wrecked and fireless mantelpiece he took down the two swords that lay there, and tossed one to Ryel. "It's been a long time since I fought blade to blade."

Kaltiri hilt inexorably in hand, the wysard stepped back and squared off. "I feel all my strength, brother."

"That isn't much of a warning," Michael sneered. "And don't call me brother, bastard. Call me Droth Hrâkon."

"Havoc Holocaust," Ryel translated. "It fits."

The Elecambronian drew his sword, a great Ralnahr claymore. All down the double-edged blade, bright runes glinted in the dawn. Michael gave a wolf's grin. "So where did Yvain cut you?"

The wysard lifted his chin. "He didn't."

The wolf's eyes slitted. "Then I will."

Ryel looked deep into those slits, seeking any trace of humanity. "Do you really wish my death?"

Michael's white teeth snarled fierce affirmation. "More than you've any idea."

"I doubt your Master will approve."

"The Master requires me," the red wysard replied. "With you gone, He will assume my form. My life will be eternal, devoted to His service."

Ryel only smiled. "I may not be as easily killed as you imagine."

"Let's find out." Michael lifted his great heavy sword with an easy hand. "Now I have you as I wish. Steel to steel, and skill to skill, and my sought vengeance satisfied at last."

Ryel shook his head, bitterly impatient. "This is no time for quarrels. We should be joining our forces against Dagar—we'll never have another chance. Together we embody the Elements, and our combined strength would be invincible."

"I'm invincible on my own." Michael snarled a word, and his sword's blade glowed quivering white with heat. "Match that, Steppes beggar."

Ryel might have, and easily. But he would not. Instead he bowed in the Steppes warriors' way of equal to equal. "Good fortune be yours in our fight, my lord brother."

To Ryel's salute Michael barely inclined his body, and spat on the stones afterward. "Damnation take you, and your blue eyes. Come on."

Theirs was a battle out of an epic, fought an entire day's sunrise to sunset, a two-man war between the elements of fire and earth, water and air. Throughout the ruined halls and rooms they warred, dealing terrible wounds that the Art's help knitted up as soon; and they said spells that kept their blades at white heat. Ryel reveled in his strength, delighting in combat so equally and rampantly matched. Even his fear was pleasure to him. With Edris, Priamnor, Roskerrek, he had been debarred or deprived of the Art, but not now. Now he was at his best, with all of his strength blazing in his veins.

"You won't win," he said, effortlessly thwarting yet another two-handed white-hot blow. "You'll never win against me, brother. Not this way."

"I'm not your brother, bastard," Michael hissed. He lunged forward, slashing Ryel's chest across with razored incandescence. The wound's edges crackled with live flame.

Ryel had no time for surprise or outrage—not even for pain. Instantly he willed the burning gash to heal, gasping at the pull of flesh, the closing of skin, the stench of his smoldering flesh. Furiously thwarted, the Red Essern shot forth a glare through his narrowed empty eyes, and the wall nearest Ryel crumbled, raining down rock. Ryel dodged the wreckage with Art-quickened dexterity, and cried out an inarticulate command. Instantly a great gust of wind hurled Michael backward into a window-ledge, and only by less than a hair's breadth did he save himself from tumbling out the window onto the raging sea far below.

Advancing again in a furious rush, Michael wielded his great sword wildly. Every slash sent forth white fire-bolts, and every bolt wreaked destruction. Uttering the silver book's remembered flight-spell Ryel leapt upward into the air, dodging the fiery darts. With a snapped curse Michael echoed the spell, and for a time the two wysards battled in weightless space like god-heroes out of a myth. Gathering all his strength of body and of Art, Ryel parried Michael's blade-lightning and turned it back on his adversary, who reeled under the assault. At last Michael lowered his weapon and signaled for a halt, slowly descending to earth. Clearly he was blood-weary from warring in Ryel's element, but he laughed.

"You've grown, gypsy. Now you're almost a challenge."

They did not sheath their swords, not yet. But time had come for truce however temporary, and parley however brief. Ryel began it.

"You saved my life in Almancar, Lord Michael. I thank you."

Michael replied coldly. "I did nothing but the Master's will."

"Then you're a rare lackey."

The Red Essern's proud blood welled up in his cheeks, and he threw Ryel a glare. "All must serve something."

"And who serves you? Who stirs up the folk of the Fourth District, now that their prophet is gone?"

"I found a perfect instrument," Michael said with a grim reminiscent smile. "A fanatical puritan named Meschante, whose vehemence of rhetoric far exceeds mine—whatever he may lack in attraction. Luckily he wears my outward semblance, thanks to the Master's powers. His own is rather less impressive."

Ryel stared at his adversary. "By every—Derain Meschante? That raving brute?"

"Spare me your upright virtue, blue eyes. He's more clever than you know. He did to death Prince Hylas of Ralnahr some years back, using one of the subtlest of poisons. And Hylas was by no means his only victim."

Instantly Ryel remembered what both Belphira and Dame Gwynned had told him concerning Guyon Desrenaud's guilt at Hylas' death, and Meschante's slanders. "The brute," he murmured. "The ranting, murdering brute ..."

"You don't know the half of it, Markulit. Theofanu gave Meschante the drugs to concoct the bane."

Ryel felt very confused. "But Meschante is a priest of the Unseen."

Michael growled a laugh. "Oh, yes. So wholeheartedly devout." But he sobered, then. "Like me, he works the will of the Master. But I have done more. I gave the Master all that I had." The red wysard sheathed his sword with a violent shove and went to the window where he had nearly fallen, leaning out with his hands on the remains of the casement-ledge, careless of the shattered glass. "And the Master will give me back what I have lost. He has promised." A hesitation, long and cold; the salt wind tossed Michael's long hair, that now burned crimson in the dying light like threads of fire. "Her name—did you ever learn it?"

"No," Ryel replied.

Michael drew a long breath. "Good. I could not bear to hear it in your mouth." His lips tightened. "Did you enjoy her?"

"I never lay with her, Michael."

The red wysard spat out of the window into the sea. "Only because Edris kept you from it. He couldn't have stopped you from cutting her up, however. Your fool's fascination with anatomy was well known to the brotherhood. What became of her, after your butchering?"

The Markulit wysard regarded Michael's profile, the dead-black eye leveled at the hazy sun that now floated within an hour of setting. All around that empty eye the skin was red and swollen.

"It hurts," Ryel murmured. "I know how much."

Michael turned like a hawk, giving Ryel his full face, angrily. "Never liken your pain to mine, Edris' bastard."

"I used her reverently, my lord brother," Ryel said. "She lies among the Highest arrayed in robes of gold, looking as if she only slept, and would waken at a word."

"She will waken. She will." The Red Essern returned to his sea-watch, his profile brooding. Many waves rose and broke upon the castle-walls, perhaps a score. The salt spray wet Michael's face and made his lips twitch, but he chewed them into quiet. "She will return to me. The Master has given His word."

"Dagar's word is trash," Ryel replied. "She's gone, Michael. Sacrificed to a daimon's whim."

The Red Essern pressed his bleeding palms to his empty eyes. "Shut up."

But Ryel persisted. "Was it not enough? Enough that Dagar used you as its instrument and deprived you even of the means to mourn, so that your trapped agony seethes like venom? Enough that you threw away not only your own life to Dagar, but her life as well?"

Michael pushed away from the window, blinking his blood-ringed eyes. "Shut your mouth for once, bastard." Furiously he pushed away from the window, blinking his blood-ringed eyes, fixing them on Ryel's. "I'll tell you a thing you don't know, gypsy. You recall when my Master had his fun with the Sovrena Diara? That was my idea. I suggested it to Dagar, for His pleasure—and you saw how much He delighted in it."

Ryel swallowed dryness. "Diara's suffering was because of you? But why? How could you?"

Michael gritted his teeth in a sneer. "I'd had glimpses of the girl, here and there in the city. Blazing with jewels like an idol, and smiling—always smiling. It was clear to see that she'd never known pain in her life. Once when she was about to enter the temple of Demetropa, she passed by me. Passed so close that I could hear the rustle of her silk, smell her perfume—that rich scent the Dranthene use. This scent."

Before Ryel could stop him, Michael wrenched Priamnor's carnelian flask from his jacket pocket, flung it down, ground it to fragments beneath his heel. "And I could tell that I offended the air around her, for I was the only unwashed in all that city; and as she looked around to discover what it was that reeked so foul, our eyes met, hers and mine; and she gazed upon me so pityingly that I loathed her from that instant, and sought every way I could thereafter to do her harm."

Ryel again felt that strange sensation of too many emotions mingling to flatness. "You twisted thing. But I'm done with fighting you."

"You mean you don't want to see me dead?"

"I'm past that."

Michael only laughed at him. "Think of your own precious life, for you've little time left to enjoy it. Follow me. And if you think to escape—"

"I don't. Lead on."

Through the castle's ruined halls the red wysard led Ryel, coming at last to a little room illuminated only by a single small window through which the declining sun threw the last of its rays. Rigidly facing the dying light with hollow eyes and yellow grin stood the corpse that Dagar had chosen for its temporary dwelling.

"As soon as the sun sets, the Master will return," Michael said. "You have not long, Edris' bastard."

Ryel ignored the insult yet again. "How great your gifts were, brother. How fair a place you might have made this World, had you not been warped from birth by suffering, and then so grossly beguiled."

Michael kept his eyes on what was left of the light as if eager to see it gone, and made no answer.

Ryel continued, ever quietly. "I healed your brother Yvain of the same sickness that torments you—but only by taking that sickness upon myself. I understand what you had to endure."

It seemed that Michael's cruel empty eyes softened, if ever so little. "Yvain," he murmured. But in the next moment he was stone again. "Aren't you everyone's savior, though."

Ryel ignored the sarcasm. He felt tears rising in his eyes, tears that could have birth at long last and flow free; but he blinked them away. "I learned from that suffering. I know the desperation engendered by unremitting pain."

"I've hugged that pain, Markulit," Michael said, his voice harsh as rust. "It has made me great."

Ryel took a step nearer his adversary. "You could have been far greater."

Michael moved away. "You waste your time, half-blood. And your time's all but done. Look." With abrupt savagery he thrust his fist through the blurred little window, smashing the glass. On the horizon the sun balanced between sea and sky as if upon a razor-fine wire that would sever it like a fruit.

In an instant Ryel was at Michael's side. "You're cut. Let me—"

"Keep away, damn you!" Breaking off a long dagger-sliver of the shattered glass, Michael slashed out with it, tearing Ryel across his outstretched palm. The Markulit wysard stared from the bleeding gash to its inflictor, too numb for pain. And in that same insensate interval he realized the chance that was his, and laughed for the joy of it.

"Steel to steel you wanted," he said. "And you got it. My turn, now."

He caught Michael's hand in his own, driving the broken glass into his enemy's flesh, clutching wound against wound, blood to blood. In appalled comprehension Michael struggled with all the strength of his body and his Art. But Ryel held fast, willing away his pain as he caught Michael around the shoulders with his other arm, clinching hard.

"My strength was nothing next to yours, brother. You could have broken me like a reed, once. But not now, and never again."

Their joined hands slipped and clung in mingled blood, and the long lancet of glass squeezed out of their wet grip and smashed against the stones of the floor. The Red Essern fought with all his force, digging his nails into Ryel's open flesh, cursing and invoking the Art of Elecambron, but Ryel willed away the pain, and intoned through his teeth the same spell that had banished Roskerrek's blood-daimon. And by the spell's end Michael had ceased his struggling, and was still.

In the last of the light Ryel let go. Slowly Michael lifted his head. He was pale even to the lips, but his eyes were now clear gray, freed of their Overreaching emptiness—and blank with revelation.

"Ryel." His voice was a broken whisper. "So this was your strength. The greatness of it …"

"We share that strength, now."

The red wysard's lips bitterly cramped. "You mean my blood taints yours."

"Nothing of yours can harm me, my lord brother." And Ryel felt his pulse quicken all the more with the vital force of Lord Aubrel, Builder of Markul, purged of its daimon-poison and made one with his being. With a word of Mastery he closed up Michael's wound and his own, then turned his gaze to the immobile corpse. "Let's end this."

"Yes. Let's." The Red Essern wiped his gore-smeared hand on his sleeve. In the ebbing light his face glowed with warm new humanity, vivid and wondering. "I've never felt this way before. Never this alive, or this clean." He gave a self-scorning inward laugh. "I dislike thinking myself a fool. But I was nothing else." His gray eyes darted to the upright corpse. "I'll put an end to Dagar myself. I learned the words to destroy him, not long ago—he was stupid enough to tell them to me."

Ryel was suddenly and urgently aware of the drowning sun, the stirring corpse. "Say them, and be quick."

The red wysard began the spell, but at his first words the sun slipped under the waves. With a strangled cry he dropped to his knees, then fell to his side unconscious.

Ryel flung himself next to Michael, seeking a pulse at the wrist, the throat; found nothing. Instantly he began a spell, but never finished it. The words dried up in his throat as another voice, dry and dead, cackled in mockery.

"Not fast enough, young blood."

Swaying in the darkness Dagar stood embodied, draped in draggled grave-clothes and cadaverous flesh. "Such a moving scene—the bad brother and the good reconciled at last. But I couldn't have that, young blood. Surely you understand."

Ryel gripped Michael's wrist, uselessly seeking any trace of pulse, any warmth; and with that death he felt his own Art slip from him, drunk up by the night. "Give him back, grave-robber."

"Let him lie, and rot," Dagar said. "It's you I want."

Instantly Ryel said the words that would send Michael's rai into the Void and keep his body from corruption, but Dagar only laughed.

"Say whatever you like, young blood. But you have no power. It's over."

It can't end like this, Ryel thought, too bitterly thwarted to feel any fear. Not with everything left undone. Not with Michael dead, and Edris lost.

The air closed in around him, stifling and hot. Ryel choked, striving for breath as Dagar shuffled nearer.

"Let go of that carrion."

Ryel pulled Michael closer. "Get away from him!"

Dagar's withered mummy swayed and toppled, smashing to reeking half-fleshed fragments of dry bone and yellow fang. In that moment Michael stirred in Ryel's arms, opening his eyes—empty black eyes.

"Well, young blood. Here we are at last," Dagar's voice crooned, issuing from the mouth of the Red Essern. Now the breath was no longer ineffably sweet, but fetid beyond enduring. Ryel tried with all his strength to push away, but in vain.

"One kiss, young blood," Dagar cooed, drawing the wysard down. "And then we'll kiss many another, you and I—all sorts of white girls and sun-browned boys. Kiss, and bite." His grip—not that of impotent claws now, but of fingers overmasteringly muscled—slid to Ryel's neck. "But first I'll enjoy myself awhile in this tall warrior's body. Feel what you've done to me, beauty."

Ryel felt it, stiff and vicious against his groin. Out of Michael's mouth Dagar giggled and whined.

"I'll have you, sweet eyes. All of you. But a kiss, first." His foul mouth drove down upon Ryel's, sucking the last breath from his body.

But suddenly Dagar jerked away with a rending shriek, arching and clawing, spitting obscene rage as he violently released Ryel and turned around. It was then that the wysard saw the dagger-hilt buried to the hilt between Dagar's shoulder-blades, and a veiled stranger who had materialized seemingly from the roiling air, and who must have dealt the blow.

Above the concealing folds of a Shrivrani headcloth, eyes hard as iron met Ryel's.

"I've bought you time, sorcerer. Use it."

That harsh command slackened Ryel's pain, and lit his memory. It seemed as if the stranger's voice awakened another self, one immeasurably strong. Leaping to his feet, the wysard shouted out more words from the silver book, words that would banish Dagar back to the Void. At each word Dagar writhed and screamed until the black-clad body cramped in a final throe, and was still.

Ryel stood over the immobile human husk of Michael's being, too spent to do anything more than draw breath. He fixed his eyes upon the dagger embedded in the body's back, then remembered how it got there, and looked round for his savior, lifting his voice as much as he could.

"Where are you? Who did this?"

But no answer came, and Ryel had no time to consider the origin of his deliverance. He could feel danger in the walls, swelling and throbbing like a heart about to burst.

"I won't leave you," he said to Michael. "We'll get out of this together." Gently he drew the weapon from the Red Essern's body. But when the wysard tried to lift his Art-brother to carry him out, he found himself powerless even to stand upright. And he realized, with sickening despair, that he had been deprived of his powers since the sun's disappearance, and had never gotten them back. That Dagar had escaped him and was still free, and that Michael was irrevocably dead, and he himself doomed. As he bowed under the burden of those terrible truths, the silver spell-book slid from an inner pocket of Michael's jacket, hitting the floor with a mocking little chime.

"This can't be all I was meant for," the wysard whispered as he sank down at Michael's side. "This can't be the last. I wanted to grow old."

He had very much wanted to live to the age of thirty. He had wanted to look again into the sea-colored eyes of Diara Dranthene. To kiss his mother's hands again, and talk in the dawn with his sister. To urge Jinn to a breathless gallop over the steppes of Risma. To lie in the sun with Priam. To hear Edris call him whelp, brat, fool.

"It can't be over." But he knew it was. With unsteady fingers he smoothed the dead face's agonized lines, shut the staring lead-gray eyes, untangled the scarlet skeins of hair. As a final gesture he bent down and touched his cheek to Michael's in the warrior's way, feeling its coldness match his own, and then pressed a kiss on the pulseless temple in the Steppes way of men who shared blood. Using up the last of his strength he lay down next to his Art-brother, and with dazed bemusement observed that all around him stones were falling, walls toppling, flames shooting bloodily upward.

"Over," he murmured a last time, sheltering his face against the dead man's shoulder, closing his smarting eyes against the thickening smoke. "Damn."

Chapter Seventeen

"There is life after death."

He said it aloud, to convince himself further of the truth. The afterlife was very pleasant if a little chilly, and smelled of salt air. Moreover, it had a loud ocean, and at least one other person.

"Life, he calls it," this individual said, neither distinctly nor cordially. "Easily pleased, ain't you."

Ryel propped himself on an unsteady elbow. Apparently fires were permitted in the afterlife, for his uncivil companion had built a small one, very smoky. Farther off a great one blazed on a clifftop.

The wysard remembered, then. He rolled over on his back, shutting his eyes. "Michael."

"Who's that?" the stranger asked in a voice all croak and gravel.

"My brother," Ryel replied tightly. "Burning up, there on the crag."

"Brother?" The stranger gurgled a laugh. "A pretty close one, from what I saw."

Ryel's memory crawled like revulsed flesh. "What were you doing in the castle?"

"Looking for somethin' to steal. You and your red-headed friend seem to have gotten there ahead of me."

Ryel bristled. "We didn't come to rob."

"Well, I did." The thief turned his attention to a heap of objects at his side. "And I got away with a good haul. A couple of swords, and a whole bag full of drugs and gold and what all. Nice drugs, from the looks of them." He held up an object that glinted whitely in the firelight. "And then there's this here little silver book—"

Overjoyed and enraged Ryel lunged forward. "That's mine." As swiftly as he might he rounded the fire and grabbed first the book, then his sword, then seized his journeybag's shoulder-strap.

But the disobliging brigand held on tight to that part of his booty. "You owe me," he growled. "Wasn't it I what dragged you out of a burnin' hell?"

The wysard in the interval of tug and pull assessed his adversary. It was hard to ascertain his height, for he sat cloaked and crouching in the sand, and impossible to judge his face, veiled as it was in that dirty headcloth. His eyes' color seemed a bloodshot gray-green by the firelight, ringed with livid bruises, and his hands gripped the journeybag like grim death.

"I don't want nothin' but the drugs," he said.

Ryel held fast. "You've had far too many already, from the looks of you."

"You owe me." With a grunted curse the robber wrested the bag from Ryel, and rummaged in its depths. Finding the lacquer case, he broke it open, brutally careless.

"Now this here looks promisin'," he croaked, holding one of the phials up to the light of the blazing castle.

"Leave it alone. It's pure essence of celorn."

But Ryel's urgency only caused the thief to uncork the little bottle at once, and slip it under his veil. The wysard lunged forward to halt the suicide, but the brigand shoved him away even as he drank.

"You fool, you'll die of that!" Ryel cried.

"No such luck," the bandit muttered, withdrawing the phial and thrusting it into his shirt. "That was good stuff, sorcerer. I was cravin' it sore."

"You outright fool," the wysard breathed. "How much did you drink?"

The stranger coughed thickly. "A drop or two. Enough to kill at least a couple of my demons, this night."

"Who are you?"

"Make it worth my while and I'll tell you."

Furiously the wysard replied. "Didn't you just steal enough celorn to beggar a Sovran, and stun a hundred men?"

"It's good for starters," the stranger shrugged. "Got any xantal?"

"You're out of your mind." The wysard could smell the drug's rankness past the foul breath that issued from behind the veil, and see its effect on those ugly yellow-green eyes, uglier now with the near-invisibility of the pupils. "I don't understand how you're still alive, much less conscious."

The stranger's ugly eyes fixed blearily on the fire. "I'm tough, magician. Tougher'n I wish I was, lots o' times."

Ryel hazarded a breathless guess. "Do you know of a man named Guyon Desrenaud?"

The brigand never blinked, but seemed to deliberate awhile. When he spoke his gargled voice held indifference and scorn. "Huh. Starklander. A drunk and a whore-chaser. Friend of yours, is he?"

Ryel persisted. "Do you know where he is?"

"He's dead, that's where he is," the robber answered. "He's been a long time dead."

The wysard felt the blood ebb out of his heart. "How did he die?"

The stranger's gum-rimmed eyes assessed Ryel equivocally. "What's it to you, sorcerer?"

"Why do you call me that?"

A gurgled laugh in reply. "You couldn't be nothin' else, judgin' by what I saw up there." And he gestured toward the clifftop. "Any nitwit watching you up there could tell that you aren't no stranger to gramarye."

"Gramarye?"

"A good ol' Northern term for what you think you're so good at. Magic."

Ryel had never liked that word. "You're no stranger to gramarye yourself."

"I've picked up a bit here and there. Nothin' as fancy as yours."

"Tell me about Desrenaud."

"Give me a reason, magus."

"It means much. More than you can know. Tell me."

The brigand coughed awhile before replying, to Ryel's extreme impatience. "He died poisoned, warlock. This place was the death of him. Don't mourn the fool—he was glad when it came."

Ryel would not believe it. He persisted. "Lord Guyon once loved a lady of Almancar, I hear. Belphira Deva they called her."

Above the dirty cowl the robber's hideous eyes met the wysard's in a hard lock. "I don't know nothin' about dead people, magus." He quivered, then, as if from either the drugs' grip or the night's chill, and turned away.

Ryel caught the stranger's sleeve, angrily. "Who told you Lady Belphira was dead?"

"What, are you goin' to bring her back? That'd be a sweet trick, sorcerer." The robber struck away the wysard's hand. "I'm tired of talkin'." He fell back onto the sand, his eyes shut. "Go 'way." Another moment and he was unconscious.

Ryel gazed down at the motionless figure. "So this is what became of you," the wysard whispered.

He knew beyond any doubt that he had found Guyon Desrenaud. He knew by report the uncommon stature, now uncloaked and at length in the sand; knew by instinct a brother in the Art, or at least a half-brother; knew by his heart's certainty the man who had gone through fire to save his life. But he would make absolutely sure nonetheless. He would see for himself how much remained of the beauty that had stunned Agenor's imperial court, and been the admiration of the North.

With greatest care Ryel unwrapped the Shrivrani headcloth, unveiling the face; at once recoiled.

A solid mass of sores and suppurating growths covered the face above and below the eyes. The nose was all but eaten away, the ears were no more than stumps. The disfigured features twitched as if in sudden sharp torment, and the encrusted slash that was the mouth grimaced, revealing white teeth gleaming and even, horribly incongruous amid the pustulent degeneration. Sickened, Ryel uncovered the rest of the head, only to find the same leprous growth enveloping the scalp, crowding out the hair save for random hanks dark with dirt.

Quelling his disgust with Markulit stoicism, Ryel sat back and studied the ghastly flesh-wreckage that had been Guy Desrenaud—but only for a time, before other concerns made him stand up and walk down to the water, stopping only when the tide-rush reached his ankles. At his back he could feel the raging fire on the crags, while before him the moon was rising out of the sea, pale and cold. His raw pain flinched at the salt of the sea, and the sky crushed him.

A thread of mist whirled downward out of the air, and another upward out of the sea. The conjoined vapors took on a semblance vaguely manlike, weirdly enlivened by two glowing gem-purple eyes.

Ryel watched, stupidly amazed. "Pukk?"

The flickering entity seemed to incline what approximated its head.

"What do you want, vapor?"

"Tos ervy ou."

"You're too late. Michael's dead."

"No."

Ryel trembled, but at last with hope. "What do you mean?"

"Th eredhai redone didn otburn."

Ryel stared into the srih's refulgent violet eye-spaces. "But he was—" Suddenly, electrically, the wysard remembered. "Yes. Of course. Fire and rock cannot harm him. They're his elements." But then he looked back at the burning ruin, his sorrow sea-vast. "Still, it's too late. Whole as Michael's body might be, it's dead."

Pukk wavered in contradiction. "Hel ives. Heis inMar kul."

Ryel started. "Markul? But how?"

"Ibrou ghthim the re. Toyour ho use. Helie sin yo urbed."

The wysard felt his mouth falling open. "My bed? Why in the name of All did you put a dead man in my bed, instead of in the Jade Tower where his body would be preserved? He'll only decay, and then—"

"Ther edhair edone's bod ywilln otrot," Pukk said in his infuriating burr.

The wysard stood immobile, the tide lapping at his knees. He felt the sand sliding beneath him, and fought to stay upright. He understood. "Michael Essern is in the Void."

To the wysard's knee-weakening relief, the wraith seemed to nod.

"But how?"

The wraith guttered. "Ask Th eOne Im mor tal."

For a long moment Ryel felt intolerably stupid. "The One Immortal," he whispered at last, dazed by the enlightenment. "Riana of Zinaph, of the First of Markul?"

"Wha toth er?"

Not even Pukk's insolence could shake the wysard's amazement. "Then all the fables were true." But then indignation overcame awe. "And if she indeed exists, why did she not come to my help long before? Why did she not stop Dagar from the outset?"

Pukk guttered indifferently. "Askth eIm mor talOne."

"Tell me what became of Dagar," Ryel demanded. "Is he in the Void, too?"

"No," Pukk breathed.

Ryel let his head fall slowly back as he let out a breath that seemed to have been trapped in him for years. "Then he's dead. At last."

"No tde ad."

The cold air of the night prickled in Ryel's nape as his head snapped to attention again. "Not dead? Then Dagar has … has entered the body of another?"

Pukk again appeared to give assent.

"By every—whose body? And where?"

Pukk made no reply.

Faint though the waves ebbed around his knees, Ryel felt as if they would knock him down. "Is he still as strong?"

"No tas bef ore," Pukk replied. The wraith hovered indecisively. "Doyo uwis hanyth ingelse?"

"No," Ryel said, heartily tired of Pukk's conversational style. "I want nothing, you—you blur. Vanish."

Pukk melted into the moonlight. Wearily Ryel returned to the fire. Wrapping Edris' cloak about him, he sat down next to Desrenaud. He felt very cold, and without thinking he commanded the fire to burn brighter. When it would not, he resignedly gathered an armful of sticks and threw them on, and for a very long time sat looking into first the blaze, then the embers, reliving the battle of the day, the horror of the night. He was hungry and athirst and shivering, but those bodily sufferings were as nothing to his mind's torment.

"It isn't over," he whispered.

It might never be over. Dagar might survive forever, far past Ryel's lifetime. Might eternally slip from one embodiment to the next, moving from strength to strength, regaining his lost powers, re-wreaking his old evil.

"You might have stopped him, Lady Riana," the wysard murmured, rage heating his heart. "But apparently your existence is far too rarefied to concern itself with anything as inconsiderable as a World—much less a life risked to save it."

Ryel would not think of what might have been, or what had to be. He lay down and dissolved into sleep, the sea crashing in his ears.

*****

Soft kisses nuzzled his face. He kissed back.

"Diara." But the Sovrena of Destimar never had such furry lips or large teeth. Opening his eyes, Ryel wakened wide.

"Jinn!" Wrapping his arms around her neck, he let her pull him upright as he buried his face in her mane, dizzy with consolation. "I never thought to see you again, little beauty. I was sure I'd lost you."

Even as he rejoiced he examined her for signs of harm, and to his relief found none. He then searched through her saddlebags and ascertained, to his strong surprise, that nothing was missing. Only then did he remember Desrenaud, and realize that the Northerner was gone. The beach up and down was empty. Ryel's next action was to check his journeybag and see how much had been stolen. But everything was where it should be, except the phial of celorn, some of his gold coin, and a flask of Dryven whisky, gift of Dame Gwynned.

You've gone back to Ormala, Ryel thought. But you require my help now, as much as I needed yours there in the castle.

The last thing the wysard wanted was to track down Desrenaud in that infamous City, but he could not desert the man who had saved his life; the man that Belphira Deva loved, and that Lady Gwynned called grandson, and that Jorn Alleron deemed a hero. Shutting his eyes, the wysard cleared his mind completely. With every breath he drew he felt the strength of his Art return to him, embuing his body with fresh life, his mind with new-found force. He suddenly realized that he was very hungry, and in killing need of chal.

"Breakfast," he said, and a few words more. In another moment a Steppes feast appeared magnificently dished on a low table of precious wood, amidst a bright island of soft carpets and cushions. More than a little pleased with this lavish display of his srihs' obedience, Ryel put all thought of the future from him, and enjoyed his first food in days with leisurely pleasure. The air was already warm, deliciously fresh, and only once or twice did a whiff of smoldering cinders remind Ryel of the annihilated castle at his back, and the events of the night before.

"Try your worst, bone-lord," the wysard said, pouring another cup of chal, stretching in well-fed contentment. "You couldn't have me, and you won't get Michael. I'll bring him back, along with Edris."

The Red Essern's claymore had been left behind by Desrenaud along with Ryel's belongings, and in all reverence the wysard drew it from its sheath and read the inscription aloud, rendering its noble runes into approximate rhyme.

"Earth for my resting, my rescue and freeing,

Water to wash my sick spirit of stain,

Fire to drive out the dross of my being,

Air sweet to breathe when I breathe it again.

Then will my heart's thirst at last know a quenching,

Then will my soul be as steel tried in flame,

Then will I face my self's storm without flinching,

Then will I know my true land, my real name."

Silently Ryel remembered the red wysard, his brother even to the blood. "This weapon I will return to you, Michael Essern," he said. "And may our next fight be a friendly one." Closing his eyes he lifted the gleaming blade in both hands, and touched its incised flat to his forehead.

*****

Even with Jinn's swiftness Ryel did not reach Ormala until nearly dark, but long before that he had detected its near presence by the greasy gray-brown pall that hung in the air miles down the coast. As he drew ever nearer to the City, he remembered all that he had heard concerning it.

Markul the Good lay mist-hidden and high-walled in trackless steppe; Elecambron the Cruel stood proud and cold, moated in the midst of a great frozen sea that swallowed up into its icy depths every interloper not aspirant or adept; Tesba the Gentle concealed itself in lush jungle rendered impenetrable by both nature and Art. But Ormala the Vile welcomed all comers; Ormala the Foul embraced every charlatan, every mountebank; Ormala the Unclean gathered to itself the scum and offscourings of the Art's desecration. The Ormalan Art was a farrago of base cunning and blatant deceit, cheap fakery and mumming sham. Lacking the skill necessary to command spirit-servants of the Outer World to serve their needs, ignorant of any Mastery, incapable of Crossing, the adepts of Ormala—or rather inepts, as they were scornfully termed by the other Cities—were constrained to other shifts, all of them low. Of all the Art-brotherhood only Ormalans trafficked with the World, dealing in love-philtres, elixirs of youth, communications with the dead, predictions of the future, alchemy, necromancy, astrology, flummeries of cards and crystals and candles—gross impostures that either enriched their practitioners or destroyed them, with the latter fate most frequent. By reason of their flagrant turpitude, Ormalan sorcerers were regularly persecuted and done to death in the World; adepts of the other three Cities either avoided dealings with mere men, or had Art enough to evade any threat.

And Ormala's promiscuity did not confine itself to debasers of the Art. Many were the World's offscourings who made their home in its reeking alleyways—escaped felons, faithless mercenaries, swindlers and rogues of every species, prostitutes of every kind, all of them enslaved by drugs mortally dangerous, drugs for which they would commit any treachery however atrocious or obscene. Their prey of choice were the deluded or desperate folk who came to the City seeking supernatural remedies for their hardships and maladies; and such easy victims were only too plentiful. For these and many other reasons Ormala was considered by both the World and the Art-brotherhood to be one of the most dangerous places on earth, more perilous even than the beast-infested plague-ridden southern swamplands of the Azm Chak.

"You've been strong to survive it, Guy Desrenaud," Ryel thought as he rode ever closer to the grimy skyline. A contrary breeze blew the smell of the town to him, and he stiffened at the stench.

Ormala had no walls or gates, but sprawled raggedly along the dirty littered oceanside whose waterline was marked by foam as greasily discolored as the air that hung above the City. Only a few people were on the beach: a woman mutteringly raving, her wild sunken eyes fixed on the sun now dissolving in miasmatic fog; three thugs in drunken brawl; an old man picking among the refuse. A couple of starved black dogs raced along the filthy foam, yipping and howling.

Ryel entered the City guarded by strong charms to protect himself and Jinn. From his saddle's vantage-point he scanned the streets and their denizens, searching for Desrenaud. But he encountered no tall veil-masked brigand among the crowded squalid lanes; only debased and inhuman ugliness exposed without shame, and hopeless despair nakedly vulnerable.

Deeper into the City he went, deeper into the misery and the evil. In a corner two ruffians tormented a young girl, grabbing at the bundle she clung to weeping and pleading. At once Ryel leapt down from Jinn and drove the attackers away with his sword-flat and a few Art-words, then turned to the girl.

"Are you hurt?"

"No." She thrust the bundle at him. "But my baby. They killed my baby—"

She burst into hysterical tears. Gentle and horrified Ryel took the limp little burden from her; examining it only a moment before covering it up again. It was grotesquely malformed, beyond any help; death had come as a deliverance, and all too clearly had come several days before.

"You must save him," she said; and her eyes were mad. "Bring him back to life. Heal him."

"There is nothing I or anyone else can do."

She snatched the dead child from him; and now her crazed eyes glittered, but not with grief. "Then do you have any drugs?"

He stared at her. "Drugs?"

"Mandragora," she said impatiently. "Hrask. Quiabintha. I'll take whatever you've got."

"I don't—"

"I'll do anything you want." And she named some of those things, every one of them appalling, until Ryel waved her to silence.

"I know you're in pain," he said. "But the drugs you want will only make it worse. I can heal you."

"I don't need your healing," she snapped. "I need hrask. Xantal."

"No." Gently he laid his hand on her shoulder. "Only let me—"

Her features, a horrible mixture of fresh girl and haggard trull, twisted in hatred, and she slapped his hand away, cursing foully. Before Ryel could stop her she darted away down the alley, the infant corpse wedged under her arm like a dirty packet of rags.

So this is the death after life, the wysard thought, numbly watching. A hand clutched at his sleeve and he turned about, ready to strike. But the one who had touched him cowered away with a placating grin, ducking his head and blinking.

"Sorry. Sorry. No harm." With a wriggling bow the creature—it was a man, Ryel knew, but the rattish look of its pointed teeth and sharp long nose and recessive brow and chin was disconcerting—sidled near. "That wasn't her brat, you know. She found it dead in the gutter. Used it to elicit pity. That's her way. A depraved child."

The wysard put his hand to his dagger. "What do you want?"

The stranger grinned again, frantically servile now. "It's not what I want. It's what you want."

"I don't understand," Ryel replied shortly. "Let me pass."

"Secrets of the universe," the other hissed, peering about as if for spies. "You know."

The wysard was about to dismiss the fellow as mad, but a glance at the rags he wore made him hesitate. They were Ormalan robes, tattered now and stained, but for all their squalor recognizable as the garb of an Art-brother. At the neck of the robe the flat head of a viper protruded, regarding Ryel with vicious black beads of eyes.

Ryel looked from it to his accoster, loathing both. "Secrets, you say. Tell me one."

The Ormalan's rat-eyes twinkled, ugly in that pockstrewn pallor. "They cost. Five gold pieces for each."

"Too high," Ryel said, turning away.

The stickily furtive fingers clutched his arm once more. "Wonders. All you've ever dreamed of. Think of it. Four gold pieces only."

Ryel considered. He had money enough, and this Ormalan might actually be offering something worth the buying. "Two."

"Do I look a fool, sir? Two coins only, for treasures infinite?"

Ryel turned away again. The Ormalan cursed most foully.

"Rob me, then. Rob me blind, and blame it on your blue eyes. Two coins."

Ryel shrugged wearily. "All right. Three." He handed over the money, which the Ormalan avidly snatched, squintingly assessed, and immediately pocketed.

"Here. Don't let anyone see." Ryel felt something cool and smooth pressed into his hand. In another instant the Ormalan scurried away, his rags a-trail behind him as he rounded a corner.

"Now what—" Ryel held the object up to view it clearer. It was a little slender tube of clear glass, half-full of amber liquid like honey. The phial was made in a single piece, and to get at its contents Ryel would have to break off its top. "Some unclean deadly bane, no doubt," he said. "I'll save it for a special occasion."

He dropped it into his coat-pocket and swung onto Jinn's back, progressing deeper into the City. No one else challenged him as he progressed, although the atmosphere of danger deepened with every step. Faces became more rodent-like and ravaged the further he went, and many a shifting eye fell covetously upon his Kaltiri blade and sleek horse; but no hand was so bold as to reach for either. The wysard's Art was like a bright light burning clean, driving all danger before him; and though danger skulked in every byway, and though each gang of carousers and blackguards held up its torches to his face, none offered him so much as a word, but stood back in silence as he passed.

"Yes. You're all at bay now," he murmured to himself. "But for how long, before your Master returns?"

Strident music caught his ear, and then the uproar of coarse voices joining in song coarser still, braying from the interior of what appeared to be a drinking-haunt. Ryel would have passed it by, had he not observed one of the horses tethered there. It was a great black hunter, and blazoned on its saddle-skirts was a full-rayed golden sun set in a disk of green, half-obscured by a seemingly deliberate layer of dirt.

"A bold device," the wysard murmured. "I expected no less, Guyon de Grisainte Desrenaud." With a swift caress to the horse's coal-colored mane, Ryel pushed open the door.

The air closed in around him and squeezed his breath from his body. For a panicked instant he thought Dagar had returned, but soon realized that what oppressed him was the narcotic fug of smoke that misted the rafters—fumes of burnt mandragora and celorn-root mixed with the reeking heat of too many fevered unwashed bodies, hovering over the din of shrieking laughter, curses and shouts. Groping for the Transcendence phial, Ryel took a covert breath of its rescuing fragrance as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and the haze, and his ears to the uproar.

Sputtering lamps set in wall-niches and a fire in the middle of the room were the only light. The oily gleam fell on a hell of fiendlike faces, brutalized and wasted, ringed like a circle of skulls about a woman that danced amid the yowling music and hoarse singing and hand-clapping. She was naked save for a gaudy scarf around her hips, and her nipples and fingernails were gilded; her hair hung down her dusky shoulders like dirty black fleece, and her body was lean and worn with excess. At the sight of her Ryel shuddered. She writhed like a guttering flame, hot and vicious, and suddenly her painted lewd eyes fixed on his—sea-blue eyes, Almancarian blue, purely clear as Diara's. Beholding his horror, she flung back her head and laughed; all of her teeth were gold.

The wysard turned his back on her, his heart pounding hard. He did not know how long he stood there, trapped in the noise.

Hot bare skin shouldered him. "You're rude. I was dancing for you."

Ryel glanced down at the gold-tipped breast insistently nudging his arm; looked away. "Leave me alone. Please."

"Not until I tell your fortune, tall lovely." Clearing a nearby table with a sweep of her hand, she dipped a gilded finger into a puddle of stale beer and traced a pattern on the greasy wood. "So. Do you see it, beauty?"

Dagar had called him that. Ryel thought only to get away. "If you want money—"

She waved away the offer, scorningly. "Not one dirty penny, sweetheart. For my own pleasure I'll evoke the powers arcane. There's adventure in that bold face of yours; high purpose in that comely form. This is no place for you, lovely. I'll find out where you've been, and where you're next to go."

The wysard had to smile, but only halfway. "That'll take Art."

"I have all Arts," she said. Her voice was light and cool, at once caressing and indifferent; soft as it was, somehow managed to overcome every other sound in that ear-splitting room. "Indulge me, bold warrior." The woman examined the random beer-scatterings with nonchalant interest, her brilliant eyes amused as she pointed from drop to drop with a gleaming forefinger.

"Look here. The past, first. Ah. Two that you love, he and she, highborn both, here." The long golden fingernail shifted to another splash. "A great enemy and cruel here, great enough to tear the World to pieces once, and still strong. Here, one taller than you lies lifeless in a high tower; or does he? Here..."

Ryel seized her wrist. "How can you know these things?"

Her beautiful eyes gleamed up at him, her gold teeth flashed. "Why, my Art, brother. My strong and wondrous Art." Shaking him off with an ease that mocked his grip's insistence, she continued. "The future, now. Wrongs righted. A life once lost found again."

The wysard swallowed desert. "Anyone could tell me such lies."

"Let them tell you lies, then, like to this." Her gilt-nailed forefinger tapped the midmost part of her strange random design. "Two realms imperiled. A red general and a white queen doomed in the North; to the South, a Sovran and his sister greatly endangered. And somewhere, the great Enemy undestroyed, seeking its strength again."

Ryel caught the woman's hand, roughly. "Who are you?"

She grinned goldly. "Why, a witch, sweet brother. The best of all. But let me finish." Again she idly peered at her design. "You can avert the harm, with help. Help like to this." With Ryel's unwilling hand clasped inescapably in hers, she indicated the final drop. "He fled you, but to no avail. You'll find him again. Soon. Now."

"Who is it you mean?"

The witch licked her lips savoringly. "The one that took you out of the fire."

Ryel caught her arm. "How could you have known that? Where is he?"

She shrugged him off, and obliterated her design with a careless swipe. "Listen."

At the nether reaches of the room a snarling uproar had broken out at a gaming-table, and one voice amid the brabble caught Ryel's ear and made it twitch. He knew that voice—dryly male, neither high nor low, pure highland Ralnahrian, unforgettable.

At his side the woman laughed. "There. He's yours—for now. Until our next, Ryel Mirai."

He turned to her, startled by the sound of his name; but she had vanished. The brawl had ended as quickly as it began, with one of the dicers limping from the room clutching his knife-gored side while another was lugged out motionless and the rest resumed their sport. Ryel could see nothing but bent heads and shoulders as the gamesters huddled over the table once again. But then one of their number straightened up to leave, having either lost all or won much. Very tall and straight he stood among that stunted rout, clad in the black uniform of a Hryeland cavalry officer, dustily worn and stripped of its silver insignia; for headgear he wore a Shrivrani cowl that concealed his every feature, save for the eyes.

"Guy Desrenaud," the wysard whispered. Instantly the tall man turned in his direction, and their eyes met. Ryel felt himself engulfed in the cold waters of a winter sea, turbulent gray-green. But only momentarily before Desrenaud flung on his threadbare dust-colored cloak, and shouldered his way past the crowd and outside.

Ryel followed. The street was empty and quiet, and the moon rode disdainfully aloof amid the dirty haze. Again he heard that voice known yet strange to him, now close at his ear.

"Listen."

Ryel stood still, and heard a faint furtive scurrying.

"I don't know how many of 'em there are," Desrenaud said, still in a whisper. "Back to back, quick!"

Ryel had barely time to unsheathe his sword when five men rushed at them from the black corners; but as they came nearer he saw that they resembled men only in that they stood upright. Loathingly through the darkness he traced their stunted twisted bodies, stony eyes, slavering slits of mouth. Two of them sprang ratlike at Desrenaud, daggers aflash in the moonlight, but at a yelled word of the Northerner's they dropped their weapons screaming, and as they fled Ryel saw that the knife-hilts were glowing hot. In his split-second of immobility the other three leapt on him, throwing him to the reeking cobblestones, their fingers like thorns in his face. But their crazed strength was nothing to his Art, and in three words' speaking two of them lay senseless; the other had been run through the back seconds earlier.

Desrenaud wiped the blood from his sword-blade on a corpse's cloak. "You killed those two?"

Ryel shook his head. "I used a stun-spell."

"That was stupid. They're not human; they're hardly even animal." As he spoke, he gave each of the unconscious forms a hard kick to the head, and Ryel heard their necks snap. But what most concerned the wysard was the magic he had witnessed.

"You know the Art."

Desrenaud shrugged. "Street tricks. Nothing special." Picking up some twigs from the gutter, he slurred something, and they burst into flame; holding the improvised torch to Ryel's face he shook his cowled head.

"You're torn up pretty badly. Lucky they didn't get to your eyes. Don't you hurt?"

Ryel put his hand to his cheek, and felt a row of punctures; rubbed dark wetness between his fingers. "A little."

"You run a strong risk of poison, so let the cuts bleed. Salt water's good for wounds--let's get down to the beach. I took a slice of my own athwart the back of my hand."

They rode through Ormala's reeling nightmare labyrinth down to the shore. When the town lay far behind them Desrenaud stopped, breathing deep of the salt air as if to drive out the smoke-choked din of the gambling hell, and the teeming stench of the streets, and the rank unwashed reek of the men—or whatever they were—who'd attacked him.

"Finally—something clean," he said. "Come on."

They dismounted in the high grass, leaving their horses there as they walked down to the sands to the sea's edge and washed their wounds. Ryel flinched at the sharp brine on his torn skin, and smoothed away the injuries with the Art's help. Desrenaud watched enviously over the Shrivrani veil.

"Neat trick, that. Care to try it on me?"

He reached out his hand, and Ryel gave an involuntary start after unwrapping it. "By every god—you're cut to the bone."

Desrenaud snorted. "Aren't you observant. I think they even ripped a few tendons."

"How can you stand the pain?"

"Drugs, friend," Desrenaud replied. "Very good drugs, and a great many of them." Beneath the veil his mouth gave a twitch. "It smarts, though, I'll admit."

Ryel examined the wound with increasing unease. "You're bleeding like a river."

"I was rather hoping you'd take care of that, magus."

Ryel made the Art staunch the blood, knit up the severed sinews, close the lacerated flesh, smooth the slashed skin. After the spell took, Desrenaud flexed his fingers in offhand approval.

"Not bad. A little stiff."

Ryel almost laughed. "It'll pass."

"This'll loosen it up. Here, sorcerer, have a drink." From his coat pocket Desrenaud produced a silver flask that Ryel at once recognized as the one given him at parting by the Markessa of Lanas Crin; drank deep, and passed it to the wysard. "This is your property, I believe. Thanks for the loan."

Since they'd left Ormala's boundary Desrenaud had been speaking in his native tongue instead of Hryelesh. It made him sound far less ignorant. Ryel reflected that not until Desrenaud had he heard the true highland accent of Ralnahr. It was a rough yet not unpleasing tang, clipped close in some places, drawn out long in others—wild if not savage, and doubtless at its best when chanting some grim saga of blood-feud and rapine, or giving tune to a stark ballad of fatal love. It occurred to the wysard that women might find it very attractive.

The liquid Dryven fire leapt in Ryel's veins. "It isn't really mine," he said, warmed now. "I had it as a gift of a great lady."

