Mistress of the Catacombs

14

Sharina stood beside the four-arched fighting tower fixed to the quinquereme’s deck between Captain Ceius and the steersmen in the stern and the mast amidships. Ordinarily the wooden tower—painted to look like stone—would’ve been struck until The King of the Isles prepared to go into action. Tenoctris sheltered within it now, working incantations that the sailors preferred not to see.

Waist-high sailcloth curtains covered the lower half of the archways, concealing the seated wizard while allowing her light and air. Sharina was ready to hand Tenoctris anything she called for, though as yet she might as well have stayed in Valles. Occasionally wizardlight dusted the sunlight red or blue as Tenoctris chanted, but those escapes remained faint enough that the crewmen on deck could pretend not to notice.

The captain spoke to the flutist seated on a perch built into the sternpost. That man lowered the instrument on which he’d been blowing time; at a nod from the captain, a petty officer blew an attention signal on his straight bronze horn.

“Cease rowing!” said Ceius. “Shake out the sail!”

Officers on deck and in the crowded hold beneath relayed the orders in a chorus, generally with the added obscenities that Sharina had learned to expect when somebody was directing soldiers or sailors. The difference between the methods of junior officers and of muleteers, so far as she could tell, was that the former didn’t use whips—at least in the royal forces.

While deck crewmen grabbed ropes to unfurl the sail to catch the freshening breeze, the oarsmen released from duty came boiling up from their benches in the hold through the open beams that supported the deck and allowed ventilation below. The first of them, squirming like a snake hunting voles, was King Carus himself. He sprang to the deck beside Sharina.

Captain Ceius stepped forward in greeting, but Carus waved him back. “Carry on, Ceius!” he said. “You’ve got matters under control.”

Petty officers were dipping cups of wine mixed with two parts water from great jars in the bow and stern. Their strikers held waxed rosters to check off the name of each man served. Military personnel didn’t have to be scholars, but Sharina had been surprised to learn that even the lowest-ranking officers were able to read at least names or passwords scratched on a potsherd.

Carus winked at Sharina, then took his place in the line forming for the drinks. The men ahead of him immediately scattered in surprise.

“Get back as you were!” Carus roared, speaking so that the ship’s whole crew could hear him. “When I’m acting as your commander, I expect you to jump into the sea if that’s what I order you. But while I’m pulling an oar, by the Shepherd! I expect to be treated as an oarsman. Does anybody doubt me?”

He raised his big hands, his palms gleaming with the resin he’d dusted on them before gripping the oarloom. Nitker and his three aides in the bow, all noblemen, stared at the king in amazement, as did several of the nearby Blood Eagles. The bodyguards were recruited from the same class as the aides, though they were generally younger sons and of impoverished houses.

The sailors who’d been in line ahead of Carus drank quickly and stepped away, watching the king sidelong. Carus took the cup offered him—one of four, each chained to a different jar handle—and held it as an officer dipped it full. The striker holding the roster looked at the king in terror, and bleated, “But chief! He’s not on the list!”

“As commander,” Carus said, “I’m directing that you make an exception in my case.”

Laughing in loud good humor, he emptied the cup without lowering it and stepped away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The next man in line dropped the cup against the jar with clang of thin bronze on thick ceramic, then hid his blush as best he could.

Carus grinned at Sharina, rubbing his palms together. “I do it to show that I’m willing to,” he said in a low voice. He nodded toward Nitker and the aides, one of whom still stared as if transfixed. “I won’t order them to do manual labor unless I need to, but I want them all to realize that I don’t think any man’s too good for any job. Some of my nobles may feel otherwise, but they won’t dare say so now.”

His grin spread even broader. He added, “But I also like to row, now and again. It’s even better than fencing practice for using every muscle and letting your mind rest.”

He sighed, no longer buoyant. “Which I need now even more than most times,” he said.

“Have you been able to sleep any?” Sharina asked quietly. There was no real privacy on a two-hundred-foot vessel carrying four hundred men, but the very numbers created a background of noise that made it unlikely that they’d be easily overheard.

Carus shrugged. “No more than usual,” he said, which meant scarcely at all. “We’ll solve the problem soon, I expect.”

Sharina followed the line of the king’s gaze out over the sea, a sheet of pale green marked as far as she could see with ships and the white wakes foaming behind them. Most vessels had their mainsail set, though a few were proceeding under one bank of oarsmen and the pull of the small triangular boat sail set from their jib. The sky was clear except for a scatter of tiny clouds on the horizon ahead.

Carus crooked a finger toward the sky. “Clouds like that usually mean land,” he said. “They’re over the Dandmere Reefs, I’d guess. That was what we called them in my day, anyhow.”

He smiled wryly. “I never claimed to be a sailor,” he said, “but at the end I was spending half my time on a ship. Some of it stuck, I suppose.”

“I suspect Ilna’s friend Chalcus knows something about using a sword, even though he is a sailor,” Sharina said straight-faced.

The king’s expression froze; then he realized she was joking. He laughed with the suddenness of a thunderclap, drawing the eyes of everyone aboard.

“Oh, aye, I think Chalcus does indeed know swords,” Carus wheezed. “I’d say I wonder how he’s getting on—and I do—but I don’t worry, you see, the way I’d worry if I cared about any of those who might try to get in his way.”

He eyed the fleet again. “We’re scattered,” he said. “That’d be dangerous if the Confederacy had a fleet, but we’re better off with room between us in a storm, and that’s a greater risk.”

Sharina looked at the sky and frowned.

“No, not a great risk,” Carus said with a smile. “No, for now I’d say things were as much in proper order as any operation can be.”

He rubbed his temples; as he did so, his face went still again. Even a man with Carus’ spiritual strength and Garric’s youthful body needed more sleep than he was getting.

The interior of the fighting tower glittered azure. Sharina winced, hoping the king hadn’t noticed it.

He shrugged. “I didn’t have a wizard with me the last time I walked a ship’s deck,” he said with a grin that softened with use. “That was when the Duke of Yole’s wizard drowned me along with every man and ship in the royal fleet. I may have mixed feelings about what our friend Tenoctris is doing; but not very mixed, I assure you.”

Two of the quinquereme’s five banks of oarsmen had been rowing her. Those men, Carus among them, had been the first released from the benches. Now they dropped back into the hold through planks removed fore and aft, while the oarsmen who hadn’t been working came up around the side vents in turn. The oarsmen stayed below most of the time they were aboard ship: there simply wasn’t enough room on deck to hold them all.

Sharina looked into the eyes that had been her brother’s, and said, “Your highness? Do you…that is, are you glad to be—as you said, walking a deck again?”