"Lucky man," Desrenaud said. "A rare taste in spirits she's got. I wouldn't mind making her acquaintance."

"You already have," Ryel replied. "Her name is Gwynned de Grisainte."

A silence. Then, slowly, "And how does my grandame?"

"She's well, save for her concern for you," the wysard replied.

"Hm." Desrenaud took back the flask again, drank, and thrust it into his pocket. "We likely need to talk, magus. Let's to my house."

They continued a little further down the beach, to a place where rocks towered in rough spikes and cones black against the moon. Desrenaud picked up a stick, and said the word to light it; failed and cursed.

"It's wet," he said, handing it to Ryel. "Here, make yourself useful."

Not too patiently the wysard turned the wet wood into a blazing torch, and found another branch of driftwood to devise one for himself. "Where are we going?"

"Here." Desrenaud indicated a great rock split long ago into two chunks of stone ten feet high, now drifted a dozen feet apart. Logs smoothed to pale yellow and cast up by storm and tide roofed and walled the split, their gaps thatched and caulked with flotsam. "We're home."

Wrapped in his—Edris'—cloak, Ryel watched the fitful leaping of the fire Desrenaud had kindled against the sea-chill. There was little else to look at; the hut was windowless, and contained almost nothing. He listened to the sigh of the tide-wind, and thought of his homeland's yats. "We both are far from the places we belong."

"I'm not complaining. Especially not now." Desrenaud yanked at the Shrivrani veil, baring his head. Ryel had already seen more than enough to sicken, and would have looked away. But he was astonished by a face compellingly fine, notwithstanding its residue of rash and blotches.

"Hah. Surprise, sorcerer," Desrenaud said, running both hands through tawny-gold hair now grown back thick, if greasily unkempt. "I woke up the other morning and wondered why my face itched so much. Crawling with fire-ants it felt. Then the skin began to peel, and I pulled it away like bark. Whole blistered waxy crusts of it. I didn't think I'd have a face left, and I never thought I'd get my nose back, or my ears. You're good, sorcerer. Really good."

After his shock had ebbed, Ryel observed that Desrenaud was indeed as Belphira Deva had described him, regardless of the passage of years. The eyes were still steady and subtle despite exhaustion, the brow yet clear, the mouth unweakened in defiance of Ormala's ravages. But despite these similarities to his former self, the Northerner's pallor held the waxen hue of the grave, and the hollowed places in his cheeks were the grave's. Ryel saw them, and was troubled.

"I did what I could to help you," the wysard said. "But you are not yet free, Guyon Desrenaud."

"What makes me your concern, sorcerer?"

"What made me yours, there in the castle?"

Desrenaud lifted a shoulder. "Even as I said. You lived. Had you not been breathing, I'd have left you there with your red-headed friend.

"No other reason than that?"

"It's enough, to my mind," Desrenaud replied. "I've a dislike of violent death."

"So I saw, back in the alleyway," Ryel replied, with not a little irony. "Those things we fought—what were they?"

Desrenaud grimaced a smile. "Why, Ormala's oldest citizens, sorcerer. The hidden aristocracy. Stay in the City long enough and grow fond of the wrong drugs, and you'll join it—turn from man to animal, living like a gutter-rat, sneaking out at night to scavenge and murder. Some say they acquire a taste for human flesh; now and again a corpse is found at dawn gnawed in places. Which reminds me—I'm starving. Since you're so great a magus, have a few of your ghost-slaves bring us some dinner."

Ryel laughed, but not long. "I had thought you might entertain me, since I'm a guest in your house."

"Very well. Remember, you asked for it." And Desrenaud brought down a basket from an improvised shelf, setting it before Ryel with a flourish. The wysard tried and rejected chalk-dense bread, rindy salty cheese; had no stomach for the cloying sticky sweets or the tainted wine or withered wormy fruit, and would not so much as touch the meat, which looked and smelled like very dead dog.

"When I asked for food, I expected something edible," the wysard said, wincing at the vile tastes in his mouth as he set the basket well aside. "Since you've provided shelter, I'll see to dinner. Ask for whatever you will."

Desrenaud wanted several things, all of them Northern and plain but choice, which appeared even as he called for them, dished in silver and crystal on a low table of Cosran lacquer draped with a cloth of white and gold damask.

The Ralnahrian blurted an underbreath oath as the food appeared, but recovered as quickly. "A neat sleight, conjurer." He touched the edge of a plate, satisfying himself as to its reality. "But I'll wager your spirit-cookery tastes like dust and ashes, for all its tempting smell—that is, if it has any taste at all."

Ryel smiled. "You're welcome to find out."

Desrenaud tried a sliver of salmon, a slice of grouse, some of the dressed fresh greens; took a sip or two of wine. "Now this suits me," he said, falling to without hesitancy now. "Of all Arts I envy this one most."

"It is the least of all," Ryel replied.

"Not when you're starving, sorcerer."

"You could learn such Art, with a little study. I've observed you're double-handed."

Desrenaud filled his glass with straw-gold Masir, tasted approvingly; shook his head. "I'm no scholar. What gramarye I know I had from my grandame the Markessa, or picked up bit by dirty bit in Ormala. But I've no desire to speak of that. Tell me what you're here for—you must want something, or you'd not have hunted me down. And I wouldn't mind knowing who you are."

"My name is Ryel Mirai, and I'm of the—"

"Steppes," Desrenaud said. "Rismai, from the sounds of you. I don't doubt your City's Markul—your Art's too clean and strong for anyplace else."

The wysard could not help being impressed. "You're an apt diviner."

"And what might you know of me?"

"That you have a complicated history, Guy Desrenaud."

"Yours seems to have twisted into it.," the earl replied. "That was a Red Essern that almost killed you."

"Yes."

Desrenaud nodded. "Singular looks, his; hard to forget once seen. There's but two in the world, and he was the younger one, the same age as me. I'd heard of him while in Hallagh, though we never met; he'd left the Barrier before I arrived, gone to study gramarye in Elecambron. It looks as if his Art proved the death of him."

Ryel inclined his head. "All too true. It's a long story."

"Then it can keep as far as I'm concerned." Desrenaud stirred the fire, regarding the coals. "It'll wring Redbane hard when he learns Michael's fate. Sibs are seldom kind to one another in the North, but those two were heart in heart, they say."

"You knew the Count Palatine well, I understand," Ryel said.

"Too well," replied Desrenaud. "That didn't make us friends."

"But you were brothers, nonetheless. Sword-brothers, I should say."

"And how might you have learned that, sorcerer?"

"Because I'm one of the Order."

Desrenaud's eyes kindled as his brows bent. "Tell me your name, then, and let's see that tagh of yours."

"Ruhkt Avràl," Ryel said, handing over the sword.

"Ha. Blood Storm. Mine's Trâgh Ran," Desrenaud replied. "Here, take this."

"Edged Tempest," Ryel translated, catching the heavy weapon the earl tossed to him. Drawing the blade forth from its scabbard, the wysard disclosed an elegantly severe Northern rapier, plain and stark and beautifully kept despite its many signs of long use. Down the blade its fair inscription ran, and Desrenaud translated it aloud.

"'As flame burns brighter for the winds

That have its light beset;

As from the highest harshest rocks

The sweetest waters jet,

Let me run clean as highland streams,

As storm-tossed fire burn free;

To make a bright unblemished path

For darkest destiny.'

"That's the way I wrote it when a lad, long before I ever knew I'd be one of the Sword Brotherhood." Desrenaud had unsheathed the wysard's blade, and now held it up to the candlelight, looking long upon it. "A sweet piece of steel, this," he said at last. "Good runes, too."

"I didn't write them," Ryel said. "They were my father's work."

"So you use his sword. That's not customary, but it'd be a rank shame to let a blade this fine lie idle. Who was your Adversary at the initiation?"

"The Commander himself."

Desrenaud gave a one-sided grimace. "You poor devil. And how badly did he cut you?"

"He didn't."

The Northerner gave a disbelieving frown more than half indignant. "Don't tell me you managed to deal Roskerrek a wound."

"Why not? Didn't you?"

"I scratched him, and he made me sorry for it. But then again, I didn't have Art like yours to keep my skin whole."

Ryel met this with indignation. "What makes you think I used my Art?"

Desrenaud filled his glass yet again. "You wouldn't be alive and unmarked otherwise." He gulped down the precious vintage as if steeling himself for a blow. "Enough of Redbane. Tell me about the Domina, since you move in such high circles."

"She believes you dead," Ryel replied.

The earl breathed in, then out, deeply. "Good. And what killed me?"

"A border dispute in Wycast. You fell with many wounds, after fighting bravely."

"That savors of Roskerrek's imagination," Desrenaud said after a long silence. "Poetical." The Northern earl took a glass of Ryel's golden Masir, and rolled a mouthful reflectively over his tongue. "He'd tell you that this wine is the essence of Almancar. Colored like the new-risen moon, and heady as the first kiss of a doomed love. I need some air." Rising up, he left the shelter. The wysard finished his glass of wine, and then went down to the water where Desrenaud stood facing the moon.

"I understand what you suffer, Guy."

Desrenaud hid his face in his Shrivrani cowl, but the moon glittered in his eyes. "Begone, warlock. Leave me in peace."

Ryel would not leave. "You have not known peace for many years."

"You lie. I have it now, for the first time in my life."

"What you have is sickness fully as mortal as Belphira's."

Desrenaud unveiled, and turned to Ryel. "Then tell me a cure, if you can."

"She is your cure, even as you are hers. You've wasted far too much time here."

Desrenaud gave a clipped laugh, harsh and scorning. "Here's where the fun is, sorcerer."

"Fun like this?" Ryel took the Ormalan phial from his shirt, holding it up to the firelight. At once Desrenaud snatched it from him.

"Exactly what I wished for," he said. "You're good, sorcerer, but I never dreamt you'd be this good."

Ryel stared from the phial to Desrenaud. "I should have known it was a drug."

The earl laughed low in his throat, inhumanly. "It's the best and the worst, magician. Mere men of a certain desperate stamp find it blurs the sharper edges of life, so that they no longer feel it when they cut themselves. It has the unfortunate effect, however, of disfiguring one rather severely."

"By every god," Ryel breathed. "Xantal." Then, louder and sharper, "Give me that back. Hasn't it done enough to destroy you?"

"Not nearly enough." Desrenaud held the drug-vial between his fingers, squinting through it into the firelight. "But there's sufficient here to save me."

"It would kill you outright," Ryel all but cried, grabbing for the vial. "Horribly."

Desrenaud met this news with absolute indifference, and held the vial well away from the wysard's reach. "That's the idea, conjurer."

"But why?"

"Several excellent reasons, sorcerer. You know one of them."

The wysard felt a surge of anger at whoever had told that lie, and wrecked this life. "I spoke with Belphira Deva in Almancar not two months gone, and saw her in my Glass only days ago. Whoever told you she was dead lied, for no reason but to do you harm."

Desrenaud made no answer, but bit his lip awhile, drawing blood at last. "It doesn't matter. Not any more. If you see her again, you needn't let fall that we met. Or how I died. It'd not make a pretty tale." As he spoke, he took the phial between his fingers, as if to break it.

Ryel held out his hand, angrily imperative. "Give that back."

"Not just yet." Desrenaud's fingers quivered, now. "There's a trick to breaking one of these, you know. A quick snap right at the top. That way it doesn't splinter—I've a dislike of glass-splinters in my xantal. Here's how it's done—"

Ryel blurted a word, and the phial flew out of Desrenaud's fingers into the sand. "Let it alone, Guy."

With a spat curse the Northerner raised his fist, but the wysard froze him in the act with a word.

"You're not getting away that easily, Starklander." Taking up the xantal-tube, Ryel tucked it into the lacquer case in his journeybag. "You're in far more need of rest. Come with me." He helped Desrenaud back to the shelter, then made him lie down. The Northern earl thrashed and mumbled, his eyes shut but sleepless.

"Calm." Ryel lightly pressed his fingertips to Desrenaud's brow close to the hairline, and said a word that smoothed the furrows, dried the sweat. "Tell me about Belphira."

The Northerner ground his teeth. "I was in Hallagh. Just back from the wars. Ready at last to return to her, she that had never been an hour from my thoughts, and make her my wife. And then the news came that she'd died. Horribly, of some arcane clap or other called jirankri." He nearly laughed. "And I believed him. After all I'd endured from him over so many years, I still believed the bastard."

"Who?"

"Derain Meschante."

Ryel recoiled. "But what could have made you trust him?"

"A priest of the Unseen he was by then," Desrenaud said. "I thought him past all worldly deceits—the damned dirty liar. He even said he sorrowed for me, and that he'd send up prayers for her soul. I should have killed him long ago, that night we brawled in the Diamond Heaven."

The wysard considered these words and all they implied. "I wish you had," he murmured. "It would have saved the World a great deal of trouble."

Another barely-uttered word and Desrenaud sank back unconscious, but still fitful. Ryel covered the Northerner in Edris' cloak, then lay down in the sand, weary to his soul's core. The last thing he heard was Desrenaud's restless breathing, discordant above the deliberate rhythm of the sea.

Dawn was fleeing the sky, harried by an insolent sun, when he awoke. Edris' cloak covered him, and Desrenaud was gone. At once Ryel searched his journeybag for the xantal, never expecting to find it. He was much astonished when he did. Shaking the sand from his clothes, the wysard went out into the daylight. A big man's footprints led down to the waterline, and a stick of driftwood lay next to letters written deep in the firm sand, still visible despite the gnawing tide—Gone Back. Guess Where.

Chapter Eighteen

Ryel could not much more than guess which direction Desrenaud had taken. He bitterly wished that he'd had time to tell the Northerner of events enwrapping Hallagh. And he was more than a little perturbed that his Glass-fragment when consulted yielded no sight of either horse or man.

"Something blocks them," Ryel said to himself. That same something watched him every night when he halted to rest; watched him with eyes half benign, it seemed. Every day occurrences Artwise strange made him wonder who it was that played with him. He would wake to find Jinn's mane and tail braided with bright ribbons, or to discover his chal already brewed, accompanied by squares of lakh. Unnamable flowers sprouted up in the midst of his path, and rabbits and squirrels spoke nonsense to him in the high nasal voices of children, giggling and scurrying away when the wysard questioned them. He wondered at the loneliness of his road, that was utterly void of houses or travelers. The same power that obscured his Glass and amused him with tricks and fancies undoubtedly had a hand in his continued solitude, and more than likely intended further manifestations, but of what nature he could only guess. He began to feel like a wandering prince in one of those Cosran fables where all the world is harmless, charming and just a little silly; but after the hardships and dangers of the past long while, the change gave him pleasure, although it did nothing to induce him to slacken his guard.

At least he could take comfort that the danger wasn't Dagar. Stripped of his former power, the daimon no long held dominion over the air, and all the spirit-energy once subjugated to his will had been freed. Ryel could feel it with every breath he drew. The changeable coastal weather had given way to unbroken early summer that persuaded Ryel to doff his cloak and coat and tie back his hair; in the heats of the day he would strip off his shirt too, pleasured by the caress of sunlight on his skin. Now assiduous srihs fulfilled his lightest want with the lavish alacrity they had shown in Markul, making his evening encampments luxurious beyond any dream of Almancar—which the wysard accepted gladly, for he was taking a delight in his Art that he had never before allowed himself to feel. Lady Srin had thought the Markulit skill too precious to be wasted upon trifles, but she would never know his strength; she had valued the Art as a desert dweller prizes water, chary of every drop, whereas Ryel felt his Mastery within him like a great river tumbling into an infinite ocean. His enemy was distant from him, its energies concentrated elsewhere; now for a while at least the wysard might meditate upon Diara as much as he wished, without need to set a guard upon his dreams. Again and again he relived the wonder of ocean-blue eyes gently joining with his own, a voice sweet beyond any music, excellences of wit and spirit nobly gracing the nymphen form. Able to give his thoughts a loose at last, he again felt white skin smooth and firm as sun-warmed tide-packed sand under his hands, and silken tresses streaming through his fingers like long ribbons of sea-grass; held in his arms all the beauty of the World, and kissed its delicious lips again and yet again, until he half sickened with longing for more, for all.

Indeed he had traveled far from Markul, farther than could ever be measured in miles. "I love you," he said aloud, a thousand times a day, laughing with the joy of it. He said it not only to Diara, but to Priamnor, and Mira, and Nel, feeling them in his blood and of his blood like an exultant intoxication. A thousand times he considered turning Jinn's head southward, forsaking cold Northland and Hallaghan turmoil for the delights of golden Almancar, and a thousand times he forced himself to mindfulness that although war among the Four Cities had been averted, the World was still imperiled by the machinations of Theofanu and Michael. As for Guyon Desrenaud, he had very probably taken the fastest road to Almancar, where Belphira Deva was. Ryel wished he knew.

"Could that have been your only part in this play, Guy—to have dragged me out of the fire? I admit it's enough and I'm grateful, but..."

He let his words trail. So lost in thought had he been, letting Jinn take her way as she wished, that he now looked around him and found himself no longer by the sea, but somewhere inland, amid fields and woods. The sun had climbed high and now shone with summer's heat, urging Ryel to take off his coat and roll up his shirt's sleeves. But as he did so, he felt a tremor of disquiet. He was being watched. He knew it, even though nothing of life moved anywhere around him. The same power that obscured his Glass undoubtedly had a hand in his continued solitude, and more than likely intended further manifestations, but of what nature Ryel could only guess.

"You're near," he said to whatever it was that watched him. "And you're dangerous when you want to be, though on your best behavior now. Show me how strong you really are. I dare you."

He waited until his wariness at length relaxed, allowing him to take slow savoring breaths of the air that bathed him in warm summer balm, and roll his shoulders in pleasure of the sunlight tickling his shoulders with voluptuous hot fingers. Coaxed by the heat, he took off his shirt, and tied back his hair. But in that moment something pricked him on the neck, making him start and swear. Slapping at what had to be an insect, the wysard glanced at his fingers afterward expecting to find them smeared with fly-slime. But all he found was a drop of clear water.

Even as he frowned bewilderment, another sting bit into his forearm. Looking down, he saw a six-pointed flake of ice-crystal poised upon the sun-gilded hair just above his wrist. Another instant and it had melted, but another landed on the back of his hand, and another on his knee—and then tens, hundreds, uncountable millions more swept down out of an incomprehensibly brilliant noonday sky now freezing cold. Hissing an underbreath curse the wysard grabbed for his shirt and coat, yanking them on amid shudders, and flung Edris' cloak about him, pulling the hood over his head. In that moment a black wall of storm-cloud engulfed the sun, and the snow thickened into a blizzard so violent that Ryel was forced to dismount and take shelter against Jinn, who showed little if any perturbation at the sudden change of weather.

"In the name of All—" the wysard tried to say aloud, but the wind carried away his words. He could only cling round Jinn's neck as the storm blew yet harder, and the air grew colder and darker, and the snow fell thicker.

"You're good," Ryel whispered, thrusting his cold-cramped fingers into Jinn's warm mane. "Whoever you are, you're good." And he meant it.

Weather-witching was a lost Art. Only the Highest had ever possessed that skill. Folk of the World believed that power over the weather was the commonest wysardry of all, even as they deemed shape-changing and thought-reading and mind-moving to be likewise common attainments among lord adepts of the Four; and nothing could have been less true. During the fight with Michael among the ruined rooms of stone, Ryel had commanded the elements, but that was in his rage and at his best, with his Art blazing in his veins. To rule the weather had for centuries been considered sheer impossibility by the Cities, and Guyon Desrenaud would have correctly deemed this snow-tempest rare and serious gramarye.

"You've made your point," Ryel muttered to his invisible prankster after what seemed quite long enough a time, his shivering lips tickled by Jinn's coat. "I'm impressed. You can stop now."

As if in mockery the snow thickened all the more, and the ice-fingered wind tore Edris' cloak from Ryel's shoulders. The wysard watched helplessly as the scarlet cloth rumpled and twisted high in the white air just beyond his desperate grasp. Another moment and it would be tossed far beyond his sight, past any hope of retrieval.

"Damn you, stop it!" Ryel yelled, choking on snow. In bitterest rage he shouted into the storm, rebuking it with words of Art mingled with curses, giving his anger his all, quivering as much with rage as with cold.

He fully expected the blizzard to halt. And obligingly the storm slackened its fury by degrees, until only the faintest diamond-powder wafted down from the leaden sky.

"About time," Ryel muttered as he snatched up his cloak and shook it free of snow, snapping the cloth vengefully. Once again wrapped in its warm reassuring folds, the wysard looked about him, and his emotions smoothed to calm, then to quiet awe as he contemplated the lovely world around him.

He stood in the midst of a forest of towering oaks and firs. Upon the evergreens deep-piled white furred the boughs, but the stark branches of the oaks were sheathed even to the frailest twig in glittering ice, and the undergrowth and grasses bent under the weight of the same glassy casing. Holly-berries gleamed like clusters of red gems. Profoundest silence hung on every limb of the great trees, soundlessness thick as the snow on the ground, clear as the air wafting the last spangled flakes of storm onto the wysard's upturned awestruck face. Of all the World's beauties he had known since leaving Markul, this moved him beyond expression. Open-mouthed he wondered, catching icy sweet sky-water on his tongue, hearing himself gasp as the clouds parted a moment and sunlight embued the ice with dazzling brilliance.

The clouds covered the sun again, and as they did Jinn gave that puzzled suspicious snort Ryel knew well, and the wysard turned about to find that thing which perturbed her.

He blinked, looked again. The vision stayed.

Off in the trees, not at all far, the lights of a house glimmered amid the crystal branches and slate-dark sky—a great house built in a manner not at all Northern, but in the style of the fragrant islands of the Western Seas: high-roofed delicate pavilions and pagodas raised up on broad galleries and ornamented with weirdly attenuated waves, flames, fantastic beasts and beings. Ryel recognized it as royal Zinaphian architecture of great antiquity, most strange to see in the rough wilderness of Starkland; its fittest setting would have been a sundrenched lagoon edged by a vine-draped flower-jeweled jungle, not this wintry woodland.

"Gramarye," he murmured. And he shivered from more than cold as his heart raced to think whose house it might be. Snatching Jinn's reins, he approached the dwelling, making slow progress through the knee-deep snow. But then he was aware of someone behind him whistling a tune, and before he could turn around something struck the back of his head and exploded in soft disintegration—a snowball shrewdly aimed. Whirling about, he saw a man of uncommon stature, singularly well-made and well-favored, standing some distance away packing another white sphere—Guyon Desrenaud glowing with fresh health, and new-clad in the richest Northern fashion. Well-gauntleted hands his were, suitable to the rest of his garb, which was extremely fine; but the princely habiliments of grape-amethyst figured velvet and rich gray furs seemed the only wear for a shape so remarkable for its elegance of strength and height, even as the lush-plumed swagger-brimmed perfection of his hat could do no more than justly set off the cold-flushed beauty of his clear-featured fresh-shaven face and the tawny luxuriance of his hair. Singularly youthful beauty it was, too, of years no more than Ryel's own.

"Well, I'll be damned."

The wysard himself said that, to his somewhat abashed surprise; but it elicited no more greeting from Desrenaud than a smile well-suited to his flourishing new guise, utterly unbefitting the desperate man Ryel had known in Ormala.

"Tell me who you are. I know I've seen you somewhere."

Desrenaud's voice, although uniquely pleasing as ever, was drawling and remote, and the green eyes wandered in blank distraction, with none of their wonted stern acuity. The wysard liked even less the unmeaning little smile that intermittently trivialized the earl's features.

"You don't know me," Ryel said, heavy-hearted but unsurprised.

That irritating smile again. "I'm not sure. Tell me what to remember."

"Ormala," the wysard said, taking a step forward. "Slavery and pain."

The smile faded. "I don't understand."

"Hallagh. War, and poison, and a cruel queen's bed."

The bright gaze darkened; the snowball fell unregarded to the ground. "I don't know what you mean."

Ryel came nearer. "Almancar, then. Love that changed your life."

Pallor at that, which Desrenaud turned away to conceal. "No. I can't recall."

Kicking the snow aside, Ryel caught Desrenaud by the wrist. "Damn it, you're going to remember me, at least. Look me in the eye."

Vaguely panicked, Desrenaud struggled. "I won't. Let me be, whoever you are."

The wysard grabbed Desrenaud's hat and flung it down; seized the Northerner's head between his hands, holding fast. "One look. I command you."

For ten seconds perhaps their gazes locked, and in that time Desrenaud's green eyes steadied, sobered, frowned. "That's enough, sorcerer," the Northerner said, bitterly breaking free. "I know you now."

"What about the rest I spoke of? Do you remember?"

Desrenaud momentarily considered, then shook his head. "I still don't know what you're talking about."

You will, Ryel thought. "Tell me whose house this is."

"A witch's." Desrenaud gathered up another snowball and hurled it at one of the figured pillars, spattering a slit-eyed god. "One who makes your magics look a paltry bag of tricks, warlock."

"I believe it."

"She's been keeping me like a pet."

"So I see."

Desrenaud gazed about him, pushing back his hair—rich clean amber hair in the highland fashion of Ralnahr, long and wild. "She's beautiful. A thousand charms she has—and uses them, believe me." He turned to Ryel, manifestly bewildered. "Am I enchanted?"

"Yes," Ryel said after some deliberation. "You do seem to be, Guy."

"I'm not surprised. Everything is, in this place." Desrenaud made his way to the gallery's edge, and bent to breathe the sweets of the incongruous roses that grew around there; drew off a glove, and between immaculate polished nails severed the stem of one, rolling the flower slowly between his fingers. Meditatively he warmed the bloom with his breath to release its fragrance, and touched his tongue to the perfumed snow that clung to its cream-crimson petals. "Yesterday there were only orchids in this spot. Orchids, and paradise-birds, and sweet vines, all under a cloudless sky burning hot. But I love cold weather best. Hard weather, snell and frore, as we say up North. This isn't the North. It isn't anywhere."

Ryel might well have lost his patience, but Desrenaud was clearly straining to remember, and perturbed that he could not. "I want to know everything about she who lives here," the wysard said. "See that you leave nothing out."

Desrenaud tucked the rose into a buttonhole of his coat. "I said she's beautiful." Reaching into his coat and then his shirt, he brought out a long chain of gold hung round his neck, holding up to Ryel its portrait-medal. "She looks no more than seventeen, but I know she is older. Hundreds of years older, it often seems."

Ryel snatched the medallion from Desrenaud's hand, staring at the portrait. "But this is Belphira Deva."

A female voice, amused and insinuating, broke in. "Are you sure, Ryel Mirai?"

Turning to the wide stairs of the gallery, the wysard saw the lady he'd named standing there and smiling upon him. Not the Belphira of late-summer beauty paled by despair that he had met in the Garden of Dreams, but a girl barely eighteen, and glowingly lovely—the queen of Agenor's sindretin. As she had been then, she was gowned in myriad pleats of ivory silk, adorned with ropes of pearl and blue-tinged emeralds. Her amber-gold hair was dressed in the courtly fashion of Almancar, partly braided, partly flowing free. Despite her garments' filmy lightness she seemed oblivious of the cold.

A very young and radiantly imperial Belphira she seemed to the eye, but her voice was not that lady's. It was light and cool, with none of Belphira's warm vibrancy. Ryel had heard that voice in Ormala, laughingly exposing the secrets of his inmost self. From his earliest days in Markul he had heard and read of the woman now masqued in Belphira's form, but never had he dreamed of this moment.

Desrenaud held out his hand to help the girl descend the stairs, but turned to the wysard as he did so. "How is it she knows your name?"

"She knows all things," Ryel said slowly. As he spoke he sank down upon his knees and bowed his head, and spoke in the tongue of the Highest. "I never looked for this, Lady Riana."

In immobile awe he knelt, there in the snow, remembering the dirt of the Aqqar under his naked knees, and Edris' long fingers ruthless in his hair. But this time the gates that loomed before him enclosed the last limits of wonder, next to which all his Markulit learning was as the first staggering steps of a little child.

He felt her fingertips stroke the parting of his hair, a touch soft as the fall of snowflakes, hot as high summer. "Riana. Why do you name me that?"

The wysard bowed until his forehead touched the smooth insteps of her feet. "All my life within Markul's walls I heard tales of Riana the One Immortal, Creator of the Best and Highest. Heard and believed, but never dared dream that my unworthy eyes might be granted the sight of her."

She laughed, and her bare toes played hotly with his hair. "Such eloquence. Well, the only fitting place for a man is at a woman's feet, I know—but not here. Welcome to my house, brother." She raised him up, then turned to Desrenaud, speaking now in Ralnahrek. "Will you come in with us, Guy?"

Desrenaud shook his head. "Long it's been since I've seen snow like this, my lady. I'll walk in it awhile." Taking the rose from his buttonhole, he gently slipped it into her plaited tresses as he glanced meaningly at Ryel. "Keep your eyes open, sorcerer."

Riana watched the Northerner disappear among the white-laden trees. "And to think that less than an hour ago he was in my bed, eager and inventive. But I can hardly blame him—he will never love me, after all." She turned again to Ryel. "Well. We meet again, even as I said we would."

"I never dared believe we might."

Her lazy soft drawl grew laughing. "You knew me at once. That's quick."

"Art-siblings never mistake one another."

"Especially exalted ones, such as we are. It must disappoint you that I'm making light of this solemn occasion, not being lofty enough. But I'm only a girl child of seventeen, after all. And you undoubtedly approve more of this guise than the one I employed in Ormala—although the eyes are the same, are they not?"

Ryel swallowed, remembering that flaunting gilded nudity, that jewel-blue shameless stare. "I would have been glad to see your true face, my lady."

"Oh, you will; all in good time." Reaching up, she pushed a random lock of the wysard's storm-disordered black hair behind his ear. "But I'd never ask for any change in this shape of yours. You're a marvel. Just the right age, the right height; just the right mingling of classic and exotic in your face. Perfect muscularity." And she ran her hand down his shoulder to his bicep, then his forearm, then his fingers, which she enlaced with her own. "Your tall friend Guy is richer in sinew, but I'll wager that you're smoother." Her free hand slipped under Ryel's coat and into his shirt, running its seeking scorching palm over his breast. "Ah. I was right. Not a single hair."

The wysard caught the errant hand and gently but inexorably coaxed its withdrawal; kissed it with a reverence not entirely free of admonition, and let it go. "I am honored that my appearance pleases you, my lady. But I had rather that you considered my Art's Mastery more considerable than my outward form."

"Oh, fear not that I'm impressed. You did wonderfully well against Dagar; I saw it in my Glass, as well as that dashing duel of yours with Lord Michael—a most taking redhair he."

Ryel bowed his head, as much to conceal chagrin as show respect. "I am delighted that our combat afforded you amusement, my lady."

"Bah. I don't need to look into you to see that you're angry with me. No, don't deny it; you blame me for merely looking on whilst you were in difficulties, and never coming to your help. But I wished to view your strength, and see its fullest extent. And it has been impressive, that strength of yours; as when your swordplay nearly killed your father, or your mother lay dying of cancer, or Yvain Essern's blood-daimon was routed. All those things I saw."

Overcome, Ryel could look nowhere but down, trying not to see those little rosy feet of hers. "I never knew you were so near to me, my lady."

He heard her laugh again. "I've been other places as well—places I shouldn't have been, some might say. Do you recall young Priamnor Dranthene—that delicious boy—telling you about the first woman he ever lay with? I must say he demonstrated finesse far beyond his years. I wouldn't mind encountering him again, now that time's improved him."

The wysard looked on her amazed. "You were the Zinaphian slave that?"

She nodded in serene recognition. "The very same—in my true shape, which he found irresistible. I was his for several extremely pleasant and creative weeks."

"Weeks only?"

Riana tauntingly smiled at Ryel's dry-toned question. "Had I stayed longer, he would have fallen madly in love with me—and I mean that quite literally. It would have been…inconvenient. But let's go inside. You're risking frostbite out here, and I would never wish you to endanger even the slightest of your remarkable members."

Taking his hand she led him into her house, a place gleaming with soft brocades, bright gems, exquisite carvings, every luxury that might enhance languorous repose. Fragrant hot summer moved in the air, all the sweeter for music of unknown instruments invisibly sounded.

Her fingers teasingly tickled his palm. "Do you like my door-guards?"

The flame-arched volute they stood under was held up on either side by two caryatids carved of wood tinted and adorned—a god and goddess in seeming, not quite human, slim and all but naked. He was luminescently black, and delicate antlers of gold branched from his gold-maned head, and his great long eyes were golden. She had the tufted ears of a lynx, and a lynx's soft dappled pelt all over, save for her smooth breasts and winsome feline face.

"Zinaphian deities," Riana said, answering Ryel's silent admiration. "Customary gate-wardens, conferring peace and pleasure: Hekrit and Dashrali."

At the mention of their names they stirred, their wooden immobility metamorphosing into supple grace and seeming life. Descending their pedestals, they bowed low before Riana, who smiled at the wysard's surprise.

"Srihs," she explained. "It amuses me to have them materialize thus, or in other charming forms. They will be your attendants while you remain with me."

"I don't require them," Ryel said, looking away.

"They are exceptionally well instructed in the arts of delight."

"I believe it," the wysard replied. "But I have no need of such service."

The One Immortal gave a slight pout. "Bah. You're no fun." A word of hers, and both fantastic beings bowed low again before resuming their pedestals and immobility. Entering the chamber and sinking into one of the cloud-pillowed couches, Riana with an indolent gesture created a lavish banquet upon a low table-top.

"I doubt you've ever tried the favorite delicacies of old Zinaph; half the best things once enjoyed by my people a millennium ago are now either forgotten or extinct. Those birds used to fill the skies, once, and the sea teemed with those fish, and those fruits used to hang heavy on every other tree; no more. It is the same with the rice, much finer than that grown nowadays, and the spices and flowers, so rare now that men no longer bother to search for them among the mountains. As for the sweets, their composition has been lost for centuries, but I was mad for them when a girl." She took one of the little cakes and sampled its sugar lacework decoration. "I have no real need of food, but it passes the time. Here, sit by me." As she spoke, she filled two glasses with clear magenta liquid, handing the wysard one. Ryel lifted his goblet and took a mouthful, reflectively analyzing the flavor before he swallowed.

"I don't recognize this drink."

"No wonder. It is royal Zinaphian wine distilled from a variety of insects, nearly all of them now vanished from the earth. Do you like it?"

Ryel smiled back, but without the lady's mischief. "Very much. But it is extremely strong."

"There speaks Markul. Water it, if you like."

Ryel did so, and made trial of the many dishes. The ancient rulers of Zinaph had no love for plain cookery, it appeared, but strove to blend a hundred spices and peppers and herbs in every dish, and mate fish with fruit, fowl with reptile, extremest sweetness with sharpest astringency, strangeness with strangeness.

"What is this?" Ryel said, indicating one of the dishes.

"Preserved lizard-tail wrapped in candied tree-fungus. I used once to adore it. What do you think?"

"A little less fenugreek in the sauce might be an improvement."

Riana laughed, a long brilliant peal. "You're wonderful, Ryel son of Edris. I remember that whenever Garnos tried my native cookery, all he did was complain about how unbearably searing and musky everything was; and whenever I told him the ingredients of what he'd eaten, he'd turn green as death. But you're far more adventurous. You even know how to use chopsticks correctly; Garnos never could manage them."

Ryel dropped the gem-inlaid jade implements with a chiming clatter. "Tell me about Lord Garnos, my lady."

"What would you hear? You already know the Books."

"I have the greatest book of all before me, unread."

She licked the rim of her glass, toying catwise as her azure-amethyst gaze dwelt unblinking on every one of the wysard's features, stopping at the mouth. "Open me, then. Ask whatever you like. Perhaps we should begin with this?" She held up a little book, its silver cover set with gems that sparked in the candlelight, and laughed at the expression on Ryel's face. "You recognize it, I see."

"But…but it was in my pocket."

"True. It was." The One Immortal idly riffled the pages. "Whether it was meant to be out in the World or not, this trinket has caused an awkward deal of harm. But in many ways it brought about good as well. With its help—and mine—that old Tesbai witch Gwynned cured you of an illness that would have been fatal in short order; and with its help the dashing bad Lord Michael was saved. The only real difficulty is that Dagar is still around to pester the World, having inconveniently acquired the Mastery of Coalescence ahead of you, thanks to the help of his flame-haired former slave. Luckily Michael's lovely tall body is safe in Markul protected by strong spells—my spells."

"But another now wears his form. Derain Meschante, who preaches sedition against the crown."

Riana frowned slightly. "Yes. A coarse dull monster. A puritanical bully and a thoroughgoing fool."

Ryel started. "How is it you know Meschante?"

"I saw him during my healing examination of Guyon's thoughts."

Indignation supplanted astonishment. "Healing you call it? You took his dearest memories from him."

Her beautiful exasperating eyes fluttered indolently. "Oh, come now. Not for long. I found him ragged and starving, half-dead less with hunger than with craving for the drugs that were killing him, all his body festering with xantal. Look at him now, and blame me if you can. I took away his pain awhile, nothing more. And his pain is deep and real, brother. It did no harm for him to forget it awhile, and lose the tormenting memories of those useless Northern wars, and his broils with the Domina, and the murder of his friend, which wrung him worst of all."

Ryel's indignation became amazement. "You believe Prince Hylas of Clarain was murdered?"

"I know with certainty he was. Guy's thoughts of course informed me nothing, so I consulted my Glass—a Glass not like to yours in Markul that sees only the present, but which can view the past as well. And I found that the deed was committed by this sullen grudging fellow Meschante, whose low cunning in regard to poisons brought the act about."

Ryel shook his head. "I suspected it. Given his evil nature and his motives for harm, he could be a terrible threat to Almancar."

Riana gave a slow silken uplift of shoulder. "He has not a tenth of Michael's powers. We need not concern ourselves with him."

"But what if Dagar—"

"Dagar would never willingly return in a form so weak; not when he has the World and the Cities to choose from. He cannot re-assume Michael's body even if he wished to. It is far more likely that he would reappear in Theofanu's form. He marked her as his own, after all, and she would be delighted to have her Master inside her skin, although I doubt the feeling would be mutual. Theofanu is a hideous little woman from the Azm Chak, where so many dreadful things live and thrive."

"But can his rai and hers co-exist in a single body?"

"It is hardly a comfortable arrangement by any means; but yes, it is possible. Of course Dagar would eventually kill off Theofanu's limited and encumbering selfhood, the better to enjoy his powers to their fullest. It would seem that your services are still required in the North."

Ryel's thoughts chilled. "But Lady Riana, your Art is so strong—a thousandfold greater than my own. Surely you could destroy Dagar with your merest word."

"For your estimation of my powers I thank you, brother. But this is your struggle, not mine."

"A struggle with the very World at stake, my lady."

"Bah. The World has survived worse. But for your sake I'll send our highland friend Northward. He'll pave the way for you."

Ryel didn't answer. But he reflected that unlike Michael Essern, Guyon Desrenaud had not embraced his pain—far from it. Nevertheless pain had made both men great, and without it Desrenaud could never have been the World's help, even as Lord Michael might never have been the World's harm. Amid these thoughts the wysard turned to regard the snow, feeling for the plight of all those naked deities entwined around the ice-filmed pillars. "I should return to Markul at once, and release my father and Lord Michael from the Void," he said aloud. "Their powers would aid me greatly."

"And how would you bring them back, brother?"

"With the joining-spell of Lord Garnos written in that book you hold."

Riana laughed even more shimmeringly and longer than ever. "Nothing more than that? Ah, Ryel." Her smile vanished, her eyes chilled; and the wysard with a shiver remembered the way the voluptuous sun had drowned in blowing white cold. "There is much more to that spell than mere saying. The Coalescence is the most difficult of all the Masteries, not to be undertaken lightly. Great study and discipline are required for its success." She tossed the book onto the table. "You're not ready for it. You'd be like a little child toddling into a blazing fire."

Ryel winced at that image. "And yet Dagar learned it easily enough."

She shook her head, apparently in pity. "Ah, my poor Ryel. For your better instruction, Lord Dagar Rall was Elecambron's Garnos. Preternaturally intelligent, although in every wrong way possible. I saw him in my Glass once, long ago when he was still very much alive and in his own form. He was of purest Hralwi blood, all white gold—but not in the least bulky with brawn, as most Barbarians are. When I saw him, he was wearing a robe of figured green velvet that trailed yards behind him, and his hair hung to his knees. I thought he was a woman at first, because he was so slight and delicate, with the most wonderful blue-green eyes. He was holding a newborn child, and I thought it was his from the tender way he sang to it and kissed it. But then he..." She gave a disgusted little shudder. "I'd much rather not say what he did to that luckless infant. Dagar was a monster. A dainty, simpering monster with the greatest talent for the Art I've seen since my little band of brothers and sisters built Markul. It's no wonder he succeeded with Garnos' spell."

Ryel lifted his chin. "What Dagar could accomplish, I can. And better."

Riana rolled a highly skeptical eye. "Ah. Really. Well, brother, I'll teach you all that is needful. But what will you give me in return?"

"Whatever you desire, my lady."

He never should have said that. Her tongue darted across her lips, and her eyes all over him. "Whatever I desire. Oh, but that is much, brother." Reaching out, she took his hand, again surprising him with her heat, but this time he did not evade the contact.

"Only try me, my lady." He bent his brow to her hand's back. "For me you will take the place of destiny."

Her smooth fingers evaded his, and she stretched with feline grace, supple and slow. "Well, I am destiny, am I not? What difference between me and a goddess, save that I am not worshipped...yet?"

At that moment Desrenaud entered the room. "For this change of weather I thank you, my lady," he said, bowing with a courtliness that seemed second nature, unexpected though Ryel found it. Throwing off his trailing furred coat, he came forward as the door-guard Hekrit silently descended his pedestal to take up the cast garment, shake it free of snow and neatly drape it over a chair. Glancing at the table, Desrenaud winced. "Not that fly-wine again."

Riana smiled tolerantly, waving an indolent hand as she spoke a word. A crystal flagon of mulled claret materialized at her bidding. Desrenaud filled a cup and tasted, then lifted the drink to the One Immortal, giving a grateful nod.

"Your health and long life, my lady."

"Yes, yes. Always." With a languid sweep of silk she rose. "You two have matters to discuss." I'll retire awhile, for there are some things I must study." She gazed up at Desrenaud, who had stood when she did. "You think me beautiful. You have said so, often."

"More lovely than any woman I have ever seen," he replied, lightly caressing her dark gold hair, looking down into her eyes with bemused tenderness. "But I half think I knew you before, in another life."

"You might have. But if you did, you knew this one as well."

As she spoke she became taller, whiter, harder, her honey-gold tresses silvering and straightening, her face's girlish charms transmuting to a severe beauty almost masculine save for the crimson fullness of the mouth; but though her warm blue-violet eyes turned ice-pale, they lost nothing of their Art's power. Desrenaud took a step backward.

"Bradamaine," he whispered.

"Ah, you remember," the Northern queen said, her voice low and sweet and a little rough, even as Ryel remembered it. "Remember, then, what passed between us, and return to me. My realm's in danger; my life as well, and Roskerrek's, and many another's you hold dear."

Desrenaud looked down, clearly remembering much and shamed by those recollections. "We parted angrily, m'Domina."

"I have forgiven you. Fear not you'll be compelled to stay; I know where your strongest loyalties lie. Only help me, for only you can."

He raised his head again, and met her ice-eyes evenly. "I will not fail you, m'Domina," he said; and he took her hands and bowed over them, with soldierly respect.

Riana gave Ryel a sideways glance, and smiled as she slipped free of Desrenaud's gentle hold, and with a word make him sink down onto the couch again, unconscious.

"There, I'm done," Riana said with an ironic head-shake. "My brief demonstration should stick in his mind, and serve to lead him in the right direction. I'm a good mimic, wouldn't you say?"

"Too good."

Her Dranthene regard dwelt awhile on Desrenaud, coolly musing. "Love. A most unsettling emotion. Agonizing. I've not missed much."

"You know you have."

She made no reply, but turned away, swaying in deliberate exit from the room.

His emotions turbulent, Ryel watched her. The One Immortal possessed consummate Art clearly intended for the good of the World, but she had no more heart than a succubus. You anger me, the wysard thought. But I pity you even more. And I will do everything I can to change your mind.

He turned to Desrenaud, who slumped senseless against the cushions of the divan; laid a hand on his shoulder. At once the Northerner roused and shook his head.

"That was stronger ale than I thought," he said. "Witch's brew, doubtless. Speaking of such, what's become of the lady?"

"She thought that you and I might wish to talk alone awhile."

"We probably should." He reached for a tidbit from one of the golden platters. A scant taste made him wince, and he let it drop. "Foul stuff, this Zinaphian cookery. Almost Ormalan." He whistled, and the she-lynx Dashrali instantly appeared. "Take this trash away and give me something I can stomach, catkin," he said to her, lightly ruffling the soft fur of her haunch as he did so. Purringly the creature obeyed, transforming the strange meats into Northern fare preciously dished, vanishing again when Desrenaud required no further service.

"Much better," the earl said as he liberally helped himself. "Join me, enchanter—unless you really do prefer pickled reptile."

For some time they said nothing of moment, concentrating on the excellent food. But after the main dishes vanished once empty, replaced with fruit and wine, Ryel turned the talk where it had to go.

"Where will your road lead, after here?"

Desrenaud shrugged. "I don't seem to have much of a choice, sorcerer." He commanded a couple of glasses of Dryven whisky, handing Ryel one, motioning the wysard to follow him out to the broad veranda. Seating himself at the top of the stairs, he gazed out at the white-draped woods. "I never feel cold in this kind of weather. It laps me like a blanket. I love the look of it, the pure sweet white, so quiet and so clean. When I was a boy up in the Craigs, it made me forget the dirt in the world."

Ryel sat next to him. "Your grandmother the Markessa told me a little about that time."

Those words evoked a grin. "Never will I forget that first sight of her when she rode up to Dryven Keep astride on her gray mule and swathed in her sea-cloak, and how all the dogs ran howling from her. She changed my life whether I would or no. Taught me letters and manners, and kindness. And thanks to her I became acquainted with Prince Hylas De Warvrek, whom I worshipped; and thanks to him at length I escaped that malignant whore my mother, and that drunken swine my sire. Escaped to a kind haven, where I was welcomed. But I had a grudge against the world that demanded satisfaction, and…" He halted, darting Ryel a suspicious glance. "You're making me tell you all this, warlock, with those arts of yours. I wouldn't mind knowing why."

"The better to understand you, Guy."

"For what reason?"

"So as to work your cure."

"I'm not sick, sorcerer. The witch Riana set me right. What you began in Ormala, she completed."

"She healed your body only. Of the mind's pain she has no comprehension."

"One as fair as she needs no such knowledge. But I wish my road wasn't leading Northward again. All my mind was set on Almancar."

"It is your decision to make."

"As I said, I've no choice, sorcerer. The troubles there have to be put down. And besides, I'd not mind seeing some of my old friends once more, Roskerrek among them."

The wysard half laughed. "He's the last person I'd expect you to call a friend."

"We had our differences, no question. But never have I known anyone more learned in so many ways, or more patient under the lash of unceasing sickness. Roskerrek saved my life, you've doubtless heard."

"Saved it, only to nearly take it again."

"He tried hard, I admit. He's a ravening demon with a blade."

"I don't mean the initiation of the Fraternity." And Ryel revealed what had nearly occurred when Desrenaud lay unconscious in Grotherek Palace, poisoned by an assassin's blade. The Northerner listened expressionless, but his cold-ruddied features lost their color awhile.