Carus met her gaze. He smiled, but this time his expression had the terrible majesty of lightning leaping between cloud banks.

“Will I be sorry to give up the flesh again, girl, when Garric comes back?” he said. “For that’s what you mean, is it not?”

She nodded and swallowed. Her fists were clenched and her chest tight with fear of the answer.

“Girl,” the king said. “I’ve killed men because I was angry, and there’ve been times when my blood was up and I killed for no better reason than that I had an excuse and someone was in reach of my sword. But my worst enemy never called me a thief.”

He pinched the skin of his biceps with the opposite thumb and forefinger. “I’ve borrowed this from Garric,” Carus said softly. “I’ll give it back to him the first chance I have. It doesn’t matter whether I want to or not, girl. It’s my duty, and I’ll do it regardless.”

“I’m sorry,” Sharina whispered. “I shouldn’t have…”

Carus laughed cheerfully again. “Do you think you need to apologize for worrying about your brother?” he asked. “Not to me you don’t, Sharina!”

He sobered. “Because I’m worried about him too,” he added. “And even more worried about what Ilna may be facing.”

Ilna thought the rhythmic clacking from the darkness summoned worshippers to the temple, so she touched Alecto’s shoulder before sitting up in the straw. She frowned; the light slanting through the loading door at the end of the loft meant that the moon was still well short of zenith.

Alecto was on her feet with the dagger in her hand, as quickly and supplely as a cat waking. She didn’t try to slash Ilna in half-wakened stupor; her weapon was simply ready if needed, and sheathed again quickly when the wild girl saw that it wasn’t.

“What’s going on out there?” she said with an undertone of harshness. Ilna bristled, reading into the question an implication that the confusion was somehow her fault. Or not, of course—but everything Alecto did seemed to grate on her.

“I thought it was the call to the temple,” Ilna said, “but—”

“Hey!” bawled the stablemaster from the stalls below. “You girls up there! Don’t you hear the summons? Get out here now, or I’ll come up with a whip!”

“If he likes to hear his voice so much,” said Alecto in a deadly whisper as she started for the ladder, “then let’s see how he’ll sound as a soprano!”

Ilna caught the other woman’s knife wrist. Alecto turned, still catlike, and tried to jerk her hand free. Ilna held her, smiling faintly.

“Hey!” the stablemaster repeated.

“We’re coming!” Ilna said, her eyes holding Alecto’s. “And watch your tongue when you speak to us!”

Alecto tossed her head and relaxed. “All right,” she muttered. She gestured for Ilna to precede her down the ladder.

The stablemaster had already gone out into the night, leaving the door ajar behind him. The sharp rapping came again, closer. A horse whickered uncomfortably, as though awakened by the sound and nervous about it. With Alecto just behind her, Ilna stepped into the inn yard.

A priestess in a white-on-black robe stood beneath the archway to the street. Several lower-ranking functionaries accompanied her—clerks, a lantern-bearer, and a brawny man with a flat hardwood block slung from a pole. He’d been hitting the block with a mallet as an attention signal. Ilna hadn’t seen that method before, but the sound was distinctive and seemed to carry as far as the blat of the cow-horn trumpet her brother’d used while herding sheep in the borough.

There were half a dozen soldiers in the priestess’s entourage. They looked more bored than threatening, but they held their weapons with professional ease. Ilna had seen enough troops to know that these men weren’t a militia of shopkeepers and day laborers, armed for the emergency.

“Fellow disciples!” the priestess said. She was a hefty woman; judging by her voice, she might not be much older than Ilna herself. “Evildoers entered Donelle during the past night and have profaned the Temple of the Mistress with the blood of a believer. The Mistress says they’re still in the city. They must be caught and punished before they can do further harm.”

All the windows facing the inn yard were open. Faces, the staff and guests alike, leaned out to hear the announcement. The servants and hangers-on who’d been in the yard to begin with were quiet and alert as well. Ilna had the impression that the respect they showed was real, not something frightened out of them by the soldiers’ presence.

“In order to identify the evildoers,” the priestess continued, “the gates have been closed. Everyone in the city will join with at least three other people who have known them for a year or more. Each group will report to a Child of the Mistress, who will mark each person’s forehead.”

“But I’m from Brange!” called a man who’d been sleeping in the box of one of the coaches. “I don’t know ten people here in Donelle!”

“Those who’ve come as individuals into the city from other communities,” said the priestess, “will report to the clerks with me. The Mistress has set gathering places here in the city for each region. Eventually everyone will have others to vouch for them—everyone but the evildoers!”

Men—there were no women in the yard save for Ilna and her companion—shuffled and spoke to one another in low voices. The attendant with the wooden gong cried, “Come along, now! Do you think you’ve got all night? We have the whole Leatherworker’s District to enroll!”

“Yes, and you inside the building come out as well,” the priestess called, gesturing toward the faces watching from the windows. “Quickly. It won’t take long, but you must get moving!”

“What do we do?” Alecto whispered hoarsely.

“Stand watch while I choose a route,” Ilna replied. She eased back toward the stable door, then slipped inside. The bustle in the yard would keep her from being missed for a time, but she and Alecto couldn’t hide for long.

The warmth of animal bodies and animal breath enfolded Ilna and calmed her. She wasn’t in a panic, but these were dangerous straits. She squatted on the trampled floor, then pulled a handful of straw from a manger and began plaiting it. Ilna rarely used her skill to make decisions for her, but in this case she had no choice. She didn’t know how the Mistress had learned the interlopers were still in Donelle, but there was more to it than mere intuition.

Ilna’s fingers wove straws in and around their fellows with a swift competence that would have seemed magical to anyone watching. The darkness of the stable didn’t affect the work: this was a business for Ilna’s soul and hands, not her conscious mind.

Outside an attendant called, “Move along, now, do you hear me? Who’s next?” The buzz of voices was louder, some of them now female. Someone shouted back into the inn proper. The words were blurred, but Ilna could identify the cook from her angry tone.

She rose again to her feet, certain that the pattern was complete though she couldn’t see it. As she reached for the door, Alecto whispered hoarsely through the crack, “There’s a flunky coming this way. The fat pustule of a stablemaster was talking to him!”

Ilna stepped back into the yard. She glanced at the rough straw mat in her hand, then showed it to the wild girl.

“North and then northwest,” Alecto said. Her face wrinkled in a thunderous frown.

“How did you do this?” she demanded. “I can see the directions in it, but there’s nothing here really!”

“Hush,” said Ilna curtly.

The fat stablemaster had worked his way back through the crowd with a clerk and two soldiers in tow. “There’s the other one!” he said to the clerk. “She was trying to hide in the stables!”