"So my looks both endangered and saved my life that night," he said at last. "How often I remember his eyes on me afterward, that he would avert as soon as my own met them. A notable spirit, Yvain Essern's; seldom does one see pure good and black evil wedded so tightly in a single soul. I well know how deeply he hated me; but that hatred embarrassed him, I think, when he saw I couldn't share it. The only time I came close was during the Brotherhood initiation, when he cut me unfairly—and fatally, almost. Hallagh's best doctors looked after me at once, and I healed fast, with barely a scar. But my resentment rankled all during the wars, and Redbane and I had many a hot dispute whenever I called his judgment into question regarding strategy, which was often. I understand his ill-will toward the Snow-folk—or Hralwi, to give them their true name—to whom he lost his father and eldest brother, both dear to him; but thousands more lives than theirs were squandered just as futilely on either side."

"You ended that war."

Desrenaud shrugged off the wysard's implied praise. "I only began the end. All it took was a parley with the Hralwi chieftain—which was made easier by my knowledge of his language, since he knew but scant Hryelesh."

"That was all?"

The earl smiled ruefully. "Not quite. First came our single combat witnessed by the clan's aristocracy—a wrestling-bout that lasted an hour or two and bruised me crown to heel, which is a fair distance; but since Clathegar and I were exactly matched in height and years, and nearly so in size, he got as good as he gave. Worse than that was the all-night drinking-bout that came after the treaty, followed by a boiling hot steam-bath and a naked roll in the dawn-lit snow to purify ourselves for peace, and a crushing wet lot of kisses and bear-hugs at farewell—Hralwi warriors are an effusive lot regardless of gender. Still, those were easy proceedings compared to what came afterward in Hallagh when the Domina—and Roskerrek—learned of my diplomacy."

"Was it your diplomacy that forced you to leave the Barrier?" the wysard asked.

"Rather my lack of it," Desrenaud muttered. "Damn your Art, that makes me say whatever you want."

"Tell me what drove you from Hryeland."

The earl sighed. "Heartily glad was I to leave that cruel land. And I'd no desire whatever to become the he-concubine of the insufferable virago that ruled it."

"What do you mean?"

Desrenaud gathered up another snowball, slinging it at a pine-cone wavering on a limb a considerable distance away; did not miss. "Bradamaine asked me—commanded me, more accurately—to become her morganatic consort. But I didn't consider a few nights of drug-drenched lust sufficient persuasion for a union in which I'd have no rights whatever of succession or inheritance, and I told her in the bluntest terms that I'd no inclination whatever for the wrong side of her blanket. That's when she drew the knife she keeps at her side and started in on me, upon which I knocked her down after she'd carved me up a bit."

Ryel stared. "By every god."

"It was considerably more sordid than it sounds," the earl replied. "Knowing that my life in Hryeland wasn't worth much after assaulting its sovereign, I sought out Roskerrek and told him of my plans for flight, which he was more than happy to assist and keep secret. I've often wondered how he's fared since."

"I'm willing to let you know, if you're interested."

Desrenaud was, and asked many questions regarding the healing of the Count Palatine's blood-bane and the wysard's meeting with the Domina, but most of all Ryel's initiation into the Sword Brotherhood, among whom the Northerner numbered his dearest friends--even to the Countess of Fayal.

"I'll be glad to see them all again," he said. "Thanks to them, I was safe from Bradamaine's vengeance; the Brotherhood keeps secrets to the grave." He stood up, and Ryel joined him. "Since fate leads us both northward, let's go together. I'd be glad of your company."

"And I of yours," Ryel replied. "But I must stay here awhile, to learn the Art I require. In the meanwhile you'll have your hands full overseeing Theofanu's downfall in Hallagh."

Desrenaud nodded, but winced too. "To think I was once that crone's most ardent follower, slave to her vicious philtres and potions. It shames me sore."

"You never really worshipped the Master, Guy. The Art within you was too strong for that."

"Still, it didn't keep me from becoming an abject slave to Theofanu's drugs, and finding my way to Ormala. Mine is no hero's history, magus."

"But it could be."

At those words Desrenaud seemed to muse awhile. "While a boy in my grandame's house I learned tales of gods and heroes, and now it feels as if I'm part of one." Reaching out with a gloved hand, he gathered up some snow in his palm, letting it fall like sand through his fingers. " My life's never been overly fortunate in its devolutions, sorcerer, but maybe now my luck will turn."

"It has already begun to."

"I'd be glad of the change, believe me." Again Desrenaud took up a handful of snow; but this time he ungloved, as if to feel the hurt of the cold. "My grandame found the good in me; Sandrine de Tresk found the best. I'd been a worthless rakehell, a stain on King Niall's learned and noble court, until Sandrine changed me the way the princess changes a beast to a man in those tales of wonder. She was wed to a worthless lord who treated her ill because she was barren, or so he thought; but she died in childbed because of me, and our daughter with her. I mourned in true Starkland fashion, howling and squalid and solitary, as drunk as I could make myself. I doubt I'd have lived long had I not been commanded to serve as interpreter for Prince Hylas when he journeyed to Almancar. I went there unwilling and surly, and upon my arrival I shunned the city, choosing to hunt all day in the wasteland outside the walls chasing foxes or whatever else I could find to kill, wearing desert gear against the sun and wind. This same gear I wore over my black mourning-weeds the night of the Sovran's feast, not caring what was thought of me; and the court observed my garb with outrage, for in Destimar it is an enormity for a guest to wear mourning at a royal celebration. But I was forgotten when Belphira Deva was brought in.

"It angered me to see a mere brothel singing-wench greeted with such acclaim and respect; perhaps I was jealous. So irate was my mood that when old Agenor made some slighting remark about my rough appearance, calling me a low fellow and a turncoat mercenary, I flung off my desert guisings and gave him back scorn for scorn, to the stark appallment of the lookers-on. Needless to say, I was drunk, having made free with Sindrite brandy and other strong waters; drunk and wretched, wishing myself a thousand miles from that place of flowers and moonlight and laughter." He caught his breath, and winced. "She told you what I did next, did she not?"

"She did."

"There was a sight for you, sorcerer. I must have gone maudlin from the drink, to have flung myself down at her feet so desperate, blubbering amid the folds of her gown--but I was long past caring. All I felt was her cool hand upon my head and her soft voice close at my ear, soothing as the sea. I loved her from that moment; could have died there with my head on her lap, the angel sweetness of her singing my last memory."

Laughter floated in on the wintry air, low and mischief-laden. Then Lady Riana was in their midst, still in Belphira's guise. "It will be much better for us all if you live, green eyes," she said. "I understand you're on the point of leave-taking. When would you depart?"

"As soon as may be, my lady," Desrenaud replied; and now he seemed well aware that he spoke only to his lady's semblance. "That is, if you've no objection…or obstruction."

She smiled serenely. "None whatever of either. You seem ready for your journey—well-rested and strong. Is there anything you would take with you?"

"With nothing I came to you," Desrenaud said. "I'll go the same."

"Oh, I think not," the lady said. "You'll find a few things in your pockets when you arrive in Hallagh, little gifts of mine that may prove useful. I'm a firm believer in reciprocation, and you gave me much to remember. Bend down to me, you great tall wonder."

Desrenaud bent, and Riana wreathed her bare smooth arms around his neck, kissing his mouth lightly but lingeringly. "Now hold yourself very still. Still as death, lest death find you indeed."

Her easy tone held a terrible warning. Desrenaud stood upright and unmoving, and the last look he gave was to the wysard, his eyes now clear and steady.

Riana said the needful words, and the Northerner's form first wavered in the air, then dissolved into nothingness. "So," she said, regarding the empty air where he had stood. "Now he's in dour gray Hallagh. I'll miss him. Such a magnificent figure of a man he was, like Prince Drostal in the epics—'An aspect aptly joining jarring arts, Wherein War smiled, and Love cast deadly darts.' So tall, with such breadth of shoulder. So slim in the waist and loins, so long and straight in the legs. And that smell of his—like an animal's pelt, clean and wild. You have remarked it?"

"I have," Ryel said, a little impatiently.

Riana licked her lips. "I liked it. Very much. How fortunate they've been, the many—very many—women he's pleasured."

"More fortunate still is the only woman he truly loves."

At Ryel's rebuke Riana only laughed. "Belphira Deva hasn't had as much of him as I have, believe me."

"She has all of him."

With a pettish mouth the One Immortal turned her back on the space Desrenaud had once filled so dauntingly, and took Ryel by the arm, impelling him to follow her. "You'll see more than you can stand of your friend Starklander in time to come. Now it's time to begin your education."

Chapter Nineteen

The One Immortal made a careless sweeping gesture at the snowy land around them, and within the space of a minute the winter-world had transformed into sultry jungle where brilliant birds and busy monkeys sang and screeched among the teeming green luxuriance. Now the land surged with sharp volcanic knolls, and glistened with waterfalls. Here and there Ryel descried ruins of great temples and palaces immensely old, and huge uncanny images either fallen or crumbling to pieces under a rank tangle of creepers and roots and moss. Around the pillars of the house, rioting vines veiled the gods and daimons and dancers in paradisial orchids and other tropical flowers bizarrely beautiful, clustered in dense garish masses. The heavy heat was breathtaking, and for an irrational panicked moment Ryel remembered Dagar.

"You needn't gape so," Riana said carelessly over the wild din. "It's an easy enough trick, once understood. You'll learn it."

Ryel wiped his brow, loosened his shirt. "I never thought such Mastery possible."

"I'd be most unhappy if it weren't. I loathe winter. Only for your tall friend's sake did I endure it."

"You seemed not to feel the cold."

"It isn't the cold I mind. It's the bareness. The death." She took a long slow breath of the sundrenched air. "Enough of this foolish girl's form. You wished to see my true self—now you may."

She transformed, her features shimmering. Her fair Almancarian plaits loosened, darkening to glossy auburn-black luxuriance rippling in close-set crimps. Her eyes lengthened and enlarged even as their deep green shifted to a languorous warm copper-gold, while the sculpted planes of cheek and brow rounded and softened. The fullness of the mouth grew fuller yet, and her imperial girlhood aged a seeming seven years, and became so excessively sensuous that they hardly seemed of humankind.

Returned to her own superabundant carnality, she stretched her smooth round arms and began to arrange her hair, using a twigful of flowers to pin it atop her head in a loose knot softened by many escaping strands.

"Ah. So much better. I hate clothes."

She wore none, now; only jewels. Now a dozen strands of pearl wreathed her neck, and bracelets of begemmed gold chimed row upon row at her wrists and ankles. A cincture of gold encircled her hips, its many looped chains ringing with little bells. Rich jewels hers, beggaring any of Almancar's; but they were as nothing to the nakedness they so lightly veiled. Soft cream-tinged cinnamon-brown was her skin, that gave off a spicy redolence not so much a perfume as an inherent scent; and absolutely without blemish it glowed warmly taut over breasts swelling like great fruits, and haunches jutting in large soft prominences beneath a waist perilously slender. Her flesh, yieldingly firm, gave no more hint of muscle or bone than would have a nectarine or a mango; but every limb of her body was pliant and supple as a vine, palpably apt for any flexure however extravagant. Save for the thick luxuriance of her rippling tresses and her delicate eyebrows and densely-fringed lashes, not a hair grew on all her body, and her sex could be discerned as no more than a soft fold tender as a plum-cleft, intermittently visible beneath the bright concatenations of the glittering belt, scarcely more or less provocative than the languorous slits of her heavy eyelids, or the warm division between breast and arm.

Irritated by sudden and urgent thirst, Ryel tried to look away, and angered himself yet more by his inability to do so. "Which of your people's goddesses have you chosen to resemble, my lady?"

"I myself was the pattern for the goddesses that came after me, Ryel Mirai. She smiled with a slow hint of mischief. "You seem too warm."

All of Ryel's body had broken out in sweat, surely caused by the plunge from icy winter to sweltering jungle. "Yes," he said with effort, taken aback by the breathless extremity of that heat, the overwhelming sensual allure of that nudity.

"Come, this will cool you."

Ryel had already observed that a pool of clear water edged the back of the Riana's house. Out of an escarpment of black lava veiled in ferns and orchids a waterfall jetted in silver strands dropping into pure blue transparency, through which glowed white sand and wavering green fronds, all of it irresistibly enticing. Riana dived in with glittering grace, and swam underwater to the middle of the pool, her jeweled body shimmering beneath the luminous blue.

"Come join me," she called to him, flinging back her wet hair as her arms waved lazily amid the water. Noting his hesitation, she laughed, slow and relishing. "Do you fear me so much?"

Ryel turned away. "It isn't fear."

"It is. Your Steppes fear, terror of the flesh. But are you not—" here her voice changed, gentling in a way that made him catch his breath and whirl round again—"are you not half Almancarian, Ryel Mirai?"

Diara of Destimar's incandescent beauty met the wysard's astonished eyes; Diara, hovering amid pellucid sapphire, smiling with that serenity of their first meeting in the dream-realm. And even though Ryel knew that her beloved fair semblance was a feigned one, the knowledge did not help him breathe.

The Sovrena swam to the bank and rose up out of the water. "You're too hot. Come in with me." And very gently she began to unfasten Ryel's shirt, pulling it from the wysard's shoulders.

The wysard shut his eyes, set his teeth. "You are cruel, Riana." He clenched back a gasp as he felt those smooth hands stray from his shoulders to his flanks to his waist, seeking the fastening of the breeches. "Don't. Please."

"Oh, very well. But I'll have this at least." The slim white arms wrapped around his body, drawing him close to wet ivory smoothness; the soft mouth took his in a searching kiss. Bitterly against his will Ryel gave himself up to the embrace, unable to keep from returning it.

"Let go," he whispered.

Kisses on his neck, burning sweet; hands straying down his back; hot urgency whispering in his ear. "You don't want me to. You know you don't."

"I won't allow this." And he wrenched himself away from her.

"You're so touchy, brother. I wasn't going to bite you." Embodied in her true shape now, draped again in her glittering ornaments, Riana released him with much of her wonted unconcern; but a shadow seemed to have passed over her face. "You men and your love. As if it mattered."

"I wish you understood what love is, my lady. It would make you kinder."

She only shrugged, too indolent for entire contempt. "Brother, I have no desire to give my heart again and again, losing it to death again and again. Better by far to spare myself continual hurt. Look at the way you ache for those you love—and you love so easily. So indiscriminately. Michael, who would have sacrificed you to Dagar without the slightest remorse. Roskerrek, who would have cut you to pieces and regretted nothing save the mess it made. Diara, who does not so much as remember you, and Priamnor who has a great deal more on his mind these days to give you more than a passing thought. You must forget them all. To learn great things you must unlearn the little; to learn the great Masteries you must unlearn the World."

"I will not," Ryel at once replied.

"And why not?"

"Because nothing makes us strong save love, my lady."

"And when did you learn that?"

He ignored the jeer in her voice, turning away from it. "I learned it when Edris lay bleeding to death in my arms, that day we fought in the courtyard. When I realized that I had strength enough to die for him."

Long was Riana silent; and when she spoke again, her voice no longer mocked. "I will never have your strength, Ryel; and that is why I could never have come to the World's help as you did. Nor could I help you when you lay on your deathbed in the house of Gwynned de Grisainte."

Ryel spun around. "What do you mean?"

She gazed upon him unmoved. "When on that first night you lay down in Guyon Desrenaud's bed, you were closer to death than you had any idea. The daimon-bane of the Red Esserns had fatally infected your blood, and Dagar's rai hovered near to seize upon you at the moment of your last breath. The Markessa hoped to cure you, but she never could have alone. She had stolen my spell-book, yes; but she had not my powers, and her Art would have availed little or nothing. But Edris reached beyond the Void and strengthened the Markessa's Art, and it saved you."

Ryel felt a shiver crawl over him despite the intensity of the heat. "In that sleep I had a dream. In that dream Edris killed me."

Riana inclined her head. "He himself sent part of that vision from the Void, although it was intermixed with your own imaginings."

"Did you see it, too?"

"Yes," she said, and now she smiled. "It was remarkably sensuous; I enjoyed it."

Blankly the wysard stared at her. "Riana, he killed me in that dream."

"He killed your sick self only. In the moment his sword-point pierced you, the daimon-evil left your body."

Ryel in a memory-glint regained that brilliant morning of blue waves and sweet salt air; felt the salt in his eyes, stinging hot and wet. "I had a second dream afterward. The ending of the world."

"That was a vision born of your weariness and despair and self-doubt," the One Immortal replied. "But the time for those cruel emotions is past, brother. I will give you in their place strength, hope, self-surety. And more, much more." She slipped her soft gold-laden arms around his neck, urging him down to her lips; and this time he made no attempt to draw away, desperate for warm woman-flesh to slake the violent hungers stirred by that gleaming vision of the Dranthene Sovrena, needful of human tenderness to counter the Dagar-sent ordeals yet burning vivid in his memory. Only one doubt haunted him, now.

"This is beyond my deserving," he murmured into her ambrosial hair as his hands dared only faintly to caress the high-set plentitudes of her breasts, span the impossible slenderness of her waist, stroke the velvet abundance of her haunches, trace with tremulous fingers the spiced silk declivity of her delta.

Her mouth was like fruit of the rain forest, nectarous and savorous and wildly sweet. She caught his hands in hers, pressing them against the flesh he dared not sense to the full, emboldening them to brash exploration. "In my land this is worship, my brother. The gods of Zinaph delight in the couplings of men and women, the affirmation of life. We will astonish the gods, you and I."

There on the margin of the lake, beneath fragrant shade, amid soft luxuriance of grass and flowers they celebrated the life-force, enabled and inspired by bodily strength abetted with Art and lust, enjoyed without the slightest tainting twinge of shame or remorse. Pleasure shook them like bolts of lightning, flash after flash after blinding searing gasping flash, until at sunset they lay amid scattered pearls and discarded jewels, entwined and at peace as the day ebbed in soft pulsations of crimson and gold.

"My lovers number hundreds, but you have surpassed them all," Riana murmured against his shoulder. "The god-heroes of Destimar are all of them joined in you."

Ryel smiled, unable to keep from feeling pride at such praise. "While in Markul I closely studied the pleasure-arts in all their aspects from many a learned book. Never did I dream I'd have a chance to apply my studies so thoroughly."

Riana laughed softly, deliciously. "Never have I met so diligent and thorough a scholar."

He touched his mouth to hers, still greedy for those lips despite an infinity of kisses. "I want you again."

"And you'll have me again, and again." Lazy with pleasure she stretched her arms in a rippling chime of golden bangles. "But now it's time for other matters. Food, and talk, and then sleep, and after that the learning of the Lost Masteries."

Ryel lost all track of the time that followed. Each moment blended into the next like the thousand fragrances that compounded Transcendence, sweet upon sweet. He might have been with Riana a week, or a year. All he knew was that he was happy beyond any contentment he had known in his life. Every hour seemed to add to his Mastery or his pleasure, both explored to heights he had never dreamed possible. Save for his lust, which was imperative and ceaseless, the wysard had no consciousness of any bodily need; he ate and drank and slept only because those actions were delightful, not because he required them. Among other enjoyments, often he would wander among the vine-shrouded lichen-misted ruins naked as a god, his arm about the One Immortal's willow-slim waist, his hand resting on the soft jut of her gem-draped hip , ever and again lingering beneath an embowered archway or atop a crumbling pyramid or under a waterfall to kiss those fruit-sweet lips of hers, or seek her breasts among the ropes of jewels, or wreathe her rippling hair with jasmine. But those toying moments were as nothing compared to the passionate unions in her vast bed, where the Art became amorous and limitless.

When they lay quiet again after yet another interlude, gathered up in each other, Riana touched drowsy lips to his cheek. "If ever I were to love anyone, Ryel Mirai, I would love you."

He treasured her closer against him, thanking her wordlessly. Beyond the wide-flung shutters and doors of the pavilion bright rain fell hard, clattering against the palm-fronds, silencing the wonted racket of parrots and apes and lemurs, refreshing the sultry air. It lulled him asleep awhile, for how long he was not sure; he awoke to dusk. Dashrali was lighting the lamps, and Riana half-reclined on the bed's edge clothed in a length of gleaming many-colored silk wrapped close about her body, her hair rippling unbound to her waist.

The wysard blinked his eyes. "You're…dressed."

She lifted a dusky sweet shoulder. "For a change."

Ryel drowsily reached for her hand and kissed it, breathing its perfume. "What is the scent you use? It never leaves you."

"In old Zinaph royal girl-children from infancy were daily rubbed head to foot with oil of spices now extinct. After a number of years the fragrance would become permanent. But you've slept long, and require breakfast."

On soundless soft-furred feet Dashrali approached with chal and other good things, and set them nearby the bed, then disappeared until only her purr remained in the air, its lingering rumble mingling with the distant growlings of the departed storm.

"Tell me about the Building of Markul," Ryel said, sipping from the emerald-jade chal-bowl she held out to him. "About you."

She nibbled a sweet, dreamily reminiscent. "I came to the Art very young—or rather the Art came to me. A thousand years ago there was no Mastery. A thousand years ago the World was beginning to recover from the worst of its wars, the Black Strife. Most of Cyrinnis was poisoned, and countless thousands died."

"Yes," Ryel said, somber with memory. "I have read of it, and heard."

"But of this you have been unaware: that among those who survived, a few were transformed by those same poisons. They lived, to find their minds' powers magnified beyond anything previously known or believed possible, powers only hitherto imagined in fantastic tales. And perhaps it was those tales of gods and daimons with their ability to command the earth and air that prepared us for the changes we underwent, and made us unafraid to try our newfound abilities to their fullest. Yet to the World we were Strife-tainted monstrosities, inhuman things to be feared and fled from. Markul became our refuge."

"How did you meet?"

"We came to Markul as everyone drawn by the Art comes to that City—inexorably yet inexplicably pulled," Riana replied. "I well remember it, even after a millennium’s passing. Driven from the Zinaph Isles by my people's terror of my Art, I fled to Almancar and took another identity to avoid persecution, becoming a dancer at the Temple of Atlan—for Destimar, a much smaller realm in those days, was the sole land in all the World that survived the wars unscathed, having stayed neutral throughout the struggle. My own home had been destroyed and my family lost—we had been nobles allied to the royal house of Zinaph, but that house had fallen never to rise again. In those days Almancar had no pleasure quarter, and Atlan's temple was the city's chief place of amusement and assignation. With my skills as a dancer, learned from girlhood, and my beauty, which was much as you now see it, I did not lack for admirers. Garnos Basarides was the warmest of them, lately come from soldiering in the Strife up in Munkira, where one of his near kinsmen was ruler. You surely envision the Builders as tottering graybeards, and most of them did indeed live to great age; but in the beginning all of us were young, Khiar of Cosra the eldest of us at thirty—I was twenty-three, two years older than Fleurie of Wycast who was youngest of all. And Garnos was your age when we met, almost twenty-seven, beautiful then as all Almancarians are beautiful still, but to my eye yet comelier for his battle-hardness. Horrors beyond all reason he had witnessed in those dreadful wars, and they had made his eyes haunted and strange; but never could they make them cruel, or trivial, or false. When we looked on one another it burnt me like slow fire; I did not know that part of that flame's heat was the bonding of our Art.

"He bought my freedom from the temple, and I lived with him in his house, learning from him that love is not only gifts and kisses, but trust and laughter and strife and thrown objects and exasperation and…ecstasy." Only her lips smiled, and just barely. "Not long after our coming together, we were both seized with strong presentiments of what lay in store, together dreaming of gray mists and dark towers. Driven by those presages we made ready for journeying, and left Almancar and crossed the Aqqar, not knowing why we went or what our destination might be. But at last after many a lonely mile we reached a place of mists and fog, and among the fog we saw a little band of young men and women dressed in the garb of many lands, sitting together on the ground earnestly conversing. When they saw us they greeted us joyfully, calling us brother and sister, saying that they too had come to the Aqqar one by one, not knowing why. We marveled at our meeting and our immediate communion, for we soon learned that the only thing we had in common after our sense of kinship was our ambidexterity."

Her eyes grew distant with memory. "So long ago. But I see them all as they were then, young and vital, burning with the power and wonder of their new-found Art. The Building of Markul was easy as a child's game—we joined hands as if in a dance, and dreamed the City into being. It sprouted up before us level by level, tower by tower, and we laughed to see it. When the City had grown as large as we wished, we threw off our clothes and entered the gates naked, abandoning all World-ties, trusting our Art to look after us, as every newcomer to Markul has done ever since. Reveling in the joy and delight of our strength we took possession of our new home, our refuge. How young we were, and happy."

"Who gave the City its name?"

"Aubrel of Hryeland. He told us that in an ancient language of his land, Markul meant Safety, and we all agreed that no name could be better."

Immediately Ryel was mindful of the secret script of the Fraternity of the Sword, wherein the runic word "markul" indeed meant "unassailable." Aloud he said, "Lord Aubrel was to have ruled in the North, the Books say."

"His younger brother reigned in his stead, and the house of Essern carried on for a couple of centuries until it was overcome by the Detregorn family, of whom Bradamaine is one—events all but wholly forgotten by even the house of Essern itself, so far in the past their kingship was." She smiled in reminiscence; half-smiled, rather. "A taunting man, Aubrel D'Sern; swarthy and panther-wild, with flashing black eyes arrogantly daring me to steal away from Garnos' bed and into his—challenges which from time to time I accepted with greatest pleasure. But doom came to Aubrel: madness caught hot from the Outer World during a spell gone bad, cruel dementia that permeated his entire being body and mind—terrible to see. For long periods he would seem rational as ever, with that admirable intellect keen and bright, but then would come the inevitable raving outbreaks."

Ryel inclined his head. "I read in the Books of his attack on Lady Fleurie, and the beginnings of the Bane of the Red Esserns."

"You brought the Bane to an end. No one else could have." She lifted her head, and her dawn-colored eyes took his. Had he been on fire, he could not have looked away. "I have lived long, and known many remarkable persons, but you have surprised me most. You are uncannily well created, Ryel Mirai. But you had to be."

Ryel trembled, understanding for the first time to the full the might of her Mastery, and the extremity of her age, and the immensity of her experience. He took both her hands in his, touching his brow to them. "Forgive me for not seeing all that you are, my lady."

She gave her water-ripple of a laugh. "Oh, I don't blame you. There's a lot to me." One of her hands—small and smooth as a child's, but armed with long vermilion nails and in no way innocent—slipped free from Ryel's and made an appraising exploration of his shoulder, moving ever downward to the chest, the belly, the dark frontier of his sex-surrounding hair.

He caught her hand, halting the quest. "How old were you when you died?"

"What age do I appear now?" she asked.

"No more than twenty-three."

She smiled, but without great happiness. "I was thirty-six when I discovered the secret of youth. My looks were fading, to my terror, and continually I sought a Mastery that would restore my charms. Garnos mocked my vanity, saying that there was Art higher and more wondrous—Art he himself was seeking to understand above all else. It became a rivalry between us, my search for youth, his pursuit of life everlasting. At last I discovered what I believed to be the Art I required, and in triumph I invited Garnos to my house to watch my transformation. He claimed that he had likewise discovered the Mastery he sought, and would give it trial as soon as I had tested mine. Naked before my mirror I spoke the words, Garnos looking on smiling his skepticism. And before my eyes I saw wonderful changes steal over me, tightening my skin, lifting my breasts, slimming my belly and thighs, and best of all smoothing the lines on my face, restoring the freshness. I gave a cry of joy, but in another instant that cry became a scream." She licked her lips, not at all in lascivity this time. "Screams. The agony seemed to tear me in pieces, and the death that ensued a moment later came as a blessing. I awoke I know not how long later, without pain. But Garnos was lying across me lifeless, his arms embracing me—"

She broke off, hiding her face against Ryel's shoulder. He stroked her rippling auburn tresses, whispering into their balmy silk. "I'm sorry, Riana. It was a terrible loss."

"I can't understand why I still feel it. It happened so long ago." She rubbed her cheek against Ryel's chest, leaving a damp streak as if from a scuffed peach. "At first I didn't understand, not daring to believe that Garnos had used his Mastery to sacrifice his life for mine. When at last I comprehended, I wanted my heart to break. But it would not. And in the thousand years that have followed, not one day of any of them has gone by without some remembrance of Garnos, whether good or ill, in waking or sleeping.

"As time passed I expected my youth to fade, but it never did; and after a century had passed I expected my death, but it never came. Another century passed; Markul had now several hundreds of citizens, and all the Builders save myself had been laid to rest in the jade citadel. I had become a learner and a teacher, revered for my breadth of lore; but those roles did not suit me. Often I would climb the death-tower to visit my old friends, remembering the glad early days when we were young together and the Art was new; often would I sit by the side of Garnos, who lay unchanged since the moment of his passing, his beauty still forceful in death—he had scarcely attained the age of forty when his Mastery failed mortally."

As he listened, Ryel in memory once again looked upon the face of Riana's lover that in the eternal torchlight of the death-tower seemed to sleep, but not easily. Once again he admired and pitied that countenance of pure Almancarian grace, every lineament in harmony save for the faint contortion of the features wrought by agonizing death bravely borne. Hope born of consolation winged the wysard's thoughts. "Edris saved my life in the same way Garnos saved yours. Could not Garnos yet live in the Void?"

Riana shook her head. "Edris' was a different Mastery. A far lesser one, although remarkably clever in its way. When you attempted the Crossing, Dagar was there lying in wait, ready to exile your rai to the Void and assume your form. But at the critical instant Edris exchanged his rai for yours, and Dagar never knew the difference until it was too late. Had Dagar not seized upon Edris' rai, believing it yours, your father would be dead indeed."

Ryel swallowed dryness. "And if Edris had not appeared in that moment…" But memory quelled and warmed the creeping of his skin. "The Steppes saying is true. Blood indeed hearkens unto blood."

"You are the son of your father, Ryel Mirai. Never so craggily rugged as he was, however; finer. Much finer." She came closer, tracing the muscles of his upper arm with an appraising forefinger. "Flex that for me." He complied, and she pleasurably explored the place where deltoid joined bicep. "Mm. One of my favorite spots." And she kissed it, grazing her tongue over the ridge before settling back again, fitting against his side as if poured there. "The Joining-Art might well cost you your life, as it did that of Garnos."

"Let it." Ryel's reply had been immediate, and Riana nodded approvingly.

"Good. That's what I wanted to hear. What I had to hear." She gazed up at him, quietly assessing. "I've lived a long time, long enough to outgrow strong emotions. The World has to be saved by someone who loves it. Someone young, with a life ahead of him. Someone not walled up in the mists of Markul, but out in the thick of things taking his chances. It actually matters to you whether or not certain people survive Dagar's depredations. I myself could not care less. You will return North to Hallagh because the life of Yvain Essern is important to you for several excellent and deeply-felt reasons: because you admire him, because he is your friend, because you are Swordbrothers, because you will not stand idly by and watch him burn to death—"

The wysard stared at her, remembering that dream vision from what now seemed ages ago. "What do you mean, burn to death?"

"That was the sentence passed upon him."

"But for what cause?"

"For his heresy. His stubborn allegiance to the goddess Argane, and denunciation of the Master."

"But that can't—" Ryel became very still, feeling as if his blood was ebbing out of his body into the air. "How long have I been here with you?"

"Six of your months."

Angrily impatient with what seemed a mindless jest, the wysard shook his head. "That can't be. Six days, perhaps."

"Months, brother. Months, I assure you."

Suddenly the jungle air turned freezing cold. "But the World was in danger enough when I left it to find you. What has become of it since? What of—by every god, what of Dagar?"

The One Immortal did not so much as blink at his tone's urgency. "Oh, nothing's gone so far that you should be distraught over it. Come with me and I'll show you."

Riana led Ryel to another pavilion where another bed took up the middle of the room—no opulent couch swelling in silken magnificence, but a plain divan, unpillowed.

"Lie with me, brother."

He recoiled from her. "Riana, if you think—"

She made an impatient little gesture. "Oh, not for lust this time, brother. Lie beside me, on your back."

Together they stretched out on the bed. Looking up, Ryel saw that the ceiling was made up of a great single pane of glass, like a mirror save that it gave back no reflection.

Riana took his hand. "This Glass sees not only what is, but what was and what will be. Now let us discover what has happened to the World during your absence. What would you view first?"

He freed his hand from hers. "Almancar. The Diamond Heaven."

The Glass shimmered and dissolved, revealing the House of Atlan lit not by gay lamps and moonlight, but the merciless glare of midday beating down through the temple's wrecked roof-beams. So hotly vivid was the radiance that Ryel blinked and winced. His recumbent body seemed weightless, drawn by the light, rising up to reach the Glass and pass through it.

"I am there," he whispered.

"In part you are," Riana answered softly.

"But it's all…wrong. It can't be like this."

The Goddess of Delight's glorious shrine had been sacked, desecrated, defiled. Its pillars were scrawled with coarse graffiti, its portals smashed. Ryel floated through the doors to find mutilated statues, torn hangings, fouled carpets. On Atlan's altar a votary sprawled obscenely dead. And off in the distance came a strange ugly roar like the humming of flesh flies.

"This can't be," Ryel whispered.

Riana's voice was cool. "Keep going."

The wysard drifted down the great stairs giving onto the Diamond Heaven's Jewel Path; halted quivering and overwhelmed at the din and the horror. All up and down the once-beautiful pleasure district a rabble army raged, shattering windows, smashing buildings, plundering shops, raping and murdering in the open streets. And amid the despoiled and ravaged gardens of the Realm of Joy, a black-clad figure with hair like streaming blood stared down in silence, his bare hard arms folded across his chest as he smiled with equal contempt at both his disciples and their adversaries.

"Michael," Ryel breathed.

"Meschante," Riana coolly corrected him. "Meschante, with the Red Essern's looks and powers."

"This can't be," Ryel whispered. "Show me my mother and my sister," he sharply commanded the Glass. In another moment and to his most extreme relief he beheld Mira and Nelora in one of the courtyards of the Eastern Palace, among flowers and fountains. As they talked he learned that they had been the Sovran's guests for some time, and were expecting a visit from Priamnor and Diara that evening. And he would gladly have made the Glass show him those other two so dearly remembered, but concerns more crucial forced him to refrain.

"Hryeland," he said. "Hallagh. The Temple of the Master."

The lush evening loveliness faded, metamorphosing to towering vaults. Now the wysard stood in Theofanu's temple among a congregation increased tenfold from the numbers he remembered, every face of it pallid with stupefaction, every eye staring in drugged trance as the witch wrought her vile mind-debauching magics; and now many worshippers were clad in the extravagant strange garb of the Servants, and like them wore their hair in a hundred strange fashions, weirdly cut and stiffened and colored. Every upturned visage bore the Master's mark, whether inked or tattooed or scarred. Amid the freakish rout Theofanu laughed in exultation, while Bradamaine sat like some gilded effigy, immobile in her flaunting encasement of jeweled gold-cloth, her face painted to garish harlotry, her cold eyes lost.

Ryel made a violent gesture of dismissal. "Show me Yvain Essern."

His surroundings shifted, becoming gray and cold. Stone walls enclosed him, barely visible by the rainy light of a mean little window set high up and heavily barred. In that dirty near-darkness a man was being tortured. Four young bullies in rich finery laughingly battered their chained victim, who bore the torment silently save when an elegant boot or embroidered gauntlet kicked or punched the breath from his body. He wore the uniform of the Hryeland cavalry, but stripped of insignia, ragged and stained. Ryel could not see his face, so ringed about he was. But at last one of the assailants caught the prisoner by the hair, pulling hard as he drew his dagger, and with a sawing slash hacked off a thick blood-red skein, hurling it in the captive's face with a mocking laugh.

"That's the first cut, Redbane. Maybe once you're shorn hairless you'll be handsome."

"Yvain," Ryel whispered, his throat tight as he looked upon that drained face with its blackened eyes. He recognized Roskerrek's attackers, too—Companions of the Domina, officers of the guard royal, women all of them. "Bitches," he hissed softly. Sick though the sight made him, he was glad to see Valrandin was not among that cruel gang.

"They are rather rough, for ladies," Riana nonchalantly observed. "But heretics are seldom gently handled. Shall we continue? There's a great deal more."

"No. One other place only." He drew a long steadying breath. "Markul," he said at last. "The funeral bier of my father."

The Glass shimmered and dissolved at his word to yet colder darkness, still dank and stony but now absolutely silent. Gradually Ryel discerned faint light issuing from torches set along the walls, and the recumbent things they illumined.

"Edris."

He could see his father's form extended to its ungainly length on the porphyry slab, clad in dark robes and barefoot. As Ryel came closer to view the near-smiling face with its half-open eyes, he let out a relieved sigh.

"You're still here. Still whole." And he would have reached out to touch one of the crossed hands, but knew he could not. "Soon, father," he whispered, his voice echoing down the chill corridors. "Soon, I promise you."

He forced his disembodied self to close its eyes, break free of the Glass, assume humanity. Returned to Riana's bed, he at once got up from it. "You might have told me."

"You were here to learn," the One Immortal blandly replied. "But I've neglected to impart to you a bit of information you may consider important. Would you care to hear it?"

Somehow Ryel controlled his anger. "By all means enlighten me."

"So far Theofanu has done Dagar's bidding in the North, and done it well. In the hour of Roskerrek's burning she will receive her reward: Dagar will choose that moment to enter her body and subsume it to his ends. For six months he has hovered in the North, drawing strength, and once given corporeal form he will exert that strength to its fullest. The aristocracy and its hangers-on have had their minds burnt to cinders by Theofanu's drugs, and Hallagh is on the brink of anarchy. Those most fit to rule never took part in Theofanu's rites, being too busily employed in matters of the mind, but they are just the ones the rabble will seek to destroy." She waved away a yawn. "So often it happens that way. The only difference now is that with Dagar in power, it will never change."

Ryel listened first in consternation, then in Art-calmed acceptance. "I will do all I can to stop him."

"I'll be watching in my Glass," she replied. "I look forward to it."

"Then I'll strive to be as entertaining as I can," Ryel replied, with irony as fierce as Edris'. "When is Yvain sentenced to death?"

She lifted a teasing eyebrow. "Ah. Yvain, is it."

"Tell me!"

"Tomorrow, early in the afternoon."

Ryel felt sweat bead up from his skin, covering him in rank mist. "Tomorrow."

Riana nodded. "Which gives you enough time for a restful night's sleep—or whatever else you prefer—before you use the Mastery that will take you Northward. But you could stay longer, if you wished. I can draw out a day to a year."

Ryel looked upon her bitterly. "Your days are overlong, my lady."

She lay still, her dark eyes fixed upon her Glass, her face impassive. "Yes," she said at last, almost inaudibly, so that the wysard almost did not catch that sick tinge of weariness in her voice. "Many times I find them so."

Chapter Twenty

Some time afterward—Ryel did not know how long, only that the noonday sun had become dawn again—he was at long last dressed in his Steppes gear, armed and mounted, Jinn restless between his knees.

"And now?"

Riana, standing at his stirrup, laid her cheek against his thigh. "Now you show me what you've learned. What I taught you."

Ryel cast a doubtful glance up at the sky, which could not be more brilliantly clear. "Do you think I'll succeed?"

"That's not a question to ask me, brother. You either succeed, or die very badly. Very badly indeed." Smiling, she took a spray of jasmine from her hair, and twined it into Jinn's mane. "You won't be needing my horse anymore, you know. You have the power to fly, now—all by yourself."

Ryel shook his head smiling. "People might ask questions if I did. And besides, I've grown very fond of Jinn. I'll keep her, if I may."

She shrugged. "As you wish. Now go. Unlike me, you don't have forever."

He bent to her lips, and she flung her soft cinnamon arms around his neck.

"Until our next, Lord Ryel … if we have one." After a long spice-sweet kiss she let go of him, and stood away. "Now impress me."

Tightening his knees' grip on Jinn, Ryel shut his eyes and lifted his face to the sun, giving all of his mind over to the Mastery of Translation. Very soon the brightness in his eyelids dulled and darkened, and he felt the air growing cold and rain-laden around him. He lifted his voice to the thunder, his arms to the sky; felt himself lifted clear of earth, up into blackness.

*****

Sour-throated and brain-reeling he opened his eyes, groaning at the effort it took, groaning again at the sight that confronted him. All around were streets staggering full of howling drunkards and shrieking lunatics, Ormalan disorder; but Ormala had no army, while this place was rife with redcoats keeping an eye on the chaos but making no move whatever to mitigate it. Only a moment before he had breathed sultry jungle, dense redolence of infinite green, strange fruit, voluptuous flowers; now the raw chill of overcast Northern air, the city's complexity of reek, stuck far down his gorge. Muffling Edris' cloak about him he shut his eyes, breathing slowly to compose his thoughts and adjust to the change.

Jinn gave an indignant whinny, and Ryel started from meditation to see a redcoat soldier gripping the mare's reins with a dirty-gloved fist.

"I've had an eye of you, outlander," the accosting sergeant said. "You're to come with me for questioning."

The wysard twitched the reins from the soldier's hand. "And why should I?"

"Because you answer the description."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"You'll learn. Now get down, or be pulled down."

"None pulls me." His sickness forgotten and his Steppes blood up and ready, Ryel would have shoved the soldier away with a boot-sole to the chest, had not another man neither redcoat nor rioter timely interrupted.

"Enough. I handle this." The newcomer, a black man of Zalla, assessed Ryel with scrutiny most balefully piercing; and although this man was dressed head to foot in spruce Northern clothes rather than half-naked in a length of silk, the wysard knew him at once as one of Theofanu's acolytes.

"Look me in my eye," the Zallan said. "Only one look."

Ryel gave back glare for glare, knowing what Theofanu's henchman sought. You won't find it, he thought. Not now.

"Blue eyes," said the black man at last; and he sounded as if blue eyes were his eternal aversion. "Enough. Go now. No trouble."

Relieved, Ryel pushed his edge. "What were you looking for?"

"No matter. You are not him. Now go."

Ryel persisted. "What is happening here? Folk seem mad."

"Death," said the black man; it was a word he relished much, from the sound it had in his mouth. "Death long wished for, come at last."

The wysard felt his heart stop. "Where is this death? And when?"

"Grotherek Palace," Theofanu's servant all but purred, tilting a dark eye upward. "Soon." The eye descended, met Ryel's distastefully; but the face's grin was like stars in the night. "Maybe even now."

Ryel no longer thought. His entire concentration gave itself over to compelling Jinn through the mob, helping her progress with blows, curses and Art-words indiscriminately heaped upon anyone fool enough to put himself in the way. The Art proved the best help, and after an endless agony of struggle the wysard found himself at Grotherek. Through the great gates of the palace Ryel could discern that in the central courtyard a scaffold had been erected, its platform spiked in the middle by a tall stake. Redcoats ringed the platform, their pikes and halberds at ready. More of their scarlet ilk guarded the palace gates, allowing in very few of those who clamored for admittance, and only then for exorbitant coin. Flinging a handful of Almancarian gold to the sentinels, Ryel urged Jinn through the gates as both redcoats and rabble groveled and fought for largesse so unlooked-for.

Only titled and rich seemed to make up the spectators within Grotherek's gates, and here Ryel found at least a little elbow-room. Closest to the scaffold were the Servants of the Master, numbering hundreds; and they were wild with joy, their eyes glittering bright with desperate narcotics, their garments excessive beyond any dream of Almancar, their faces and even the backs of their hands marked with the Master's seal. Likewise nearby were coaches emblazoned with coats of arms, their occupants reveling within--all but one, unmarked and curtained, that several redcoats seemed to guard against harm.

Insistent ink-stained fingers wrapped the wysard's ankle. "Why, Mr. Marai of Destimar, well met after many a day! Still keen on the sights of Hallagh, are you? This'll be a great one, I promise—let's drink to it."

The wysard looked down on Thomas Dulard to find the poet more slovenly and besotted than ever, a sheaf of papers under one arm and a bottle of wine in the other, now proffered with a shaky hand. At Ryel's curt refusal Dulard shrugged, and quaffed for two.

"Well, Mr. Marai, since you'll not drink, perhaps you'll show yourself a patron of the arts and buy one of my broadsheets. I swear I've penned my best in this—'Redbane's Goodnight' I call it, and can't count how many I've sold since this morning. It's made my fortune."

"Tell me what has happened, and be quick."

The bard gave an equine grin. "Vengeance at last. The Fellowship of the Sword has been adjudged a blasphemous cult dangerous to the true religion, and its members have been proscribed as heretics. Many have fled the realm, but enough have been jailed to give folk a pretty show this day. Redbane's to go first—they say that he was half afire as it was with his hair so flaming, but he'll burn for fair soon enough. My poem here tells the entire tale of his iniquity and sedition, if you'll but look—"

"What of the Unseen?"

Dulard all but whinnied in glee. "That silly old god? Most of its churches have been closed, or burnt, and its followers gone to ground—even Derain Meschante himself has fled the country, they say. Would you hear but a quatrain of my ballad? The tune's quite taking." Dulard cleared his voice to sing, but his first note came blurtingly, forced out by a sudden shove from behind that sent him tottering.

"Peddle your doggerel arsewipes elsewhere, you scurvy inkpisser," came a dry but murderous voice at Dulard's back. The drunken bard reeled about, with pallid terror beheld Jorn Alleron, and at once oozed into the throng with a bob of his bad hat, helped by the captain's kick.

Ryel dismounted and held out his hand, but Alleron was too distraught to take it. "I never thought to see you again, m'lord prince. But you've come too late if you came to help. Nothing can help him now. He's to burn, thanks to the Domina's madness."

"What of the rest of the Fraternity's officers?"

"They've been captured. Jailed. And they're to die next, after my lord."

"Not one of them escaped?"

"Theron and Payne got away, but not the others."

"Why were you spared?"

Alleron gave a mirthless laugh. "Because I'm of no importance. A mere commoner, not worth killing. But that's my luck this day, for there's one I must look after at my lord's asking. Come, I'll present you."

He led the wysard to the curtained guarded coach, and rapped at the window. A woman finely dressed and heavily veiled lowered the glass, and at the sight of Ryel gave a cry, holding out a hand gloved to the elbow.

"The Prince of Vrya!"

Ryel took the lady's hand and bowed over it. He could not recognize her voice, so choked it was and faint; and she observed his confusion.

"Come in, and speak with me. Join us, Captain."

The coach was spacious and comfortable, well-warmed by a fire of coals burning in an iron box; a basket held a rich variety of provisions as yet untouched. But the lady was not there for her amusement, as was clear from her expression, and her body's evident unease despite the coach's deep cushions.

"We are sadly met this time, Ryel Mirai," she said, now with more composure. "But I hope you'll know me once more, altered though I am." And with those words she threw back her veil.

He knew not her, but her memory. The arrogant wild hoyden had become a beautiful woman in the worst distress ever held in check by proudest strength, ashen pale but icy calm.

Gabriel Valrandin read all the questions in Ryel's face. "You marvel at me, and no wonder. I have astonished myself often and often in the past year. But before we speak further, let me offer you a cup of wine and somewhat to eat--and you as well, Jorn, that have watched with me here since dawn."

Ryel declined, as did Alleron. "I've small stomach for food, m'lady," the captain replied. "But you require looking after." And over her protests he poured her a glass of cordial and readied her a plate delicately arrayed with the basket's best things. For himself he took nothing, but produced a silver flask from his pocket and from it poured a stream of frangin into two goblets, handing one to the wysard.

"To better times than this," he said, emptying his glass with brusque dispatch. "You and the prince have matters to talk of, my lady--and I have your sentries to keep in order. I'll be within call."

When the equerry had left, Ryel too pledged Valrandin. "Good fortune guard you, Countess," he said. "I never thought to see you here."

"Fortune." She shook her head, and made a face he remembered from other days. "Name not that whore to me, Ryel Mirai." She set aside her untouched plate; she had taken off her long gloves, but underneath were others, fingerless and somewhat shorter but still wrist-concealing. Her fingers quivered and clenched. "I should still be angry with you for leaving me in the lurch that day Redbane ruined me. But up until that time you had been a friend to me, and I am in great need of friends now."

"Allow me to prove myself one, Countess."

"I'd welcome that. The Domina no longer knows me thanks to Theofanu's wiles, and the Companions have all despised and forsaken me because of Roskerrek; and now Yvain is to die today, and terribly. Hard calamities, mine; but I'm damned if I'll let that witch Theofanu see me weep for them." And indeed although her voice was faint and broken and her cheeks colorless, not a tear flickered in her hazel eyes, heavy-lidded and weary though they were. "I miss Bradamaine."

"But is she not responsible for the Count Palatine's captivity?"

"No. Theofanu rules, now; and at Theofanu's pleasure Yvain was taken prisoner a month ago and stripped of his generalship, despite the outcry of the ranks. Yes, outcry--for your cure transformed him, Ryel Mirai, taking away the pain that had oppressed and disguised him all his life." She paused awhile. "He is so different now. So…kind." She bit her lip, and her eyelids quivered until she shut them hard.

"I will help you in any way I can," Ryel said, his admiration even stronger than his pity. "But tell me how…" He hesitated, not quite knowing how to frame his next words.

Valrandin shrugged, and took up her little tumbler of cordial. "I know what you're thinking, and you're mad to think it. Yvain Essern and I have yet to share a bed, and I doubt we ever will. But since that fight of ours I've been under his protection, which I'm in need of now that I can no longer wield a blade, and have always had rather too many enemies." She held up her right arm. "You remember, doubtless. It has never really mended."

"Let me see." Gently the wysard drew the glove from Valrandin's right hand, and examined the deformed and discolored wrist with aching regret. "I had thought this would be healed by now."

"It never will. I'm used to that."

"It makes you suffer.”

"Only when I lift anything heavier than a book--and I’ve lifted many a one of them the past half-year, thanks to Yvain. He undertook my education, seeing that I needed pastime. I’m growing so learned I scarce recognize myself--history, pictures, maps…why, I can even strum a few notes on the harpischord, now. But I've small taste for reading lately, as you might guess."

"You're worn out, Gabriel, and unwell. This is no place for you."

"I'm here not for Yvain's death, but his life. Bradamaine will soon appear at her window above the courtyard, and I'll make her look upon me and remember what used to be between us. And surely at the sight of Yvain she cannot choose but recall his loyalty and love, to which she owed her power. Theofanu may be strong, but she is not Domina of Hryeland; she dares not gainsay Bradamaine's wishes." A spark of her old fire made her glance askance at the wysard. "My lord prince, you toy strangely with my hand."

"Forgive me." With a final caress Ryel replaced Valrandin's glove. "I hope it will cause you no more trouble."

"Hope. What an empty word that is." She was silent awhile, and when she spoke her voice was strangely distant. "Yvain once told me that when he was a boy, his sickness was very strong upon him, and he often had attacks of fever in which he dreamed he was burning alive; he would wake up shrieking, rousing all the house. Nothing, he said, equaled the horror and the agony of those nightmares; and there could be nothing more dreadful, he thought, than to be burnt to death. Nothing more cruel. I remember the cold sweat that crept over him as he spoke of it, he that fears nothing on earth; and I held him close until he warmed again, saying that he need never dream that way any more, that it was over, that he was safe..."

The crowd's sudden uproar made her break off with a curse. Throwing open the coach door she leapt out, Ryel following. Clutching the wysard's arm, Valrandin drew him to the edge of the cordon. "Look. Look where Bradamaine comes, prisoner to that vile hag."

Every eye turned toward the palace, where the Domina and her favorite had just appeared on the great balcony overlooking the courtyard. The Northern queen leaned strengthless upon the Ormalan witch, her pale blue eyes dulled to blank gray in a face painted to garish inhumanity. But the little yellow sorceress was all vivacity and smiles, her fierce teeth flashing in satisfaction as she gazed down at the scaffold and its stake, then at her congregation who hailed her with wild shouts. Both she and the Domina were swathed in gowns of gold-cloth, and in an ill-advised imitation of her tyranness, Bradamaine's moon-colored hair had been skinned back in a tight knob that made her drug-drawn raddled face stranger yet.

The wysard grimaced at the sight. "By every god."

Alleron, who stood at the wysard's other side, bitterly shook his head. "Only one, now. And nothing will please it but my lord's blood."

An even greater shout now went up among the crowd. Turning to the noise, Ryel saw that the Domina's Companions were with much jeering roughness dragging a man up the scaffold's stairs—a tall man, with skin white as ice. In the raw cold he was half-naked, clad in black cavalry gear only from the waist downward, and his body was wasted and gaunt with starvation. Dark bruises marked his ribs and breast, while his back had been scourged raw. All his hair had been shorn off cruelly with many cuts to the scalp, and his face was disfigured with blows. At the sight of him Ryel felt his own face freeze hard, save for his searing eyes.

"You bitches," Valrandin hissed. There was murder in her eyes as she looked upon her former friends, murder mingled with hot tears. "You heartless sluts, I'll make you sorry for this."

"Ah, Yvain," Alleron whispered, his voice breaking. "Yvain…"

As if he heard, Roskerrek straightened to stand at his full height, and looked out over the jeering crowd. Iron chains manacled his wrists and ankles, but he seemed not to feel them now. His blackened eyes found Alleron, and the faintest smile moved in his crushed lips, though nowhere else on his face, and he bowed slightly in salute. Valrandin he next discerned, with a tenderness and regret far stronger than the emotion he had shown that rain-gray afternoon when she lay destroyed and helpless in his bed. The mocking jostling world had fallen away from him, and he no more than blinked when a Servant-flung stone struck his whip-rent shoulder. Lifting his enchained arms, he held them out to Valrandin and slowly crossed them over his heart, as if gathering her into an embrace. Long did he gaze on her thus; but then he turned away to face Bradamaine's window, ever with his arms crossed, and Ryel remembered the Temple of the Sword. Colder and more insensible than any statue the Domina stared down at him, oblivious to that adoration.

Valrandin clenched her fists. "How can she be so cruel? Bradamaine, look at me! Bradamaine!"

Her wild shout carried to the balcony, and seemed to shock the Domina back into life again, for she blinked with recognition at the sound, and eagerly would have turned to it; but Theofanu clutched her arm and hissed something in her ear, her sharp teeth gnashing in a spell. At once Bradamaine became even more blankly impassive, helplessly enslaved to the Ormalan witch.

Theofanu looked over the crowd, and discovered Ryel. Time seemed to unloosen and ebb as her eyes narrowed and blackened, and the raw air thickened like molten lead as a voice slithered snakelike into the wysard's brain.

So, young blood. I knew you wouldn't want to miss the fun. Where have you hidden yourself the last half-year?

Steadily despite his loathing Ryel looked into those empty eyes, and answered in his thoughts. "This won't work, Dagar."

You think not? the voice crooned. Stop it if you can. But I'd much rather you didn't. It's been so long since I burnt anyone alive, and I'm so looking forward to it.

"The flames will never light. I'll make sure they don't."

Dagar laughed in a sharp flashing of teeth.

You'll do nothing, beauty. I'm ahead of you, everywhere. Knowing that you'd very probably come here, I set awork spells to counter yours. The fire will burn, believe me; burn brilliantly. All you can do is watch, young blood. But don't think this diversion detracts from my true purpose. This madwoman's body doesn't suit me, not at all, and you've been foolish enough to keep me from Michael. That leaves you. And I'll have you, beauty. I'll have you. All the clever things in the bitch Riana's little book I read, and remember.

Cutting off further communication with the wysard, Dagar made a sign to one of the Companions, who relayed the unspoken order to the others.

"Bind the heretic!"

The Companions seized upon Roskerrek, and would have fastened him to the irons hanging from the stake, but he fought against his captors with all the strength left him. Some of the redcoat soldiers cheered wildly for their former general, but hard blows felled him at last, and his unconscious body was wrapped in chains.

With curses and blows Valrandin tried to push through the cordon of redcoat soldiers, but to no avail. Her efforts were noticed by the Companions on the scaffold, who jeered at her and redoubled their abuse of Roskerrek.

"I'm damned if you'll sleep through the fun, Redbane," one of them cried, and she flung cold gutter-water upon him until he shuddered awake, causing the crowd to howl with joy. Finding himself bound beyond any escape, Roskerrek with pain-stunned eyes sought Alleron, giving his equerry a look that made the wysard's blood run colder yet—a look of the most desperate urgency, that made Alleron straighten in steely attention.

"I understand you, m'lord," he said through clenched teeth. "If this be my last service to you, I welcome it."

Ryel caught his coat-sleeve. "What would you do?"

"The only thing I can," the captain answered, low enough that Valrandin could not hear. "It'll take but a moment to leap that scaffold and drive my knife into his heart."

"You'd lose your own life."

"I expect it. But I'm damned if I'll stand by and watch him burn."

"You won't have to. Stay, and wait."

"Wait? Are you stark mad? Wait for what?"

Ryel made no reply, but dealt an Art-empowered glance at the countess, who at once swayed and crumpled in a swoon. Alleron caught her, and together with the wysard helped her back into the coach.

"Stay with her," Ryel said, his tone brooking no argument. Shutting the door behind them, he gave his full attention to Dagar.

But Dagar scorned to return it, having begun to harangue his rapt Servants and the gutter mob swarming outside the palisade. In a fury of exhortation the daimon jeered and abominated the Fraternity of the Sword, and the Unseen. He promised the followers of the Master dominion over all the world, and was only too evidently believed. Out of Theofanu's dry little body his voice shrilled, his savage oratory reverberating in the enclosure of the palace walls. The soldiers around the scaffold drew their swords at ready, to keep Roskerrek from being torn to pieces by the mob.

Ryel's thoughts raced to find a stratagem to foil his adversary. But suddenly he felt an imperative grip close over his shoulder, while before he could react he heard a voice at his ear that once heard could never be forgotten—a Ralnahrian voice with a highland tang. "I was thinking I might find you here, sorcerer. But you took your time."

Above his muffling scarf and beneath the wide brim of his hat Desrenaud's eyes glinted like glacier-ice. "Come here awhile, magus." He led Ryel behind the coach, and spoke swiftly.

"Some of your help I could have used long ere this, sorcerer. A bustling time I've had of it this half-year, cabaling with the Brotherhood and winning over the loyalty of the army against that yellow hag—no hard task, my past service in this land being well-remembered by most. There's been a plan in train for the past while. The Fraternity, some of the Snow-folk, most of the army's best—all here, and ready to play their parts. We'll have Roskerrek and the rest free, but our success hangs on you. It'd have been kindly done had you shown up straightway, but I'll admit you had strong distractions."

Ryel let that last remark pass, incalculably relieved by Desrenaud's news. "I couldn't be more glad to see you, Guy. But why doesn't Alleron know of your plot?"

"I wish he could have," Desrenaud replied. "Few men would have proven braver, or more useful. But far too closely was he watched by Theofanu's spies for any of us to reach him. Redbane will be surprised as well. He has no idea of the scheme to save him, any more than he knows that I'm back in the Barrier." He looked from Dagar toward the stake where Roskerrek stood fettered and insensible, his pale eyes unseeingly fixed. "I know that look," he murmured. "He's given up."

"But we won't," Ryel said. "Carry out your plan as you intended, and I'll cover for you."

"Be clever, warlock. Riana must have taught you a thing or two after all this time."

"She has. Trust me."

"You're going to have to be our luck, Ryel. May we all meet again safe after this day, and drink blind drunk." Desrenaud caught the wysard's hand hard in his own a moment, then was one of the crowd again, dissembling his height with a round-shouldered slouch.

By now the Companions had finished piling oil-drenched wood about the stake, and one of them stood by with a lighted torch awaiting Theofanu's word. Alleron had reappeared at the wysard's side.

"It's high time," the equerry said, his steely eyes deadly clear, his fingers drumming on his dagger-hilt. "I must to my lord's service--pray you look after the Countess, sir, for my sake. I'm glad she's still aswoon." And he started toward the platform.

"Hold still." The wysard caught Alleron from behind, pinioning his elbows. "Wait."

The captain struggled violently and cursed foully, but Ryel held fast. "I said be still, damn it." A word in Alleron's ear, and the captain froze immobile at the same moment Theofanu screamed for fire.

"Burn him!"

With a wild laugh the Companion threw the torch upon the eager wood, and a great roar went up from the watching throng.

In that moment Ryel shut his eyes and cleared his thoughts, willing all his mind to deep still white, forcing away fear and doubt, quelling his heart to calm slow beating. It seemed that time stretched before him like a long road, cutting a black swath through the soundless incandescence. And in the middle of that road stood Riana, laughing at him as she had that day when she first taught him the Mastery of Elements.

"Because you are nothing more than a little child compared to me in this, a childish rhyme I'll give you to remember: 'If there be doubt, the Art will find it out.' Remember it well, brother, because your life hangs on it. No doubt, ever."

"None," Ryel whispered. Within his deepest being he called upon his Art, and felt it flash like silent lightning. Then he smiled as something cold and small fluttered against his cheek and melted there.

He opened his eyes to the snow, and murmured a phrase. The white flakes began to fall thick, and a rising wind began to blow it about ever more violently, until in a minute's space the entire courtyard was engulfed in a raging storm. Amid the blizzard Ryel could only just discern staggering fleeing figures, and maddened horses. Upon and around the platform, battle reddened and trampled the fresh cold white into bloody slush. The air throbbed with shrieks and cries and sword-clangs, the howl of wind and hiss of storm-driven snow. But one noise rose above it. Out of the high balcony Dagar craned at full length, screaming in fury for Roskerrek's death—but he no longer had power to cause it. The fire swirled around an empty stake and broken chains.

The wysard felt a thrill of joy, sheer delight in the power of his Mastery. His heart beat wildly, and he laughed. In that instant, a great gust of white wind caught Theofanu's golden draperies and sucked her out of the window into the storm. Like some bright insect the helpless form fluttered and tossed and shrieked, until the tempest flung it against the stake with such force that it broke like a doll. Onto the fire Theofanu crumpled, and the flames ate up her dry little body as hungrily as it would a skinny bundle of sticks. And as the fire lapped and panted, Bradamaine watched with blank staring eyes.

Ryel stared at the eager blaze, suddenly sobered. Much though he had despised the Ormalan wysardess, his Art was in life's service. Surely he had not caused Theofanu's death…or had he, however inadvertently?

Forcing his thoughts from that possibility, he turned to Alleron and slapped the snow from his shoulders. At once the captain came to and stared about him, dazed and shivering. "Where am I?" The steely eyes blinked against the snow, warily at first, then in baffled anger. "Damnation. What's happened here? How came this storm about, and where's my lord?"

"Never trust Northern weather," Ryel replied. "As for the Count Palatine, I'm fairly sure he's still alive."

"Then who's that burning in the fire?"

"Theofanu."

"Argane's be the glory." The captain shook himself fully awake. "I wouldn't mind warming my hands on that witch." Again Alleron peered through the snow toward the scaffold, then dashed at his eyes and stared again. "Blessed Unseen—that looks like the dead Starklander with my lord!"

"Not quite dead yet," Ryel replied. "But he'd welcome your help."

"With all my heart." In an instant Alleron was in the saddle, but in that same moment Valrandin rushed forward, her former pallor now flushed with cold and joy.

"I woke up just as the snow began, and looked from the window and saw everything, the entire miracle! Lend me your sword awhile, Ryel Mirai," she said, or rather demanded; and as she spoke, she snatched his blade from its sheath, and seized the bridle of an unwatched horse nearby. "You owe me a good turn, remember." With wild grace she leapt astride onto her stolen mount's back, her windblown skirts disclosing not the dainty shoes of a noblewoman, but the riding-boots of a cavalier. "Old habits die hard," she laughed as she noted Ryel's stare. "I'll only be as long as it takes to teach the Companions a lesson."

Alleron turned to stare at her. "But m'lady, you can't be using your left hand."

Valrandin met his amazement with a grin brimful of vengeance. "Can't I? Just watch." And giving a wild yell, she dashed toward the fray.

"Now there's a lass," Alleron said, his face lit by its rare smile. Then with an impatient boot-heel to his horse's side he followed her into the fight.

*****

Without his weapon Ryel felt a deep sense of loss, and the milling crowd kept him from seeing what had become of it. The battle, however, was soon over. Two of the Companions lay dead and three were perilously hurt, while some redcoats had likewise met with wounds or death; otherwise the platform was deserted. Desrenaud and Roskerrek were nowhere to be seen. But the guardroom door of the palace stood ajar, and just within it Ryel recognized Theron BanDalwys tying up a cut over Sir Payne de Sartriss's scalp. Dismounting, the wysard joined them, glad of the shelter, and even more glad that he was instantly recognized and welcomed.

"Why, my brother the Prince of Vrya!" Covencraig held out a fraternal hand. "Well met in a risky time--but you've missed all the fun. The Commander's safe, Argane be praised, and the sorceress burnt in his place."

Sir Payne, very wan and tired, shook his injured head. "Your notions of amusement are hardly mine, Theron. The fate of Hryeland hung on this day."

"And turned to the good, thanks to Starklander." The dark markess' eyes glowed. "After all those rumors of his death, to see him alive again, fighting like an angel--it was worth all the life I have left to battle at his side."

The wysard ran a covert healing hand over Sir Payne's wound. "Tell me what happened."

"Heroic things, brother. That mad unlooked-for storm must have been sent by Argane herself, for our Commander's aid. And out of the blast appeared Starklander, leaping upon the scaffold and cutting down any that dared strive against him, next striking off the Count Palatine's chains and lifting him clear of the fire, covering him with his cloak--I stood near, and observed how it angered him to see the cruel way the Commander had been tortured. Then while the rest of us finished the fight, and released the others of the Fraternity from the prisons beneath this place, Starklander took the Commander up before him on his horse, and conveyed him safe under cover of the snow, the Countess following."

"Where?"

"Into the palace stables, thence to the hidden passages that lead to the army headquarters and the Temple of the Sword--all of the Fraternity know that way. Even now our Commander should be warm abed, and doctors looking after him."

"But what of the Domina?"

"Still upstairs, where she'd stood with Theofanu," Sir Payne replied. "They expected resistance from her followers, but found none. Everyone thought the witch a thousand times stronger than she proved. She had no more power than a puppet."

"Which she was," Ryel murmured, feeling a chill creep down his back.

A little more talk and he bade farewell to his two Swordbrothers, making his way upstairs. Among the many guarding the Domina's door was Marin Dehald, who at once crushed the wysard in a hug.

"Rukht Avral! You've come even as Starklander said you would, and never more needed. The witch made the Domina drink some filthy philtre before they came out to watch the Commander burn, and now she's senseless from it."

"I'll see to her," Ryel said, and would have gone; but Dehald would not relinquish his arm.

"Drink to her deliverance first. Here's some of the best wine in the North, brought up from the palace cellars." And the Earl of Seldyr thrust a cobwebbed bottle at him. "To Theofanu's cinders."

Ryel could not resist a toast so pleasing, and drank deep. Then he entered the room where Bradamaine was, and found her still standing rigidly upon the balcony, snow swirling around her, her eyes staring senselessly downward at the charred stake and the blackened shreds of gold and bone scattered around it. The wysard tried to bring her indoors, but she would not move an inch; only when urged with whispered words of Art did she at last obey. When led to the fireside she followed silently, blankly insensible, and sat like an image in the chair offered her. The wysard tested her pulse; it flickered and stalled. Her breath reeked of quiabintha, feia, even xantal, but those perilous drugs were by no means the deadliest threat to her life.

"Is she dying?"

Ryel nodded in answer to Lord Hallor's question. "She's been dying for weeks, months perhaps, from slow poisons and worse." He could not reveal that Theofanu's Dagar-empowered Art had warped and subverted the Domina's selfhood to the point of annihilation.

"Then save her, if only for our Commander's sake."

"For his sake I will try. Leave me, and I will do what I can."

Alone with the Domina, Ryel employed his deepest Mastery to stir Bradamaine's senses, all to nothing. Thwarted, he sought to look into her thoughts, again in vain.

"Dagar's work," he muttered bitterly. "Argane's image would reveal more." But in those words he found inspiration. Striding to the door and throwing it open, he lifted his voice to be heard by the carousing Brotherhood.

"The Domina must be taken to the Temple of the Sword."

Those words evoked only startled outrage. "Argane's sanctuary? Never. No one save the Brotherhood has ever set foot there."

At Lord Hallor's indignation Ryel only shrugged, not patiently. "Her life depends upon it. Wrap her warmly and bring her there by the underground passage, and be quick. I'm going on ahead."

Returning to the courtyard and its smoldering pyre, Ryel found the place all but deserted, and Jinn still at her place beside Valrandin's coach, quietly communing with the other horses as if nothing of any note had occurred. "I'm glad Valrandin didn't decide to commandeer you, little sister," the wysard said, patting her neck before mounting to ride.

The storm had not ceased, and its fury had emptied the streets save for black-coated soldiers keeping close watch against any further uprisings. But if Theofanu had had any adherents among the citizenry, they seemed unanimously disinclined to fight for her. Already the bells of the city rang out in celebration, chime upon chime overcoming the roar and hiss of the snow. Ryel lifted his face to the clanging storm, at peace within. And when Dagar's mosquito sneer thrust its way into his meditations, he only smiled. Because now the air was free around him, and he had never breathed easier.

You must think yourself very clever, beauty.

Ryel shook his head. "No, Dagar. I only think you very stupid."

That wasn't kind of you, murdering Theofanu.

The wysard felt a pang of guilt. Dagar must have sensed it, because he laughed.

Kill whoever you like, young blood. This isn't the end.

"You keep saying that. But you can't have Michael, you've lost Theofanu, you won't take Srin Yan Tai, and you'll never get me. You've run out of Overreachers."

I don't need one for what I plan. You've not trapped me yet, beauty. I'm still clear of the Void, here in the World. And I'll find a way to you, believe it. I've read the bitch Riana's little book, and know full well that you can't use the Mastery to send me back to the Emptiness until I'm re-embodied. Which I will be, soon. Count on it, young blood'.

For reply Ryel only uttered a spell-word of dismissal, and heard his enemy's curses fade, swept away by the driving snow. Again he smiled for the joy of his deliverance and the power of his Art, and urged Jinn more swiftly toward the residence of the Count Palatine.

*****

Alleron awaited Ryel at the headquarters gate. No sooner had the wysard entered than the guards locked the great iron portals after him.

"This place has been the Barrier's strongest fortress, many centuries gone," Alleron said. "If we've any enemies left, they'll never get past these walls. But come up with me this instant, for my lord's been asking earnestly after you." Anticipating Ryel's next question, the captain actually grinned. "Your sword's upstairs, along with the one who took it from you."

Within his chamber Roskerrek lay on his side half-covered by the bedclothes, his upper body wrapped in bandages visible beneath the nightshirt's open collar. Valrandin sat beside him, her hand in his, her eyes on his; but when Ryel entered she looked up through tears.

"They were so cruel," she said. "So inhumanly cruel. For months he has been starved, and beaten, and frozen."

Roskerrek rose up on an elbow, wincing only slightly. "It feels years ago, now. My orderlies have helped me to the bath I've needed for entirely too long, whilst Alleron's proven a notable doctor at need, and Verlande has distilled all the world's best nourishment into a single broth, and you--" he lightly pressed Valrandin's palm to his bruised cheek. "And your least touch is a cure, my lady." His pale eyes turned from her, then, and glanced into a grim distance; met Ryel's. "I've been apprized of what became of Theofanu. What news of the Domina?"

"She is perilously sick from Theofanu's drugs," the wysard replied. "I gave order for her to be taken to the Temple of the Sword, that I might try to heal her."

"I'll join you." Roskerrek began to sit up, and clenched his teeth over a groan. "Countess, be so kind as to have my orderly bring me some clothes, if you would."

Alleron, who had just entered the door, at once protested. "My lord, you're in killing pain, and your wounds not yet well looked to."

Roskerrek waved away his concern. "I'm better than I was, by far. Go, and take some rest; I can see you're in need of it."

"I'm neither hungry nor aweary, my lord."

"But you're more than a little difficult, Captain. Consider yourself commanded, and dismissed."

"I go only because ordered, and under protest." With an ill grace Alleron bowed low. "Keep you well, m'lord."

"With you to insist upon it I can hardly fail to." The Count Palatine was silent a moment, regarding his equerry with a look made up of many emotions. "I will never forget what you would have done for me this day, Jorn."

Fully and fairly Alleron returned that look, and gave his rare smile. "I'll not die, m'lord, until you do—and were that when I wished, I'd never fret about the fit of my winding-sheet. Good rest be yours."

"For the first time in too long it will be." He glanced over at Valrandin. "The Prince wants his sword back, by the way."

"And he'll have it," the Countess replied. "A sweet piece of steel it is, and I'm loath to let it go, since it proved the quick death of several this day."

Alleron nodded with evident approval. "Aye, they didn't suffer as they should have; but still, 'twas well worth the watching. It was as if you'd never been hurt…" Halting himself, he glanced at Roskerrek and colored up. "Well, I'll be going."

When the captain had departed, the Count Palatine turned to Valrandin, but dealt a sharp glance at Ryel as he did so. "Your wrist is mended, Countess?"

"Not a bit," she replied. "I used my left hand during the fight, and never dreamed it'd be so easy. I'd no idea I had that skill until then. I suppose I'm ambisomething, whatever they call it."

"Ambidextrous," Ryel said with a feeling sigh. "By every god…"

Instantly Valrandin rounded on him, her dark eyes flashing. "And just what do you intend by that?"

Roskerrek clasped her right hand, gently. "Never mind. You need sleep, Gabriel. The past few weeks have done you no good."

"I'll not lie in a bed until I've seen Bradamaine, and spoken with her. Don't try to keep me from it, Yvain."

He half laughed. "I know how useless that would be. Well, at least give me a moment with Prince Ryel, that he may see to whatever hurts I have."

"I will gladly. But this first." She came near, and rested her head on his shoulder. "I was so worried. I never slept…" her voice caught, and she hid her face against him.

Gently Roskerrek drew his bruised fingers through her dark curls, breathing their scent, touching his lips to their silk. "You didn't get all of me back, Countess. I never thought I'd regret my hair so much, but now--"

"Bah." Valrandin lifted her head again, dashed away her tears, and lightly stroked his shaven temple. "That red mane of yours will return blazing in a week's time, so fast and thick it grows. It's your skin I'm sorry for."

"What's left of it is entirely at your service, my lady."

Their eyes met, and long; but then Valrandin's sparked with their old mutiny. "Entirely? Does Bradamaine get nothing, then? But don't answer that."

When the countess had left, Roskerrek reached out to the wysard. "I wondered if I'd see you today."

The wysard joined his hand with the Count Palatine's, never thinking to have it carried to Roskerrek's forehead; the contact made him start and struggle. "There's no need for that."

"The custom of your land requires it, but even more does your greatness, and my gratitude." Another clasp, and Roskerrek released him. "I'd thank you more energetically, did my ribs allow it," the Count Palatine said. "I owe you everything, Ryel Mirai. Not only my own life, but that of my queen and her realm."

"You owe me nothing, Yvain," Ryel answered. "It was Guyon Desrenaud who brought about Theofanu's downfall."

Roskerrek only half-nodded assent. "His help was indeed great, as I have come to learn. But neither he nor any of the rest could have prevailed without your raising that storm. I had heard of weather-witching ere now, but nothing like to yours."

"Let me help you further," the wysard said. "Your wounds must be giving you great trouble."

Roskerrek attempted a shrug, fought a grimace. "I suffer less now than I did. Being battered by she-demons injured my pride far worse than my body. And it was nothing next to the anguish of my heart, never knowing whether Gabriel or Alleron or my brothers in Argane were alive or dead or in torment..." He sank down on his side. "It's everything to have my thoughts at rest. The rest of me will heal eventually."

"I prefer immediately." Ryel discovered and set right not only a great many bruises and cuts, but several raw burns inflicted by the fire, as well as a sprained wrist, three broken fingers and several cracked ribs, growing more appalled and impressed with each injury. "Your capacity for pain is really remarkable."

The Count Palatine waved away the compliment. "Compared to my trouble of mind, my captors' tender attentions were as nothing. Still…" He drew a deep breath, and stretched with clear pleasure. "I'm glad of yet another chance to thank you. The world owes you much as well, Ryel Marai."

"I ask nothing of it, Yvain Essern."

"You did great work for its sake."

"Unfinished work," the wysard replied. "Dagar has been routed, yes. But not destroyed."

Roskerrek met this news with consternation. "Not destroyed? But I thought—"

"I'm certain he's no longer near—I would feel him in the air if he were. But he still exists. And I'm certain that the next place he'll resurface will be Almancar."

Sorrow joined with anger in Roskerrek's face. "Because my brother his servant is there, glad to work whatever evil is required."

"Lord Michael is no longer in Almancar." As Ryel explained, the Count Palatine's eyes fixed upon the flames unblinkingly, but his teeth cruelly caught his underlip when Ryel finished telling of the fight in the ruined castle.

"My poor brother," Roskerrek whispered. "A black demon's pawn, even in death."

"He is not dead."

A bitter laugh. "Why, then he is alive."

"He is neither."

Accusing cold eyes met Ryel's. "I loved my brother dearly, wysard. You might remember that."

"I mean you no hurt, Yvain." And Ryel related how Michael's body lay in Markul, while his rai hovered in the Void. The Count Palatine listened without a word, without an eyeblink until the wysard made an end; and when he spoke, it was slowly, half in disbelief.

"Then it…it may be that Michael and I will meet again."

"I'll do whatever I can to bring it about. Where is Guyon Desrenaud?"

"Here, magus."

Ryel and Roskerrek both turned to the compelling new voice and the tall man it belonged to, who now came forward brushing the snow from the collar and folds of his long gray coat. "You might consider making and end to that squall of yours, warlock. Two feet thick's the snow in the streets, and has more than served its purpose, to my way of thinking." Desrenaud glanced at the Count Palatine, then away again. "I'm glad to see you well, my lord of Roskerrek."

"I have you to thank, my lord of Anbren," the Count Palatine replied. But his tone, too, was strained. "Still, I've yet to know what reasons could have made you risk you life for mine."

"I enjoy risk at times," said Desrenaud. "That is, when I consider it worth the taking."

He had turned toward Roskerrek as he spoke. By now day had ended and the room was dark save for the light of the fire, and neither man could have looked the other clearly in the eye from the distance they stood apart. But they read each other by glints.

The Count Palatine replied after a considerable silence. "I wish us to be friends, Guyon Desrenaud. I hope you think it possible."

"I never wished you ill." Desrenaud came near and pulled off his gauntlet, reaching out to Roskerrek. "And at any rate, we have both of us been scarred, Yvain Essern."

The two linked hand to hand, and the fitful faint light silvered in the lower lids of their eyes. Deeply moved, the wysard watched. But then he stared past those two great men into the embers of the fire, his thoughts dark.

There's not yet an end to you, Dagar. Still you reach beyond annihilation to grasp and rend the World. Still you stand between me and my dearest hopes. And he sickened at heart as he remembered the horrors he had witnessed in Riana's glass. Only a little while longer, beloved , he thought, and he spoke not to one, but many. Only a little while, until all is made right and we are happy. But it seemed that his every inward-whispered word drifted into the fire like scraps of a page torn from a foolish tale, and burnt to flimsy black cinders.

With a banging knock Alleron was breathlessly back in the room, disregarding Roskerrek's frown to address the wysard. "M'lord prince, your help's required. On my way down I met my lords of Seldyr and Covencraig, asking for you. They've come with the Domina. The rest of the Brotherhood have been set free, and…" His eyes, now used to the darkness, all but leapt from their sockets as they recognized Desrenaud. "Starklander. By Argane's glory, it was you helping my lord!" Rushing forward he seized Desrenaud's hand and would have kissed it, but was prevented by a hard if perfunctory hug.

"I'll not allow that, Jorn Alleron. There's no time, for one thing. Roskerrek, get some clothes on if you're coming."

*****

Bradamaine had been placed on a camp bed before the statue of the Queen of Swords, and lay as still and cold as her likeness in the flickering glow of hastily-gathered torches, Valrandin kneeling beside her. The Brotherhood stood guard about them, and saluted their Commander as he appeared among them, then bowed to the wysard, and greeted Desrenaud with rejoicing smiles.

"Most warmly welcome, Starklander," said BanDalwys of Covencraig. This would have been a black day without you."

"It's still black, Theron," Desrenaud replied as he flung his coat aside and knelt down next to Valrandin, joined by Roskerrek on her other side. "How fares she, Countess?"

Valrandin turned to him, her eyes wet as she held Bradamaine's hand in both of hers. "I never hoped to see you again, Guy, and it joys me much; but I wish we might have met in better times. Her skin's cold as death."

Desrenaud wrapped his arm around Valrandin's shoulders a strengthening moment. "No fear, Lieutenant. We'll get her well again." He next addressed Ryel. "Sorcer--I mean, my lord of Vrya-- help her as best you can."

"This place will warm her." As he spoke, the wysard felt the Art radiating from every pier and shaft of stone—Art that he might bend in whatever way he would. Calling upon the power that impregnated every lance and fold of rock, he murmured words of Mastery that mingled with the uncanny harmonies rustling high above. Bradamaine's eyelids twinged and fluttered, opening to fix upon the icy image of Argane.

"Who is she?"

No authority or impatience rang in those honey-harsh syllables—only intense confusion, and fear. As she spoke, the Domina caught the Count Palatine's hand, and half taken aback by that gesture Roskerrek sought to reassure her.

"You look upon the goddess Argane, m'Domina—She that we worship, our Lady of War."

"I don't like her. She's cruel." Bradamaine looked from the statue to the Brotherhood surrounding her, and her eyes fell on Valrandin, but with no recognition. "Who are you?"

The Countess stared, stricken. "Ah, m'Domina. You ask that, when I love you more than life?"

Those words seemed to touch Bradamaine's memory, but barely. "Why am I here?"

"To save you."

Desrenaud had answered her, and at his words Bradamaine started, but too all appearances she no more recognized his face than she did his voice. She sought Roskerrek, clearly trusting him above all the others. "You know me. I can see it. Tell me who I am."

With the greatest respect the Count Palatine kissed the hand that so pleadingly clutched his own. "You are the great Domina of all Hryeland."

Bradamaine's confusion was desperate, now. "The what? Of…where?" But even as she spoke, her voice trailed away and her eyes fell shut, and only the wysard knew the cause.

"She's fainted," Desrenaud said to Ryel. "Now's the time to try your wiles on the Domina's wits, and make them whole again."

"I'll do all I can." Ryel knelt close to Bradamaine, and breathed a word into her ear, and she opened her eyes in a dreaming gaze that traveled far, deeply upward into the stone-draped darkness.

"How sweet that music is," she whispered. "How very beautiful."

Ryel recalled that in Theofanu's temple Bradamaine had been utterly unmoved by the music. Disquieted, he pressed his fingers to her temples, employing a Mastery of Lord Garnos to seek her inward light. "I can't find her," he whispered after a time. "She's… gone."

Valrandin's sudden grip hurt the wysard's arm. "What do you mean?"

"Her mind has been destroyed, Countess," Ryel answered. "It's been burnt away by Dagar's poisons as fire burns away the skin."

"Skin grows back, sorcerer," Desrenaud said.

"New skin, yes, and slowly," Ryel answered. "But some burns are too deep for healing. This woman cannot rule the Barrier." Amid stunned silence he addressed the Count Palatine. "Lord Roskerrek, I assume that you were the Domina's chief adviser."

"I was," he replied, his gaze never leaving Bradamaine's face. "Although she seldom heeded my counsel."

"And your family ruled Hryeland in time past."

"It did—long ago."

"And most if not all of Theofanu's followers among the court have had their brains all but erased thanks to her rituals. It would seem that the rule of Hryeland devolves upon you."

Roskerrek did not answer at first. When he did it was slowly, and almost too soft to hear among the moanings in the vault. "My fortunes are most strange. In a single day, almost burnt to death as a traitor to the realm, and then given the chance to be that realm's regent. If it is the will of the people, I'll act in the Domina's behalf for as long as is needful."

"Hryeland could do far worse," Desrenaud said. "Now that you're in health at last, you'll guide this land wisely and well."

All the assembled Brotherhood agreed most vocally, save for Valrandin whose thoughts were clearly elsewhere. With many demonstrations of thanks Roskerrek dismissed the officers, inviting them to take rest in his house and to call for whatever they wished from Verlande and his staff, assuring him that he would soon join them. As the brotherhood departed to celebrate, the remaining four turned their attention to Bradamaine, who had been drifting between sleep and waking.

A smile played about her lips, soft and dreaming, as her eyes found Roskerrek's. "That scent you wear on your shirt is so sweet."

The Count Palatine stared on her with something close to shock, then glanced at Ryel, questioning and perturbed. In answer the wysard took out Priamnor's carnelian vial and opened it. Immediately exquisite fragrance tinged the air, and Bradamaine started up from where she lay, drawing deep eager breaths.

"Ah, but that is even more wondrous," she whispered. "I could die of it." Giving a little sigh she fell back, her eyes closed and her face still.

"Bradamaine." Roskerrek took her into his arms, consternation in his look, then turned to Ryel. "She cannot be..."

"She isn't," the wysard replied. "No harm was done. The scent was merely too much for her, it would seem." He sealed the vial again. "But it's strange nonetheless. I'm aware that she never before had any love of music, nor enjoyment of perfumes. Truly she seems to have become someone else."

Roskerrek seemed not to wish to believe him. "I'll have her taken from this place to apartments in my quarters, where she'll be safe until the city's troubles are ended."

"She can share my rooms," Valrandin said. "I'll watch over her tonight, and every day and night hereafter until she's well at last."

Roskerrek nodded assent. "And until she is herself again, the Temple's fire will be put out, and the image of its Goddess veiled, and the doors sealed, and the Brotherhood disbanded."

"The Domina will never be herself again," Ryel said.

A somber while Roskerrek reflected. "Then it may be that the uses of peace are of more consequence now than those of war, and that the worship of Argane has seen its day." He gave a faint bitter smile. "The Domina always called us a fanatical gang of bloody-minded bullies, and now I begin to understand her. How often have I read in philosophy that men get the gods they deserve; and perhaps the people of Hryeland now deserve deities more tranquil and less exigent than Argane and the Unseen."

"And somewhat less dangerous than the Master," Ryel said.

Desrenaud raised a skeptical brow. "So. Cobbling of idols, it's come to? I had thought you more devout, Roskerrek, than to cast aside your heartfelt servitude of the Sword-Goddess like a dirty coat."

Soldierly and upright Roskerrek faced his former enemy, stung but without rancor. "You were never a true believer, my lord. But I will admit that my past devotion too often erred in its excess of zeal. I am a different man than I was in those days, as I hope my regency of this realm will prove."

"I hope it, too." Desrenaud turned away, looking down at Bradamaine's sleeping form. "I confess I am far from understanding what you saw in this woman. What made you love her with such unswerving idolatry--you with your learning and your discernment, devoted to as stone-souled a termagant as ever breathed."

Perhaps he never expected a reply; but Roskerrek gave one. "She answered something in me, once. But I have changed almost as much as she has." He drew a deep breath, looking from Desrenaud to Ryel. " I hope you both will guest with me awhile. Surely you must be awearied from your journey North--and I have not yet thanked you sufficiently for the help you gave not only me, but the realm."

Roskerrek's courtesy made Desrenaud remember his own. "For your kindness I thank you, my lord. But I have no time to spare."

"Nor have I," Ryel said. "Not with matters so much at risk in Destimar."

"I wish I could set your mind at rest there," Roskerrek replied. "But no news has reached the North from Almancar in the past months, only hearsay and conjecture. According to the last rumor I heard before being imprisoned, the young Sovran's half-siblings have cabaled to overthrow Agenor's legitimate heirs, and will soon bring armies against Destimar."

"Then I too must leave Hallagh tomorrow," Ryel said.

Roskerrek seemed both disappointed and concerned. "But these have been hard days, and you have both suffered from them."

"Well, I know I have," Desrenaud said. "I'll gladly accept of your entertainment this night at least, and revel with the Brotherhood. And did I dare presume so far, I'd ask for some of your music as well, for you're a better hand at it than any other I've heard—but I'm aware that this is no time for it."

Roskerrek smiled in that sudden gracious way that had become his since his cure. "I'd be only too glad to oblige you. During my captivity I kept my wits by meditating on the most intricate pieces of counterpoint I could devise, although I never expected to live to play them. But first we must see to the Domina. I'll send for some soldiers to—"

"No need." As he spoke, Desrenaud lifted Bradamaine up with only a little overt effort. "She's a strapping lass, but I can handle her for a way."

"Stay a moment." And Valrandin came near, gently pulling out the long silver pins that so harshly confined Bradamaine's white-gold hair, until the tresses fell loose. "There. That is more like her."

Roskerrek nodded agreement as he gazed meditatively upon her deep-slumbering features. "She always loathed music and often said so, until this night. Perhaps now she may learn to love it as I do."

Desrenaud shrugged, settling Bradamaine more comfortably in his arms. "Who knows what she may come to love, my lord--or who. But let's go up. Slim as this lady may be, she's heavy in those long bones of hers. Speaking of which, some of your magics would come in cleverly now, enchanter."

Ryel obliged with a word or two, and they left the Temple of the Sword; but the wysard lingered on the steep stone treads.

"I will come back to this place," he whispered, closing his eyes to feel the timeless Mastery of the cavern's depths break over him like slow waves of the sea. "But I will not return alone."

*****

The next morning Ryel and Desrenaud rode south from Hallagh. They bore messages from the new Regent of Hryeland for the young Sovran of Destimar, and without need of seal-breaking Ryel knew what the letters contained: greetings and assurances of friendship, and promises of aid if need be, all written not in a scribe's smooth hand but in the angular upright script of Roskerrek himself. Ryel knew that Yvain Essern would rule Hryeland wisely and well, and was glad that Priamnor Dranthene had so strong an ally in the North. He could put at least one set of troubles behind him, now.

They had ridden free of the boundaries of Hallagh, and were now in open country, under a sky intermittently beclouded. Ryel had led Jinn into a clump of woods at the roadside, and Desrenaud followed, but unwillingly.

"We're wasting time, sorcerer. There's naught you might do here that you can't on the road, unless—"

Ryel waved him silent. "Listen. There's something you must know before we arrive in Almancar. Something I had no time to tell you, and no wish, in front of the Count Palatine."

"Then say it now, and be quick."

Ryel said it, as briefly as he might given Desrenaud's interruptions and cursings. When he'd made an end, the Northerner was silent awhile, but not long.

"Well, necromancer. Isn't this just what was needful—Dagar, Michael, and Meschante, triumvirately bad in one body."

"Even so."

"I should have killed Meschante long ago," the Northerner said after the wysard had made an end. "I had chances enough, and motives yet more. What a bullying coward he always was, and what a canting hypocrite bigot; and how he loathed everything that was brave and bright. Always seeking to thrust himself into Hylas' favor, so fawning desperate that the prince pitied him and suffered him to be one of the court, and even let him be among the entourage to Almancar, although Meschante had no qualities whatsoever to commend him for that high privilege. And all the while he was there, he did nothing but condemn the luxury and the whoredom of the city, although I could well see that he would have partaken liberally of both had he only dared."

"He has done great harm, and will do more and worse, with Dagar able to subsume his form."

Desrenaud let out an expletive breath. "And now what? How do we fight them?"

"I fight them," Ryel answered, his voice firm. "You'll have your hands full with the siege. I rely upon those military skills of yours."

Desrenaud again muttered execrations, then shot Ryel an accusatory glare. "Then we've got to move faster, magus. Where's that precious Art of yours when we need it? Why isn't that horse of yours a magic one?"

"She is," Ryel said, feeling more than a little irritation. "Jinn's as fast as the wind. Faster. But I don't think she'd put up with bearing double—especially when one of the two would be an overgrown highland crag-hopper."

Desrenaud looked more wounded than angry. "You needn't insult, sorcerer. And you might show yourself more clever. In all the old tales, witches can translate themselves from one place to another in an eyeblink. Why can't you?"

"I can," Ryel replied with a shrug meant to infuriate.

It did. "Damn it, then we could be in Almancar this minute!"

"I said I could get myself to Almancar," Ryel said. "I have my own skill to take me there. But how I'd get you there is another question entirely. I'd have to use the Mastery of Lord Garnos, which I've never tried before on another than myself. You might reach Almancar safely—and you might as easily be shredded into screaming rags."

"I have the choice?"

"I wish you didn't."

"I'm taking it. Work your gramarye, warlock, and be quick."

Ryel began the spell. Winds hurled together the clouds and covered the sun. The wysard shivered at a sudden thrust of cold, and halted the Mastery.

Desrenaud's voice was colder yet. "Get on with it, conjurer."

Ryel still hesitated. "This is more dangerous than you've any idea. I might kill you."

The Northerner only shrugged. "I've been a long time dying, wysard. If you finish me off, so be it—but I'll not put Mywaren in danger." So speaking, he stroked the horse's night-black mane, and a moment pressed his forehead to the white star between its great dark eyes. "See that he finds his way to good people who will look well after him."

"I will." Ryel swallowed. "Guy. This spell could be extremely painful."

"It wasn't when Lady Riana sent me to Hallagh. Not much, at least."

"I can't guarantee anything. If all goes as it should, you'll materialize within the Eastern Palace. But if not—"

"Don't think of it. Work those arts of yours on me, and be quick."

Never had Ryel felt more torn. "Forgive me if this kills you."

A grunt of laugh in reply. "I'll be sorry if it does, magus." But Desrenaud fell silent a moment, and when he next spoke, his steady keen regard met Ryel's with complete trust. "Whatever befalls, know that I considered you a friend from the first, Ry." He held out his hand. "Good luck go with you."

From a man seldom demonstrative, those words were much. The wysard met Desrenaud's hard grip with turmoil and regret. "I wish your heart wasn't set on this."

"It is and you'll never change it, so stop throwing away time."

Ryel drew a steadying breath. "Then stand where you are, and neither move nor speak nor open your eyes again until you feel the air warm around you."

Desrenaud did as he was commanded, standing tall and steady with his arms at his sides, his face lifted to the shrouded sun. Slowly Ryel spoke the words of Mastery, Riana's Art. Midway through the spell Desrenaud's brow broke into sweat, and through his clenched teeth came a low groan of agony, but he never trembled. Drymouthed the wysard continued, bitterly angry that he could not hurry the spell, which had to be enunciated with the most deliberate concentration. After a desperate infinity he came to the last syllables, uttering them furiously clear. As the vibrations of his voice ebbed he saw Desrenaud's form begin to blur and fade, until only his racked cry lingered on the cold air.

The Northern lord's great black hunter pawed the ground, alarmed and nervous. Ryel caught the animal by the bridle, gentling its mane, shakily stroking its broad bright-starred forehead. And into a large flickering ear he murmured words that soothed the animal, and whispered words that made it turn about and head for the farmstead the wysard and Desrenaud had passed earlier. But he would not part with Jinn.