Under the gate arch, the inn’s residents were giving their names to clerks while the priestess looked on. She pointed to the innkeeper, come from the main building in a nightshirt and cap. “I know Master Reddick by sight,” she said. “Stamp him and then the ones he can vouch for.”

“I went to get my outer tunic,” Ilna said coldly, her eyes on the clerk as if the stablemaster were beneath her notice. “We have nothing to hide.”

“Don’t you?” the clerk sneered. “That’s for me to decide, I think. Now, who are you?”

In his left hand was a notebook made of four thin leaves of birchwood bound with leather straps. The ink-filled tip of a cow horn dangled from a hook in his tunic collar, and he held a short quill between his right thumb and forefinger.

“My name’s Ilna,” Ilna said. She tossed the straw back into the stable behind her; it had served its purpose, now that she’d read its message. “My kinswoman here is Alecto. We’re from Barca’s Hamlet.”

The soldiers watched Alecto with more than causal interest. One of them shifted his left arm slightly, as if ready to throw his small, round shield in the way of any attack the wild girl made.

“Barca’s Hamlet?” the clerk repeated. “I never heard of the place.”

Ilna shrugged. The only thing she’d feared was that the fellow somehow had heard of Barca’s Hamlet—and therefore knew it was on Haft.

“It’s north and west of here,” she said. “We came to Donelle at the Mistress’ summons.”

“North and…” the stablemaster said. A deep frown furrowed his forehead. He glared at Alecto. “You come from the hills? You didn’t tell me that!”

“You might’ve known by looking at her,” the clerk said, his nose wrinkling. “They’re mostly animals up there. And not”—he turned his attention from Alecto back to Ilna—“many worship the Mistress.”

“There’s some of us,” Ilna said, making sure that her tone carried the cold contempt she really felt for this functionary. The Mistress’s service had no monopoly on his sort, jumped-up little worms who felt their slight authority made them important people. “Do you object?”

The clerk must have heard a threat in the words—and felt it might be justified. “What?” he said. “Of course not. Well, you’ll report to…”

He paused, flipping back to the outer leaf of his notebook, then realizing there wasn’t enough light to read it by without a lantern. “Well, I know there isn’t a gathering place for people from the hills. You’ll have to go the temple and ask them there. I’ll give you an escort.”

Ilna sniffed. “We can find the temple,” she said curtly. “We have on past nights, after all.”

Before the clerk could object, she added, “Come along, Alecto,” and started for the gate across the inn yard. She nodded respectfully to the soldiers as she passed. One of them nodded back, but the men kept their eyes primarily on Alecto.

Someone had lit a stick of lightwood from the oven and stuck its base through the iron harness loop of an upturned wagon tongue. The flame threw a flaring, yellowish light across the inn yard.

A line had formed in the yard’s forecourt. Clerks jotted information onto wax or wooden tablets, then divided the people into two groups. Those whose identity wasn’t sufficiently guaranteed went out into the street, sometimes pausing first to don clothing for public wear. The others joined a separate group in front of the priestess herself in the gateway.

Ilna didn’t want to call attention to herself by making eye contact, but as she neared the gate she saw the priestess touch a stamp to the cook’s forehead, then press it into a pot of ochre again. The red pigment outlined a fat-bodied web spider whose forelegs spread in an encompassing arc.

Ilna started, then lowered her eyes and sidled past. She expected the cook to snarl something at her, but the woman wore a nervous expression and didn’t seem to have noticed Ilna’s presence. She looked as tense as if the mark on her forehead was a real spider.

The waiting soldiers didn’t block the gateway, but they narrowed it considerably. Ilna waited for a pair of teamsters to go through ahead of her so that she didn’t brush the cuirass of the man to the left. He gave her a speculative look, to which she responded coldly.

The disciples of Moon Wisdom seemed a straitlaced lot; in that at least Ilna felt kinship with them. The soldiers, however, weren’t locals and apparently weren’t followers of the faith either. They reacted to Ilna in the fashion she’d come to expect from young men with weapons or some other reason to feel full of themselves.

The lantern and burning pine knot hadn’t made the inn yard very bright, but the street was darker still, especially where overhanging eaves shadowed the cobblestones. The teamsters turned to the right, the direction that Ilna wanted to go. She stepped away from the gate and paused, letting the others get farther ahead for privacy.

“Did you see that spider?” Alecto said. “Though I suppose it’s what you’d expect from people who call out the Pack.”

“I saw it,” Ilna said without emphasis. She was interested to realize that the spider symbol had affected her companion as well. There was more to it than a smudge of ochre, though she couldn’t have said what the added difference was.

In a less distant tone she went on, “I don’t think we dare stay in Donelle if they’re searching for us this way. We’ll get out through the north gate and go on, the way the pattern indicated.”

“I still don’t know how you did that,” Alecto muttered grudgingly. “All it was was a few wisps of straw, but when I looked at it I saw the road through the gates we left by last night.”

“You don’t need to know,” Ilna said. The teamsters had disappeared beyond the jutting corner of the second building down the street. She set off after them.

“Faugh!” Alecto said, glaring at the pavement as she strode along beside Ilna. “The only thing worse would be crossing the lava barrens sunwise of Hartrag’s village. The rock here doesn’t cut like lava, I’ll give it that, but half of it’s covered with slime so slick we might as well be walking on ice.”

Ilna sniffed. She almost asked what “lava barrens” were, but she decided that she didn’t want to give Alecto the satisfaction of knowing something Ilna herself didn’t. Instead she said, “If the people in the hills don’t worship this Mistress, then we can hope that they’ll hide us if the disciples come searching. Though I don’t think they’ll bother looking for us if we’re no longer in Donelle and a direct danger to them.”

That left the problem of Ilna getting her information back to Carus and the others in Valles, but she’d learned long ago to take matters one at a time. First she had to avoid being caught and disemboweled by the disciples of Moon Wisdom.

Alecto muttered, out of sorts and perhaps frightened by the twisting streets and stone buildings. In a louder voice she said, “I’ve hunted in canebrakes where the paths were straighter! How can people live like this?”

Ilna, who hated stone so much that she’d almost have preferred to walk on knives than on these streets, smiled coldly. “We’ll be outside soon,” she said.

“They closed the gates,” Alecto said, her voice sharpened by the undertone of condescension she’d heard in Ilna’s words. “We won’t be able to walk straight out like we did last night.”

“We’ll manage,” Ilna said. Her fingers were plaiting cords as she walked along. She wished she had some long straws snatched from the stable instead, because for this purpose she was working in a larger scale than she usually did. Her cords were short, no more than two fingers’ lengths apiece, so she had to weave several to manage the effect she wanted.