"You're no ordinary nag, little one. I'm not about to lose you."

He wound his arm around Jinn's neck, intoning the needful words, forcing them out past the self-sundering torment through gritted teeth. Then he felt the winds take him, and his body break apart like a ship in a storm.

Chapter Twenty-One

Warm air surrounded him, perfumed with a thousand balms. Opening his pain-cramped eyes, Ryel gazed around him at walls of vine-grown marble enclosing a garden lovely even in the night—the private courtyard of Priamnor Dranthene, Sovran of Destimar.

"I did it." He licked his lips, and tried again, and this time didn't croak the words. "I'm here."

Close at his side Jinn whickered in bewilderment, and the wysard reassured her with caresses and whispers. "We're in Almancar, little sister. But are you all right?"

She seemed no more harmed by the transmutation than she had been in Hallagh, and indeed Ryel himself felt far less disoriented and sick than had been the case his first time. "I'm going to look for Guy, little Jinn. Stay here and rest awhile; I've no doubt you need it."

A word or two and the mare was asleep under a shaded gallery. Ryel stood awhile quietly, gathering his strength, searching for Desrenaud with ears and eyes. But he heard no scuff of boot-soles, saw no tall figure silhouetted amid the garden's foliage—only leaves and petals ruffled by the night wind, and rippling water, and the statue of the diver, its slim bronze muscularity aglow in the moonlight.

"You had to have made it through," he whispered. "You had to."

He couldn't allow himself to envision what might have happened to Desrenaud had the Mastery gone wrong. It was too terrible to contemplate—especially here and now, with so much to set right. He shook his mind free of horrors, his body free of pain, and made his way to the rooms of Priamnor Dranthene.

Only a few guards patrolled the dimly-lighted halls of the Eastern Palace, and the wysard avoided them without incident. He overcame the two sentinels outside the imperial chambers with a mere sign of his hand, and slipped through the portals like the figment of a dream.

On the threshold of Priamnor's sleeping-room he halted. a great glittering bed made entirely of crystal glass caught the light of lamps and candles, its tall winding posts enclosing intricate interlaced swirls of jewel-like strands. "Tesbai work," the wysard whispered to himself, dazzled by the sight. No one now lay in that bed, nor had recently, for its embroidered coverlet was still smoothed flat, and the cushions yet billowing in welcome. But from another room issued more light, and faint sound—smothered mutterings and low incoherent cries, so anguished that Ryel could almost not recognize the voice whose sweetness had driven to his heart from its first utterance.

"Priam," Ryel breathed, cold vengeance gripping him by the nape. Drawing his dagger, he stole to the door of the chamber, ready for anything but what he saw. No one tortured Priamnor Dranthene, who sat hunched forward in the comfortless embrace of a straight-backed chair at a table strewn thick with papers, his head restlessly asleep on his folded arms—no one but the young Sovran himself, who even in dreams found no haven from his cares, nor refuge from the fate threatening his proud empire.

"Kerai, ilandrakis." Softly entering the room, the wysard stood beside the Sovran of Destimar. He bent and touched his lips in the kiss of a Steppes kinsman to the fevered temple where the night-black hair now grown so long straggled in lank strands, and ran a grazing knuckle down the bearded cheek once as smooth as Diara's. "I've returned, cousin. Now we will be happy." But Priam did not awaken.

The air of the room was close and thick. Going to the windows Ryel threw the heavy curtains wide, and at once drew back.

The glass of the casement had been smashed, and the window-frame sealed with bars and boards, but through the interstices Ryel saw horrors. In the streets of Almancar men battled and plundered, and palaces once numbered among the world's wonders stood in gutted ruin, or burnt unregarded. The air throbbed with a hell-din of shouts and screams, and reeked with smoke and death. Out beyond the walls the black desert flickered with the watch-fires of waiting armies.

A shout went up from the rabble surrounding the palace. "There he is! Shoot him!" At once a flight of arrows whirred forth, seeking the window where Ryel stood.

He yanked the curtains shut and leapt clear as the arrows broke against the iron bars or bit into the wooden boards. Turning his back to the havoc and calling upon his Art he calmed himself by forcing his eyes to move in deliberate analysis from object to object in the chamber, fixing at last with wonder upon an object well known to him.

"A krusghan," he murmured, reaching for it. A shock of recognition ran through his fingers' ends. "My krusghan."

Closely and in wonder he examined the Steppes flute that had been his constant friend from boyhood. Dusting it with his sleeve and seating himself on the edge of the table, he lifted the instrument to his lips and sounded a note. The pure wild tone thrilled forth, sweetening the air like Transcendence. Memory guided Ryel's fingers over the stops, drawing forth a snatch of an ancient song of his green homeland inspired by one of the great epic cycles of Destimar, learned by him long before he had ever known or thought of Edris and the Art.

"With a voice that rang like sharpened steel, Diomenor foretold

The doom of the lord of the Nasri, proud Ashok of the plain:

'Call up your armies rank upon rank, summon your horsemen strong;

I and my brave Redestens will rout them like wolves to the fold,

Dearer than brother Redestens, he of the arts arcane,

As lion and hawk against sheep and goats, so Redestens and I to your throng.'"

For all its bellicose text the song's melody was pleasing, and at last Priamnor Dranthene grew silent as he slept. But as soon as Ryel made an end of the music, the Sovran fetched a broken breath, and opened his eyes. The wysard set down the flute, holding out his hand.

"Ilandrakis."

But the Sovran only stared with haunted eyes, and recoiled. "Go away. Get out."

"But Priam—"

"Will you never let me rest? Must every one of my dreams have you in it?"

"I have returned, Priam," Ryel said, very gently despite the pain he was feeling. "And upon our kinship I swear I'll never leave you while you need me."

Slowly and against his will Priamnor lifted his head, and looked into the face of his friend. But then all the weariness and despair faded from his eyes, and rising light came into them. He reached out, taking the wysard's hand into both of his own, gripping tight. "Divares be thanked. You're here. Real." He pressed his brow to the hand's back, and Ryel winced at the cold and the wet. "I never thought to see you again, cousin. Kerai."

Ryel freed his hand, but only to lay it next on Priam's head, soothing the damp entanglements of hair. "Kerai d'yash, ilandrakis. I knew we'd meet again, but I never wished it thus. I'll help you in any way I can."

"You're helping even now," Priam said. "My head ached enough to kill." He was quiet a moment. "I'll not ask how you got past the walls. You have your ways."

"Ways enough at need."

"All those ways will be called upon, I fear. As yet the palace has suffered no great privation from Michael's siege, but the city is enduring the cruelest hardships. I can do nothing to help them, nothing, trapped in siege as I am within these walls. Were that not enough, outside the gates of the city are encamped the armies of my so-called siblings of the Azm Chak, waiting until Michael has broken Almancar's strength and they can enter the city as rulers of Destimar. Much of the city army went over to the side of the Master, and it is taking untold time and trouble to levy other forces within the realm, Almancar being so far from any other city of size. Many fled the city in the past three months, but now the situation has grown too perilous for anyone to escape. Michael has promised Catulk that Diara will become his concubine, and brags that he himself will take Belphira Deva as his mistress."

Ryel lifted his chin. "None of that will happen, while I live."

"And you live indeed." Priam gazed long on the wysard's face until his next words. "When my guardsmen brought the body of my messenger down from the mountain I believed it yours, and nearly went out of my senses from grief and guilt. I can never forgive myself for that night in the Diamond Heaven. Never."

"You were daimon-driven to what you did, Priam. In no way are you at fault."

"I wounded you to the death. But how were you healed? Only your Art's help could have saved you."

Ryel flinched within as he again felt Michael's torturing grip on his wound-raw flesh. "I couldn't have lived without the Art." He drove the memory out of his mind. "I hurt you, too."

"It was nothing." Priam regarded his friend, and at last smiled. "You haven't changed, kinsman."

Ryel smiled back, partly because of that observation's total inaccuracy. "But I hardly recognize you. Your hair grown long, and Steppes clothes—could that be the shirt I left behind?"

Priam shook his head. "I wore that one out. This is a new one, embroidered for me by your mother."

"Yes. Now I see that it's richer than any of mine ever were. Silk instead of linen, as becomes the Sovran of Destimar.

"Your mother says I could be your twin."

Priam's color returned, and deeply. Reaching for the krusghan, he examined it with interest clearly feigned. "Your sister lent me this. I'd been learning the music of Risma, but I've had little time for practice the past many days—as you can understand, I'm sure." He hesitated. "She is hardly more than a child. Half the age of Belphira—whom she heartily dislikes."

"How could anyone dislike Belphira Deva?"

Priam sighed. "Ask your sister. Many times has Belphira attempted to win Nelora's goodwill, all in vain; has given the girl magnificent gowns, only to have them returned to her ripped to shreds; has sent her a hundred gifts such as women love, fans and flowers and and ornaments, only to find them again tossed upon the threshold of her chamber, broken and torn in pieces; has offered to instruct her in music and dance, only to be brusquely told that a Steppes virgin has no need of a whore's arts."

"By every god. I'll instruct her in better manners."

"I always feel enchanted, as if all her traits were spells—her talk, her caprices, her wild wit. I half believe she knows your Art, her powers over me are so great."

"Surely no greater than yours are over her."

Priamnor understood, completely. "I would never misuse them, ilandrakis." He smiled. "Especially since I'm sure I would face some dreadful Steppes vengeance if I did."

Ryel smiled back. "As eldest brother I could challenge you to single combat."

"I expected as much. Of what kind?"

"Daggers on horseback."

The Sovran gave a low whistle. "Too rough for me."

"It isn't a pretty sight—I've witnessed it more than once. But we needn't speak further of it. Are Nel and Diara friends?"

"Inseparable. They're lovely together, whether walking hand in hand in their silken gowns, or dressed like boys, vying at the archery-range. Let me take you to them, and your mother."

Ryel lifted a reluctant restraining hand. "Not yet. No one must know I'm here—none but you, and a few others to whom I will reveal myself as I see fit."

"Will one of those be my sister Diara?"

At that name, sweeter than any krusghan's melody, the wysard flinched within. "I'll be more than glad to see her—when the time is right. But tell me how she does."

"She enjoys perfect health, and spirits as bright as these bad times may allow. I have done what I can to shield her and my friends from the horrors just outside the palace—which I cannot for much longer, for matters worsen hour by hour."

Ryel frowned. "I warned you about Michael. I told you he was a wysard of Elecambron. Why was he not stopped?"

"He cannot be caught," the Sovran replied. "No matter how trapped or cornered, he always escapes unscathed. And he has changed terribly. When he first came to Almancar, all his talk was of the city's corruption, and the need for reform. But soon after your departure he became more cruel, urging open rebellion and destruction. The more rampant he grew, the more his followers increased. In the last three months he has called for outright revolt, encouraging every kind of atrocity—and as you see, has been all too well obeyed."

"The true Michael Essern refrained from the use of his Art while in Almancar, and his nature was too noble to be subverted even by his Master," Ryel said. "He would never have roused the Fourth District to open revolt."

"Then—then who is this man?"

"The real Michael Essern lies entranced in Markul, but his semblance and his powers have been conferred upon Derain Meschante."

Priam's brows knit hard. "Meschante was more puritanical even than Michael, to the point of terrorizing the Diamond Heaven."

"Meschante's self-righteousness was a film of snow over a cesspit, masking the vilest lusts, the foulest urges," the wysard replied. "Now those passions have been given full rein, with powers more than enough to satisfy them."

"Belphira loathed him."

"She has far more reason to fear him, now. The daimon Dagar has returned to this city, and together with Meschante dwells in Michael's form."

Priamnor leaned against the table and closed his eyes. "Great Divares…this is terrible news. The worst."

Wearily Ryel nodded. "I think so, too. Dagar will be at his strongest now. He will not fail to seek me out, for mine is the form he most wishes for his own; but the most immediate danger concerns Belphira."

"I have caused her apartments to be set round with sentinels," Priam said. "But only your Art can give her true safeguard."

"Not entirely true. As it chances, I have brought with me to Almancar her strongest protector."

"And who is that?"

"Lord Guyon Desrenaud. I sent him here before me."

The Sovran's frown was at first bewildered, then displeased. "Desrenaud? Where is he?"

"I'm not sure," Ryel said. "Somewhere within the palace complex, I hope."

"So. My rival has returned, then. It only needed that." Priamnor pushed back his sweat-lank hair, wearily. "I'm very tired, ilandrakis. Forgive me. These many days I don't think I've slept more than two hours at a time."

"Then rest now."

"If I can. Yours will be the rooms across the corridor from these, ilandrakis—the ones I had readied for you almost a year ago, when I thought to make you my chief minister."

"My deepest thanks, Priam."

"I wish I could drink to your return with a glass or two of Masir. But there's none left. My court drained the last drop weeks ago."

"It doesn't matter." The last thing the wysard wished to taste was that wine, with all the memories it would inevitably evoke.

Many of the palace servants fled when they could," Priam was saying. "And most of the guard are now stationed on the walls, fighting the enemy. I can't offer you luxurious attendance."

"I won't require it."

Reluctantly the Sovran turned his gaze to the howling insurrection just outside his walls. "Many causes brought these troubles about. Nobles idle and vicious; heartless greedy merchants; slaves fully as rich as their masters, and as proud. And supporting all of these, laboring folk more numerous than any of the other classes, yet destined from birth for the meanest work, kept ignorant and untaught lest they become upstarts and threaten the balance of power. This had been Almancar's way for centuries, endured by the people of the Fourth District because they considered their lot luckier than that of their counterparts in other lands—which it was, if being well-housed and well-fed are the only things of importance in life. But to think in those terms is to be like a woman who believes herself happily wed simply because her husband does not come home drunken every night, and has not yet treated her ill; and it only took Michael and his preachings to make the Fourth District comprehend their essential slavery, and rise in revolt. If only I had known…" The young Sovran's voice broke on his last words. "Don't leave me again, Ry. Not now."

"I never will. But rest." With a gentle whisper Ryel made the Sovran sleep, then lifted him in his arms as he would a weary child, and carried him to his bed. "Rest," he murmured when his friend lay pillowed and covered. "I'll keep watch this night, ilandrakis."

For a time he sat at Priamnor's side, taking to himself his kinsman's troubles of mind, every gnawing nightmare. At last the Sovran's angst-etched features smoothed, and his breathing steadied and deepened as he slept. But Ryel grew ever more unquiet and distraught. Feeling his blood going cold, he rose and took Edris' cloak about him, then went out to the retired courtyard just off Priam's bedchamber, seeking the night's solace.

He found it even sweeter than he'd hoped. For here in the quiet amid the scent of jasmine, far from the city's turmoil, the faint notes of a cithern mingled with a fountain's shimmering music. As the wysard drew nearer he saw that a woman sat alone by lamplight, her jeweled fingers touching the strings of her instrument in sad revery, barely beckoning the tune—one that the wysard knew well from childhood. Taking up his krusghan, Ryel strengthened the song with harmony, and Belphira after a moment's surprise continued the tune to its end, then set down her cithern and swiftly stood.

"Priam." She hastened toward him, her face alight, but then halted, her smile fading. Ryel, however, greeted her gladly.

"My lady Belphira Deva, it is good to see you in health."

She was smiling again, incredulously now. "Why, it is Redestens!"

They joined hands. Moonlight shone upon them as it had in the Garden of Dreams, and they looked upon one another with the same ineffable communion of their first meeting. "My friend Ryel, most dearly welcome in these terrible times," Belphira said at last. "Sit with me, here at my side. I need not ask what brings you here, nor how you came—for the Sovran told me long ago of your powers, which indeed I had guessed of from our talk in the Diamond Heaven. But where is Priam now?"

"Asleep in his chamber, my lady."

"Thanks to you, I have no doubt. And I am grateful. For too long he has not known rest—nor have I known his company, which made me all the readier to mistake you for him. But the truth makes me even more glad, for surely you have come here for our help."

"I will do whatever I can."

"Much will be asked of you, then; much that could have been prevented from the start," Belphira said, a thread of reproach sharpening her soft voice. "You could have brought about Michael's death long before. You had the skill, and the chance. The Sovran told me everything, after you left."

"Michael is my brother in the Art," Ryel replied, feeling again the gash of edged glass, the slippery blood-fevered grip of struggling hands. "I could not harm him."

Belphira recoiled. "But he is a demon—a monster."

"He is worse than you have any idea. Michael is no longer in Almancar." And he told her what had really occurred, but only part of it, making no mention of Dagar.

She was trembling, even with half the truth. "Meschante. I can still recall how he tore my mask from my face and spat at me in the Diamond Heaven, actions which should have been his death; but Prince Hylas pleaded that he be spared, and by the Sovran's mercy he was."

Ryel shook his head. "Agenor's choices were far from wise ones."

"And you say that Meschante now has powers strong as yours. If Almancar should fall—"

"Do not think it," Ryel said, although he thought it too. "It mars your beauty."

She turned from him. "That is the least of my concerns." She turned away from him. The lamplight fell upon her face, disclosing downcast pallor unrelieved by the painted maskings that had disguised it at their first meeting, so seeming long ago. "I have heard that pain makes one a philosopher. If that is true, then I have grown very wise in a short time. Too wise for tears, or perhaps simply too tired, having wept so many of late. I had many friends in the Diamond Heaven, Redestens; but those friends are all of them gone, now. The few who paid heed to my warnings escaped the city, but many died at the hands of Michael's fanatics. Some of them—the lucky ones—were killed outright. Others less lucky were raped to death."

Ryel spoke through a tight throat. "I know."

Belphira shivered. "All of them were so young. So beautiful. Very often I feel guilt for having been spared their fate."

"Be glad instead that you have known happiness, however briefly."

"Happiness." Belphira looked toward the imperial apartments where her lover slept. "Yes. We have known it, in full measure. Priam had feared at first that he might not be capable of pleasure with a woman, after his illness and those years of celibacy. How wrong he proved himself—and how glad he was of it." She laughed, but very softly, and not long. "Now all he requires is a young bride. Young and fair. Unsullied and fruitful."

Her last words came bitterly. She had taken her cithern onto her lap as she talked, and now she plucked a twanging discord. "Your sister does not love me, Redestens. She cannot. She is good of heart, but rigorously chaste as all Steppes maidens are, and therefore incapable of excusing me my past life." A long moment she hesitated. "Nelora's blood is of the imperial line. The Sovran made me aware of your mother's more than probable kinship to the dynasty, as well as your own rank, my lord of Vrya. But most important of all, your sister adores Priam."

"She's a child. He can't return her feelings."

She almost laughed. "In three or four years, if these times permit her to live them, Nelora will be only more beautiful, and I will be...but it doesn't matter. If I survive this siege, I will never again dwell in Almancar, but return to my homeland. And I will search for Guy Desrenaud until I find him, or until I become an old woman out of my wits. For he was my first love, and even in Priam's arms I have never forgotten him. Will you keep this secret, Ryel Mirai?"

"I will."

She held out her hand, taking Ryel's. But then her beautiful face grew unquiet, and her fingers cold. "You have a secret of your own. One that I need to learn, whatever it costs me."

Ryel fought to clear his mind of all forebodings concerning Desrenaud, for this woman's Art was strong, although it slumbered unknown within her. "Many matters call me now, and I must look to them. But we'll continue our talk later." And he would have gone, but Belphira stayed him.

"Wait." She fixed her eyes on his, unevadably. "Yours are great powers, Lord Ryel. With so much evil awork, I have little right to ask this question—yet I must know. Is Guyon Desrenaud still alive? Could you consult your Art in some way, and tell me? Now that the world might be on the point of ending, I can bear to know."

Ryel had never felt more pulled and torn. "I wish I could, my lady. More than anything at this moment, I wish I could."

Belphira stared at him, all but comprehending. "I am afraid to ask you more. Go. It may well be that he is better off dead than where we now are, you and I."

Those words echoed in Ryel's mind like mocking ghost-shrieks. "Better off dead," he murmured as he left Belphira and began what he knew all too well might be a fruitless search. "Are you, Guy? And was I the cause?"

In his turmoil of mind he strayed out onto one of the open balconies of the Eastern Palace, oblivious to the danger. At his appearance a shouting went up in the streets, and a barrage of arrows—shouting he never heard, and arrows he never saw, until far too late.

Chapter Twenty-Two

"You're a great one for close calls, sorcerer. This makes twice I've kept your skin whole."

Ryel rubbed his head, which hurt smartly on one side. "You almost cracked my skull, you crag-crawling savage," he said, not gratefully. Then he realized who he'd just spoken to. "You're alive. Guy, you're still alive!"

Out of aching blackness Desrenaud appeared somewhat blurrily at first, grunting a laugh. "Small thanks to you. I've never known anything that smarted worse than your wysard's way of traveling. It's not natural, magus."

"No. It certainly is not." Ryel cleared his vision with a vigorous head-shake, and looked long at the man who'd rescued him yet again. "I thought I killed you."

"You did your best, I'll give you that," Desrenaud answered, curtly wry. "But why add suicide to murder? Couldn't you watch where you were going? By the way, were you hit?"

Ryel made a cursory check. "No. But my head's ringing."

"Because I knocked you against a wall whilst snatching you yet again out of harm's way."

"Where did you materialize?"

"In some courtyard or other. One with a naked man's statue in it—and a living lady fairer than any work of sculptor's art, though fully dressed."

"Then you saw Belphira."

"I did indeed, enchanter. Although I took good care that she didn't see me."

Ryel stared at him. "But why? Why, after so many—"

"I've only a single reason, but that excellent. Come along and I'll show you."

After many corridors and some strenuous climbing they stood together at the summit of the palace's tallest tower. "I found this high place straightway," Desrenaud said. "We can't be seen by any, but have every view of the city and the plain. I expected it to be guarded, but that other tower yonder has fully as good an aspect at only half the height—and as you can see, there's an armed watcher on it who little thinks us here. Now turn your eyes southerly. All the strength of the Zegry force lies camped in a clump around that gate, whilst the eastern way into the city is watched by a force much the lesser. Anyone attacking from north or west would meet with little resistance, and overcome it handily. How many do you think there be out there, all told?"

Ryel scanned the wasteland now grayed by false dawn, using both his Steppes sight and his Art. "Around five thousand."

Desrenaud nodded agreement. "Close to my own count—which doesn't numerate those who've sneaked off to steal what they can out of the jewel mines. Now, whilst prowling about the corridors and courtyards I overheard some of the soldiers talking, and they were saying that fully half those troops, the ones encamped at the east gate, aren't regular soldiers but aliantes all, scraped up from every dirty hole and corner. So what we have is an army of savages and mercenaries, not over-numerous."

Ryel frowned. "But surely reinforcements are expected in days to come."

"That I'd never doubt, but the Azm Chak has few friends, and those mostly from over the seas and no great fighters. The Zegrys may have sought help from perhaps Usk or Bashant, but likely didn't get it--those are indolent hot lands. Moreover, the Azm Chak's nearest neighbor is Zalla, and the Rei of that land despises Catulk and Coamshi and all their blood, for old reasons. With a little luck this would be easy—with a few of Roskerrek's battalions we'd have the day won before it broke. Damnation, where's Destimar's army?"

"On its way, I trust."

Desrenaud grimaced. "Bah. It's probably still being levied. Old Agenor presumed too much upon his realm's greatness, and in his overweening idiocy thought none would ever dare lift hand against it; and now a gang of ragtag scum can topple all his empire."

"Almancar is the capital of the realm, not the whole of it."

"Almancar is the dynasty, sorcerer." Desrenaud leaned against the parapet at Ryel's side, and gave a disgusted grunt. "Those Chakans fight all underhanded. I've heard that each soldier carries a jar full of vipers, to let loose during battle; they themselves are made immune by antidotes. And it's rumored that some of their strongest are purposely infected with incurable diseases to spread amongst their adversaries, and that all their weapons are envenomed with rotting poisons. I don' t know how many of those tales to believe."

"Believe them all, and more."

With a muttered curse Desrenaud turned to the wysard. "And where's that hell-daimon Dagar now? Why has he not come to face you? Surely he knows you're here."

"I am far from certain he does," Ryel said. "But even if he did, the dawn is rising, which means his powers will be much diminished. When night comes again he and I will meet, be sure of it."

"See that you prevail, sorcerer. But what is it you stare so straightly at to the west?"

Ryel squinted. "I think I see the captain of the mercenaries coming out of his tent."

"Rare early hours, his." A thought seemed to come to Desrenaud, one that lit his eyes. "Use that sorcerer's sight of yours, and tell me his looks. He is young, is he not? Barely thirty?"

Ryel shook his head. "Much older. Fifty years, at least."

"Hm. But fair, doubtless? Pale of skin and silvery of hair, and that hair very long, in four great braids?"

"Not at all," the wysard said. "Swarthy, with wiry black hair gone gray high on the temples, all a-bristle on his crown and shaven at the nape."

"But bearded? A great beard down to his belt?"

"Hardly," Ryel said, mystified. "Shaven clean, save for a thick mustache."

"Is he, now. But surely he is my height or thereabouts, and craggy lean?"

"Far from either. Very little in stature, and round as a tub—uncommonly strong-seeming for all that. But why—"

Despite so much contradiction, Desrenaud seemed far from displeased. "One last thing. Is he exceeding grum of manner, haughty and rough?"

"Never a bit," Ryel said. "He has a smile for everyone, with many a slap on the back and hug round the shoulders. I'm sorry, Guy, but he's not at all the man you seem to wish he was."

Desrenaud startled the wysard with his laugh. "You're dead wrong there, enchanter. Blood and damnation, but this is wonderful."

Ryel was extremely surprised. "Why? Who is he?"

"Our luck, magician," the earl said, triumph in his voice. "Our first luck. I did not dare believe it, and thus was roundabout with you in asking his looks—a trick I got from my grandame. The man you've so minutely limned is none other than Rodhri M'Klaren, one of the toughest old warhorses of all the North."

"What, do you know him?" Ryel asked, astonished.

"Know him? Look at him again with your sorcerer's vision, and tell me whether or not he has one dark eye, and one light."

Ryel looked, and nodded. "He does indeed."

"There you are," the earl said with satisfied finality. "It's him, beyond the breath of a doubt. Whilst I was espying on the Sovran's guard, I heard them say that a great captain had come down from the North in the pay of the Zegrys, and I knew that it had to be none other than Rodhri the Ransacker, as he's known to his men. I first met the M'Klaren when he led a force against the Hralwi during the border wars—mercenary troops called up by the Domina when she learned that the Hryeland army was deserting in droves, and that most other able-bodied men were shirking conscription in every way they could. We've been drunk together times out of number, the M'Klaren and I, and pledged eternal brotherhood at every bout."

"Then you trust him?"

Desrenaud shook his head at once, with a wry laugh. "Not a whit. He's a knave in grain. But that's all to the good, since he and his soldiers are more than likely snarling sick of cooling their heels outside the eastern gates whilst Michael's crew gets first snap at the Diamond Heaven's beauties and makes off with the prime plunder, and the Zegry force rifles the jewel mines in the mountains. From what I've heard, Rodhri was promised loot rather than wages, a bargain he willingly shook hands on. But the prospect of rich pillage has waned to the point that the M'Klaren would turn his coat to the Sovran's side forthwith, given assurance of ready gold."

"Priamnor has abundance of that, at least," Ryel said.

"Then it's settled. I've only to get to Rodhri's camp. Use that Art of yours to find me a stratagem, sorcerer. Another of those translation-spells, such as you last wrought."

Ryel shook his head in absolute denial. "It's too soon for a second time. You'd infallibly die."

Desrenaud smote the edge of the parapet with a curse. "Then think of something else—but be quick!"

Ryel briefly meditated. "I know of one method only a little less desperate. But first I must ask you how good you are at scaling walls."

"You called me a crag-crawling savage ere this, sorcerer. All I'll need is enough rope, as long as you can convey me safely to the eastern wall."

"You'll have it," Ryel said.

"Then what are we standing idle here for?"

"Because the light's rising, and I have to consider the best method for us to negotiate our way unseen."

"Aren't you a conjurer? All you need do is render us invisible."

Ryel gave a snort very like Edris'. "Easy for you to say." He leaned his elbows on the parapet, contemplating the city's ruins and the smoke rising therefrom, thinking of how very far Almancar was from Markul. He remembered the smooth gloomy granite of his own City's buildings, the eternal overcast, the mists so thick that often he required the Art to find his way to the walls …

"By every god," he half exclaimed. "That's it."

Desrenaud jerked around. "What? A magic cloak?"

"Something better."

"Then shake it out, enchanter."

Ryel leaned out over the parapet, and closed his eyes, and gave all his thought to obscuration. Soon he felt chill damp on his cheeks, and at last heard Desrenaud's underbreath oaths.

"Damnation. You did it, magus. We're utterly shut in."

Opening his eyes, the wysard no longer saw a vista of smoking ruin and encroaching armies. All that met his gaze was clammy gray cloud. "Good," he said, muffling Edris' mantle about him. "No one will find us in this murk. Let's go."

Silently he led the way through the yielding wall of white, unerringly finding the right path amid a maze of corridors and courtyards. All about him he heard cursing guardsmen, startled servants, alarmed courtiers, most of whom had never known such weather in their lives. But Ryel passed among them as if through a dream with Desrenaud at his side, making his way to the gallery where Jinn stood entranced, waking her and silencing her neighs of recognition with whispered words of Art.

At the stables he housed Jinn in one of the extravagant stalls, and wordlessly bid her farewell with caresses to her gold-silk mane. Finding a strong length of rope, he led Desrenaud with him to the remembered door, and broke open its lock with a touch. Once they had entered the secret passage, Ryel closed the door behind them.

"You can speak now," he said in the darkness.

The Northerner made muffled noises of disgust. "This is worse even than your fog, magus. Cobwebs a foot thick, and moldy as a grave—"

Groping in the black Ryel took one of the torches from its wall-socket, and commanded it to spring aflame. Desrenaud blinked as he looked around him. "Where are we?"

"In a tunnel leading to the Diamond Heaven," Ryel replied.

"Ha. I'm sure young Priamnor made use of it, often and often."

They made their way slowly, hampered by webs grown more thick than ever, but Desrenaud now pushed through them undismayed.

"At least now I can see a clear ten feet ahead of me. It reminds me much of the passages under Grotherek Palace, save that Bradamaine kept hers better swept."

"Tell me why you didn't wish to see Belphira tonight."

Desrenaud halted. "I did, sorcerer. Believe me, I did. She that I've not laid eyes on for years—never a day of them gone by without some thought of her, every thought fresh and lively as a blow athwart the face, or a knife in the guts. It's raw luck, sorcerer—to have come so close to her, then instantly taken the best way of never seeing her again—but there's no help for it."

Ryel started. "I thought you foresaw no danger in meeting with Rodhri M'Klaren."

"One always runs some risk with a hired blade," said Desrenaud, grimly resigned. "Especially when Bradamaine's last orders to the M'Klaren were to throw me in chains if ever he encountered me again, and compel me Northward for judgment. She promised him no inconsiderable reward, as I recall, and I much doubt the M'Klaren's yet heard about the late changes in Hryeland."

"Then by all means you shouldn't—"

Desrenaud waved away the wysard's concern. "I'll take my chances, enchanter. But here we are at yet another door for your arts to open."

At the wysard's word the locks and bolts screeched back, and the great iron door swung a little ajar. The door was further barred by an overgrowth of vines; these Ryel replaced when they had exited, and caused the door to shut and lock again, strengthening the portal with great spells as a final measure of surety.

On their way to the east wall they more than once collided with members of Michael's faithful, but bore themselves so menacingly and ready-bladed that they were never once challenged, though often cursed and brusquely told to watch where they were going. These incidents decreased, however, the further they went, until in near-total silence Desrenaud leaned to Ryel's ear. "I'm good as blind, sorcerer. Where are we?"

"At the Temple of Atlan," the wysard whispered. "Careful with the steps."

As they made their way through what remained of the Jewel Path, the wysard was glad that he could not see the ruins around him, and wished he could not smell the cruel reek of spilled stale wine, smoke and putrefaction. The tangled fetor was horribly overlaid with the spoiled perfume of essence-bottles wantonly broken open, rich delicacies wasted, rare blossoms trampled and crushed, all of which the two men were forced to tread upon or kick aside as they went. Ryel did not need eyes to know that the canal which once so brilliantly divided the Jewel Path was choked with garbage and corpses.

Desrenaud sounded sick. "Did you have to lead me here, warlock?"

"It's the quickest way to the wall," Ryel replied, knowing that his whisper, too, was harsh with anguish. "And as you can hear, it's somewhat less than thronged."

All too apparently looters no longer found it worthwhile to rummage in the wreckage for some overlooked bit of plunder. The only sounds in the cloud-dimmed Heaven were an occasional fall of rubble or crash of glass. Heavy of heart Ryel remembered that night of laughter and song, of lamp-lit boats gay with revelers afloat on the River of Bliss, of Atlan's most ravishing nymphs exultant and aglow with wine and wit, of Priamnor Dranthene beautiful as a god treading the exquisite measures of the zarvana; and all those fair memories dissolved and crumbled and blew away into the mist, leaving in their place only brutish drug-stunned lust, the giggling shrieks of a false whore, the excruciating stab of a black and gold blade.

Desrenaud's hand on his wrist tightened its grip. "You're the one with the warm cloak, wysard. No need to shiver."

"It is difficult to bear."

The Ralnahrian heard Ryel's voice break, try as the wysard might to speak steadily. "I understand." His hand slid to meet Ryel's and grip it tightly a moment. "But it won't last, if I can do anything about it. Have we reached the wall yet?"

"Just arrived."

Silently they climbed the stairway to the rampart, meeting no one on the way. Desrenaud fastened the rope to an iron ring on the parapet's ledge. "Well, I'm off."

"Good luck go with you," the wysard replied. But he had little hope.

"A favor I'd ask you, Ry," Desrenaud said as he pulled on his gloves.

Never before had the Northerner called the wysard by that name. "Ask whatever you will," Ryel replied, his heart crowded by emotion.

"Lend me your cloak awhile."

"You're cold?"

"My insides are. I could use a little of your magic, now. And besides, the hood will hide my face until I get to the M'Klaren's tent."

The wysard took off the cloak and handed it to Desrenaud, feeling suddenly stripped and bereft. "I won't rest easy until you're returned safe."

"My thanks. But I don't know when—or if—I'll get back. Whatever befalls, make sure that beast Meschante never gets near her."

Ryel understood. "He won't while I'm alive."

"Tell her…nothing. She need never know I was here. You understand me?"

"I understand."

"Good. Until our next, sorcerer." Another moment and Desrenaud had wound the rope around his body and pushed off the wall, rappelling with the smooth agility of a born mountaineer. Instantly he was swallowed up by the fog, and after a time Ryel turned and departed, as much in turmoil as if Desrenaud had fallen to his death.

*****

Retracing his steps through the stinking vandalization of a place once famed as the world's wonder, Ryel sought out the wreckage of the Garden of Dreams, running a sorrowing hand down the defaced marble of the gallery columns before climbing the broken stairway to the roof-garden. Once on the upper terrace he found the spot where he and Priamnor had spoken with Belphira that terrible night. Every ornament had been looted, and all else destroyed. Dropping to his knees amid the wreckage, the wysard pressed his cold palms to his face.

"You did this," he whispered, so full of fury that he sickened with it. "And when I find you..."

A voice that all but stopped his heart broke in, deep and resonant and mocking. "You've only to open your eyes, fool."

Michael Essern stood before him, not twenty feet away in a sudden clearing amid the mists—Michael tall and tattered in black robes and dirt, his once-shaven head now covered with crimson skeins that trailed down his scar-seamed back, his eyes scornful under the lowering dark brows, his body yet more truculently muscular through the rents of his rags.

Ryel leapt up, drawing his dagger. "You."

"I'm not armed, fool."

Past the cold pale gray of Michael's eyes Ryel loathingly discerned dirty mud-brown. "Show yourself in your true form, Meschante."

"I'll keep this guise. It suits me better." The fanatic gazed around him, and grinned. "Now this is a heaven indeed. A place free at last of any sin."

"You're a murdering swine, Meschante."

"My work was holy, Markulit. I've made Almancar clean—most of Almancar, I would say. Purified of its iniquitous debasements. Now we shall have no regiment of strumpets and catamites, but good order such as the Master wishes. Time now for the good folk of the Fourth District to assert their power, which as you see is strong if well directed. And not only have Almancar's whores met their judgment; my children have taken full vengeance upon the rich and titled who despised them. They have burnt the books they could not read, and sacked the mansions where they once toiled in ways no slave would tolerate, and wrecked the temples where their ignorance was abused."

"They had no right. They were never maltreated in any way."

"No? What was it, to have the Diamond Heaven's allurements and excesses waved in their faces? To be daily tortured with the sight of luxuries they could never possess? To see slaves and sluts prized and esteemed, whilst they themselves were scorned for their lowly service? Were they tame beasts, to be dumbly thankful for their water and straw, and never wish for more?"

"You know and I know that you care nothing for those people." It was much to endure, suffering the taunts of a monster veiled in the flesh of one so suddenly and surprisingly become a friend, and only too untimely lost. "Where is Dagar?"

Meschante struck his chest. "In here." He put his dirty hands to his head. "In here." He covered his eyes with his hands, and when he took them away again, those eyes were complete empty black, and he was laughing in a high thin sneer. "Meet your Master, young blood. I hold Almancar, and soon will have all the realm. And I'll have you, and your pretty little—"

With a shout Ryel hurled a spell at Dagar, Lord Garnos' spell that would exile the daimon forever to the Void. But his words fell on empty air. The Enemy had vanished like a thread of mist.

"Invisibility," Ryel murmured. "Great Mastery, or else a deceitful vision." But visions seldom or never smelled so much in need of a bath. Retrieving his weapon, the wysard made a last search round for his adversary. He found nothing; only scattered bright plumes roughly wrenched from masks that had once veiled the costliest beauty, and crushed crystal splinters of goblets delicate as bubbles, and everywhere the dark stains of wine and blood.

"I missed my chance," the wysard whispered, despising himself. Nevertheless, he expected nothing Artwise untoward to occur until evening, when Dagar's powers would take their fullest strength from the darkness. Alone through the enveloping brume he returned to the palace complex even as he had come, his mind full of misgivings for Desrenaud and fear for those others he had come to love, so incalculably menaced now.

Within the Eastern Palace every denizen was awake and variously bewildered and dismayed by the mist that no window or door could keep out, however tightly shut. His tread soundless, Ryel passed from room to room. But as he rounded a corner he ran full force into a woman, or rather a girl. For a moment they stood embraced and breathless, she looking up into his face with startled adoration and surprise.

"Oh, Priam—I mean, most exalted—I never thought to..." her gaze grew searching, then widened into blue-centered circles. "Ryel?" She said his name in bewilderment at first, then all but shrieked it. "Ryel! Oh, my brother—" Before he could reply she threw her arms around his neck, hugging hard, but then in the same moment pushed out of his arms and struck his chest with a fist remarkably strong for its smallness. "So it's you, finally. You might have told me, brother."

"Told you what, Nel? I only just arrived."

She gave him a furious frown. "That's not what I meant, and well you know it." A gleam of suspicion came into her eyes. "Did you have anything to do with this fog?"

"Well, I…"

"Get rid of it." She hesitated. "Please."

Ryel did so. Nelora watched, ever more impressed, as the air cleared. "That's quite a trick, brother. Could you teach me how to be a witch?"

He smiled at the thought, wryly. "You don't need lessons."

She smiled too, but it faded fast. "I'd use some wicked spells on that dirty rabble, if I could. How dare they rise up against Priamnor, who has done all he can for them? How dare they listen to that ugly ragged villain?"

Ryel started. "You've seen Michael, then?"

"From a window, when at the very foot of the palace he preached his hateful nonsense to the scum that follow him. He looked right up at me—a look that stripped me to my skin, the lewdest look—if I'd had my bow handy I've had shot an arrow into one of those nasty eyes of his. I've gotten good with a bow, brother, since you and I last met. I practice every day, even here."

"In Steppes gear, I hope--not the gown you're in now." Admiringly the wysard ran his fingers through her straw-pale mingled braids and tresses. "It's a lovely gown, by the way. Pale green is a color that suits you." But he'd stopped smiling. "Still, you shouldn't lace it so tightly."

She thrust out an indignant lower lip—a painted one, the wysard disapprovingly observed. "I'm a grown woman if you hadn't noticed, fully fifteen years old. I only wish the Sovran saw as much, but he cares most for that old trollop Bel—"

Suddenly and angrily reminded, Ryel frowned. "Belphira Deva is a good and noble lady," he said, very sternly. "If you had any—"

"She was a common prostitute, brother, for as many years as I am old." Nelora turned away from him. "I cannot bear the way Priamnor looks at her. He never looks at me that way."

"He'd better not. You're still a child."

She spun about, and her hard little gem-studded fist thumped his solar plexus again. "I don't mean that kind of look. Not a lusting ogle, but what the poets call a conjuncture of souls. But how can he love her? A strumpet who has rolled in bed with countless men—"

"Lady Belphira was a tiraktia--a musician and a singer, not one that sold herself for money."

"Still, I'm sure she had many a man in her younger days, chosen solely for his wealth."

"I'll not permit such talk from you. I'll wager our mother is friends with her."

"That means nothing," Nelora said, making a petulant face that only looked adorable, to the wysard's chagrin. "She's friends with everyone. Oh, don't preach at me. Come here." And Nelora gave Ryel a great hug, kissing both his cheeks, then laid her head against his chest, her arms wrapped around him. "I missed you, missed you, missed you. We all have—except for Diara, of course, but it isn't her fault."

Ryel returned the embrace tenderly, but felt as if one of Nelora's emphatic little fists had driven clean through him, grinding its rings against his spine. "She doesn't remember me?"

Nelora nodded, quite matter-of-factly. "But she wants to meet you, very much, after all the things Priam and I have told her. But you can see her later. For now, I'm taking you to our mother. We'll have chal. Remember how we drank it together, you and I, out in the dawn? I only wish we had some lakh now, but there's none left and no way to get any more, thanks to the siege." She looked up at him, impishly quizzical. "Perhaps you could conjure up some?"

"I'll see what I can do, you greedy brat," Ryel said, exasperated but smiling too.

"Then come on."

She took his hand, leading him up the steps, flinging open a door. At first Mira seemed puzzled at the Sovran's early visit, but in another moment she comprehended, and rushed forward rejoicing.

Chapter Twenty-Three

As was usual with Almancarian custom—even in times as desperate as now, Ryel saw to his disbelief—the palace rested in the afternoon, seeking refuge from the cloudless scorch of the sun. Much against her will Nelora had also gone off for a nap, her emotions overwrought as much from the joy of seeing her brother again as from the wine she'd drunk to celebrate his return—rather to excess, Ryel noted with small approval. He and his mother were now alone in the garden-cloister that adjoined Mira's apartments, a place shaded by vine-trellises and palms, strolling among the paths and quietly talking, learning each other again, rejoicing in their communion.

"So now you believe the tales," Ryel said.

Mira nodded. "The imperial archives give me no other choice. When first the twins and I came to this city, Priamnor summoned us to the palace and welcomed us with the greatest kindness, and showed us the writings that prove our kinship to him. From that moment until the troubles we have lived magnificently here, happy in the mansion my grandmother left me; all the court visited us. Priamnor's mother and I became especial friends."

"Ah." Ryel remembered the kind woman with the unhappy eyes, her gold ornaments glittering in the myriad votive lights of Demetropa's altar. "Then Lady Calantha Diaskiros left the temple of Demetropa, and returned here."

"She broke all precedent to do so, but no longer regrets it. For now she lives again as she was meant to, sharing the Eastern Palace with the children she loves. "

Ryel considered his mother's words. "You, too, came back to the life you were meant to live. I hope that way returns." Reaching toward a stand of flowers, Ryel gathered a pale golden lily that matched his mother's gown, and slipped it into her night-hued tresses. "Flowers such as these never grew in Risma."

Mira's smile waned. "But all of Almancar's gardens have been destroyed by Michael's followers. The palace is the only place left where they safely thrive, now; but even here they are so few. It's as if they knew the danger threatening the city—even the roses are suffering, the flowers I love most. Life on the Steppes was hard enough without having to coax my roses into growing at all, until you came home at last and made them flourish—with your magic, I now know."

"Call it my Art." Ryel turned to a marble vase where only dry twigs stuck out of the parched dirt. Putting his hand on the vase, he spoke a word, and then another; and as he and his mother watched, the twigs became green and pliant stems. Eager green leaves sprouted from the stems, and then buds. The buds swelled, opening into roses of every color. At the beginning of the metamorphosis Mira had drawn back half in fear, but when the rosebuds were half-open she caught Ryel's wrist. "It is enough. Stop."

Ryel halted the spell. Slowly Mira reached out to the flowers, her hand hovering over the blooms but touching none of them. "They have no thorns."

"Had I my wish, they never would for you."

Emboldened, she bent closer, breathed deep. "Sweeter than Transcendence." Her delicate fingers reached toward a rose-stem they held, and the petals trembled. "The danger around us is great, little son. I am glad your Art is greater."

Ryel bit his lip. "I hope it will be."

Mira's delicate ring-bright fingers tightly gripped the rose-stem, stilling the petals' trembling. "I had so much longed to see my home again. So many years of yearning and dreaming—and so little time to enjoy my return. From the windows of this palace I have witnessed cruelties beyond belief, appalling atrocities; my nights are endless watches, black with fear."

"I can see as much in your face."

"Then you must think me greatly aged since we parted last."

"Not even a day."

"Some terrible thing is coming. I can see it behind your eyes. This morning you spoke to me of Michael's powers, and how you hope to overcome him with the knowledge you acquired in the last half-year. But something worse than Michael confronts you; I feel it."

She must have felt it in his pulse, because she had taken him by the wrist to turn him toward her. And he turned; but he regretted having to meet her eyes, because she saw clear into him, this woman to whom he was bound by a thousand ties of blood and love and loyalty, she who had made him with the seed of Edris Desharem Alizai, lord adept of Markul.

Her voice was hushed and slow. "Tell me what you fear."

Ryel turned his gaze to the flowers, seeking their sweetness, their bright life. "I had great hopes when I left Risma for Almancar. Now I wonder if any of them will be fulfilled. Any at all."

"What hopes are those?"

"Fantastic ones, my mother. Foolish ones, they seem now to me."

"You are your father's son, Ry. Your father's son, and mine. The bravest blood of the Steppes and a tincture of the imperial line run in your veins. You will not fail."

"I'll do my utmost not to. But…"

"Do not think of that now. Tonight the Sovrana Dowager Calantha and the Sovrena Diara come to dine with Nelora and me; join us. Besides palace dishes we'll have Steppes fare—all the things you like, or at least as much as the siege will permit." She smiled. "I wish that might include the lakh you love."

He took her hands, and bent his brow to them; then straightened to gaze upon her with admiration and disbelief. "Almancar is on the brink of falling, silestra, and you can think of entertainment?"

His mother lifted her chin, meeting his eyes with proud defiance. "We have lived in danger long enough to scorn it. I'll never let a fanatic and his rabble dismay me. What are the poet's words—

'And when the fight like fire raged, Redestens' heart blazed bright,

And burnt away his fear and doubt as sun drives forth the night;

No moment to him sweeter seemed than this where he drew breath,

Nor life more balanced than when poised upon the edge of death.'"

Ryel said the last line with her. "I remember when we first read those lines together. Surely there can be no greater tale of heroes than the final canto of The Siege of Kasrinagal."