She smiled harshly again. As she’d said to the wild girl: they’d manage.

A family—father, mother, three children, and at the end of the line a servant—passed them going in the opposite direction. At their head was a minor temple official whose lantern lighted his own way, not that of those he was guiding. He looked irritated; they were nervous and uncertain.

Ilna glared at the guide, then found her gaze softening as she met the eyes of the woman carrying her youngest in a sling of coarse cloth. They didn’t know anyone in Donelle but one another, so they’d been roused from sleep and led off to a collection center for strangers from their district with no idea of when they’d be released. The children, already tired and whining, would be a shrieking burden long before then.

The Mistress and Her Children didn’t care. Ilna supposed she needn’t care either, since these people were part of the reason the Pack were loose to hunt in Carus’ dreams.

She and Alecto came around a bend in the street which brought them into sight of the wall. The city gate had been closed, apparently with some difficulty. A freshly attached length of hawser ran diagonally from the upper hinge of one of the leaves, lifting the opposite corner so that it didn’t sag into the ground and lock the panel open.

A dozen armed men stood in a morose circle in front of the gateway. They were militia, probably members of the night watch called out for this special duty. Close by were a trio of mercenaries, bulky fair-skinned armsmen from Blaise. There was a watchtower, but if its floors were in the same condition as the gate, Ilna understood why the guards weren’t in it.

Both groups watched the women approach. The civilians looked worried; the attitude of the soldiers was more generally speculative, though Ilna noticed the senior man lifted his broad-bladed sword a finger’s breadth in the sheath to make sure wouldn’t bind if he needed to draw it suddenly.

One of the civilians held a lantern hanging from the crossbar of a pole. The lamp had at least two wicks, but the dirty parchment lenses passed only a yellowish glow. Ilna frowned as she walked closer, wondering if there’d be as much light as she needed.

Alecto walked a half step behind. She didn’t touch the horned hilt of her dagger, but Ilna could smell murderous tension in the wild girl’s sweat. Alecto might fly into berserk slaughter at any moment, driven mostly by fear. Against so many armed men, the result was a foregone conclusion.

“What are you doing here?” said a militiaman in a bronze cuirass, his voice rising a note on every syllable. His full white moustache flared into his sideburns. “You haven’t been marked!”

Each of the militiamen had the spider stamping in the middle of his forehead, though the helmets of several of the men partly covered the symbol. The speaker wore real body armor and a number of the others had cowhide vests, which they obviously hoped would turn an edge. They looked more threatened than threatening.

“No, we haven’t,” Ilna said in a clear voice. The knotted pattern was a ball in her left palm. “Hold that lantern up, and I’ll show you why.”

The guards were all staring at her. The three professionals moved around to the side so that they had a clear view without being blocked by the militia.

Ilna nodded, gesturing them closer. When she thought everyone could see what she was doing, she reached down with her right hand and pulled the pattern open in the light.

The guards went down like lightning-struck sheep in a clatter of equipment and dropped weapons. They were stunned, not dead, but it would be hours before they regained their senses. The lantern broke on the pavement, spilling oil that blazed into soft flame.

The old man in the cuirass had fallen only to his knees. He pawed his eyes with his left hand and made choking noises. Bad vision had saved him from the pattern’s full impact.

Alecto knelt over him, her dagger out. Ilna dropped her cords and caught Alecto’s shoulder; she couldn’t reach the knife wrist. Alecto twisted and slit the old man’s throat to the spine. Blood gouted onto the cobblestones, black in the light of burning oil.

Ilna picked up the pattern and began to unknot it as a way of occupying her fingers. She was afraid of what she might do to her companion if she let her control slip.

“There’s a wicket gate in the main panel,” Ilna said coldly. “Help me get it open.”

She put the cords in her sleeve and stepped to the city gate. A door small enough that she’d have to hunch to pass through it was set in the center of the right leaf. Ilna slid the drawbolt open, but the sagging frame kept her from pushing the wicket open.

Alecto slammed the butt of a watchman’s spear into the panel. It sprang ajar. Alecto stuck the shaft into the crack and levered the door fully open.

She smiled at Ilna. “Are we going out or aren’t we?” she said.

“Yes,” said Ilna. Her mind was white with fury, but she’d spent most of her life angry, so she knew how to control the emotion. She slipped through the doorway, out of Donelle.

On the pavement behind lay the ring of guards, their eyes open. They were breathing as heavily as sleeping seals; all but the man in the bronze cuirass, whose feet had just ceased to drum the cobblestones.

Garric swung to the top of the wall and found Lord Thalemos squatting there. “Where’s the ladder down?” Thalemos cried.

A watchman with a cudgel and a whirling rattle stood calling over his shoulder to people Garric couldn’t see around the curve of the wall. Probably it was a detachment of Protectors, summoned from the guardhouse at the front of the enclosure. More Protectors were coming down the street from the other direction, their spears raised to strike.

“Jump, you fool!” Garric snarled. Thalemos goggled at him, then leaped down without looking. He’d have belly-flopped on the pavement if Toster hadn’t been there to catch him.

Garric jumped also, angry at the world and particularly at himself. He’d let his fury out at Thalemos, who was guilty of nothing worse than having lived a normal life which hadn’t fitted him for slaughter and prison breaks. Between Garric’s tone and the bloody sword in his hand, the rescued prisoner had almost broken his neck in fright.

And if that had happened, what would Tint’s death have been worth?

A javelin flackered in the air. The leading Protector, still twenty yards down the street, threw up his hands and fell backward. Prada stood on the roof of the building where the gang was hiding. He cocked another missile. The surviving Protectors ducked for shelter in doorways.

Garric followed his group across the street and into the shop. Toster half helped, half carried Thalemos. Garric tried to sheathe his sword, but the curved blade and memory of Tint’s cracking bones kept him from finding the mouth of the scabbard.

Metron was jabbering demands in his squeaky mental voice. It was with an effort of will that Garric managed not to smash the crystal between his heel and the cobblestones.

Halophus and Mersrig slammed, then barred the shop door behind Garric, the last to enter. The panel wouldn’t withstand a determined burglar, let alone a military assault.

Vascay stood at the door of the inner room, gesturing Garric through tight-faced. The wizard lay on the littered floor, his head pillowed on a rolled-up cloak. Yellow lamplight helped turn Metron’s complexion sallow, but Garric had seen corpses laid out for burial with more apparent life in them.

“Put the amulet on my chest!” Metron’s voice said. “Quickly, now!”

Garric slipped off the silver chain and set it with the crystal on Metron’s chest. He was surprised at how much lighter he felt; the amulet’s psychic weight was greater than he’d realized.

The tiny figure of light within the crystal vanished. The wizard’s lungs swelled. He lurched upright, snorting like a man saved from drowning. Looking around wildly, he shouted, “Lord Thalemos! Is Lord Thalemos all right?”

Heavy objects hammered the shop door. Wood splintered, followed by a scream.

“Who’s next?” Hame cried in a high voice. “Who else wants to die for the Intercessor?”

“He’s all right,” Vascay snarled, “but he won’t be long if we don’t get out of here. Come on! You swore you could get us free!”

“Yes, but bring him here,” Metron said, crossing his legs shakily. He’d drawn a circle of power on the grimy floor before going into the trance. Now he moved the oil lamp into the center of the figure and took the athame from under his sash.

Garric started for the main room. Vascay waved him back. “Stay with this one,” he said. “I’ll send the boy in.”

Over his shoulder, he muttered, “I’ve seen enough wizardry for the night—and for a lifetime!”

Metron ignored him. He held the sapphire ring between his left thumb and forefinger, then dipped the athame in his other hand over the words written about the circle.

“Rexi,” he chanted. “Thorexi hipporexi…”

The candle guttered—but not, as Garric first thought, because the wizard’s movements were fanning it. The flame pinched in and expanded the way ale spurts from a full barrel, sucking the bunghole closed and reopening rhythmically. The light grew brighter but took on the chill red tinge of wizardry.

“Maskelo,” said Metron. “Maskelon maskelouphron.”

Thalemos came into the room, wearing a more settled expression than Garric had previously seen on his face. The boy had been snatched from his cell and carried through a chaos that would’ve disconcerted anybody facing it cold; no wonder he’d seemed dazed most of the time. Now that Garric looked back on the events of the night, he marveled at the thought he’d really been involved in that.

“You wanted me, sir?” Thalemos asked Garric.

Garric hooked his thumb at Metron. “He did,” he said. “I think he just wanted to be sure you were safe.”

“Besro, uphro, bolbeoch!” Metron said. He held out the ring in his left hand so that the jewel glittered in the wizardlight.

There’d been a pause in the noise from the front room. Now there was a crash that must have been the main shutter giving way, followed instantly by the shriek of steel on steel. A man cried out on a rising note.

Garric turned and started forward. His sword was still in his hand.

“Bring them here!” Metron shouted hoarsely. “I’ve opened the way, but we’ve got to leave quickly.

Garric looked over his shoulder. The wizard was trying to get to his feet, still holding up the ring so the candleflame fell on it. The sapphire’s facets scattered light in an oval of bright points against the plaster wall. For a moment Garric thought he was looking at the starry sky; then the pattern blurred into an outrushing void.

“I’ll get them!” he said. He stepped into the main room.

The bandits hunched, facing the front wall of the shop. Echeon’s men had battered through the center of the shutter, and the dovetailed vertical slats to either side slanted loose. Lanternlight from the street silhouetted the bandits and the men trying to fight their way in.

The Protectors were in half-armor, but the shop’s lintel had tripped several of them. Their bodies lay in the opening, a fresh barrier for their fellows, and Mersrig had snatched up one of the fallen shields.

“Metron’s got the way open!” Garric shouted.

A Protector gave wordless cry and rushed the opening, his shield held before him at arm’s length. Toster met the charge, swinging his axe sideways to clear the low ceiling. The edge split the round of laminated wood with a crash, staggering the Protector. Two spearpoints and Hame’s sword bit the man’s knee and lower legs, bringing him down in screaming agony. His helmet rolled off; Ademos stabbed him through the back of his neck. None of his fellows had followed.

“The way’s open!” Garric repeated. “Head for the back room! I’ll hold them off!”

He didn’t know why he’d said that, not consciously at any rate; it just didn’t cross his mind that he wouldn’t be the rear guard in this situation. The bandits were all familiar with weapons, but these tight quarters were sword territory. Garric was the only trained swordsmen among the Brethren…and besides, he was Prince Garric of Haft, descendent of Carus, the greatest ruler and man-of-war in the Old Kingdom.

A dozen Brethren looked at Garric, then scrambled toward Metron in the other chamber. They were the men on the fringes of the fight. There hadn’t been room enough for the whole band in the opening. The Brethren had sorted themselves into those who wanted to face the first rush of Echeon’s minions, and those who preferred someone else take that duty.

The others didn’t retreat. Their blood was up, and they knew well that turning their backs now was likely to signal their own slaughter. The Protectors were massing in the street, in great numbers and under the control of officers who’d had time to assess the situation. Overhead, swords hacked at the roofing. Prada had barred the trapdoor when he came back down, but the tiles wouldn’t last long under determined assault.

One-handed, Garric tugged the shield from a dead Protector’s grip, tossed it up, and caught it by the paired handles in the center. It was a buckler, not a target that would’ve been strapped to the man’s arm.

“Get into the back room!” Garric shouted. “Quickly, for the Lady’s sake!”

“Stand clear!” said Vascay. “I’m going to throw out the last of the cave dust! That’ll kill everybody in the street, and we can get away!”

“What!” shrieked Halophus. “Are you crazy?”

Vascay flung a bag overarm. The Brethren who faced the opening now scrambled back in panic. They knew how indiscriminately dangerous the spores were.

The Protectors stood in a double rank, their small shields held forward. As an officer shouted an order, the bag caught the upper edge of a shield and burst in a spray of dust. The men pushed away, screaming in fearful agony. Their serried order disintegrated as though a volcano had just erupted in their midst.

“Go, boy!” Vascay said, clapping Garric on the shoulder. “They’ll figure out it was plaster fallen from the ceiling soon enough, and I don’t want to be around when they do!”

Only three of the Brethren remained in the side chamber with Thalemos and Metron when Garric followed Vascay through the doorway. Toster stood beside the roiling blur where the wall had been, his face screwed up in terror. He started toward the vortex, then flinched back. His axe trembled; the head and upper helve were slick with Protectors’ brains.

“Get through or get out of the way!” Metron screamed. “How long do you think I can hold this?”

Garric tossed down the shield he’d appropriated and sheathed his sword without difficulty. He stepped in front of Toster and backed the big man away, keeping his own body between Toster and the wizard-door.

With a hand behind his back, Garric gestured the other bandits to go. To Toster he said, “You saved my life when I came back over the wall, Toster. I was done up from what happened inside. Without you to take care of Thalemos for me, they’d have had me there in the street.”

Prada and Mersrig passed through the vortex, each pausing for a moment before jumping in. The void flashed with rose, then azure, wizardlight as the men vanished.

“Lord Thalemos!” Vascay said. “You’re next! Except for you we could’ve stayed where we belonged.”