"Yes. Where all the demigods do battle for the World's sake against the armies of the Demon-king—and win."

Ryel's smile faded. "But their victory is a dear one. It costs the lives of Bahalin and Ghenris … and Drostal." Again he thought of Guyon Desrenaud, perhaps at that moment enduring torture in the mercenary camp.

His mother seemed to sense his thoughts. Reaching up, she smoothed back his hair as she had when he was a boy. "Those heroes do not die forever, Ryel. The great goddess Demetropa saves them. And she will look after us, too—even after you, unbeliever though you are."

Unwilling to argue, Ryel let the matter drop. "You're a brave lady, Mira Silestra." He took her in his arms and nuzzled her under both her ears, as was his way when very little; and she laughed as she always had.

*****

Ryel parted from his mother, promising a swift return, and made his way to the quadrant of the palace where Priam dwelt. Awhile he stood in the deserted Court of the Diver, giving his entire being over to the peace and beauty of the place he was. But the evil unleashed in the World could not be shut out or willed away.

I don't want this night to come, he thought. He wished he could stop the sun in the heavens, as the old gods of Risma used to do—stop it at this lovely bright time, and give him space to grow warm again.

He sat at the pool's edge and for a long time stared into the jeweled water, that glittered and shimmered like a silken robe—like the trailing golden mantle Priamnor Dranthene had worn in the Diamond Heaven.

"I have never forgotten that night, Priam," he murmured.

"Neither have I."

The Sovran's voice made Ryel's nape prickle, but nevertheless the wysard did not look about. He heard the rustle of his friend's garments, breathed Transcendence.

"Did you sleep well?" the wysard asked.

"Better than I have in all my life before."

Ryel turned to Priamnor, then, and saw that the Sovran had greatly changed. "Priam. You're as you were— "

"When we first met?" Priamnor Dranthene's night-colored hair was now shorn close and his face shaven smooth, once again revealing the subtle yet commanding perfection of feature that had drawn every eye in Agenor's presence-chamber. Instead of silken Steppes gear he wore robes of deep blue-violet, very like the ones he'd worn at that first meeting. "I wanted us to remember that time."

As if I could ever forget, Ryel thought. He had averted his eyes from Priam's, and now found it impossible to look back. "This will be no night for revelry. Dagar will seek every means to strike at me, and will no doubt try to harm those I most care for. But he shares Michael's form with Meschante, who will very likely try to seek out Belphira. Neither she nor your sister should be left alone once night falls. I don't know what will be demanded of you. I can only hope— "

"I can only hope I'll be of more assistance than I was the last time," the Sovran said, with a slight flinch at the memory. "At least I'll try not to faint."

"Make damned sure you don't, lad. The last thing we need is people flopping down in a swoon."

Ryel and Priam started about in the same instant, both in recognition, at the sound of that deep yet womanly voice. Priam frowned when he saw who the voice belonged to, but Ryel leapt to his feet, even more relieved than amazed.

"Lady Srin?"

The wysardess, dazzlingly clad in the rich warlike uniform of the imperial guard, grinned. "The same, lad."

"But how did you get here?" The wysard turned to the Sovran. "Do you know who this is?"

"Of course," Priam said a little shortly as he joined them. "She's commander of the Kugglaitai warriors who came to the city just before the siege. Why do you call her Lady? And Srin Yan Tai, what is your business here? My conversation with my kinsman was meant to be private."

The wysardess waved an impatient ring-heavy hand. "High time you were enlightened—and at last you can be, now that Ryel's here. It's good to see you again, lad Ry; I worried about you. I want you to tell me everything that happened to you in the North, but first I'd like you to inform the Sovran who he's dealing with when he deals with me."

Ryel informed Priamnor as briefly as he might, with many interruptions and emendations from Lady Srin. The Sovran stared from Ryel's face to Srin's, blankly amazed, and when the explanations came to an end he fixed his gaze on the wysardess.

"Then you were the one who healed me, five years ago?"

Lady Srin nodded, her martial headgear jangling. "The same."

"Why did you? Who was I to you?"

The Steppes wysardess grinned. "A very sick, very pretty boy. But you've grown to be far more than that, and you'll have to be much more, very soon."

Priam frowned. "What do you mean?"

"There's matters awork in the world, lad. Big ones." Turning from the Sovran, she addressed Ryel. "I've done what I could here. Kept Dagar, Meschante, Michael Essern, whoever it calls itself at bay, or at least away from the palace, with the Art's aid. The armed bands I led here from Kugglaita are on the walls of the city, awaiting the war and sinking arrows into any of the enemy stupid enough to get within range. But it won't be enough." Srin Yan Tai looked from Ryel to Priam again. "Most exalted, the night to come will be no easy one. Every bit of Art we can muster, the better. Thus you must play a part in the fight against Dagar."

Priam appeared confused, and incredulous. "But I'm no—no sorcerer. I have no powers."

Lady Srin almost glared at him. "You mean you're no wysard, and you don't know the Art. Twice wrong, lad. You've the Art within you, believe me."

"Then why did you not tell me of it before? You've been here for months."

"I didn't want to draw Dagar's attention to you. Had you learned anything of the Art, he might well have considered your body a very pleasant habitation for his rai. I can't say I cared for the notion."

The young Sovran didn't flinch from the wysardess' look, which impressed Ryel very much. "You infer my capacity for sor—for the Art because of my ambidexterity. But I've never done anything resembling wysardry. Never."

"You mean you've never tried," Lady Srin said. "Try now. We'll start you out on the simplest of baby-tricks. I don't know why this one's the perennial favorite, but no matter." She took off one of her many rings, and held it out gleaming on her outstretched palm. "There. Now make it move."

Priam shook his head, rather irritably. "Impossible."

"Don't be such a blockhead—sorry, most exalted. I only ask you to try."

Clearly Priam didn't relish being called the name Lady Srin assigned him; it was undoubtedly the first time anyone had ever dared. And perhaps his anger awakened the Art within him, because he dealt the wysardess' ring a sharp glare, and the ring shuddered.

"Good, lad, good," Lady Srin murmured, her attention as rapt as Ryel's, fixed entirely on the glittering jewel. "Now give me more."

Priam's eyes never left the ring. "More?"

"You know what I mean, you pampered dolt," the Steppes wysardess snapped. "Do it!"

Ryel reflected that this was not the way to address the Sovran of great Destimar, and that anger was an emotion Priamnor seldom was called upon to feel, therefore strong when it occurred; he could remember how much. Quick as the wysard's thoughts, the bright-gemmed ring on Lady Srin's palm trembled violently, then suddenly shot up into the air perhaps three inches above the callused dark many-lined flesh. A long moment it stayed suspended, ever trembling, then dropped back down.

Lady Srin clenched her hand around the ring. "Remarkable, for a first try. How do you feel, most exalted?"

"Well enough, for a pampered dolt." But Priam was gray under his sun-bestowed bronze. "I can't believe I did that."

The wysardess half-laughed. "Believe it, and do more."

"How do you feel?" Ryel asked Priam.

"Odd." Priam blinked, rolled his shoulders. "As if my brain had been struck from the inside by a little bolt of lightning."

Lady Srin and Ryel looked at each other. "Sounds right," the wysardess said. "Doesn't it, whelp?"

Ryel nodded. "That's how it felt with me. But I was made to Art-lift an egg." He recalled that the egg had indeed levitated, but had burst as it did so, spattering Edris and drawing forth a barrage of curses, but relieved delighted laughter too.

Lady Srin sniffed. "In my day, we started with bricks. Big ones. Ah, well..." She turned to Ryel. "I'll look after everyone. All you have to do is draw Dagar to you and get rid of him."

Ryel felt tired. "Easily said. But he knows the same spells I do, and if—"

"Then make up your own. What a dullard you are sometimes. It'll come to you."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then the World's perdition will be your fault, whelp, and no one else's. Let's go up to that tower I like, and look out over the wall."

It was the tower Desrenaud had chosen, at the southern wall; and Lady Srin surveyed the Zegry army along with Priamnor and Ryel. The wysard fixed his gaze far. "We arrived at a good time. There's Catulk and Coamshi, coming out to harangue the troops."

Priamnor leaned out, his blue eyes squinting. "I wish I had your sight, ilandrakis."

"You do, Priam," Ryel said, giving his kinsman's shoulder an encouraging pat. "Only try, and say this word."

Priamnor narrowed his eyes, said the word, and gave a start. "I…I see them now, clearly. Russet of skin both of them, with green eyes—both very tall, clad in jeweled chain-mail. Their teeth are filed to points, their cheeks scarified, their ears pierced each a dozen times and studded with bright gems. They wear crowns of feathers upon their heads, long plumes of a hundred hues."

Lady Srin nodded. "Coamshi has been the death of five husbands so far, I hear, and numberless lovers; they say she can never get enough either of men or riches. Regarding the men, I believe it; the Azm Chak has a tender custom of making sure that its women never get to scratch their itch."

Ryel recalled Theofanu's words regarding infibulation, and winced. "Coamshi looks to this city's walls most lustfully—as does her brother."

"We'll rebuff her embraces as well as we can," Priam said, with a faint smile. "Lady Srin has been training the courtiers since her arrival."

The wysardess half laughed. "Gods know they need it. All of the young nobility have no end of good weapons inlaid with gold—and not so much as a scratch on any of them, meant as they were only for making a swaggering show in the Diamond Heaven. None of the dashing counts and princes were ever taught the use of a blade, and most of them were as soft as girls to start with—and looked like girls in those long silk robes of theirs. But now that they've hardened up and become warlike, they've begun wearing Steppes gear like to yours, Ryel, although still silken—as much in flattery of the Sovran as for easier swordplay, I've no doubt. Which reminds me--it's time for afternoon drill. Farewell, lads."

When Srin Yan Tai had left, Ryel and Priamnor remained, silently looking out over the Zegry encampment. At last Priam spoke, his voice hushed.

"In a way, I am glad that Michael Essern was not stopped early on. Had this insurrection not occurred, I might have lived out my life unaware of these people's misery."

"You learned of it the very day you gave up your life of seclusion, and went with me to the Diamond Heaven," Ryel replied.

"And had you not come to me, kinsman, I might still have never left the palace."

"Had I not been drawn into the World by Dagar's lures, these horrors would have never been."

"And we would have never met."

Silently Ryel considered the weight of those words, each syllable thudding against his naked heart like edged flints, so loudly he at first could barely hear Priam's next words.

"I want very much for matters to turn out well, ilandrakis. You and I must live to travel to Vrya, that you may see what manner of land you are prince of. It's not so very grand, I'm afraid—merely a little parcel of ground very far to the south, bordering on Zalla. No riches of gold or jewels, but excellent fruit and mandragora sought after far and wide, and as a result a comfortable and uncantankerous citizenry. You might even rule the place if you like, but it's been in capable hands for decades. I look forward to visiting it; I've never been to the sea."

Ryel's ears twitched. "Vrya is on the sea?"

"Quite a bit of it is, from the maps I've seen. We'll explore it together, I hope."

"I hope so, too. Very much." The wysard had averted his eyes from Priam's, and now found it impossible to look back. "The sun's started downward," he said at last. "It won't be long now."

Priamnor rose, and offered Ryel his hand. "Come, let's join the ladies for dinner. I'm looking forward to trying Steppes food."

The wysard closed with that steady grip, drawing an infinity of strength from it; but he shook his head. "This will be no night for revelry, Priam. We must all of us stay close together tonight, against Dagar's appearance. Dagar will seek every means to strike at me, and will no doubt try to harm those I most care for. But he shares the body of Meschante, who will very likely try to seek out Belphira."

At that instant a servant appeared, his breathing labored from climbing, and approached the Sovran, murmuring a message. Dismissing him, Priam turned to Ryel.

"My sister wishes to see you."

Ryel felt his blood dry up, along with his tongue. "The Sovrena Diara? But why? She doesn't remember me."

"Unhappily true. But she wants to thank you for saving her life."

"Then I ask you to do this for me. Gather together everyone in the Court of the Swan--my mother and yours, my sister, Belphira, Lady Srin--everyone you and I hold dear. Make sure many lamps are lit; there must be no darkness. Revel and enjoy yourselves. I'll bring the Sovrena after she and I talk together."

"Very well. I'll find Belphira, and take her to the others. " Priam put his hand on Ryel's shoulder, his touch light but urgent. "Go to my sister, ilandrakis. The night draws on."

*****

As he followed the servant assigned him through the mosaic corridors and sun-spangled courtyards of the Eastern Palace, Ryel had time to consider that he had never met the Sovrena of Destimar according to the forms prescribed by imperial protocol. The Diara he had seen in his father's Glass had been a girl in her teens, dressed in boyish Steppes riding-gear; the Diara he had encountered in the desert outside Almancar was her unbodied rai; the Diara of the dream-realm had been careless of outward proprieties, forgetful of those strictures that normally ruled her movements in her waking life. Now, for the first time, he would meet the Diara known to the World, most exalted lady of the sovereign house Dranthene.

He felt the true distance between them when the great doors of her presence-chamber opened and he was met by soldiers armed in gold and steel, who stood at either side of the portal with drawn swords. At the servant's word Ryel was allowed to pass, but only into a world even more forbidding than that of armed sentinels. Between ranks of court ladies, all magnificently garbed in the opulent Almancarian fashion of myriad-pleated gowns laden with jewels, the Sovrena sat enthroned on a high dais, more gorgeously arrayed than any of the others and crowned with the imperial diadem.

Ryel heard music, heavenly sweet—ceremonial music of the imperial court. It might have been playing ever since he'd entered; he couldn't remember. Before this meeting he had taken the time to dress and otherwise ready himself for an imperial audience, but his simply-cut robes, fresh and new at Priam's order, seemed far too plain despite their lustrous silk and fine making. He felt like what he had grown up as, what Edris had called him long ago—a churl stinking of stable-reek. Not at all like a lord adept of the Best and Highest.

But whatever he was, Diara seemed not to know. She watched him as he advanced past the long files of ladies up to the place where she sat; watched him calm-eyed behind her diadem's seed-pearl veil, with no apparent emotion. When he had finally—it seemed a straight-backed, even-paced eternity—arrived at the foot of her throne, she eyed him up and down with a serenity so detached that he felt complete dismay.

"Most exalted." He half felt as if full prostration should be his next move, but Steppes rearing, Markulit training, and most of all the remembrance that this woman was not one to be bowed down to, but one to stand at his side, made him climb the first two steps of the dais. At this height, his gaze and the Sovrena's met evenly. The ladies in waiting disapproved in a flurry of indignant whisperings that for a moment rose above the music, then subsided at a gesture of Diara's.

"At last I have the chance to thank you, Ryel Mirai." She held out her hand, and he bowed to touch its back to his forehead. Her fingers were covered with gems, and he felt cold diamonds sting his brow. "My brother has told me who you are, and what you are. The city is fortunate indeed that your friendship for Priamnor has brought you here."

"That was a great reason, most exalted. But not the only one."

She regarded him calmly, with cool distance. "I understand completely. Your mother and your sister are guests in the palace, and your greatest concern must of course be for them."

He didn't know what to say. Her absolute composure astounded him. This was the woman for whom he had braved and daunted the most horrific of menaces, and she sat there calmly in her silks and jewels—sat easily, leaning back with her gemmed petal-nailed fingers idly playing on the arms of her ivory throne, regarding him with curiosity so mild that it might as well have been outright indifference. Sat like a goddess, impossibly remote—as if this chamber were a shrine, and she receiving homage, mutely tolerant as a beautiful image wrought of purest, coldest marble. Painted marble, at that. Ryel noted with mixed feelings her pearl-dusted cheeks, carmined lips, kohl-rimmed eyes.

He drew a long breath. "Most exalted, is it permitted that I speak with you a moment alone?"

His question set off a flurry of shocked whisperings among the ladies in waiting, which grew louder when Diara rose from where she sat and joined Ryel. Now she had to look upward to meet his eyes, but nevertheless she still seemed impossibly above him, unreachably remote.

"Two of my guard must attend me," she said.

He did what he could, which wasn't much, to conceal his impatience. "Why?"

"I rule this realm together with my brother. My life is precious to Destimar."

"It is even more precious to me, most exalted."

He'd startled her. "What do you mean?"

"I wish you knew. But no matter. I have information meant only for your ears, information crucial to not only this city and this land, but the world."

A while she stood undecided, but then nodded assent. "I doubt that the man who healed me of my sickness will harm me in my health. Come with me, this way."

The Court of the Swan's graceful colonnades enclosed thick plantings of flowers and trees that glowed in the gilded light of the late afternoon, bewitching the air with fragrance. Ryel took a deep strengthening inhalation of the warm perfume. But Diara's scent imbued the air, overcoming all others despite its faintness—Transcendence warmed by her dear body, so piercing sweet that he could scarcely bear to breathe it.

He took her hand in his, and was dismayed at her attempt to free herself. Tightening his grip as much as he could without harming those delicate fingers, he looked into her eyes, deep, Art-deep, clear into the realm of dreams. "Diara," he whispered, his voice breaking almost as much as his heart. "Remember me. I pray you remember me."

During an aching few seconds of infinity he held his breath, never letting her eyes leave hers; and during that interval her unwilling indignant stare softened, widened, comprehended. The most beautiful eyes in the world gazed into his.

"Ry?"

That whispered syllable proved the strength of his Art. She knew him at last. She knew him. Knew him as they had been together, after the horrors of that ghastly night; knew him as he was when she lay back indolent with exhaustion in her bath, giving herself up to his hands that had healed the Dagar-wrought wounds, soothed away the pain, restored her to the beauty for which she was famed in lands many leagues distant from Destimar.

At last, she knew him. His heart flailed, his blood dried in his veins, his body burnt away from his soul. She was less than an arm's length from him, but as far away as the moon; and he looked upon her helplessly, too rapt for any other act. One of her pale gem-gleaming hands she held out to him, but he could no more take it in his than touch the rays of a star.

"Ah, Ry. I missed you." Trembling and hesitant she reached out to rest her hand upon his shoulder, and as if by some unbinding Art the wysard came to life again. He seized her hands in his, dropping to his knees as he clutched them to his brow; and then in another instant he was standing again, holding her, enwrapping her desperately lest she ebb out of his arms into the air. It was as if he held his own existence against his other self; as if all the love he had ever known in his life had embodied itself here, now.

Her voice was another fragrance in the air. "I owe my life to you. Ask anything you will of me."

He carried her hand to his heart, became one with her eyes. "I ask nothing but this moment, kerandraka."

His last word made him catch his breath. Of all the endearments he might have called her, this one came to his lips quicker than thought, out of that part of his mind where only the deepest emotions dwelt, unknown and voiceless. To call this woman kerandraka, dearer than sister, was to acknowledge a bond stronger than any union of the flesh. He would never be able to take that word back, never be able to change that bond save to its detriment. To call Diara kerandraka was to acknowledge, in his innermost heart, that she was destined be the one object of adoration in his life. The enormity of what he had implied and vowed in that single word made his heart ache with an emotion he had never known before, and could only be described as an agony of joy.

She felt it; felt his attempt to let go of her, and instantly wreathed her arms around his neck. He felt her tears on his neck, burning hot.

"Ah, Ry. Ilandrakis."

"Diara. Silestra."

They stood together a long time in one another's arms, motionless. But night was drawing on. "You must go join Nelora and my mother," Ryel said, suddenly mindful of the black-winged peril hovering near; but his attempts to free himself from those slim arms lacing his neck were unsuccessful, despite all his strength of body and Art.

He felt her lips against his cheek, whispering. "I'm not leaving you."

Gently he took her wrists, urging her clear of him. "You have to. Srin Yan Tai will guard you tonight—you, my mother and sister, Priam, Belphira."

"Srin Yan Tai, the Kugglaitai captain? Then she is like you? A wysard?"

"Wysardess. She's great in the Art, and Dagar won't want to wear out his strength on her. It's me he wants."

"And what if..."

Ryel touched his fingers to her lips, very lightly. "He won't."

"He can't." She kissed his fingertips, burning him clear to his core. "Because I'm not leaving you. Never."

She would be as good as her word, Ryel knew. He cradled her face in his hands, compelling her eyes into his; and as he did so he murmured a word.

She pulled away from him, her eyes flashing in amazement and not a little indignation, drawing herself up to her full height. Even while looking up at him, she was looking down on him, so icily that he almost gasped for cold.

"You forget yourself, physician, wysard, whatever you be." She pushed away his hands, to Ryel's mingled agony and relief. "What was it you said—that some danger threatens this night?"

"Yes. I was sent to take you to safety. Your brother has gone to find Belphira Deva."

"Belphira dwells in the Court of the Sun, not far from here. Let us go there; it's on the way to the Court of the Swan."

"We have little time. Show me the way."

She refused to take the hand he offered her. "Four of my ladies must accompany me."

"Protocol be damned, most exalted."

She looked on him with perfect amazement. "How dare you address me in such—"

"There's no time, Dia—I mean, most exalted. Take me there, now! "

The Sovrena knew the shortest way to Belphira's apartments, having often been a visitor there, and led Ryel through a vine-hidden gate of the courtyard and through a private arcade that opened onto the courtyard. For a moment they stood there. "No music," Diara said at last. "No voices. The doors are all closed. I don't think they'll welcome this intrusion. Let go of my hand, if you would."

Ryel didn't. "Your brother knows what is to happen tonight, as does—"

A horrific shriek rent the air. "Belphira," Diara breathed, her fingers icy in Ryel's.

Ryel froze, too, but only an instant. "I'll see to her. Stay here."

But Diara followed him. Together they pushed open the portal that led to Belphira's rooms. In the middle of the fair great chamber with its brilliant carpets and gold-woven silken hangings and rich appointments Dagar stood ghastly foul in the guise of Michael Essern, reeking in black rags and bedrabbled with clotted blood the color of his stringy skeins of hair. He clutched at Belphira with filthy hands, but was unable to reach past Priamnor, who stood between them with drawn sword.

At the sight of Ryel the monster grinned. "You've come rather too early, beauty," he said to the wysard, in his mocking ugly whine. "But rest assured you're welcome—you and your little princess. Your pretty friend here has been amusing me with his Art-attempts."

Priam glanced at Ryel, then Diara. "They've been enough to keep this—this thing away from Belphira, ilandrakis. You can see I wounded him. Sister, leave this place, and go to the Court of the Swan."

"I will not," Diara said, hastening to Belphira's side. "Not until this--this monster dies."

The daimon's face had been slashed, and still bled; his tongue darted out and licked some of the blood, and he grinned. "By all means stay, little princess. But you'll have to wait your turn with me. The whore's first."

Priam leveled his sword at Dagar, eyes gleaming with fury. "You'll never touch them while I live."

Dagar knocked aside the blade, baring his teeth in impatient scorn. "I could have at any time, fool." A spat word of his, and Priam was hurled against the wall, where he sank unconscious between Diara and Belphira, who caught him in their arms, terrified.

Ryel in an instant was at the Sovran's side, cold with horror. To his unhoped-for joy, his friend still lived. Leaving Priamnor to the ladies' care, furiously he turned on Dagar, shouting a spell that should have reduced the daimon to dust, but Dagar only screeched with laughter.

"You'll have to do better than that, young blood. But I wouldn't harm your lovely lad. Not when I've made such interesting plans for him." His empty eyes changed to Meschante's mud-color then, in a pebble-hard stare that fixed on Belphira and would have stripped her to the skin, had it that power. "So, whore. I vowed someday to have you, and I will. This very night I will. Scream for your stallion Desrenaud as much as you like—he's been dead and stinking since yesterday."

He laughed at the look on Ryel's face, his eyes empty black again. "You thought I didn't know that Starklander came to Almancar with you, young blood? You didn't think I knew when he went to the mercenary camp to turn M'Klaren’s rabble against me? You didn't think he'd face instant execution the moment he entered M'Klaren’s tent? Such a soft trusting fool you are, beauty."

Belphira met Ryel's eyes with desperate pleading. "Tell me he lies. Tell me!"

Painfully against his will Ryel replied. "Lord Guyon did indeed come with me to Almancar last night, my lady. But— "

Her voice shook with terror and anger. "He was here? Here, and never came to me? Here, and you never said a word?"

Dagar snickered. "Oh, he'll return safe back to you, trollop—at least part of him. His head, which M'Klaren will send me any minute now."

Belphira gave an anguished cry. Furiously summoning all of his will, the wysard began to utter the words of Lord Garnos, Mastery that would hurl Dagar into the Void before he could emerge again in Meschante's body. But even as he spoke, the daimon's sneer rose over his voice.

"No good, sweet eyes. I know a trick worth two of that." And he hissed a sudden incantation in the secret tongue of Elecambron, mingling Ryel's name with it. Even though he had begun a countermantra, the wysard in appalled wonder felt his body stiffen stonelike as it had in his underwater dream, only his eyes and ears alive.

"One of my own little sleights," Dagar smirked. "You forget that I've a good memory, young blood. Every one of that silver book's words I remembered—especially your precious exile-spell, which I easily found a way to counteract, as you see. Had you used your imagination for a change and tried something of your own, you might have had me. But now I'll have you. All of you, beauty. Every delicious inch." His vacant gaze stripped Ryel bare, used him obscenely. "And I also found this among your goods, while you were playing the loving son and brother." From a tattered recess of his robe he took the lacquered case with its crystal flasks. "Lovely drugs, but none of them a match for this one." Between grimy thumb and forefinger he held aloft a slender glass tube partly full of heavy amber liquid, and Ryel with a pang recognized the vial of xantal he had bought in Ormala. "Here's stunner enough to poison a city far greater than Almancar. All I need do is empty it into any of the palace wells, for all of them connect to the great one deep underground. And then the fun starts." He came close to Ryel, clapping the wysard's stony cheek with a rough sordid hand. "Won't it, beauty." Mockingly he flicked the wysard's nose, yanked his hair, blew breath most unMichael-like fetid into his face. "Won't it."

Priamnor struggled to his feet and flung himself at Dagar, jewel-blue eyes bright with fury. "Don't touch him!"

"You're really too stupid, boy." The daimon made a gesture, barked a word. Within a minute's space drawn out to an hour's horror the young Sovran dropped his weapon as he shrank and warped within his imperial robes, dwindling to a wizened deformity more ape than human, gibbering and grimacing.

"Behold the comely heir of great Destimar," Dagar sneered above Diara's cries of horror. "Though I doubt this land would be ruled any the worse."

Diara rushed to her brother's side, shielding him in her arms as she stared at his tormentor with pleading eyes, and spoke in a voice trembling with tears. "Lord Michael. I know that you despise me, but if you have any humanity left in you…"

"I'm not Michael, little fool." His ghastly eyes fixed again on Belphira, and became stony, dirty brown, Meschante's. "The way of the Master far surpasses that of the Unseen. That I learned in Hallagh, from Theofanu. When Michael Essern left Almancar for the Master's service, I was graced with the lord adept's shape and his powers, and I've used them well, as you've seen."

Belphira recoiled. "It can't be Derain Meschante..."

His teeth flashed like a wolf's. "The very same. Only better. More clever. So you wouldn't have me, slut? Well, I now deem myself too good for Starklander's dirty leavings—and anyway, you're too old for my taste." A few words he snarled, and Belphira's beauty withered and grayed to gnarled toothless senility, her opulent silks sagging into tatters about her feeble slack form. A moment she stood wavering, her wrinkled lips wordlessly twitching. Then she tottered to a chair and with quavering plaintive groans lowered herself into it to sit like an ugly dropped doll, her blotched knotted hands sprawling in her lap.

As Meschante laughed at the terror-stricken grief of Diara and the gurgling howls of Priamnor, Ryel looked on powerless, trapped within that unavailing stony husk, wondering how it was that his anger could not burn away the spell that bound him, so white-hot it was. And at least a little of his rage came from witnessing the proud nobility of Michael Essern's outward form defiled by the brute baseness of Meschante's mind, that sullied and cheapened features once stern and high-souled; a fate worse even than that of the lifeless body of Michael's mistress those years ago in Markul, subjugated and exploited by an obscene srih. Dagar's doing, all of it; and Ryel felt as if he would lose his mind, trapped as he was.

With contemptuous satisfaction Meschante regarded his work. "Now we'll see how many hearts you break, whore. Something younger I'll have—something fresh." He stretched forth his arm to the Sovrena, and his eyes emptied and blackened. "You. Come here, girl."

Diara had looked upon her brother's and Belphira's transformations with horror, but at Dagar's command she only lifted her chin, staring defiant loathing into the daimon's cruel empty eyes. "Never think to command me, daimon."

"Ah, you're proud now, aren't you? But you'll learn who's your Master, when I rule Destimar. For who's better to reign, lovely? Not that waddling halfwit there, and as for the bastard sibs Catulk and Coamshi, I'll have them strung up the moment they set foot within these walls, which won't be long now. At midnight their army enters the city, and after a good look at the slaughter we'll to bed, you and I--although I can promise I'll not give you much chance to sleep." As he said the last words, he leered and licked his lips with obscene relish.

"You monster…" Diara seized the dagger that hung at Ryel's belt and threw herself at Dagar, driving the blade deep into his side. Dagar gave a howl of pain, but in another instant had closed up the wound, and seized her with his blood-drenched hands.

"You think to match your virgin's Art with mine? You're even more an idiot than your brother." Yanking her by the hair, Dagar pulled the Sovrena to his blood-fouled face and kissed her with lewd-tongued brutality, his empty leer mocking Ryel's paralyzed rage. Then he shoved her from him, his black slits fixing upon Ryel, and made as if to approach the wysard to inflict yet more scorning injury. But suddenly he fell silent, cocking an ear. "Ha. Listen to that."

As Dagar spoke, a great roar as of many armed men in hard battle went up outside the palace. Ryel's heart froze as the daimon grinned and shifted selves to Meschante, eyes and voice shifting to dirty and deep. "So. My friends outside the walls got restless, and found their way past the gates early." A din of arms and shouts clattered and rang in the corridor, but Meschante lifted his voice above it. "In here!"

At those words a hulking Shrivrani mercenary pushed into the anteroom and bowed in salute, awaiting further command.

"Did you bring it?"

In reply to Meschante's demand the aliante nodded and unwrapped the bloodstained bundle he carried, revealing a human head spoiled almost beyond recognition by the desert heat, but its hair unmistakably Ralnahrian in cut and only too unique in its tawny color. The teeth had been smashed in, and the eyes gouged out.

Ah, Guy, Ryel thought, his own eyes burning. I only hope you weren't alive when it happened.

Meschante grabbed the head by its hair. "Ha. So there you are, Desrenaud." He brandished it aloft, waving it in the wysard's face. Ryel endured the stench as best he could, powerless to move away from it. "You see I wasn't joking, Steppes beggar." Then he turned to Diara, who had shrieked at the head's unveiling. "What, sweetheart? You don't think he's handsome this way? No?" And he shoved the head toward her, howling with laughter to see her recoil in horrified revulsion. "Time was that women couldn't get enough of this face. And you don't want a kiss?" He seized the putrescent thing in both his hands, contemptuously jeering. "You were always such a beauty, Guy. Weren't you." He spat on it. "And you knew you were, didn't you. But look at you now." He tossed the ghastly orb upward, catching it like some obscene ball as he giggled and muttered to himself.

Sick within, Ryel strained his glance sideways to Belphira who sat all but hidden in the shadows, and was glad at least to find that she looked on with vacant incomprehension, her dull stare not even trying to follow the ascent and fall of Meschante's loathsome plaything. But the big mercenary watched the ghastly sport with keen absorption as he waited for further orders, his bloodshot eyes intent between his cowl's swathings.

Tired at last with his play, Meschante hugged the head under one bare begrimed arm, and indicated Priamnor with a brusque sweep of the other.

"Cut him open." He gave a wolf's grin as his eyes emptied to black. "I'm hungry."

The aliante bowed obedience. Diara screamed, and rushed to protect her brother, but in vain. Clutching her arm, Dagar jerked her away, holding her fast. As if searching for a fit weapon to execute his master's order, the Shrivrani mercenary looked about him, and saw Ryel's Kaltiri tagh. Above the dirty veil of his headcloth his long eyes glinted, rapacious and sly.

This is more than I can bear, Ryel thought, desperation dissolving him within his useless flesh as he helplessly witnessed his sword's theft and Diara's desperate terror. This will kill me. This...

Dagar glared at the aliante. "Get on with it, fool. What are you staring at?"

As if in merest curiosity the mercenary had peered full into Ryel's face, and the wysard's heart had all but stopped. Long dark eyes aglint with all too familiar irony shone above the Shrivrani veil, and one of them winked. As if to free up his sword-arm the brigand threw off his cloak, tossing it in offhand mockery over Ryel's shoulders as if over a clothes-rack. The wysard felt a shock of liberation as it dropped around him, for now he discerned its color past the layer of dust. Deep purple-tinged red, like wine-lees.

Father, Ryel thought, his heart hammering, each thud weakening the Art-wrought encasement, taking him closer to freedom. Ithradrakis. You, here—

Dagar stamped his bare black-soled foot, and his voice shrilled. "Faster, you stupid scum!"

The aliante laughed in a way Ryel had heard a thousand times, deep and mocking. "How's this for fast?" Instantly the rune-bright blade rang from the sheath, drawing the air's blood. Dagar doubled over, hewn through the guts by razored Art-strengthened steel.

The blow shattered Ryel's trance, freeing his body to action, his tongue to utterance. Blurting out words agonizingly long-pent he flung all his Mastery's force against his Adversary.

He invoked no spell from Lord Garnos' silver book, nor any of Markul. He used his own words, his own Mastery. The World fell away from him, until it seemed that he hovered in an incandescent dimension where his heart no longer beat, but vibrated in exultant ecstasy. He no longer knew what he said, or even if he spoke at all. He only knew that in that transcendent radiance Dagar shriveled screaming, consumed first to blaspheming cinders, then to silent dust, then to nothingness that the ineffable brilliance took to itself and made shining, pure, one with its own luminous infinity that surrounded Ryel like the center of an endless sun. The wysard gave himself to the light, floating upon it as if upon a sea, wishing only to remain forever in that scintillate bliss. He drifted off among the stars, gathering glittering handfuls, blowing them into the blackness like dandelion-seed caught fire. Far off, very far off, he could discern all the worlds that were—Cyrinnis glowing sweet blue and green, marbled with shining white; twin-mooned Drihaytn, sere and bare; bright nebulous Naja, huge Trantor splotched and striped, Ashrog with its rings—these he saw and others, their shining colored spheres pretty as a child's game carelessly left to roll where it would. It was so beautiful that Ryel would never have filled his senses with anything else.

Chapter Twenty-Four

But in another moment he felt the World's air again enwrap him and the World's ground hold him up. Opening unwilling eyes, he found that the feigned form of Michael Essern had evaporated, and now Meschante's ugly real semblance lay writhing at the veiled mercenary's feet.

"Ryel! Ah, Ryel…" White arms cooled him, transcendent balm wrapped him like a dream, tears sweet as the sea dampened his neck. "I had thought everything lost. What he might have done to you—"

"Shh. That's over, now." Ryel steadied himself with his arm around Diara's waist, taking consolation from that touch, disoriented by his return to vitality. Gently he took her hand, healing the maimed wrist with a kiss. "He hurt you."

"He would have done far worse, were it not for this man." The Sovrena's lovely eyes shone next on the mercenary. "A hundred times welcome, our deliverer."

The Shrivrani aliante reached to unfasten his headcloth, and Ryel waited unbreathing. With a jerk of his gauntleted hand the mercenary uncovered his face, and the wysard gave a cry; for now the eyes he stared into were as green as a wild Northern forest, and the face was the face of Guyon Desrenaud.

"I 'd a notion you'd be glad to see me, sorcerer." The Northerner half-smiled, his grim pallor sternly pleased. Turning to Diara, he bowed deeply. "Guy Desrenaud I'm called, most exalted, at your service--for by your Dranthene beauties and your kindness to my friend you can be no other than the Sovrena. And it may be you've heard my name mentioned here and there." Ungloving he took her fingers in his, bending his brow to them.

Above his bowed head Diara's smile waned. "Belphira…Priam…" she whispered. And more she would have said, but Ryel pressed her waist warningly, and bent to her ear. "Not yet."

Straightening again to his full height Guy reached out to Ryel, taking the wysard around the neck in a rough hug. "I thought you might not have pulled through, enchanter. You're lucky I came when I did."

Ryel returned the embrace with all his heart. "I never thought I'd see you alive again."

The Northern earl thumped the wysard's back, ruffled his hair. "You almost didn't."

Ryel stood back to look at him. "I can't believe how fooled I was. I could have sworn that head was yours."

Desrenaud laughed. "Not a bad bit of fakery, was it? One of the M'Klaren’s men died in a dicer's brawl last night—a Northerner, by lucky chance. Rodhri was so loath to part with me after our reacquaintance, that he decided to make the dead do a good turn for the living. No matter that the corpse was more than a foot shorter than me— Meschante only wanted my head. All it took was a bit of clipping, some rough surgery, a dab of dye and a few hours in the sun with the flies, and there I was ready for wrapping. Needless to say, I lent no hand in the doing—that business I left to Rodhri, who took rare zest in his work. But I gladly took charge of the delivery, though I must say it made my flesh crawl to see that dirty swine Meschante defaming the shape of Michael Essern, playing pitch and toss with carrion he called by my name."

"You remember that?"

"Most of it."

Ryel tensed. "What do you mean?"

"I blacked out for a while," Desrenaud said. "Or rather I was there, but not there. Myself, but someone else…I don't know. Maybe you do."

"I might," Ryel replied. "But there isn't time to tell you now."

"I can wait. Here, sorcerer, you'll be wanting this." And he gave Ryel back his tagh. "Let's put Meschante's toy away." He threw the covering over the head, holding the bundle at arm's length. "Where should I stow the thing?"

Having knelt to rifle Meschante's rags and safely pocket Riana's book and his drugs, Ryel stood up again. "I'll show you," he said, grateful of a chance to guide Desrenaud away from the main chamber and its ensorcelled captives.

Desrenaud deposited his burden in the corridor and returned to the anteroom, wiping his hands on his dusty breeches with grimacing distaste. "I could use some water."

Diara herself brought a basin and ewer freshly filled, and the Northerner first poured some of the water over his hands to wash them, then splashed his face, then lifted the ewer's edge to his lips and drank deep. "Gods, that's good. I'm not used to this desert air. My profoundest thanks, most exalted."

Diara smiled, but not with entire joy, and only the wysard knew why. "I'm glad to be of help," she replied.

"You were of aid well before this. I'd no idea you were so wicked with a blade."

At that the Sovrena colored slightly. "You two surely have much to discuss. I will be in the next room." And she turned swiftly, and went to where her brother and Belphira were ensorcelled.

"She could have stayed; I'd not have minded," Desrenaud said. "But to business. Have Meschante's warlock powers left him?"

Ryel nodded. "Completely."

"And what of Dagar?"

"Gone forever."

Desrenaud looked doubtful. "Meaning he's once more in the Void, seeking another way out?"

"Better than that," Ryel answered. "He's destroyed. Reduced to nothingness."

After a moment to let this news sink in, the Northerner gave a deep relieved sigh. "About time. Good work, conjurer. Matters seem like to do not overbadly henceforth. It took some ticklish dealing and great persuasions—not to mention a deal of deadly drinking—for the M'Klaren to come round, but he did at last. And now the best of his troops are ranged about the palace guarding it strongly, whilst others are making war upon Michael's—or rather Meschante's—armed followers, cutting them down right and left should they be foolish enough to put up a fight."

"What of the Zegry army?" Ryel asked.

"It's still locked out of the city."

"That won't last."

"We'll see," Desrenaud replied. "Whilst in the mercenary camp I learnt from the M'Klaren’s scouts that the Rei of Zalla is even now coming up from the south in swift secret march, with all his power. The M'Klaren once might have warned Priam's traitorous half-siblings Catulk and Coamshi, but he's no friend to them now, and is more than eager to swear his loyalty to the Dranthene dynasty. So we've some good news, at least." Desrenaud turned to the sprawled prone form of Meschante, whose groans had become very faint. "Will the beast live?"

"Not if I have anything to do with it," the wysard replied. He was silent a moment, observing Desrenaud's drawn sleepless face. "You don't look well, Guy."

"I'm not. It's been a rough couple of days." The Northerner looked down at Meschante, his color coming angrily back. "But I'm going to make this scum's days rougher yet. Heal his wound, sorcerer."

Ryel stared uncomprehending at Desrenaud. "You want him alive?"

Desrenaud gave a curt nod. "He has much to answer for, and I'm damned if he's getting off this easily. If you've any kindness toward me and any sorcery left in you, do my asking."

Bitterly reluctant, Ryel with his Art's surgery knit the wound's edges again, gradually restoring Meschante to wholeness of body. Desrenaud watched awhile, but then looked toward the next room. Instantly his eyes narrowed. "Who are those…things…with the Sovrena?"

The wysard moved to block the sight. "I was going to tell you."

"Tell me what? Stand away."

"But Guy. I don't think you should—"

"Who are they?" He read the wysard's face, and muttered a curse. "Get back." Shoving Ryel out of his way he looked about the chamber. "Damnation," he murmured, taking up a lamp for better viewing. "What black witchery's this? Who—or what—are these folk?" The light shook in his hand as he discerned the apelike thing squatting and snuffling under a table. "What is that monster?"

Diara looked up with eyes full of tears, and answered. "My dear brother Priam, disfigured by Dagar's hatred."

"Gods. Then who is…" Desrenaud fell silent. He had recognized Belphira. Hunched over and softly mumbling she sat oblivious, picking at her gown's pleats with trembling blotched knot-veined hands, her thin gray lusterless plaits and tresses shaking like sere willow-branches around her withered face, all of her former beauties so cruelly ravaged and destroyed by senescence that no one remembering the fair queen of the Diamond Heaven would know her now; no one save he that had loved her at first sight, in her young glory.

He set down the lamp. "My lady."

She made no sign. Falling to his knees, he took her hand. "Belphira. My white star."

She did not know him, though he whispered to her the tenderest endearments, the dearest reminiscences. At last he gave up trying, and overmastered by his grief lay his head on her lap, hiding his face in the silken folds; Ryel heard him sob. Feebly Belphira's quivering fingers trembled in his hair, unfeeling; and the wysard felt his throat tighten.

Desrenaud released Belphira and stood up. Never had the wysard seen more rage in his eyes.

"Undo this black gramarye, Ryel."

"I'll try what I can." Ryel considered his next move. Formidable Art had been used to transform his friends into their uncouth shapes, Mastery meant to create permanent changes. Undoing that thaumaturgy would require power that matched the One Immortal's own, summoned with all speed. His thoughts wind-quick, the wysard sifted the entirety of his Markulit learning for stratagems to save his friends; out of many evolved one that would have worked for all, had he but the strength.

I've got it, he thought, his path suddenly bright before him. "Guy. You're going to have to help me."

"Name the way."

"You are double-handed, and I have more times than once been witness to the Art in your blood. But never have I called upon it until now. If all goes as it should, with your help Belphira and Priamnor will return to their true forms."

Diara came to Ryel's side. "I, too, can be of use to you now."

"You will be," Ryel said, after barely an instant's hesitation. "And if all goes as it should, I can promise you will both escape safely."

Desrenaud glanced at Diara, his fear for her alone. "And if all doesn't?"

"You need not answer him, Ryel Mirai," said the Sovrena of Destimar. "Only tell me what I must do to save these I love."

The wysard gazed upon her as if admiring the rainbow after a storm, his heart enmeshed in her eyes. "You already know. In the last word you said lies the secret."

He went to the portals and locked them fast, then lit every candle and lamp that did not yet burn.

"It won't work," Meschante said, stirring from where he lay. "You've lost, Markulit."

Desrenaud strode over to him, irked and virulent. "I warned you." A sharp kick to the head, and Meschante fell back unconscious.

"You might have killed him," Ryel observed with no great concern.

Desrenaud shrugged. "It'd take something more than that to crack his thick skull, and I'd already had too much of his mouth—but enough of him. Let's to work."

"This very instant." From his lacquered case Ryel took the phials of feia and celorn, emptying them into a golden cup of blood-red wine; and then he held out the xantal-tube to Desrenaud.

"You once said you're clever with these things. Open it."

The Northerner flinched. "Magus, are you sure—"

"Don't question me."

With a practiced snap Desrenaud broke off the cylinder's top, releasing the smell of wet wood and rusting iron; equivocally hesitated, then handed the vial back to the wysard. "Be careful with that stuff. I know what it can do."

Ryel quelled a memory-grimace. "I'm well aware of that." Drawing his dagger, the wysard gathered a drop of xantal on its point, setting the broken vial carefully aside; stirred the wine with the drugged blade, creating an elixir capable of loosing the spirit's shackles and setting free the rai to its highest endeavor, or blending a hell-brew beyond which a single sip was mortal poison.

"There. My lady, I ask that you take your brother by the hand while you, Guy, do the same with Belphira. A drink will I give you; and then at my word I would have you fix your thoughts upon your loved one—as many joyful memories and hopes as you can bring to mind. We will counter hatred and darkness with love and light and every force we can summon from within us."

With infinite tenderness Diara took Priamnor's flaccid stubby hand. "I am ready, Ry."

Desrenaud gently held Belphira's thin quivering fingers, so cruelly mocked by their rich-gemmed rings. "Get on with it, sorcerer."

Ryel held the cup first to Diara's lips, then to Desrenaud's, warning them to take but one taste only. Then he coaxed Belphira and Priam to take a sip, and at last he lifted the goblet and drank off the rest. Hardly had he swallowed the elixir than he felt the earth melting away beneath him and his rai floating free, seeking the stars.

"It begins," he whispered, scarcely able to hear his own voice for its distance. Blindly he reached out, laying a hand on Diara's shoulder, another on Desrenaud's. "Close your eyes. Repeat every word I say. Remember these dear ones as they were, as you wish them. Now."

He heard his incantation's echo, once by a voice never forgotten once heard, again by the sweetest music ever spoken; and then the entire force of his thought he turned to what had passed and what might be, seeing both as clear as truth. Priam rustling in night-purple silk, gliding through bright water, masked amid revelry, in every guise admirable, imperial, beloved; Priamnor Dranthene, Sovran of Destimar grown to greater strength and wider power, tenderly wedded to a fair queen, father to gifted sons and daughters, famous for the justness and peace of his reign. Belphira Deva, brilliant amid the sensual splendors of the Diamond Heaven, her voice imparting sweet wisdom, her singing surpassing all other music, her unmasking the revelation of a goddess; Belphira of Tesba, great in the Art, in later years bringing her skill and wisdom to the World for its beauty and its betterment.

"We will be happy," the wysard said; and his words rang around him like soft slow peals of gold, ebbing out through infinity, even into the Void where Edris dwelt, and Michael. "All of us."

He opened his eyes. The drugs were still strong in his veins, but he felt no disorientation; indeed, it seemed he had never looked upon life so clearly, nor felt it so keenly. Diara gazed upon him with eyes luminous and serene, still rapt in the exaltation of that secret realm.

"Will we ever go back?"

He nodded, smiling back at her. You were with me the entire time, kerandraka, he thought. Even though we did not meet amid those worlds, you were there with me, warm and dear and essential to me as my blood. No matter where we are, it will always be the same. Always the same joy, the same sharing; always, always, that sense of the infinite.

"Yes," she whispered, her eyes blue as Cyrinnis' seas, answering his thoughts. "Always."