“I’m afraid,” Toster whimpered. “I won’t do it! I won’t do it!”

Thalemos shot Garric a look of uncertainty. Garric waved him fiercely on, afraid to turn away from Toster. Vascay grasped Thalemos by the waistband and the nape of the neck. He half walked, half threw the youth into the vortex ahead of his own entry.

Metron stood and stumbled toward the wall. When the sapphire no longer winked in the candlelight, the portal began to shrink. The wizard disappeared into it with the usual double flash. It continued shrinking.

Toster wore a short cape. Garric twisted the garment, then raised its cowl to blind the big man the way he’d have concealed fire from a terrified horse.

“Come on, Toster!” he shouted, holding the man by the left wrist and shoulder. “Run! With me!”

They lumbered forward, Toster sobbing like a child behind the thick wool. There was still a chance….

“Now duck!” Garric cried, forcing down the big man’s head at the same time he lowered his own. “And jump!”

It was like diving through a skin of ice over the millpond, hard and cutting and colder than life could bear. Garric tried to scream, but his flesh was a mist of atoms exploding across time and space. He had no being—

With a shuddering haste Garric was back in his body: gasping, lying on soft dirt in a forest like none he’d ever seen. He still held Toster. Around them were the other members of the band. Some—those who’d passed through early in the process—stood and looked nervously to their weapons.

Metron lay on his back. His expression was agonized, his eyes screwed shut. The ring was on his left middle finger. Without opening his eyes, he raised his hand so that the sapphire lay against the middle of his forehead. His right hand groped on his chest, then closed on the crystal amulet.

Vascay untangled himself from Lord Thalemos. Both men appeared to be all right, at least as much so as Garric himself was.

Sighing, Garric shoved himself onto his knees, then hunched upright. He could feel every part of himself; not just a finger, say, but every atom of skin and flesh and bone that formed each finger.

The pieces had been separate. Now they were joined again, were him again; but in the future Garric would never be able to forget their individual existences.

He looked around. The ground was mostly bare, but arching upward around him were clumps of flat-trunked green vegetation that hid most of the sky.

Something croaked. It sounded like a frog the size of an ox.

“You all right, Gar?” Vascay said. He still had one of his javelins. He used it butt-down as a cane as he got to his feet.

“Yeah,” Garric said. He gestured at the forest. “Vascay, these aren’t trees. It’s grass. We’re in a field of grass.”

Vascay nodded agreeably, eyeing the landscape as he wiped loam from his javelin’s butt spike. “Could be,” he said. “Could be. What I’m happiest to see now is that it’s not grass full of Protectors, eh?”

Thalemos walked toward Garric and stopped a polite double pace away with his hands crossed behind him, waiting to be acknowledged. Vascay had turned his attention to the long cut along Hame’s side.

“Lord Thalemos?” Garric said. “You want something of me?”

All the bandits were up, apparently unharmed by their passage to this place. Toster was using the edge of a giant grassblade to clean his axe. He saw Garric and gave him a shamefaced grin.

Toster had nothing to be ashamed of. Telling him so would only make his embarrassment worse, though.

“Yes, I’m Thalemos bor-Laminol,” the youth said. “Actually, what I wanted to do, sir, is introduce myself. And thank you for saving my life.”

He smiled shyly, and added, “Saving my life several times that I know of.”

“I’m Garric or-Reise,” Garric said. “Or you can call me Gar, as the Brethren do.”

He looked away as though to survey their surroundings. Thalemos as a person made quite a decent impression. The trouble was that when Garric looked closely at the youth, he saw instead Tint’s terror-contorted face as she leaped toward the snake that would kill her.

“I, ah…” Thalemos said. “Master Garric, I won’t keep you from your duties but, ah, I’m very grateful.”

In a rush, he added, “Metron wanted me to go through the portal immediately. I refused to go until you were ready, sir.”

Garric met the youth’s eyes and managed to smile. “Because you thought Metron might not bother waiting for the rest of us if you were clear?” he said. “I’m glad that possibility occurred to you, milord. And that you chose to act on it.”

The strange forest was alive with sounds, none of which proceeded from an obvious source. Most of the notes were very low, more in the order of trembles felt through the ground than ordinary noises.

Vascay came over to Garric and Thalemos. He nodded toward Metron, the only member of the group still on the ground, and said to both men, “Is he all right?”

With a quirked smile he added to Thalemos, “And if he’s not, do you know what we do next?”

“He’ll come around, I guess,” Garric said. Metron hadn’t moved from where he lay initially, but he’d clearly relaxed. “The art—wizardry—takes a lot out of people.”

He stretched mightily, noticing kinks in muscles where he hadn’t expected them. He added, “So do other things, of course. I’ll be feeling this day’s work tomorrow.”

Garric grinned and—as King Carus would have—added, “Assuming I’m feeling anything tomorrow, of course.”

A sound like that of a cicada, immensely magnified, came from the side where the giant grass gave over to oak-thick briars reaching immeasurably skyward. Metron rose to one elbow, looking in that direction. Garric touched the hilt of his sword, remembering that he hadn’t sharpened the blade after the hard service it’d seen carving through the serpent’s scales and spine.

The call sounded again, measurably closer. The bandits bunched instinctively, readying their weapons. “Chief, something’s coming!” Ademos said.

“Form a line between me and Gar,” Vascay said calmly. “Stay close but don’t get in each other’s way. Hame, you watch our back. This may all be a trick.”

He walked to the side, placing himself on the projected left end. Garric drew his sword and strode to a spot ten or a dozen double paces to the chief’s right. One of the grassblades, so large that Garric’s spread arms would barely span it, rose behind him. He supposed it’d protect his back, though if the animals living in this place were on a scale with the vegetation…

The call sounded a third time. A creature holding a tube with a plunger like an elongated butter churn stepped into sight twenty feet from Garric. It was six-limbed and chitinous, but it stood upright like a short man. It stopped when it saw the humans. Toster raised his axe in both hands and stepped forward.

“No!” cried Metron. “These are our allies. They’ll guide and protect us for the rest of the way.”

Two more of the creatures minced out of the forest to join the first. These wore gorgets of beaten gold. They didn’t speak. Could they speak?

“Wizard, what are you playing at?” Vascay shouted. “Do you think I don’t recognize them? They’re the Archai! They’re the monsters that brought down the New Kingdom after Prince Garric died on Tisamur!”

“Yes, they’re the Archai,” Metron said, walking forward shakily. “But that’s all in the past, Master Vascay. They’re with us against the Intercessor, now. We can’t succeed without their help.”

Garric looked from the wizard to the gang’s chieftain. For the moment he felt nothing, nothing.

He couldn’t have died on Tisamur: he’d never been on Tisamur in his life. But…

“Against the Intercessor?” Vascay said, stalking toward the wizard in the center of the line. His peg dug into the soft ground, causing him to limp. “Of course they’re against the Intercessor, you fool! It was the Intercessor that kept the Archai from sweeping over Laut as they did all other islands of the kingdom! What are you thinking of?”

“That was a thousand years ago,” Metron said, facing Vascay but not raising his voice. “That was a different age, Master Vascay. We have the future of Laut and of the Isles to consider now. And our own future as well.”

He made a spreading gesture. The sapphire winked on his middle finger. “How do you propose to get out of this place? For myself, I know of no way save through the Archai’s help…and even then it will be hard, and very dangerous.”

The Archa with the tube held it high with one of his middle arms, balancing the upper portion between the saw-edged top limbs. The creatures didn’t carry weapons, but their limbs alone were designed to kill.

He—She? It?—jerked down on the plunger. The tube vibrated another raucous shriek. Prada cocked a javelin, in reflex rather than as a conscious threat. Vascay touched the man to calm him.

“Well, Master Vascay?” Metron said, letting a sneer of superiority creep into his tone. “What shall it be?”

“Chief?” said Hame. Vascay looked at him.

“It wasn’t these bugs as killed my wife,” Hame said. “It was Protectors did that.”

Vascay swore into the empty forest, quietly but with a tone and viciousness that Garric hadn’t expected to hear from that man’s lips. He looked at Metron again.

“All right,” Vascay said resignedly. “They’re our allies. Now what?”

“It’s already in hand, dear man,” the wizard said unctuously. “Our transportation is coming now.”

“Chief?” Halophus called. “The ground’s shaking!”

“It’s all right!” Metron said. “This is all planned!”

“By the Lady!” said Thalemos, standing near Garric but a comfortable distance behind and to the left. Since the youth didn’t have a weapon, he properly kept back from the line of armed men. “What is that monster?”

It was twenty feet high and walked on more many-jointed legs than Garric could see or imagine. Most of the creature’s squirming body was still hidden in the forest when the blunt head halted behind the trio of Archai; it must be hundreds of yards long. Two immense, multifaceted eyes covered most of the front; the mouth parts seemed small for the great body. A net of gold chain gleamed like a saddle blanket on the upper surface.

“It’s a millipede,” Garric said. He was glad to have Thalemos to answer; otherwise, he’d have been talking to himself, because he needed to get the words out. “That’s all it is, a big millipede. They don’t bite or sting, they’re harmless.”

The bandits edged closer together in the giant creature’s presence. They weren’t seeking so much protection as feeling the need of companionship in the face of the unimaginable. Mersrig had one of the Protectors’ sturdy spears. He clutched it in both hands and seemed to be steeling himself for a rush.

Garric strode forward, putting himself in front of the party. He could smell the millipede, now; the millipede or the Archai themselves. There was a slight astringency, an acid odor similar to that of sour wine.

“It won’t hurt us!” Garric said to the Brethren. “They eat compost, that’s all!”

It could step on them, of course; that would be as lethal as being in a collapsing building. But there were many ways a man could die….

There were more Archai on the millipede’s back, looking down over the smooth black curve of the armored segments. Their heads were triangular and expressionless.

Garric turned to the wizard. “What do we do now, Master Metron?” he asked.

“Do?” said Metron. “Why, mount our steed, of course, my boy. Under my guidance and protection, it will carry us to our destination.”

One of the Archai on the millipede’s back let down a ladder with center-hung wooden rungs on a chain of gold links. It clanged and clattered against the calcified segments of the creature’s shell.

Toster grabbed a rung, then looked back at Vascay. “Yes, go on!” the chief said. “What choice do we have?”

Toster started climbing. Another man took the ladder behind him; the whole band drifted into line to follow. The wizard smirked.

“Master Metron?” Garric said, smiling and speaking in a voice that only Thalemos was close enough to overhear.

“Yes, my boy?” Metron said.

“I’m not your boy, Master Metron,” Garric said, still wearing the deceptive smile. “I may be your ally, but I’m not your friend. And I’d like you to keep one thing in mind as we proceed.”

The wizard’s expression hardened. “Yes?” he said.

“People have died tonight over this business,” Garric said. “Some of them were people I liked a lot more than I do you. And if I ever decide that you’re sneering at my friends, either the dead ones or the living—I’ll kill you. Whatever that does to anybody’s plans. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Metron curtly.

“That’s good…” said Garric with a smile. His body was trembling with emotions and memories. “Because part of me would really regret it afterward. But it would be afterward, you see.”

He gestured to the ladder. Vascay, the last of the Brethren, was climbing it. “Go on up, Master Metron. Thalemos and I will follow.”

From the look on Metron’s face as he turned away, he did finally understand.

Cashel cleared his throat. It was hard for him to think properly with the little brown people crying, “Master!” and “Great lord!”

Tilphosa rested a hand on his biceps, looking for reassurance. This wasn’t a bad place she and Cashel were in, but it sure was confusing.

“I wish you’d stand straight and just talk to us!” Cashel said. The little people jumped up and stared like bunnies startled in the garden. Cashel supposed he’d spoken louder than maybe he’d needed to. He’d startled Tilphosa too, though she patted him and put her hand back on his arm just as quick.

“Lord?” the oldest of the little fellows said questioningly. Cashel had expected some of the people to fuss over the man he’d saved from the tree, but nobody seemed interested in him. He was sitting up, but his eyes didn’t focus yet.

“My name’s Cashel,” Cashel said. “Just call me that. And this is Tilphosa—”

He frowned and looked at the girl. “Ah?” he said. “Lady…?”

“Just Tilphosa,” she said, speaking directly to the little people. “And how are we to address you, sir?”

Of course Tilphosa was used to this sort of thing, meeting people and taking charge. It wasn’t something Cashel had ever had to learn about.

He smiled. Everybody in the borough knew who to turn to get their sheep settled down, though.

“We’re the Helpers, great lady,” the old man said. “My name is Twenty-second. May we feast you at our village, great lord and lady?”

Cashel’s belly rumbled at mention of food. The berries had been a long while ago. From what he’d seen in the village he didn’t guess there was a chance of bread and cheese, let alone meat, but most anything would go down a treat right now.

He looked at Tilphosa, expecting her to speak. She nodded crisply to him, passing back control: this was his job.

“Sure, we’d like that,” Cashel said to Twenty-second. He pointed. “Ah, what’s his name? The fellow who was being eaten.”