Desrenaud's eyes opened. "Always," he murmured, his voice overlapping with Diara's as the waves wash the land. He turned to Belphira, his face calm and glad, but in another moment rounded accusingly on Ryel, cruelly thwarted.

"She's still bewitched, sorcerer."

Belphira stood restored to her true semblance, but all unmoving, her eyes focused far. Priamnor was likewise transformed, but fully as fixed and stonelike.

"Ah, Ryel." Diara's joy faded too. "I had thought them safe."

"They are," the wysard said. "It takes a last spell to awaken them."

"Then do it," Desrenaud said, far from patient.

"Go out into the courtyard, Guy, and I will."

"The courtyard? But why?"

"For him," Ryel answered, significantly glancing at the enthralled form of Priam as he spoke; and Desrenaud understood.

"I'll go. But make it quick, enchanter. I've waited a long weary time."

"I know. I will."

"My lord of Anbren." Diara touched Desrenaud's arm, and he lingered at that slight contact. "But a moment more. I only wish to thank you again, for you have saved many lives this night. Often has Lady Belphira spoken of you, and from all that she has said I have long learned to admire you."

The Ralnahrian half-smiled. "She left a great deal out, then, and we've a long way to go before all's safe, most exalted. But all that I can do for you and yours, I will to my utmost." A long moment Desrenaud gave to revery; but then his gaze returned to Belphira. "I want everything I've missed. And I'll have it, if this magician's as clever as he thinks he is."

He bowed farewell, and went out into the warm night; and Ryel said the words that would release his friends from the last of their enchantment. As if watching the sun come up, he saw live light return to the blank eyes, vital color to faces once masklike.

Priamnor was first to speak. "Ryel. Sister. Belphira" He embraced them as one, drawing them close. "I never thought I'd get back. I thought it would be forever."

"Then you remember? You saw everything that happened here?"

At Ryel's question the Sovran shook his head. "Nothing. I was a prisoner, trapped in another body. I couldn't think a whole thought, or remember anything I once knew. I didn't know who you were. Even my sister and Belphira seemed as strangers."

"There was another stranger here," Ryel said. "A Shrivrani aliante. Did you see him?"

Priamnor thought a moment. "Yes. A man with his face covered. Who was he?"

"You'll soon learn. My lady Belphira, I would have a word with you alone, if I might. Priam, I must request you to keep watch over Meschante."

"With greatest pleasure," the Sovran replied, pulling down a curtain-tie and binding Meschante's wrists and ankles with strong knots before standing over his unconscious enemy with drawn sword. Diara reached again for her dagger and moved to join her brother.

Ryel could only think of how fair they looked together, like twin gods of vengeance. "I'll return soon." Offering Belphira his arm, he guided her into the garden. The air was deliciously sweet, but above the fragrance rose the tumult of armed struggle.

"How weary I am of that dreadful sound."

At Belphira's faint toneless words, Ryel gently rounded his hand over hers. "It'll soon be over."

"How can you know?"

"The Shrivrani brigand told me."

"Nothing will ever be over, Ryel." She drew a weary breath. "The longest night of my life this has been. And to think that Guy was here, and I never…"

She stiffened and silenced, lifting her face to breathe the night as Ryel felt her grip his arm in a sudden clench.

"My lady, what is wrong?"

She let go of him, and clasped her hands over her heart as if to keep it in her body. "I must be going mad. I…I breathe him. I sense him."

Ryel, too, had caught Desrenaud's emanation, unique to him as so many things were. "Yes, my lady."

"Is it an illusion of yours? Would you make me believe that he is here?"

"He doesn't have to." Some of the darkness solidified, assuming the form of a tall man cowled Shrivrani wise. "I'll convince you myself."

That voice made Belphira start and tremble; slowly turning about she faced the apparition. They stood not five feet apart under the moon; like painted things they stood, wordless and still. But then Belphira spoke, every word strangled.

"Ah, Ryel Mirai. I have been punished enough, believe me."

"This is no illusion, my lady," the wysard said. "I swear it."

Guyon Desrenaud said nothing, but gave the concealing headcloth a sharp yank that made it fall about his shoulders. Belphira cried out, but did not move; and with an impatient oath Desrenaud closed the gap between them, reaching out and catching Belphira's hands to draw her the rest of the way to him, lifting her off her feet into the air.

"Call this mere seeming, lass." He rubbed her face with his unshaven chin, making her gasp; whirled her about in a sweep of jeweled braids and silken pleats. "Or this." He kissed her at random, neck and cheeks and forehead, and at first she resisted, beating her fists against him.

"You can't be. You aren't!"

"I am. You know it. And I know this is you at last." Still he kissed her, still mingled a hundred Northern endearments with her name, speaking in the wild tongue of Ralnahr, calling her his bright wave of the sea, his swift sweet-eyed deer, his white star, his flower of the forest; and at last she no longer struggled in his arms, but let herself be held and cherished, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Guy. Ah, Guyon." And now she spoke not in Almancarian but in the Northern language they shared, haltingly, mingling words with tears. "I dreamed this so many times. Dreamed and woke and wept, so many times."

"Dreaming and waking we'll share together from now on, lass," Desrenaud replied. "But as for weeping, we'll have no more of it, ever again." He bent to her even as she lifted her fact to his, and their mouths met in a kiss that made up for all the years of thirst.

Ryel had not wished to be a witness to that encounter, but he found he wasn't alone. Turning away, he discovered Priam at his side, and could tell even by moonlight that the Sovran had grown pale. Diara too was watching, but at a distance, on the room's threshold.

"Lord Guyon," Priam murmured, transfixed. "Guyon Desrenaud, here?"

He was heard. Belphira and Desrenaud separated, she hastily, he entirely unwilling.

Slowly Priamnor approached his mistress and her lover, facing Desrenaud as one honestly, albeit reluctantly, confronts a past mistake. "Most gladly met, my lord of Anbren—that is your title, as I recall. You did my realm a great service this night."

Desrenaud bowed. "Many another had a hand in it, most exalted."

Priam regarded Desrenaud silently awhile. "I must confess I was no great admirer of you in the past, Lord Guyon, but this night you have proven yourself more than a friend to me and mine. You have been the savior of Destimar."

Desrenaud bent his head, partly in thanks, partly in contrition. "Not yet, most exalted, and probably never."

"When we met at my father's sindretin I was still a boy, too ready to judge harshly without understanding," Priamnor said. "But that was long ago."

"Sorry I am, most exalted, that I ever gave you reason for anger." The Northerner studied the young Sovran's proud yet gentle features, clearly remembering the past. "Whatever skill I have at arms is in your service. I only hope you find me deserving of it."

You are deserving of much, Lord Guyon." And coming near to Desrenaud and Belphira, Priam took both their hands and joined them together. "I ask only that you marry here in Almancar, that I may be a guest at your wedding." He looked into Belphira's eyes, that shone with tears of thanks; then lightly drew her near and kissed her on the forehead, gently and not long. "I have never wished anything but your happiness, silestra. You know that."

"I always have," Belphira whispered.

Priamnor looked upon her with infinite kindness. "This night has been long, and tomorrow will prove even longer, I fear. You and my sister require rest; I will take you to the Court of the Swan, where the others are. But one moment." He turned to Desrenaud. "When will the war begin?"

"On the morrow, but not until darkness," Desrenaud replied, all soldier again, in a way that made Ryel marvel at his self-control. "There's nothing the Zegry relish so much as a night fight. And besides, their reinforcements are expected to arrive tomorrow morn, which will swell their army to many thousands more."

This news visibly shook Priamnor, but he remained calm. "Tomorrow I will convene a council of war. I wish you present there, Guyon Desrenaud, and Srin Yan Tai, and the warlord Rodhri M'Klaren, and you too, Ryel Mirai. But for now, I will escort my sister and Lady Belphira to the Court of the Sun."

They said farewell to one another with the calm of those who have undergone danger and would endure yet more. Many times did Belphira look back to Desrenaud as she left, nor did he take his eyes from her an instant until she was no longer in view. "Now for this beast," Desrenaud said, turning to the room where his enemy lay bound.

Meschante had regained consciousness, and very evidently had been watching Belphira through the open doorway as she left, his eyes full of yearning before they shifted to the Northerner, and narrowed in hatred. Desrenaud said nothing, and drew his dagger in a way that seemed to intend nothing less than Meschante's death; but the razor-edged blade only sliced through the ropes. "Get up, you worthless miscreant."

"Had I my powers--"

"Forget them," Desrenaud said, his contempt boundless. "They're gone forever."

"Are they, now." Meschante glanced behind him at the table where the xantal and other drugs were. "Not if I had some of that magic there."

"But you don't," Desrenaud said. "Here's just you and I." Silently he gazed upon his enemy, with absolute steadiness. Ryel had never seen eyes so dangerous. "Hylas met a cruel death, but never could I have dreamed it murder. He had no enemies…or so I thought."

"I cared very little for Hylas, truth be told. But I knew how much his death would hurt you, so I made it happen." At Desrenaud's stunned reaction Meschante grinned. "I knew Theofanu long before she served the Master in Hallagh. I knew her when she was a wandering witch that halted awhile in Ralnahr, calling herself a healer." The grin became a sneering chuckle. "To think of that malignant Ormalan crone as a healer…what a joke. Her fame soon spread, and I sought her out. From her I learned what drugs kill slow, with the most suffering, leaving no trace. It cost me deep, but I bought those drugs of her. You may know of them—quiabintha and celorn. Apart they're relatively harmless, but mixed together they're…” He winked at Desrenaud. “Well, you saw what they are, and what they did.”

“You monster,” Ryel whispered. And he flinched within to think of the agonies Prince Hylas must have endured, before death at last released him.

Desrenaud's voice shook as he spoke. "Make me understand how you could kill one that did you nothing but kindness, whose every thought was pure and high. The only one who did not despise you."

"Hylas only kept me about him because he pitied me. I loathed him for that." Meschante's thin lips curled in disgust. "But he never noticed, so taken he was with you. Neither of you heard the whisperings behind your backs, predicting that Hylas would never marry, besotted as he was with you..a passion you not only encouraged but gratified, according to hearsay."

Desrenaud colored hot. "I've no doubt you spread those rumors, as vicious as they were false."

"Some might not think them so--those who knew of your adultery with Sandrine de Tresk, dead of her sinful childbed. Ah, you thought it secret? Nothing you did was secret to me."

Desrenaud's heat turned to pallor. "You vile, worthless--"

"And no sooner was your mistress cold in her grave-clothes, but you needs must seek out new lechery in Almancar, and shame the Sovran's great celebration with your drunken tricks, and then roll in the dirty bed of Belphira, the brothel-quarter's most notorious wh--"

Desrenaud backhanded the word from Meschante's mouth even as he drew his dagger. "Give him a blade, Ryel."

The wysard shook his head. "I will not."

Desrenaud gritted his teeth. "And you call yourself my friend."

“You can't make me fight, Starklander," Meschante snickered. "You know I was never a swashbuckling bully, as you were. It'd be cold-blooded slaughter, you against me."

Desrenaud kept his weapon drawn, feeling its edge; had not yet noticed his cut fingers, nor the blood dripping. "You sniveling puritan, that never knew love in your life. Never felt pleasure, unless you deem your miserable rites of self-denial such. Always preaching dour damnation and the revenge of the Unseen. But you were more than willing to go over to the side of the Master, and set folk on to slaughter and destruction."

"I was always on Dagar's side, fool. The dull rites and strictures of the Unseen made the rich and powerful all the more willing to go over to the Master. Only the stupid simple folk, the petty merchants and tradesmen, hearkened unto me, never knowing how much I despised them."

"Now that your Master's gone, you return to being nothing," Desrenaud said, his contempt even greater than his rage. "Worse than nothing, after I avenge Hylas' death."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure…" As he hissed those words, Meschante lunged for the xantal-tube, that scant quarter-dram more deadly than an ocean's worth of any other poison. “Mine,” he said, clutching the vial tight.

The entire world seemed to grow cold. "Stand back," Ryel said to Desrenaud, calm with fear. "Don't go near him."

"That's right," Meschante grinned. "I'm dangerous. I know about this stuff. I know—"

"It's deadly poison," Ryel said, horrified despite hatred. "Don't touch it!"

"Wysard I'm not, but no fool either, Markulit." Lifting the vial, Meschante turned to Desrenaud. "It was this drug that all but killed you in Ormala, Starklander. Too bad it failed. But I'm learned in all venoms, and know that xantal is no common bane. With it one can bridge the gap between this world and the Outer one."

Ryel reached out his hand, deadly calm. "No. Only the lord adepts of Markul and Elecambron can turn it to that use."

"And I'm one," Meschante replied, snatching the vial close to his chest. "I had the powers of the great Michael Essern, Steppes bastard—them and more. I'll have them again, thanks to this. With its help I'll be greater than Dagar. I'll return from the Void strong enough to crush you like a louse."

Desrenaud took a threatening step toward his enemy, his dagger clenched and ready. "Go, drink that hell-bane and reach the blackness. But whilst your ghost roams, I'll burn your ugly body to ashes. Come back then if you can."

Loud laughter met those words. "So much the better," Meschante said. "I always envied that shape of yours—I'll make it my own." Pledging his enemy with smug contempt, Meschante lifted the xantal-vial to his lips.

"Don't!" Ryel rushed to halt him, but with a brutal shove to the chest Meschante thrust him away, and drank.

"Now I have it," he crowed. "Immortality. Now I have—"

He never spoke another word; but he screamed. Ryel had always believed that of all earthly deaths burning alive had to be the worst, but Meschante's suffering went beyond any fire's torment. He fell to the ground, rolling and writhing as all his flesh erupted into loathsome boils that covered his entire head in a suppurating mass save for the red hole of his foaming shrieking mouth, and swelled his body until his clothes tore away. Convulsed and frantic he thrashed, tearing at his appalling deformity in a frenzy of excruciation, clawing the rotten flesh until the very bones were laid bare amid a stinking welter of blood and pus, and the heart might be discerned throbbing as if straining to free itself from the dissolving mass. His mouth no longer more than a toothed raw hole, Meschante with a last desperate scream wrenched the heart from his body, and hurled it from him; and then the horrible form was still at last, save for a few last twitching tremors.

Desrenaud had looked on with a dry wide stare, but now turned and staggered to the antechamber, bending strengthless against the doorframe, gasping for fresh unfouled air. The wysard yanked at a curtain, pulling it down, and threw the rich drapery over the mutilated remains; found the dead heart some distance away, and loathingly kicked it under the covering, along with the wrapped severed head he had despairingly thought Desrenaud's. He was trembling all over, and not even his Mastery could still it.

The Northerner shuddered, too, but less. "So grim a death I never saw before," he said at last. "Hylas has been well avenged, and I'm not sorry. But had I the ordering of Meschante's end, I'd never have wished it thus. Never this way."

The room stank. They went into the courtyard. The hour was very late, and the tumult of street-battle had died down. The stars shone all the brighter since the moon had set, and the air was sweet with the coming dawn. Desrenaud sank down onto a bench, lifting his face to the silvering heavens. He was quite calm now, save for a twitch at the left side of his mouth. "I've fought in cruel wars, and seen things I've willed myself never to remember. But blood and damnation, Meschante died hard."

"Deservedly," Ryel said through unmoving lips. Although his Art might be in life's service, he felt no sorrow for Meschante. None whatsoever.

Like time-wearied effigies the two men sat. After a long numb interval Desrenaud spoke again, with a faint trace of his wonted humor. "Well. What now, sorcerer?"

Ryel pushed back his hair. "I need sleep." He felt as if his bones were melting in his body, he was so weary and worn.

"I could use some myself. Since no orders were given for my lodging, and my lady is guest of your mother and sister, I'll make bold to share your quarters tonight, if you're agreeable."

Ryel nodded assent. "There's something you should know, Guy. Belphira is…" He tried to think of the most delicate way to say it. "She was under the Sovran's protection."

Desrenaud understood, but not willingly. "Meaning she was his mistress. You might have told me before this, sorcerer."

"There was no way. But Belphira never ceased to love you."

"I'd never blame her." After a time Desrenaud spoke again. "Priam's a brave lad and I love him like a brother, but he knows as well as I do that matters have grown desperate. The M'Klaren’s men, tough though they are, are far too few to ever prevail against that screeching horde of blood-drinkers that's come up from the Azm Chak. If the Rei of Zalla or some other friend doesn't get here in good time, we're fairly done for." He was quiet awhile, then gave that wry half-laugh of his. "Isn't it good as a play, sorcerer. To have everything on the point of being made right, yet at the same time tottering at the brink of doom."

"We'll finish the damned thing one way or the other tomorrow," Ryel said. "For now, I'm sleeping. Come on if you're coming."

Chapter Twenty-Five

He slept heavily, desperately, dreamlessly. When he felt a hand jarring him awake, he cursed it.

"Day’s wasting, magus."

He knocked the hand away from him. "Leave me alone, blast you."

"It's well past noontide, and battle looming fast. Roll out."

Ryel gave a heartfelt groan, groped for a pillow and crushed it over his head, only to have it ripped from him.

"On your feet, magus." Desrenaud flung open the window-curtains, and the light came in like a blast of fire. The wysard gave a furious grunt, scrabbling the sheets over his head.

He could still hear Desrenaud's laugh. "Some sorcerer you are. Come on, I've brought you some chal and breakfast. You can't slug abed any longer; we need you in the fight. Catulk's been calling you out since noon, by the way."

"Chal." Ryel thrust forth a hand from the covers, and closed it around a warm porcelain cup; took a preliminary sip, and emerged from the bedclothes by slow grudging stages. At the sight of Desrenaud his fatigued eyes glared bitterly, then widened a fraction. "By every god. You're armed to the teeth."

The Northerner looked down at himself with unabashed vainglory. "Dashing, aren't I?" Sometime between dawn and midday he had bathed with Almancarian thoroughness, submitted to some close barbering, and dressed in bellicose splendor half-Almancarian, half-Northern. Over the gleaming silk he wore a breastplate of silver-bright steel, with vanbraces and greaves of the same, all in the Hryeland fashion; under his arm he held a chain-veiled helmet. "I found these things in the palace armory--where you're expected to pay a visit straightway. The ladies are mad about me, but it isn't entirely for show. I expect to be pretty active soon."

Desrenaud looked so fresh and rested that Ryel could feel nothing but exasperation in contemplating him. He turned his attention to food, suddenly realizing he had famished need of it. "Don't the Zegry know that Meschante is dead, and the mercenaries have joined with Priam?"

Desrenaud nodded. "They know. It's only increased their desire to fight. Zegry reinforcements arrived midmorning, swelling their army to many thousands more. Surely they intend a full assault soon, knowing us weak within the city. Very many folk fled Almancar long ago, and those who stayed won't be of much help to us. The poor fools who followed Michael--or Meschante, rather--proved themselves no fighters at all compared with M'Klaren’s mercenaries, and were mostly cut down or taken prisoner. Not all of the Fourth District rebelled against Priamnor, and some have come over to our side, but they're a pitiful lot at best. The nobles and their hangers-on look to be fairly capable with their pretty gold weapons, but the merchants are as good as useless, and the slaves and the priests too. Your Art is going to be worked hard, magus."

"My Art would be very grateful for a rest."

"It's not getting one, conjurer. Roll out and come on."

Ryel finished his chal and went with Desrenaud, blinking against the light; followed him down the great ramped entry of the palace complex to find Jinn waiting ready saddled, along with another horse almost the twin of Desrenaud's black hunter, left behind in Hryeland.

"The M'klaren gave me this nag," Desrenaud said. "Not a bad one, either; I wasn't expecting that. We're free to ride where we like, so follow me."

After greeting Jinn with a hug, Ryel vaulted into the saddle, all his former weariness forgotten in the pleasure of being again on horseback. The mercenary forces of Rodhri M'klaren had put down the rebellion of Michael's followers, liberating the city, and already people had begun the slow work of repairing damage; but because of the siege the dead could not yet be buried outside the northern walls, necessitating cremation that enveloped the city in foul gray haze.

"Not a little noisome," Desrenaud noted. "Especially since Meschante's pocky corpse is feeding some of the flames. But order's being restored at a rapid rate. Priamnor's Sovran again--at least within these ramparts."

"The aliante force seems to be behaving itself," Ryel added.

"It has to. Rodhri's ordered instant decapitation for any instance of looting or rape, and flogging for all lesser offenses. Speaking of the devil, there he is, putting some luckless fellow to the lash." He indicated the mercenary warlord who stood some distance away from them encouraging every blow, and the quick-sensed M'klaren looked about and waved with jolly camaraderie to Desrenaud, blowing him a kiss before turning back to relish the conclusion of the correction.

Making haste through the ruins the wysard and the Northerner reached the southern wall. "We're to meet soon with Priamnor and the other officers," Desrenaud said as they climbed. "But I thought you should first get a good view of what we're up against."

Sheltered in an elevated part of the barbican they examined the enemy force. The Zegry army spread out in more than twice its former strength, further reinforced by a variety of siege machines. Ryel shook his head. "It looks bad."

"It's worse. Not a sign of help from any quarter. Can your enchanter's eyes see anything on the horizon?"

"Nothing. But I thought you said the Rei of Zalla was coming."

"I didn't. The M'Klaren’s scouts did, and they'd say anything that would make Rodhri happy--the sons of whores. It looks as if every man here will have to fight like a hundred."

Ryel had no wish to consider that necessity. "What did you mean before, when you said Catulk's been challenging me?"

"Just that. He's been riding up and down along the walls, vowing your destruction and proclaiming his betrothal to the Sovrena Diara."

"He sounds very foolish."

"He doesn't look it--not with his golden armor and scarlet plumes and white horse with its mane and tail down to the ground. But see for yourself. There he comes for the tenth time today."

Fitting Desrenaud's description exactly with the addition of a gold-hafted spear and a bristling beltful of daggers, the Zegry lord Catulk spurred his snow-white streaming-maned barb not too dangerously near the wall, brandishing his javelin and shouting in strident mangled Almancarian terrible and wildly uninformed insults regarding the wysard's parentage, courage, and intelligence.

"Very foolish," Ryel said, unable to quell a smile.

Desrenaud laughed. "It gets worse."

"Come out, warlock! I know you there, I know you fear!" In his dusky bearded tattooed face Catulk's filed teeth glinted like mirror-shards. "The girl Diara is mine, she and I will lie together this night! I get her virginity, and if she have no virginity because of you, foul magician, I kill her!"

"Well, that was stupid," Ryel said, adding a word and a sign; and in another moment the splendid warrior's exquisite mare stumbled, throwing her rider clean over her head. Proud Catulk sprawled face first in the dust, his filed teeth bloodied; and all along the wall a laugh went up, accompanied by a rain of malodorous missiles. With the help of his soldiers and his sister Catulk was led away, limping badly and cursing vehemently in his native tongue.

"Looks like he's twisted his ankle," Desrenaud observed.

Ryel shrugged. "I was hoping for his neck. But I see to my great happiness that he's lost one of his front teeth."

"You don't want to fight him face to face?"

"Not in the least." The wysard stood up. "Let's put an end to this."

*****

As Desrenaud had only too accurately predicted, the battle began a little after dusk, and raged without respite through the night. Almancar had no defense against the Zegry army's great catapults, that rained an unceasing barrage of rotting-dead animals and human corpses, knots of venomous snakes, and jars full of poisonous or flaming substances upon the city; and the forces of Catulk and Coamshi had brought new weapons with them, never seen before—great cylinders of iron that blasted like thunder, sending up great balls likewise of iron, which crashed against the city walls and splintered the stone, destroying the mural sculptures that were meant to outlast time. It took every effort of both soldiers and citizens to combat the enemy's swarming attempts to scale the walls and break open the gates. All night the clamor and riot of arms shook the air, and still the archers and spearmen of the Azm Chak kept up the assault, loosing barrage after barrage of missiles at the outnumbered and exhausted force upon the wall.

From the tower where he had once stood with Desrenaud the wysard watched, alone and deeply distraught. He was uniformed and armed in the manner of a high officer, but his Art served life, not death. He could only watch the fight, and say mantras of his own devising to protect the Almancarian forces from harm. Those spells met with success, he was relieved to see. But he couldn't be everywhere, nor save everyone.

He had come up to this high place to gain an overview of the chances and changes of the war, and to gather his thoughts awhile. Matters had been worsening apace, despite the headlong desperate efforts of the M'Klaren’s men and the wholly unexpected valor of those Almancarians, noble and commoner, who had resisted Dagar's persuasions. Directly beneath him, Ryel had a perfect, terrible view of the southern wall roiling in savage battle bloodily hand to hand, as wave after wave of the Zegry force assaulted the stone ramparts and were repelled ever less forcefully by the combined powers of the Almancarian forces and the mercenary cohort. The wysard could descry Priamnor Dranthene in golden armor gleaming by the moon's light and torchlight, standing in full view of the enemy shouting orders and encouragement to his men, laying about him with the sword that had nearly reft the wysard of his life that night in the Diamond Heaven. Nearby him Lady Srin led her band of warriors in battling against the enemies' efforts to scale the wall. Her moonstone eyes glowed with fury and delight as they glanced now here, now there, wherever the fight was at its worst; and as she fought, hacking and hewing with her razor-edged axe, she grunted underbreath Art-words to ward off enemy arrows, saving lives countless times. He saw Guyon Desrenaud and Rodhri M’Klaren fighting side by side, both of them splashed and stained with their enemies' blood and their own. But bravely as Almancar was defended, and high and strong though its walls were, no victory would come to the Dranthene loyalists. They were far too few, even with the mercenary army's crucial assistance.

"You cannot prevail," Ryel murmured. "Not alone."

The reek and din of battle had made his head ache terribly, and brought painfully to mind his Art-brother Michael Essern, tormented all his life by the daimon-bane in his blood. Ryel would have given serious consideration to trying the Art of Elecambron, Art in the service of death, had his attention not been drawn to a young soldier in the uniform of the imperial guard fighting at Priam's side, loosing arrow after arrow into the Zegry swarm: a beardless stripling, very slender and slight among the grown men, his long tresses streaming past his helmets' edge to his waist. And now the wysard noted that this bold strange youth had a companion equally slim, but with hair of a color most unAlmancarian.

"Blond," Ryel said, musing in pain-distracted wonderment. "Blond, and thick. So thick I could hide an egg in it." Then the hectic firelight caught the gleam of a golden bow-guard on the slim wrist, and the wysard stiffened in recognition. "Nelora?"

He raced down the tower-steps back to the wall, half-falling in his haste. Pushing his way to the wall's top, he struggled to reach the place where Priam stood. But before he could, an imperative hand caught him hard by the shoulder and wrenched him about.

"Not so fast, whelp. I need a word with you."

Ryel struggled against Lady Srin's unbudgeable grip. "What do you want now?"

"Catulk and Coamshi are standing over there, side by side, in plain sight." She thrust out her steel-clad arm to indicate the Zegry twins on the plain below, who were shrieking orders to their army. "Strike them dead."

Priamnor heard her. "I forbid it. They're my brother and sister."

Lady Srin's teeth and eyes flashed with rage. "Only half—if at all. And I much doubt they'll shed any tears at your death, boy." She cast a furious glance at Ryel. "If you won't do it, whelp, I will."

She stretched forth her hand to begin the death-Art, but Ryel seized it and forced it down. "No. We're Markulit. We serve the forces of life, and there's already been too much destruction."

Srin Yan Tai broke free of his grip, furiously. "Damn it, whelp, can't you see that the Zegry are on the point of destroying us? When they get into the city they'll put everyone to the sword, or worse. Look at them—they're beginning the end."

Catulk and Coamshi had called a retreat, and the Zegry forces had regrouped some little distance from the wall, readying for another assault, this one sure to be the last. They had ceased their shrieks and whoopings, and in tense eager near-silence were readying for an all-out battering of the gate and storming of the walls. The dawn had begun to diminish the blackness of the night, and in that murky semi-darkness the enemy's multitude spread across the land like a gray galaxy of steel, infinite and unconquerable.

Priam had come to Ryel's side. He put his arm around his kinsman's shoulders, wearily resigned. "It comes, ilandrakis," he said, his voice hoarsened to a whisper. "The last."

"Not yet." And wrapping Priam around the waist as he closed his eyes, the wysard summoned all the strength of his Mastery. In the dread silence a noise began to swell, a great rhythmic roar afar off, like the ocean's waves. At his side Ryel heard Srin Yan Tai give a cry of wonder and hope, and he felt Priam's hand tighten on his shoulder.

"Look! Look up!"

It seemed that every ear on either side heard the wysardess' shout, every eye followed her arm's upward thrust; and everyone on both sides of the struggle silenced motionless. For now great clouds were massing in the gray interval between earth and heaven, night and day; clouds rushing and scudding out of nowhere, in a sky whose moon and stars had only a moment before shone undimmed on the battle. Low-hovering clouds boiling and surging, heavily a-rumble, that first encircled, then utterly covered the sky above the city…and then broke in an earth-shaking storm of deafening thunder and blinding downpour.

So wholly unlooked-for was that tempest, so unknown to dry bright Almancar, that the imperial guards on the wall stared dumbfounded up at the torrent, sputtering and blinking and swearing as the rain flooded their wide-open mouths and eyes, but laughing too. Because so fast and thick the rain fell that it pushed the Zegry invaders clean off their siege-ladders into the mire below where they slipped and writhed, and made their engines and ordinance useless. Soon the field was ankle-deep in flood. Pushing back his streaming hair, Ryel closed his eyes and felt tears of relief and joy mingling with the rain that pelted his face.

Then a great flash of light broke forth with a deafening roar swelled by the cries of enemy and defender alike. Opening his eyes again, the wysard looked up to the heavens, and felt his mouth fall open. "But it can't be," he said, hearing his voice shake. "There are no gods."

Priamnor's reply was clear. Clear and joyful. "There are now."

The immortal protectors of Destimar tread the blast, gods whose temples Ryel had passed on his first day in the City of Gold; gods armed for war in the heights of the air, their chariots and armies rumbling and clashing among the highest tops of Almancar's golden towers. Lion-headed Biskris, many-handed Aphrenalta, hawk-winged Divares, even soft Atlan and chaste Demetropa wore battle-harness flashing with jewels, and helmet-crowns upon their heads, and carried terrible weapons. They were joined by other uncanny deities, and warriors too strong and fair for humankind. The gods of immemorial epic teemed amid the heavens in defense of their beloved land—gods, and more. In a daze of joy Ryel recognized by their aspect and their armor the demi-deities Ghenris, Bahalin, Drostal, Diomenor, Redestens. At that incredible epiphany the forces of Almancar gazed transfixed, every face turned upward in adoration and awe.

Amid the downpour sounded great peals of thunder wrought by celestial chariot-wheels, as shafts of lightning hurled by immortal hands streaked down to shatter the siege machines and destroy the encampment and drive shrieking mad the forces of Catulk and Coamshi. Many were trampled in the mud, or consumed by the bolts of fire; many fought to the death with one another, too crazed to distinguish between friend or foe; very many scattered at a mad run across the plain. But none died at the hands of the Almancarians, whose ecstasy at their divine deliverance had made them drop their weapons and fall to their knees, lifting up their hands and voices in adoration.

Then suddenly the rain stopped, the clouds dispersed, and the gods vanished with them. From afar off the sun broke free of the world-rim from under a black mantle of cloud, and its flaring red brilliance seemed to ignite the ground, that blazed up in a glitter of silver sparks. And those sparks seemed to advance with the spreading of the light, as the sun throws its radiance upon the sea, and forked streaks of blue fire darted from the gleam.

Priamnor gave an amazed, ecstatic cry. "It's Zalla!"

The great azure banners of the advancing host unfurled, snapping in the fresh breeze of the new day; then the drums began, thudding like a high proud heartbeat. The flickering sparks proved to be the razored points of spears held aloft and battle-ready. The Sovran's exclamation tore along the wall, carried from one soldier to the next, and the wondering rejoicing uproar increased as a rainbow born of the bright shower-spangled dawn took form over the land, arching from the Zallan banners to Almancar's gilded tower-tops. Sweeping toward the city in the pure sweet morning light rode a proud host splendidly horsed and armed—many hundreds of soldiers, led by a magnificent tall officer blazing in bright mail, his skin black as night—the Rei of Zalla himself, his voice resounding as he urged on his forces.

"Beautiful," Ryel whispered, feeding his eyes with the splendor.

Lady Srin's attention moved elsewhere, and more practically. "Better yet, there's a whole long line of wagons following the troops--cartloads of provisions, that this place is in dire need of. I like the Rei all the more for that." Leaning out from the wall Lady Srin laughed, catching a wholly bewildered Ryel around the neck in a rapturous clinch. "You did it, lad. You saved us all. It could only be you—although I admit that at first sight of that vision I nearly became religious. Look at those Zegry dogs down there." And the wysardess indicated the remains of the rebel army, now panicking at the approach of the Zallan force and paying no heed whatever to the frantic orders shouted by Coamshi and Catulk. "They can't flee to the west because of the mountains, nor north because of the wall."

"Nor east any longer," Priam said, new life ringing in his voice, shining in his eyes. "Look who comes there—warriors of your homeland, ilandrakis."

Far different from the Rei of Zalla's gleaming serried ranks were the hundreds of horsemen now racing up to close the only open edge of the Zegry force: wild nomads armed to the teeth, shouting the names of their phratri. Ryel's blood stirred to hear the war-cry of the Elhin Gazal, and to his joy he recognized his boyhood friend Shiran among the leaders of the allied cohort. All of the clans and tribes had set aside their differences to join in the relief of Almancar and the defense of the realm. Never had the wysard felt more proud of the great green land that had birthed him; and as the warriors struck their shields with their daggers, sending up a clanging din that mingled with their shouts, he felt his eyes stinging with tears.

Glad to admit defeat, the ragged remnant of the enemy force threw down its arms and groveled in the mud in abject surrender. Soon Catulk and Coamshi were in chains, and the armies of the Rei and the Steppes contingent were greeted by the city's defenders, who threw open the gates wide in welcome.

"It's over," Ryel murmured. But even as he spoke, the air darkened to total blackness. He stared, seeing nothing, and the din of exultation faded, leaving only silence soft and warm and dark as deep velvet. Fragrant velvet clinging to seductive swells. Laughing cinnamon velvet with dark mocking eyes.

"Such a boy you are, Ryel."

Stupidly he beheld the One Immortal. "Riana?"

She hovered in the blackness before him, laughing the more. Gradually that blackness took on color and light, becoming dense jungle spattered with a thousand hues of green and diamond-flash. "I like the armor. You could ravish me in it."

Ryel's sex twinged, to his exasperation, and with a mental slap he stilled it. "That vision of the gods—it was yours?"

"Only to embellish your own excellent work." She smiled. "if you looked closely, you might have seen how interestingly the demigods Drostal and Redestens and Diomenor resembled three of my most memorable lovers—Guyon Desrenaud, Priamnor Dranthene, and yourself. Did I not tell you I'd be worshipped someday—didn't you recognize me as Atlan? For a moment I think you almost became a believer."

Ryel could only stare. "You were the salvation of Destimar. But why? What made you care?"

She smiled at him, very gently and sweetly, all unlike her. "You did, my lord brother. You, who risked your life for this foolish World out of your simple love for it. Feelings I had not felt for a millennium, you brought back to me. This little god-show of mine was meant to thank you. Well, until our next, Ryel Mirai—and there will be a next, and a next, believe me."

Ryel raised a pleading hand. "Wait. Don't go. Will I have what I want at last? The life of Edris?"

Riana's beautiful almond eyes blinked slowly, her luscious fruit-sweet smile faded. "Ah, Ryel. You always ask so much." And as she spoke, the dense hot tropics darkened and chilled around her, and she herself began to wane. "You will get what you desire, but not as you desired it."

"But Riana—"

"Wake up. Everyone around you thinks you mad."

He started out of his trance to find his friends' eyes all wide as they wondered at him.

"Ryel." Priamnor must have been saying that often, but now it was with relief. "Are you well?"

"Yes. Never better." Instinctively the wysard turned to the east, where far beyond the horizon Markul lay wrapped in mist. Where Edris lay on a bed of porphyry in a tower of jade, waiting.

"Soon," he whispered; and his heart rose with the sun. "Very soon now, ithradrakis."

But then he remembered Nelora, still upon the wall, and his rage rekindled. Nel had already glimpsed her brother and would have fled from him, but the press of soldiers was too thick. The wysard caught her by the shoulder, dragging her back.

"You little fool. How dared you come here? I'll—" But before he could finish his threat, Nelora's young companion threw himself between them.

"Stop. I command you." Brilliantly and defiantly blue the youth's eyes met his, and the wysard felt his mouth fall open.

"No," he choked. "Not you, too."

Never had Diara seemed more beautiful, her night-hued hair streaming rain-wet down the glistening silver that armed her like the statue of Argane. Never more serene, or more maddening. "I was in no danger, Ryel Mirai. The gods of my city protected me."

Nelora broke in. "And they watched over me too, because I was saving Priam's life! I was at his side, where I belong." She glanced at the Sovran as if expecting him to agree with her, but he was mute with amazement and doubtless many emotions more.

Ryel, however, had all of his voice. "Diara, what madness brought you here? How could you?"

She gazed on him with haughty surprise. "Who are you to question me? I rule this land at my brother's side, and will fight at his side if need be—and I know the warrior's art as well as any man, having learned from Lady Srin Yan Tai ever since her coming here."

Lady Srin coughed. "I forgot to tell you about that, lad Ry."

Diara stared at the wysardess. "Why would you tell this man anything?"

"You'll learn in time, child," Lady Srin said with a tolerant smile. "After matters have settled down a bit."

At that moment Desrenaud came up to catch Ryel around the neck in a great hug, and many other things of a wildly celebratory nature took place in the next minutes. But at some point in the general clamor Ryel managed to find himself alone with Diara. Morning was in its young glory, its fresh rain-laden breezes driving away the battle-smoke and reek, and the wysard found the Sovrena at an embrasure of the wall, gazing out over the plain, scanning the wreckage and ruin of the war dry-eyed and undismayed.

"Most exalted."

At Ryel's voice she turned to him, and their eyes met. An Art-word of Ryel's and her cool regard warmed and softened, and she held out her hand to him.

"Ry. Come, sit by me."

He had never felt more spent, nor more joyful, than here feeling her warmth against his side. But he still could not forgive her for putting herself in such danger, and would have spoken in reproach had she not forestalled him.

"This is my city, Ryel. My land. And I knew I could defend it as well as any of you. Priam understood."

"That doesn't mean I have to."

"Why should that matter to me? I am, after all, the Sovrena of Destimar." She gave a prideful little smile. "I can't count how many of those Zegry devils I drove back."

"But you could have been—"

She only laughed. "Did I not have the gods on my side?"

He had no answer for that—at least not one she'd welcome. But even as that thought flickered in his mind and was instantly extinguished, she detected it. She had lightly put her head on his shoulder, but now drew back.

"You smell strangely."

The realm of dreams allowed a wide latitude of expression, but this of hers was entirely unexpected, and not pleasantly so. "Small wonder, since I've been all day in battle," he reminded her. "If I've offended ..."

She shook her head. "It's not that. It's some kind of perfume." Her face came close to his neck, breathed deep, frowned. "Sweet as Transcendence, but different—not like flowers, but spices. You smell like—like Zinaph."

Ryel fought the impulse to pull away. "So you don't approve?"

"No. If you were a woman, I'd think you shameless." But she exacted no explanation, and did not move away from him, although her gaze fixed again on the land beyond the city walls, resting on the horizon-line. She seemed perturbed, but from another cause this time. "Ry. Is Lord Michael Essern dead?"

Ryel let out a hard-pent breath. "Not quite."

She kept her eyes on the line that divided earth from heaven, now very clear in the fresh daylight. "I dreamed of him. Only once, but ..."

"I know."

Her arm slipped around his shoulders at the same moment that his did her waist. Silently they leaned against one another, each reliving that vision of the temple beneath the waves.

"He had hated me so much," she whispered. "But in my dream he was gentle."

"Yes. I remember."

"And though he brought such terrible harm to the world, I cannot do otherwise than sorrow for him, because he was so deeply in thrall to that black demon. So horribly enslaved ..."

Ryel took her into his arms as she wept, and let her tears flow freely awhile, knowing that the release would only do her good. But then he murmured a word that made her sleep with her eyes open, sitting as she had with her gaze fixed on the plain, and leaving her thus went to that part of the wall where his friends were still gathered.

"Your sister wishes to speak with you," he said to Priam. Then he left to seek out Nelora, and give her the stern brotherly admonishment she so richly merited.

*****

The battle over and order restored to Almancar, a series of ceremonies followed, which Ryel as a prince of the blood witnessed at Priamnor's side. The formal surrender of Catulk and Coamshi was first. Proud and savage the dark twins entered the great audience hall, both still in their battle array of jaguar-skins, tall feathers, savage jewels; tattered, dirty and weaponless now, but haughtily unrepentant. Agenor Dranthene would have doomed them both to slow and miserable death, but his son Priamnor contented himself with the exacting of ruinous tribute to be spent solely on the rebuilding of the city and the relief of the population.

Then came the entertainment of the Sovran's allies, a joyous celebration held on the rooftop garden of the central palace, where long ago the Sovran Agenor had held his great celebration. By now the hour was advanced and many of the guests had departed, happily exhausted by revelry. Only a few groups remained around the low tables, lounging among cushions and taking a last glass of wine, sharing some final moments of talk as the lamps and candles flickered their last light. Among them were Ryel and his blood-kin and Shiran, while nearby Lady Srin sat genially discoursing battle-strategy with the warlord Rodhri M'Klaren and some other officers mercenary or imperial; the court musicians were lazily playing compositions made up that moment, tunes that built on ancient measures and spun off into soft meandering rhapsody. Desrenaud had been among Lady Srin's company, but now joined the wysard's group. The Northerner wore Almancarian court attire, amply billowing save for the sash-cinched waist, less opulent than was usual with courtly style, yet more ornate than Priam's rich but plain-made garb—robes of dark gray and muted green brocade that suited his tawny highland looks, but that Desrenaud clearly found a hindrance.

"Good revels these, sorcerer. And I have to say this silken gear is something I could readily get used to." He looked about him yet again. "Many a memory's here where I never expected to return—I've never forgotten the Sovran Agenor's sindretin."

"Nor have I, my lord of Anbren."

Desrenaud smiled, acknowledging Priamnor's observation with a wry remembering nod. "But this is a deal more lavish than the sindretin was—and more peaceable. Even my old acquaintance the Rei of Zalla is behaving himself." And he gestured to another part of the rooftop, his gaze narrowing slightly as it fell upon the man he named. For Rei Akht Mgbata had demanded, as the sole reward for his crucial service to Destimar, the privilege of sitting at Belphira's right hand during the formal banquet, and of enjoying private conversation with her afterward. Now he and the lady half-reclined in cushioned intimacy some distance apart from the others. The Zallan ruler, once so formidably gorgeous in his battle dress, now luxuriated in the rich light garb of his hot land, naked to the waist and swathed in brilliant jewel-belted silk to the bare feet, the gems at his neck and arms and ears setting off the polished darkness of his rather sinister beauty.

Desrenaud eyed his rival with grudging esteem. "Our friend the Rei looks even braver and more bold than he did that night when he nearly speared me through and through. He's ten years my elder, but you'd never know it, save for that touch of silver above his ears. I daresay Belphira finds his homage small hardship." As he spoke, he and Belphira exchanged glances, and both smiled with the same memories. The ebon Rei lifted his golden cup in Desrenaud's direction, gravely pledging respect.

"He never married because of that woman," Nelora said, perhaps a little free-tongued with wine. "Look how he worships her—and how she welcomes it."

Shiran, dazzled and abashed amid so much splendor, at last ventured a remark. "It reminds me of a tale out of an epic. But everything seems that way in this place."

Priamnor, who had taken to Shiran from the first, smiled kindly. "With entire respect to Belphira Deva's beauties, the Rei of Zalla has a variety of concubines to keep him entertained at home. And even should he chance to bring up the subject of marriage to the lady, I feel fairly certain of her answer."

He and Desrenaud exchanged looks, briefly and silently, before turning their attention elsewhere. The talk continued, ever in a light joyous vein, but Ryel paid little heed to it. Across from the low table Diara sat next to her brother, their resemblance to one another more striking than ever.

I love you, Ryel thought. As if they'd heard him, both Dranthene siblings turned their wondrous sea-blue eyes on him, and both smiled; and both reached for the wine-ewer to fill his goblet, laughing as their hands met. I love you both. Both in the same way. Ilandrakis, kerandraka...

Priam would always be, for him, brother and dearer than brother. But Ryel could only wonder what had become of that first surge of near-unbearable passion he had felt for Diara when they met in the desert surrounding Almancar. That aching, trembling, agonizing desire, so overmasteringly, ineffably strong...where had it gone? Diara's beauty had not changed; indeed, if anything it was greater than ever before. Her charm had only increased the more he knew her.

Despite the warmth of both night and wine, a shiver of memory rustled up his back and into his hair like a sharp-toed scaly lizard, and he suddenly understood.

I'm enchanted, he thought in something akin to horror. The One Immortal has me in thrall, even as she had Desrenaud once, and Priam.

It was exactly as Riana had said: he had what he wished...but not as he wished it. And his long journey, undertaken with such unknowing, endured with such danger, was not yet over.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Succeeding days brought rituals of thanksgiving. The temples of the gods were hastily cleansed and repaired, and their priests either freed or found in order that ceremonies as magnificent as was possible, given the disordered times, might be performed on behalf of a grateful citizenry. Every Almancarian had witnessed the marvelous apparition of Destimar's pantheon hovering over the city, as had the Zegry and mercenary forces. And while Ryel could not but acknowledge that Lady Riana's stratagem had been the most effective possible, nevertheless he regretted that the City of Gold would undoubtedly now become a place of religious pilgrimage for all the credulous in Destimar, and the World beside.

"I call that a clear gain," was Priamnor's calm judgment. "At least now the temple district will replace the Diamond Heaven as Almancar's most notable attraction."

He and Ryel were alone by the gold-mosaic pool, having just swum, and now they basked under the sunlight, glad to be together in the calm after so much turmoil. But the young Sovran's remark clouded the wysard's thoughts. "Far too much harm has been done to the World already by religion," Ryel said. "The cult of the Master did enough on its own."

"Wholeheartedly agreed," Priam said. "But the gods of Almancar are gentle and forgiving—and powerful, as many people saw with their own eyes during the struggle on the wall."

"That was a trick," Ryel said. "It wasn't real."

"Then never did trick come at a better time, ilandrakis—the Immortal Riana be forever thanked for it. And my thanks to you as well, for revealing to me the true identity of the Zinaphian enchantress, my first love." The young Sovran gave a short laugh. "I knew she was an older woman, but not that much older." He smiled again, savoringly reminiscent now. "I hope she retained the same fond memories of that time as I did."

Ryel nodded assent, but thought it best not to tell his kinsman how very friendly Riana had been with him, and with Guyon Desrenaud. "You won't require any help from the Art from now on," he said aloud. "Yours will be a great reign, one that poets will immortalize."

"They've already started, from what I hear." Priam glanced over at the wysard. "But I want them most to sing the praises of my chief minister. When will you take office?"

"As soon as I return from Markul." Even as he spoke Ryel arose from where he lay, reaching for his Steppes gear, no longer able to rest quietly. "I understand you have much to think of and attend to, but don't forget that you're invited to join the Steppes encampment for the celebration feast tomorrow night. They're making great preparations, from what Shiran tells me."

"I look forward to it very much, and I'll be bringing Diara with me, and your mother and sister. I wish you were joining us."