“He was Fourteenth,” Twenty-second said. “Come, great lord and lady, let us feast!”

The whole troupe fluttered around Cashel and Tilphosa, chattering among themselves. Their voices too high-pitched for Cashel to make out the words—if there were words, not just a sort of birdlike chirping.

Girls no taller than Cashel’s waist took his hands. Three of them walked on either side, guiding him in the direction of the village. He held the staff crosswise in front of him while the girls skipped along and behind it like a train of draft animals hitched to a bar.

He glanced over his shoulder. Tilphosa was being conducted in the same fashion, though in her case by a bevy of young males. The rest of the Helpers spread to either side in a loose line. A few adults had run on ahead, vanishing into the immaculate plantings like deer in the forest.

“I’m hungry,” Tilphosa called when he caught her eye. “Even if it isn’t cooked food.”

Cashel grinned in answer, but he was frowning again when he faced the front. He could just make out Fourteenth, still where Cashel had flung him clear. He hadn’t moved since he sat up. The rest of the tribe had left him there alone.

Twenty-second walked a few paces to the right, smiling when Cashel looked over to him. “Lord?” the old man said.

Cashel almost asked about Fourteenth, but said instead, “Do you get many visitors here, Master Twenty-second?”

“No, no,” Twenty-second replied. “You’re the first one in—”

He turned up his palms in uncertainty. “I don’t know how long,” he said. “My father spoke of visitors, but whether he saw them or his own father did and told the tale, I don’t know.”

Cashel looked at the little man and looked up at the sun, now nearing zenith. The days and nights here seemed to be the usual length. Even if the years also were the same as Cashel was used to, though, these Helpers might not live as long as folks did—the lucky ones did, anyway—back home. It explained why they were making such a big thing about him and Tilphosa arriving, though.

The girls led Cashel in a gently weaving path. At first he thought it was high spirits and one girl or another tugging him more firmly than the girls on the other side. A shepherd learns to note small changes in the land, because sheep do. After a little while, Cashel realized that the girls were taking him by a path that led through the least amount of vegetation.

The Helpers themselves seemed not to trouble even the thickest foliage. Twenty-second walked through a stand of virgin’s bower, but the white starry flowers were scarcely waving when the old man reached the outcrop beyond.

Cashel glanced back at Tilphosa. He’d have told her what he’d just figured out, but that might embarrass the Helpers. He decided to watch his own feet as much as he could and whisper to Tilphosa when they were sitting down.

They reached the village again. Quite a number of the tribefolk—a double handful, it looked like—were already at work in the central courtyard and carrying food from the drying racks. Others appeared from the forest, bearing handfuls of fresh fruit and nuts.

The Helpers didn’t seem to make baskets any more than they wore clothing. Cashel thought about squirrels again; but they weren’t, they were people who were just smaller than the folks in the borough.

The Helpers were too nice to be squirrels. From what Cashel’d seen so far, they were also too nice to be most of the people he’d met thus far in his lifetime. Except for the way they’d ignored Fourteenth after Cashel freed him, and there might be more going on there than an outsider could see.

The girls released Cashel at the passage between the huts. Twenty-second outstretched his hand as a guide without quite touching Cashel and led him into the courtyard.

“Ah, where should we sit?” Cashel asked, checking over his shoulder to make sure Tilphosa was with him.

“Anywhere you please, lord and lady,” Twenty-second said with a sweep of his arm. “Wherever you are is the place of honor. Will you have juice or water to refresh you before the meal?”

“Ah, I guess water,” Cashel said. He gestured Tilphosa to sit—on bare dirt, but they’d slept on nothing better the night before.

She sat, murmuring, “Water for me as well, thank you,” to the older woman who’d entered behind her.

More Helpers were bustling into the courtyard, some carrying food and drink while others merely seated themselves in the open area. Cashel remained standing for a moment, his back to a hut, and he watched. Things didn’t seem right; meaning that they didn’t seem like anyplace he’d been before, not that there was anything wrong exactly about it.

The Helpers wouldn’t hurt a fly, he thought. And indeed, maybe they wouldn’t; but Cashel hadn’t seen any flies or mice or any other animals around since he got up this morning.

Twenty-second took a container from a younger member of the tribe. Instead of offering it directly to Cashel, he pointedly drank from it himself and only then held it out.

Cashel felt his skin go hot; he hadn’t realized his suspicions were so obvious to his hosts. He took the cup in his left hand and drank—

Cautiously at first: he might be embarrassed at his suspicions, but he was still suspicious. There was nothing but water in the cup, cool but really too flat to do more than cut the dust.

The container was kind of interesting, though. It wasn’t pottery, just sun-dried clay. Sap or gum coated the inside to seal it the way Reise tarred the leathern jacks he used for crowds during the Sheep Fair. Unlike tar, this coating didn’t flavor the drink. It was soft enough to dent with a thumbnail, but it rose back to a smooth surface afterward.

Tilphosa was being served from a similar cup—and again, the old woman beside her drank first. Tilphosa looked up at Cashel, her blank expression hiding surprise. Cashel squatted beside her, propping his staff against the hut where he could reach it easily if he had to.

The Helpers knelt rather than sitting—like Tilphosa—or squatting. Twenty-second dropped into place on Cashel’s other side. Immediately a younger Helper offered the apparent chief several red apples that dwarfed his outspread small hands.

“An apple, lord?” Twenty-second said, taking a delicate bite out of one and holding it out to Cashel.

“Thanks, but I’ll have a whole one,” Cashel said, taking an apple directly from the servitor. It was pleasantly tart, tasting something like the green-ripening fruit that peddlers occasionally packed into Barca’s Hamlet from orchards in the south of the island.

Cashel ate the apple down to the core and paused, wondering what to do. At home he’d have tossed it onto a midden or, if he were with the sheep, seen if he could get it into the sea. A servant plucked the core from his fingers before he was aware of her presence and disappeared with it.

The meal continued, fruits alternating with nuts. Many of the dishes were new to Cashel, but they were mostly good and often excellent. Twenty-second used a sharp stone to bore through the shell of a head-sized nut, drank from the opening, and then gave it to Cashel. The milky contents had flavor that the plain water lacked; Cashel drank the nut empty and was pleased to have more when the old man opened another.

Cashel hadn’t expected this food to really fill him, but the nuts surprised him by doing a pretty good job of replacing the bread and cheese he was used to. A servant used a rock to break open the big nut after Cashel had drained it; the meat inside was solid and crunchy, with the same pleasant flavor as the milk.

And the food—not dishes, except the tumblers for water and the juices Cashel now drank cheerfully—kept coming. Each one was different; and each time Twenty-second politely insisted on taking a