"If all goes as it should, I will be…and not alone."

Priam's eyes glinted. "I hope that dearly." He smiled, then. "I even have suitable garb to wear for the occasion, in plain strong cloth and leather, not silk. Your mother lent me one of your shirts that she'd made for you--I hope you don't mind."

Remembering the time-honored custom of his land, and Edris' cloak that had been Warraven's, the wysard returned the smile, but could say nothing because his heart was too full. Dressed and ready, he took his kinsman's hands, touching them to his brow. "I'll return soon."

"May all go as you wish it, ilandrakis."

Ryel winced inwardly, recalling the parting words of Riana. "Whatever awaits me, I cannot have come so far and risked so much for nothing."

"Was it nothing, to save a world?"

"I never meant to, if I did. Farewell, Priam."

"Wait." And the Sovran took Ryel around the shoulders, touching his lips to his kinsman's temple in the Steppes way. "There. Now go, and return to us as soon as you can." He tried hard to smile. "I look forward to meeting your father."

Immeasurably moved, Ryel seconded his friend's gesture. "Until our next, ilandrakis."

*****

Parting from his friend, Ryel went to his rooms to make ready for his journey, and found Srin Yan Tai sprawled at her ease in his favorite chair, riffling through a pricelessly illumined volume of Destimarian epics, manifestly unimpressed.

"Finally," she said, glancing up at him as she flung the book aside. "I was wondering when you'd return, if ever."

The wysard sighed, not in joy. "What are you doing here?"

"Such exquisite politeness. Waiting to add to your congratulations, obviously, in a more private way than up on the wall amid a crowd." She contemplated Ryel with immense gratification. "You really came through, lad Ry. You fulfilled all the prophecies, and more."

Ryel shook his head. "Not yet, Lady Srin."

"I assume you refer to the life of Edris. But you'll set that right, too. You've done everything else so far." She sobered, then. "It means very much to you."

"It means everything. I want to share the whole truth at last with him," the wysard said. "To bring him back to Almancar, for my mother's sake."

"Does she know of your plans?"

"I thought it best not to tell her."

Lady Srin inclined her jewel-braided head. "That's wise. But what excuse have you given out for returning to Markul?"

"I've told everyone that I'm going to Risma for awhile, to see if it requires my help."

"That'll work." The warrior-wysardess rose from the chair, her armorings and ornaments making a rich clatter. "I'll be leaving Almancar myself in a few days. I'm not especially fond of cities, and this one's in sad need of repair."

"Where will you go? Back to your tree-yat?"

Lady Srin swung her plaits in negation. "I'm getting a little too old for that. You and I haven't had much time for talk since the battle, but now I can tell you my news. For some time it's been revealed unto me that Riana the One Immortal wasn't just a figment of legend revered and enshrined. She's alive and well—amid a screeching plethora of monkeys, from the looks of things."

"How long have you known of her?"

"Long enough. She's had her hand in many matters where you're concerned, lad."

"As when you wrought the spell that sent me to Hallagh? And when Jinn re-appeared outside Markul's walls, a horse only in seeming? And—"

"You needn't name 'em all." Srin Yan mused a moment, somewhat enviously. "I must say she shows considerably less than her thousand years. She's suggested that I join her in that jungle realm of hers. Of course I'm going, since she possesses knowledge I wouldn't mind sharing; who knows, I might even end up looking younger. Make sure that you tell Serah Dalkith to come up and join us. She's getting too creaky for Markul."

Ryel had to smile. "I doubt she'd thank you for saying that."

"I lived a long time in that fog-smothered City, lad, and I can assure you the damp played the devil with my old bones. Well, I'll leave you to pack." Lady Serah rose from her chair, and for a moment stood regarding the wysard, the respect in her moonstone eyes no longer tinged with irony. "You've impressed me very much, young Ryel. Your father would be proud."

"I hope to hear him say so."

"Greet him for me. And bring him with you when you come to visit me and the other old girls." She grinned. "I daresay he wouldn't mind making Riana's acquaintance."

Ryel inwardly resolved never to bring that meeting about. "I'll be sure to, Lady Srin." The wysard put his hands on her mailed shoulders. "You gave me wise counsel when I most required it. I won't forget."

"You'd better never, lad." She embraced him with mankind strength, cheek against cheek in the warrior's way, and took her leave. Ryel stood silently awhile, memory overwhelming him. Then he slowly reached for his journeybag, and made ready for the final trek.

*****

Ryel left for Markul quietly in the dawn, passing through the southern gate that had been closed for so long, yet now swung open wide in well-guarded triumph. Although the dead and wounded had been carried away, the terrain was still littered with wreckage from the Zegry war, and he steered Jinn around the shattered siege-machines and other debris. But then something not of death, but of life caught the wysard's eye. Leaping down from the saddle he grabbed up a handful of earth, and examined it with wonder. Bright green blades sprouted from the rain-dampened once-barren dirt, stretching toward the sunlight, and in the midst was a tiny flower, its heaven-blue petals only just beginning to unfurl.

"In the name of All," Ryel murmured, his heart full and humble. He knelt to plant the grass safely in the earth again, and inwardly thanked Riana, glad to think of the City of Gold surrounded by lush fields and fruit-heavy orchards, and Diara and Priam walking among them.

Dusting off his hands, he looked to the city's walls, and their fair stonework now battered and defaced, all the gods and creatures reduced to fragments by the cruel weapons of the Zegry forces. He remembered his first sight of those walls, how the fair stone glowed in the warm dawn and the shadows of the deep reliefs shifted as the sun rose, bringing the graven shapes to life. Until the Zegry onslaught, those walls had never known harm in all their centuries of existence, and Ryel sorrowed to look upon such wanton, heedless destruction.

The birthing of the day gave him strength and guided his inspiration. Lifting his hand, he spoke a mantra and began to outline the wrecked shapes with his fingers, drawing them in the air. Little by little the great walls mended, the massive stone blocks returning to their former splendid state, all their ancient carvings once again bold and whole.

"For you," he whispered to those he loved still enwrapped in sleep. Wishing them the most soothing and wondrous of dreams in which he hopefully played some kindly part, the wysard remounted and pressed his heel to Jinn's flank, and the horse tore off like a meteor. But when Ryel could no longer see the towers of Almancar, he brought Jinn to a halt.

"You're fast, little one—but not fast enough. We'll do a little wind-riding now, by your leave."

He willed himself to forget the World he had dwelt in for the past near-year. To forget friends, enemies, adventures, lands and realms and cities, driving them all out of his mind awhile, giving his entire thought to Edris, again seeing him tall, spare and strong, hearing his mocks and curses, feeling the ferocious glint of those ironic eyes. A expectant thrill imbued Ryel, warming the ever-thickening, ever-chilling air around him. Reveling in his Art's strength he called out the mantras that would harness the elements of water and air, soon feeling wild rain surround him.

At last the storm abated, and tall shadows seemed to loom amid the mists. A sharp gust tore the haze to rags, revealing vast gray-black walls and dark towers.

The wysard gazed at that familiar sight with rapt joy. "Markul," he breathed. "Best and Highest."

How often he had felt himself a prisoner within those walls, cut off from sunlight and freedom. But how often since his departure he had yearned for the peace of those cloud-wrapped citadels. I’m home, he thought, letting out a glad World-weary breath. Home.

He had expected to find watchers upon those walls, but none greeted him. The stark ramparts were empty.

Ryel only shrugged. Rain had begun to fall yet again, and the City's denizens were in all likelihood keeping dry within doors. He dismounted, shouldering his journeybag and stroking Jinn's damp mane.

"You'll have to stay here, little one. But I won't be long."

Standing before the huge iron-wrought portals he hesitated. How should he enter? To his knowledge, no one of the Art-brotherhood had ever returned to Markul after leaving it. Steppes prudery forever relinquished did not decide him, but the chill dank rain certainly did. Wrapping Edris' cloak more closely about him, he said the words that would cause the gates to open—and to his mild wonderment they did so without hesitation or noise, swinging wide to admit him. He entered amid silence broken only by the steady drip of rain, and for a time wandered in aimless disquiet among the wet still streets and stairways, seeking in vain for a sign of life.

"But this can't be," he murmured, his breath vaporing. "There's no one here."

The City was deserted. Neglect and abandonment dismally haunted the gaping doors and windows, the herbs and vines straggling and gone to seed in gardens and at casements. And now it occurred to Ryel that many of the little clumps of discarded belongings outside the walls had disappeared.

"They've left," he whispered.

"Or died."

Turning to the faint voice that had spoken, Ryel found Lady Serah standing nearby. She wore a hooded mantle of wet draggled black, but he could discern that his Art-sister had known terrible times since his departure. Very sick and frail she seemed, her once fox-red tresses closely shorn and now entirely white, her keen-edged beauty lost to sudden age and long torment.

She bowed to him in slow painful obeisance. "Most gratefully welcome, Lord Ryel," she said, her voice faint and unsteady. "You have overcome our great enemy with Mastery as great as that of the Builders of this City. Of all mortals your Art is strongest."

Ryel stared, stricken. "Sister. My dear friend. What has happened here?" And he hastened to her, taking her thin cold hands in his own. "I never knew it had gone this far. I would have returned to help you."

"No, great brother," said Lady Serah, clasping her fingers about his with none of their old firmness. "Your work in the World could not be interrupted."

Ryel gazed helplessly into those eyes that had once held such bright deviling glints, and were now so weary and dull. "Come out of the rain to my house, my lady sister," the wysard said, very gently. "We'll talk long, as we used to."

Lady Serah faintly smiled assent; but then trembled with sudden fearful memory. "Ah, Ryel. There is—"

Ryel hushed away her consternation. "I know Lord Michael was sent here. Come."

With the wysard's arm steadying his Art-sister's steps, the two adepts ascended the levels of the City to the dwelling of gray-black granite that had been Ryel's home. As he crossed his threshold for the first time in nearly a year, Ryel felt the entirety of his Markulit existence enfold him as completely as Edris' cloak. The deep many-colored carpets underfoot, the air's warmth, the scent of flowers, the rigors and horrors and marvels of the Art—he had them back again. And he could feel, too, a pervasive presence like a vibration in the air.

Emanations of the rai, he thought—yours, Michael Essern. Strong emanations, indicating an overmastering impatience to return. You have not long to wait, my lord brother.

He gave Lady Serah hot chal and a good fire to warm her, and frangin to set her eyes alight in the old way, and Steppes sweets. Awhile they sat together by the hearthside and spoke of the changes in the City and the World. But after a time Ryel stood, driven against his will by the imperative presence in the next room.

Serah knew. "He is in your bed."

"Yes. Let's see him." And Ryel led the way to his bedchamber, throwing back the heavy curtains of the windows to let in the gray rainy light.

Lord Michael Essern lay as if asleep, save that no rise and fall of breath stirred his inert form. His body was clad in magnificent Markulit robes, rich flowing layers of dark violet and muted silver and night-black. The heavy scarlet skeins of hair that once grazed his shoulders had grown twice as long, streaming like blood over the pillow, but his face was smooth, and no change whatever lessened the forceful symmetries of his form and visage, save for the deep dreaming serenity of the motionless features.

"He became bearded," Serah said. "I used a spell to stop it. More handsome he is this way. I liked to come here and look at him, and comb those long red locks of his—and remember how flaming and flowing my own hair used to be." She seated herself at the bed's edge, all too plainly tired from her climb through the City's levels. "Well may you imagine my astonishment to find Lord Michael here, when I came as has been my daily wont to see that your rooms were as I'd left them. To expect only to arrange a few flowers, and find your bed taken by a Hryeland soldier to all seeming wounded to the death! But in another moment I recognized him, and healed his wound. Without a scar I healed it, I might add—I'd much regret to see him marked, for he is so good to look upon. I have made sure he is always warmly covered, although he surely cannot feel either heat or cold. Other than that he requires small looking after."

Ryel wasn't interested in Michael. Not now. "Tell me about the plague."

Serah Dalkith was silent awhile, and let out a long wearied breath before speaking. "A ghastly scourge it was, Ryel, without cure or relief. Many of our brotherhood died, and they say it was fully as bad in Tesba. Those who chanced to survive were marked forever after by it, as you have seen only too well from me. And once the dead were burned—for we needs must burn them, as they were too foully corrupt to be laid in the Silent Citadel—most of our brotherhood left the City forever, fleeing to their homelands. At last I alone remained."

"You are all that is left? Everyone else is gone?"

Serah inclined her head. "Everyone else, Ryel. And I must confess I never expected you to return. But I suppose you came for Lord Michael's sake."

"No, sister. For yours," Ryel said. "But there is another reason as well." And his sorrow lifted cloudlike as he spoke. "In my travels I learned that Edris is not dead—that I can restore him to life with the right Mastery. Tonight I will attempt to bring him back."

He expected Lady Serah to rejoice with him, to at least show some glad emotion. But she sat silent as if spelled into a statue.

"Sister." He found he could barely say the word, and had to force out others. "Sister, what has happened to my father?"

Lady Serah replied. "So you learned what he was. We always knew."

"Tell me!"

She sighed as if worn to exhaustion. "Not only the living suffered the plague, Ryel."

Numbing white horror seized him. "You…you burnt him? You destroyed his body?"

Serah clasped her hands. "We had to, brother. He—he stank. He was crawling with…" She turned away "I'll not tell you. Too dreadful it is to speak of."

Ryel could barely move his mouth. "You destroyed him." Unable to stand any longer, he sank down at the bed's edge. Serah Dalkith clasped him around the shoulders.

"Nothing else could anyone do, Ryel. Nor was Edris the only one in the Jade Tower who met that fate. All of the Builders save for Lord Garnos and Lord Aubrel had to be given to the fire, and many others."

He could not feel her embrace. "How could you." He had not enough strength to make the words a question. "How."

Lady Serah replied with a spark of her old energy. "Had we let him lie as he was, rotten even to pieces, would you bring his rai back to such a body? I think not. We did what we had to. There was no choice."

"I understand."

"But you do not forgive." The weak helpless tremor had come back to her voice, and she let go of him. "Ah, Ryel. I am sorry. So sorry."

After a long moment he took her hand, lifting it to his brow; released it lifelessly. "Yes. As am I. Leave me, sister."

Serah tried to catch his hand again. "Ah, Ryel—"

He would not be held. "Go. I beg you go. We'll meet again later."

She did so, wordlessly. A long time Ryel stood at the bedside, staring down at Michael's face, memory breaking over him like salt waves, searing his eyes.

You have lain here long, my lord brother, he thought. My father Edris lay even longer in the jade tower, awaiting the life I strove with all my power to give him back. We were going to be together as father and son, he and I. You will return from the Void to this young strong body of yours, but Edris—

Dazed with pain he rose, and with slow faltering steps left his house, seeking the tower of the dead. The rain fell harder, but he did not raise the hood of his cloak against it, unregardingly letting it stream down his hair and face.

The silent citadel was lightless. Ryel sharply commanded the torches to flare brilliantly aflame, and silently paced among the icy echoing rooms. Lord Aubrel lay intact as Lady Serah had said, as did Lord Garnos, and the beautiful silver-blonde woman whom Michael had loved and killed. But very many of the stone beds were vacant, most empty of all that which once held the lean massive form of Edris.

"Father." Strengthlessly he sank to his knees beside the great porphyry slab. He had not wanted to weep, had steeled himself against it with all the iron in his will, and not a tear escaped him. But grief and rage poured out in a stammering rush as he knelt first embracing, then beating with both fists the hard chill rock, all his being racked beyond the power of thought.

He awoke cold and aching. At some point before unconsciousness he had stretched himself out upon the stone, and now he lay as Edris had, on his back with arms folded high upon his breast. The torches had dimmed, and night had come on loud with rain. Wrapping his cloak closely about him, he joined his thoughts with the downpour, letting the steady soft roar fill his emptiness.

For an unknown interval he listened unmoving to the rain, letting the dripping blackness fill him. Then he hoarsely whispered a word. An all but invisible plume of mist oozed from the foot of the bier, rising and widening and taking on form. In wraithlike indeterminability the srih Pukk wavered, its eyes of glowing amethyst unblinkingly and impassively fixed upon its summoner.

"Yourw ill?"

Slowly and with pain Ryel sat up. "Tell me what to do."

"Youknow," the srih replied.

"I don't. The body of my father no longer exists."

Pukk wavered shruggingly. "And?"

"Tell me how to bring him back."

"Hei sinthe Void."

"I know that, you vaporing halfwit," Ryel said with weary forbearance. "But what if I were to instill his rai into a dead body? One freshly dead, and undiseased at death?"

"Theb ody willcon tinue torot."

The coldness of the stone filled Ryel's veins. "That cannot be true," he whispered. "Surely that is a lie."

Pukk whitened as his purple eyes slit to glowing lines. "I tisno t."

"But the Immortal Riana was dead when Lord Garnos—"

"Shew asn otdead. Herrai wa sinthe Void."

"Then what of Garnos? What of Aubrel Essern? Are they—"

"Theyd ied. Wi tho utthe Artofth isplace theywoul drot."

Ryel sickened with mute dismay. Pukk continued, ever impassive.

"Theb ody ofth eredha iriss trong. Ta keit."

At the absolute unemotion of those words Ryel's despair heated to rage. "Michael Essern still has his own chance at life. I won't rob him of it. Leave me, you babbling gas."

As Pukk leisurely dispersed, Ryel returned to his house and slammed the door behind him. With a taut command he caused the cold logs of the fire to leap into crackling fresh life, and tried to warm himself at it; gave up at last, and went into the room where Michael lay. By the wall near the bed was another fire-hearth, and Ryel ordered it alight as well.

"It's for you, friend," he said to Michael's unheeding form. "I wouldn't want you catching cold as soon as you came back."

But he was in no mood to bring the red wysard out of the Void just yet. Going into his bath-chamber he commanded the great crystal vessel to be lit from beneath and filled. Taking from his journeybag a gift of the Sovrena Diara, a vial very like the one Michael had brutally crushed underfoot in the ruined castle, Ryel scented the water with a drop of the perfume. Ineffable sweetness rose upon the air, each breath of it bringing yet another remembrance of his time in the World, and bodily ease. But neither remembered pleasure nor physical respite could solace his agony of mind.

"I've lost you," he said, his voice thudding against the tall surrounding shafts of mirror. "I have failed, ithradrakis."

A long time he spent in the water, wombed in its enervating heat. Sometime, somehow, he got out of the bath at last. Never once feeling the touch of the towel he dried himself, and returned to his bed, where he threw aside the coverings and lay next to his unmoving Art-brother, losing himself in oblivion as if sliding down into a solid white world of fog.

*****

A faint knocking awoke him. The fog that had swallowed him the night before now hung impenetrably nebulous outside the windows whose curtains Ryel had forgotten to draw the night before. Next to him Lord Michael lay ever trancebound, warm but unbreathing.

The wysard threw him a grim glance. "Good morning. At least you didn't talk in your sleep, or snore." He rose, pulled on a robe and went to his house-door, opening it to find his Art-sister standing there, a traveling-bag in her hand.

"The Immortal Riana appeared to me last night," Serah Dalkith said, before Ryel could speak. "She wishes me to join her. And having considered the matter, I deem it best that I go."

The wysard blinked, unable at first to understand. "When?"

"As soon as I give the word. I came here to say farewell."

He stared into her face, disoriented by regret. "But sister. We had only just met again."

Lady Serah shook her head with a pale sad smile. "You've shown me how much you desire my society. Nay, no apologies—I well understand. Aloneness you require now, and time to mourn."

"But that is no reason for you to leave."

The wysardess sighed. "Other reasons have I, young brother. Unwilling though I am to admit it, I am old, and the plague made me older. Very weary have I grown amid these wet windy barrens with never a sight of the sun. Riana has promised me warmth and light and peace, all of which I am more than willing to accept, especially since Srin Yan Tai will bear me company." Her mouth gave a quirk very like its old way. "And when such enticements are offered by the One Immortal herself, refusal is most rude—if not unwise."

The wysard embraced her, sorrowing to feel her so thin and infirm in his arms. "I wish you happiness in your new home, sister." He bent and touched his lips to hers. "Forgive my anger. It wasn't meant for you."

Bright color welled up in Serah's thin cheeks. "How I wish I weren't leaving you here alone, poor lad."

"I won't be alone for long."

Uttering the needful Art-word Lady Serah slowly vanished, until only wet footprints lingered on Ryel's doorstep. The wysard after a moment's revery returned to his bedchamber, and awhile regarded the tall figure that lay as still as wrought marble beneath its opulent swathings. "At least you'll get your life back, Lord Michael," he said. "And without further delay."

Striding to the curtains, he pulled them shut and called for light. The great branch of candles by the bed instantly burned ardently, flames stretching high. Remembering Riana's silver book, the wysard envisioned once more the instructions therein, instructions he had indelibly committed to memory long since, and began his work.

It was really a very simple procedure, bringing a rai out of the Void. All one had to do was take oil of quiabintha and ritually encircle the eyes of the dispossessed body, then anoint the mouth and the ports of the ears, then speak a few Art-phrases. There was almost nothing to it. The only difficulty was that death might occur at any moment of the spell if the one performing it allowed his or her concentration to waver in the slightest. The least intruding thought, the merest notice of any extraneous occurrence would be the wysard's last.

On a table near one of the windows was a box of silver and pearl. In this box Ryel found a vial of quiabintha oil among the other drugs he had used during his learning of the Art. The flask was tightly stoppered, and the oil had kept fresh. The wysard closed his eyes and steeled his will, for the spell started with the opening of the vial. A twist of his fingers, and it began.

He never smelled the oil, although in less crucial times he had always partly enjoyed, partly disliked its sharp acrid redolence. He never saw the room around him, never heard the winds howling outside, never felt Michael's skin under his fingers; never heard the words he spoke. When blackness overcame him, he never even wondered what he had done wrong.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Suddenly there was light, ten blurry bits of it—the candles, now burnt almost to nothing. Hard rain battered the windows. Ryel picked himself up from the floor where he must have fallen. Other than a bruise on his shoulder where he'd struck furniture, he'd sustained no harm. Getting to his feet, he steadied his thoughts awhile, then went over to the bed. Michael Essern lay as always, motionless.

Motionless…save for the rise and fall of his chest.

Ryel caught his own breath. "You're back. I brought you back!" Tearing Michael's silken robes open halfway to the waist, he pressed his hand over the heart, searching out the pulse beneath flesh that no more yielded to his touch than would white rock. Under his palm surged a steady beating like a call to war, inexorable and endless.

"I'm good," the wysard said softly, unable to resist a smile of purest delight in his Art. But then came the everlasting sorrow. "And you will never see it, ithradrakis." He moved his hand to the Red Essern's brow, speaking ever softly, but in a voice of command. "Awake."

Michael's deep-set eyelids twitched to disclose glinting slate-gray at first unfocused. But then the eyes found Ryel, and blinked hard. His lips parted after an effort or two, and he breathed deep; exhaled slowly. His breath was, as always, inexplicably sweet, but his voice came out gravelly and slow, with none of its wonted resonance. "Are we dead?"

"Not yet."

He coughed. "Then I could use some water."

Ryel brought some as Michael sat up very slowly, with many a cursing groan. He drank greedily, then looked about him and frowned. "Where's this?"

"Markul."

Michael pushed back his hair, and with that gesture observed the egregious length of his blood-colored locks. "Great Argane! How long was I in the Void?"

Ryel started, as much from the suddenly reverberant voice as its question. "You knew you were there?"

"Of course I knew," Michael impatiently replied. "But for how long?"

"Your rai has been separate from your body for more than half a year."

Michael murmured a stunned curse. "Half a year? But what's become of the World? What of Dagar?"

"Dagar is destroyed, thanks to you."

"And Meschante?"

"He died. Horribly."

"Good." A long hesitation. "And Destimar? The Dranthene princess?"

Ryel glanced away momentarily. "I'll tell you the whole story soon enough. Are you well?"

"I'll live, since it looks as if I have to." Michael rose from bed, but no sooner stood than staggered, the waking color in his cheeks suddenly draining white.

Alarmed, Ryel caught him. "What is it? Are you in pain?"

Michael seemed to consider, perplexedly. "Nothing hurts," he said at last. "I'm all right. You can let go of me." And he stood upright, although uncertainly. "Still, there's something strange. I feel...crowded."

Ryel sharply lifted his head. "Crowded?"

"More than myself. I can't explain it." He glanced down at his Markulit garb with surprised and profound distaste. "Robes. I can't stand them. Too cumbersome." He rapped out a sharp phrase, and in another moment the battle-dress of a Barrier colonel of horse appeared in orderly array on the bed, fresh regimentals of new black and silver and snowy linen, the jacket bearing the insignia of a black dragon. "Good," Michael said, inspecting the garments with satisfaction. "My servants haven't deserted me—but they wouldn't dare." He threw off his trailing layers of precious silk and began to dress. "We're in your house?"

"We are."

As he arrayed himself Michael gave a summary glance about, and seemed to approve. "Not bad—though somewhat spare. My own house in Elecambron is more elaborately fitted. More books and pictures and the like. But I don't think I'll be returning to my City any time soon …if ever again." He fastened the black breeches, pulled on the tall riding-boots, and reached for the shirt. "Is there a house empty hereabouts that will suit me?"

"As many as you wish. We're the only ones in the City." And Ryel explained why. Michael listened silently as he adjusted the various items of his gear.

"So Markul and Tesba are down," he said when Ryel had ended. "Which means the other Two are strong."

"Not all strength is in numbers," Ryel replied. "No adept in either Elecambron or Ormala is the match of us."

"More than likely," Michael said, fastening his jacket's many clasps with practiced one-handed ease. "And I doubt that that truth will be tested any time soon." Having clothed himself, the Red Essern went to Ryel's mirror to behold his image, made a grimace at the inordinate length of his hair, and drew the dagger at his side. Wrapping his long red skeins around his right hand, he hacked them away to shoulder length with the razor-edged blade.

"There," he said, throwing the severed tresses down upon the table and running his hands through his shortened locks. "Now I'm right. But why did my hair grow, and not my beard?"

"Because of one of my Art-sister's spells," Ryel said. "She liked your looks clean-shaven."

"I thought you said we were alone here."

"We are now."

"Not quite," Michael said. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"To see her," Michael said, his deep voice's music rough and harsh. "She that lies in your death-tower. Take me there."

"It might be better if you waited until—"

"Shut up and come on."

The roaring downpour of the night before had waned to mist, and the air was sodden and chill, but Michael never seemed to notice. Feeling the cold keenly himself, Ryel wrapped Edris' crimson mantle well about him as he led the way to the Silent Citadel. Again he entered the dark tower, again caused the torches to burn. In that radiance shimmered the body of the Northern beauty who had almost been Ryel's death, lapped in robes of gold-cloth that streamed down on either side of the stone bed upon which she lay.

Michael went to her side. His face showed no emotion save for an almost imperceptible tremor around the stone-gray eyes. "You kept her well," he said to Ryel. His resonant voice barely shook at all. "I'd swear she was alive and ready to wake. But you say she's dead."

"Yes."

"Dead, and not in the place I was. Not in the Void."

"No."

"She couldn't be. Because I would have known, had she been there. I would have felt her." He took her hand and gazed into her face, searching every feature. "I would have felt you," he said softly. He then addressed Ryel, although he never took his eyes from that fair still visage. His words came slowly, although his deep voice never faltered. "We met in Hallagh. She was the daughter of a great scholar with whom I studied—fully as learned, and joyous and gentle. It took all the self-command I possessed not to love her. When I left Hallagh for Elecambron, I put her out of my thoughts and gave all my being to the Art. But one day some years later I looked down from the wall and saw her lying there in the snow, all but dead. I took her into my house, and cared for her until she was well again. Never until then had I observed the Art within her, and how strong it was—but it had no place in that City of cold. It should have flowered in Tesba under the sun, far from any thought of me—"

His breathing had become labored, and his last words were barely audible. He covered his face with his hands, and for a silent interval his shoulders shook. But then he gasped, and jerked his hands away from his face to find them wet with tears.

"It's been long," he whispered. "So long…" Raising a finger to his lips, he touched his tongue to the salt wetness there, and gave a little start. But in another instant he'd roughly dashed his cheeks dry, and become as stone again.

"I've no right to mourn her. I will only remember, and that will be my punishment, every hour that I live, until death gives me rest at last."

His face never flinched, his voice never shook, but his gray eyes glittered with a terrible light. "Come away a moment," Ryel said, unable to bear that look. "There is something I would show you."

Michael did not reply for a long time, did not look round. But at last he nodded assent. They climbed the tower to its top, where the bodies of the First of Markul once were kept in reverent state. Ryel led Michael to the funeral bed of Lord Aubrel.

"This was your kinsman," Ryel said. "From this man came both Markul's greatness, and the curse of the Red Esserns."

Silently, with folded arms, Michael regarded his forebear. "I wish he'd been stillborn." Some time passed before Michael spoke again. "Many believe the rai is deathless. But we who have Crossed know how fragile the rai is, and how easily destroyed."

Ryel shivered, remembering his own shrieking fall, that burning up. "Yes. We know."

The Red Essern lifted his head, meeting the wysard eye to eye. "The Void that was Dagar's prison was my freedom. There I transcended both life and death."

"Did you sense anyone else there with you?"

"I had no self left—but I sensed other emanations. One of them was very strong."

"The rai of Edris."

Michael bent his head. "Yes. I could sense its restlessness. Its yearning to escape. I had no such desire."

"Edris' rai has been delivered from pain," Ryel replied, but he felt his voice catch.

Michael inclined his head again, not so much in assent as regret. "True. But his body has been destroyed."

"How could you have known?" Ryel asked, amazed.

"Because I was the one who sent plague to Markul."

Ryel froze, incapable of speech. Michael continued, slowly.

"Yes. I sent it. I made sure that your father's body was corrupted beyond any healing." He did not look up. "To make you suffer."

It was Ryel's turn now to look away. He could barely breathe the red dense dazing air around him. "You got what you wanted, Michael," he said somehow. "I have indeed suffered."

"I'll never expect you to forgive."

Ryel could make no answer, and barely felt Michael's hand upon his shoulder.

"Ryel." The deep voice shook with remorse. "If I could do anything to restore Edris' body, I would."

"You cannot." Ryel freed himself, though gently, and looked down unseeingly into the face of Lord Aubrel. "It doesn't matter. For I am certain I have not lost Edris forever. There have been times when his rai escaped, and I spoke with him." Ryel studied the pattern of Lord Aubrel's robe. "Two rais can exist in one body, Michael. I've witnessed it."

"Where?" Michael demanded, very suddenly.

"In Almancar, when Dagar and Meschante shared the double of your form."

Michael frowned. "But surely one of them must eventually conquer, and one die—"

He halted choking on the last word, and clutched the edge of Lord Aubrel's bier. Ryel looked up, roused from his numb revery by the livid distortion overtaking Michael's face.

"Brother!" He reached out to him. "What…"

Michael struggled to speak, uselessly, then swayed and collapsed, falling across the body of his ancestor. Ryel seized him by the shoulders, lifting him up, struggling with his dead weight.

"Brother—" He caught Michael's wrist, seeking the pulse; found none, and after an eternal moment's horror damned himself for his stupidity. "I should never have let you come here. It was too soon." He lowered Michael's body to the floor, kneeling next to it and trying all he knew of both Art and World-lore to rouse the limp form to life ... all to nothing. At last Ryel knew he was incapable of any further effort, and bowed his head against the icy alabaster of the bier.

"Gone," he whispered. "Everything. Gone." He sank down, taking the Red Essern's hand in his own, bowing his forehead to its back. "I never thought to lose you again. Never this soon." And his eyes clenched in numb sick agony.

But then he gave a cry, heart-stoppingly startled by a blow to his face, a hard stinging smack athwart his cheek more stunning than any full-fisted wallop. Staring wide-eyed down into Michael's face, the wysard felt his mouth fall open, and could not close it. The Red Essern's eyes were now open, and still cold storm-gray, but now it seemed that Ryel looked past them, into eyes far different—brown nearly to black, and longer, and aslant. The same eyes that had pierced Ryel's inmost soul that winter night on the Steppes, when his entire life had changed forever. They turned him to stone, those eyes, and strangled any possibility of speech. Then came the voice.

"You needn't look so goggle-eyed, whelp—and quit that idiot sniveling. Yes, it's me."

Those deep bass tones—less sonorous than Michael's, but to Ryel's ears a thousandfold more sweet—dinned him back to life, and an imperative shake like countless well-remembered others jolted out his speech, word by gasping word.

"Edris. Father. Ithradrakis. But how? How—"

"Easily enough," said Edris, letting him go with a grin. "I sneaked in unbeknownst from the Void with the rai you'd summoned. There wasn't much other chance to get back, what with my body turned to stinking ashes."

"But how could you—"

"It was easy. I slipped in during your spells—which you did very cleverly, I must admit—and waited until I saw my time."

"I can't believe it," Ryel said. But he could, and never had he known any joy like to this. "I can't believe you're back."

"Better than ever, I might add." With supreme complacency Edris gazed down at his tall muscular form in its military black. "Don't I look good." He tested his arms and shoulders, stood to admire his legs, fingered the angles of his face. "I feel downright handsome—that's new. How old do I look?"

"About thirty-two."

"Old enough to be your—brother." Stripping back a sleeve, he assessed his skin's icy whiteness. "Hm. Rather on the pale side." Catching a strand of his hair, he held it in front of his eyes. "And this mop's as red as a monkey's arse…" He comprehended, then, amazedly. "Am I in the body of Michael of Elecambron?"

"You are."

A fierce flash of laugh, nothing like Michael would ever give. "It's too good—the body of your bitterest rival, and I in it. Unbelievable."

"Michael and I are no longer rivals," Ryel said. Despite his joy, he could not quiet a misgiving qualm. "What has become of Michael's rai?"

"Oh, it's still here. We're sharing this body, him and me. But I don't know how long I'll have the uppermost, so let's not waste time. I'm perishing with hunger. Let's get out of this tomb and find some food—and drink." Impatiently Edris seized Ryel's wrist, yanking him to his feet. "Come on, brat. Is my house still standing?"

"It is. But everyone's gone from our City, father. No one's—"

"No one's left but us? Good riddance, I say. Come on."

They left the Jade Tower, Edris descending the stairs at a run, Ryel following. But as they traversed the dank streets, suddenly Edris slid to a halt.

"Remember this place, lad?"

They had come to the courtyard where they once used to fight with swords. A long time he and his father regarded one another. Ryel never saw the form of Michael Essern, but only the hulking lengths and crags of the Steppes warrior, he that had fought Warraven in the Temple of Argane, he that Ryel had dwelt with and learned from for every day of twelve years.

"Call me what I am," Ryel said, each wrung syllable snagging in his throat.

"I did a long time ago." Edris reached out, pulling Ryel into his arms. "I said it when we first met, years ago in your mother's yat. You're mine, Ry. Mine."

Ryel felt the embrace wrap him in all the serene wholeness of life finally understood, all the deliverance of a great truth beautifully brought to light. "Father," he whispered. "Ithradrakis."

Edris touched his lips to Ryel's temple. "I've always been proud of you, little son. Always, since the day you were born." He let go, opening his eyes, flashing that old fierce irony. "But I'm still taking back this—and this, by your leave." With a swift jerk he stripped Ryel of his scarlet cloak, and in another moment had slung the rune-strong Kaltiri tagh over his shoulder. "That's better." Turning on his heel, he strode off into the mist, flinging an irritable last word over his shoulder.

"Damn it, are you coming or not?"

Overwhelmed but obedient, Ryel followed.

Once inside his house, Edris inspected its yatlike appointments with tolerant disdain. "To think these walls were enough for me, more years than I care to count. Well, I'll try to endure them yet another night." Sharply he issued commands, and soon a plentiful Steppes feast was smoking on the low table, before a hearth brilliantly ablaze. Tossing his cloak where he always had, unslinging his sword and throwing himself down upon the floor-cushions, Edris motioned Ryel to join him, and without more words energetically attacked the food, washing each ecstatic mouthful down with long draughts of rich red wine. Ryel had never seen Edris so gluttonous before, and hardly knew whether to show concern or smile. But the smile won out, to see such greed seemingly exhibited by the habitually stoic Red Essern.

"Don't kill yourself," he said. "I only just got you back."

Edris wiped his mouth with his sleeve, leaning back upon his cushions for a moment's respite. The drink had colored him ruddily, and his long dark eyes gleamed bright. "You're not losing me any time soon, whelp. Not when I've got this stalwart young soldier to live in. I know you cured Michael of the Red Esserns' blood-bane—I can feel it. Has he any other ills I should worry about?"

"As far as I know, Lord Michael now enjoys perfect bodily health," Ryel replied. "But tell me—do you sense his presence? Can you read his thoughts?"

"I don't know. Let me try." But after some moments' concentration Edris shrugged, defeated. "I can't look into him—not that I care to. He always struck me as a surly young beast. But though I can't say much for his mind, I'll never quarrel with his body." And he turned a luxuriant stretch into a flex, jolting his biceps into truculent bulk. "It's not often an old codger like me gets a chance like this."

"You weren't old, father," Ryel said, tasting the last word like something indescribably sweet.

"Bah. I was nearly sixty. Almost twice the age of this fellow." And Edris for the tenth time ran his hand over his smooth cheek, and traced his eyes' edges with a searching finger. "No crow's feet here—but my former carcass had them aplenty." He poured out yet more wine. "I'd forgotten what it was to know my full strength, the strength of my prime." His eyes shone with revery. "You remember that night we met?"

"As if it were last minute."

"When Mira ran out of the yat to speak with me, I was sure Yorganar would follow to drag her back. But he didn't. What she and I said to each other I can't recall now. But never will I forget how it felt to wrap her with me in my cloak to keep her warm, and kiss her until I couldn't stand it anymore, and curse myself for a fool. I want to make it right. And I will, in Almancar. If you don't object, I plan to marry her."

"I have no quarrel whatever with that; but Lord Michael well might. And I doubt my mother will think it proper to wed you as you now look."

"Bah. She'll like me all the better." As if the matter were settled, Edris reached for another skewer of meat. But hardly had he grasped it than a trembling fit came over him, and he gave a gurgled cry.

Ryel lunged forward, appalled. "Father! What—"

But in that moment Edris grew calm again, looking about him in blinking amazement increasingly wary and disgruntled.

"Where's this? A Steppes gypsy's tent?"

Alike as Edris' voice was to Michael's, Ryel nevertheless knew the difference well. His heart sank to see those ice-gray eyes' resentful stare examining the room. But before he could reply, the Red Essern observed the table in front of him, and the food on it. He lifted up the skewerful of meat Edris had dropped, eyeing it with dislike, sniffing it first in suspicion, then in loathing. "Mutton," he growled under his breath. "Disgusting."

"It isn't mutton, it's lamb," Ryel said, not a little indignant.

"Sheep's sheep. I detest it." Throwing down the skewer, Michael lifted his hand to his head, resentfully grimacing. "And why do I feel so—strange?" But he found his answer in the golden cup. With deepest revulsion he inspected the precious vintage glimmering in the bright metal. "Wine? I've never touched wine in my life." He glared at Ryel. "Was I eating and drinking this vile stuff? What's happened to me?" Indignantly he glanced downward, discovering yet another anomaly. "And why am I squatting on the floor like a savage?" Abruptly surging to his feet he barked out an order, and at once a great chair took form. Into this massive—and in its Steppes surroundings most incongruous—furnishing Michael instantly dropped, gripping the cushioned leather arms as if determined to keep his rai firmly dominant in his body.

"Clear that trash away," he commanded with a glare and an Art-word toward the table, and in a moment every atom of the Rismai banquet had disappeared. But its savor only too apparently still lingered on Michael's palate. "Agh. I can still taste that greasy sheep-fat and garlic." Another word and a crystal goblet appeared, brimful of clear water. Michael drank deep before he spoke again; and when he spoke he looked, for the first time Ryel had ever observed, confused, apprehensive, and utterly taken aback.

"It's your father that's within me. His rai."

"Yes," Ryel said; and his emotions were the complete opposite of Michael's. "He has returned to me."

Michael glowered at his Art-brother. "Not for long. I know the spell to drive him out, and send him back to the Void."

"In which case I'd use the same spell on your rai, then bring Edris back to take full possession of your bodily form, which I can assure you he'd be well contented with."

Michael surged to his feet, unsteady and furious. "Just try it, Markulit!"

Ryel, too, was standing now, equally irate and very much in control. "Don't be such an overbearing fool." With not a push but a word he hurled Michael back into his chair. "You might show a little gratitude. Were it not for my Art, your body would have lain lifeless forever—just as without me, your blood would still be poisoned with the bane that plagued your family for a thousand years. Your blood, and your brother's. But now you're both free of it."

Michael stared up at him, hands frozen on the chair-arms. "What do you mean?"

Ryel told him of the cure he had wrought upon the Count Palatine, but said nothing of the sickness he had taken upon himself, and how it had tortured him; told him of the uprising that would have been Yvain Essern's unspeakable death. When he had made an end, Michael sank back into his chair, leaning on one of the great arms, turning his head so that Ryel could not see his face for a while. When he again looked round, a faint trace of color humanized the harsh pallor of his countenance, and his voice though barely audible seemed to fill the air with resonant warmth, and his gray eyes glittered harshly in the firelight.

"Yvain," he whispered. "They would have burnt Yvain ..." With a grimace he averted his eyes from the leaping flames of the hearth. "So we both owe you our lives, my brother and I. For his at least I thank you." Michael reached for the crystal goblet, holding it to the light, seemingly absorbed in its faceted flame-bright scintillations. But his eyes glinted more. "I've missed him," he said quietly, mostly to himself. "More than I can say, I've missed him. All my desire is to return to Hallagh after these many years apart, and see him again—and I will, at once."

Ryel reflected that Edris might not be in favor of Michael's decision. But before he could offer objections, Michael spoke again, seemingly to himself.

"But I'll not stay there. I've done cruel murder, and untold wrong. Were I coward enough, I'd wish my rai back in the Void, safe in the nothingness, forever forgetful of the World I came into only to harm. But my crimes require penance, harsh and unending."

Ryel felt his mouth falling open. "By every god! Haven't you suffered your entire life? You couldn't help how you were born. You—"

Michael shook his head. "I could have helped what I became. I should have fought the Bane, not yielded to it. I should have been strong enough to resist Dagar. I was weak in all things; weak, and vile. It will take the rest of my life to make right the harm I did."

"Then you might as well begin in Almancar. More than enough needs to be made right in that city."

Michael waved away the very notion. "I'll never go back there. I never want to see that place again, that I almost destroyed...or the Dranthene princess, whose death I nearly caused."

"Her name's Diara. And if you were a man, you'd go to her and ask her forgiveness on your knees."

A long silence at that, and a barely audible reply. "Never."

"And what about my father's wishes?"

The Red Essern shrugged in scorn. "Let that Steppes gypsy Edris do what he can to overcome my rai. He's old, and his Art's no match for mine."

Ryel lifted his chin. "You only say that because you're drunk from the wine he made you drink."

"I'm not drunk! Although I admit I feel...strange. At any rate, I'm damned if a mere graybeard Markulit is going to push me around." Propping both booted legs upon the table, the Red Essern settled himself back in his chair in a posture defiantly immovable. In another moment his scarlet-skeined head, unbalanced by drink, fell upon his breast. His next sound was a muffled snore.

Ryel sighed, knowing that Edris wouldn't let Michael sleep for long. "Rest while you can, brother mine," he said in deepest sympathy, endless vistas of new roads rising up before him as he spoke. "Rest—while my father lets you. Because tomorrow we head for Almancar...all three of us."

END

A Guide to Names

Many of the names in The Ryel Saga are influenced by French and Greek, and should be pronounced accordingly.

Agenor: AGG-en-or

Bradamaine: BRADA-main

Dranthene: Dran-THEE-nay

Diara: Dee-AR-ah (rhymes with “tiara”)

Edris: EE-driss

Essern: Accented on the last syllable

Guyon de Grisainte Desrenaud: GUY-on deh GREE-zahnt DEZ-ren-aud ("aud" rhyming with "lode)

Mira: MEE-rah

Priamnor: Pry-AM-nor

Roskerrek: Ross-KERR-ek

Riana: Ree-AHN-ah

Ryel: Rye-EL

Srin Yan Tai: "Tai" pronounced like "tie"

Valrandin: Val-RAN-din

Yvain: Ee-VAN

A note on Steppes names: It is customary among males of the Steppes phratri of Destimar to use a first name followed by a patronymic (the father's name, with the additional ending -em) and a matronynmic (the mother's name, with the additional ending -ai): thus, Ryel Edrisem Mirai, Ryel son of Edris and Mira. Females upon marriage take as a surname the first name of their husband, with the additional ending -a. Upon the death of a parent, the patronymic or matronymic is not used for some length of time--usually three to five years--as a sign of mourning.

Glossary:

Aliante: (al’YANT): The lowest type of mercenary soldier, one that changes loyalties at the slightest whim. Always an insult.

Chal (rhymes with Hal): a hot drink relished by the folk of Destimar, especially those of the Inner Steppes. It is green in color (dark murky green in the Inner Steppes, where it is brewed very strong), and is invigorating, warming, and nutritious. Among Steppe-dwellers, chal is traditionally brewed in a chaltak―a wide-mouthed jar-shaped vessel that can also double as a canteen―and drunk from the close-fitting lid that serves as a cup. Chaltaks can be made of simple fire-hardened porcelain or of precious enamel, depending on the means of the owner.

Ilandrakis (Ill-an-DRAK-is): Almancarian endearment, signifying “dearer than brother.” Used by both sexes. The feminine equivalent is kerandraka.

Ithradrakis (Ith-rah-DRAK-is):: Almancarian term of respect, signifying “dearer than father.” Used by both sexes.

Kerandraka (Kerr-an-DRAK-ah): Almancarian term of respect, signifying “dearer than sister.” Used solely by a man to a woman, and betokening a deep bond of the heart.

Keirai (Keer-AYE): A High Almancarian greeting, used solely between blood relations of the imperial house.

Kriy (Kree): A Steppes game similar to polo.

Krusghan (KROOS-gahn): The seven-holed transverse flute of the Steppes, usually made of blackwood with joinings of carved stone.

Kulm (Kool’m): A peat-like substance dug from the substrata of the wide plains of the Steppes, lightweight and long-burning; used as fuel for stoves or cooking fires throughout Destimar.

Lakh (Lack): Sweets made with finely-ground almonds and sugar, enclosing a filling of apricot conserve. A favorite delicacy of Destimar.

Silestra (Sill-ESS-trah): An Almancarian term of endearment, meaning “as fair within as without.” Used principally to describe women, but can also be applied to men, in which case the word becomes Silestor.

Sindretin (Sin-DRET-in): An Destimarian celebration commemorating one’s fiftieth birthday, signalized by lavish revelry.

Sovran (SOV-ran): The male ruler of the imperial house of Destimar. The female equivalent is Sovrana, which also the title of the Sovran's consort. Male heirs apparent are given the title Sovranel; females, Sovrena. Younger brothers to the titular ruler are styled Sovranet; females, Sovranara.

Tiraktia (tir-AK-tee-ah): A privileged member of the Diamond Heaven, whose primary role is to entertain with music, dance, or song. Tiraktiai are at liberty to choose their lovers as they wish.

Yat: The typical dwelling of the nomadic tribes of Destimar's steppes. Its form is similar to the yurt, with a hole in the roof to provide escape for the hearth-ring's smoke.

Table of Contents

The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic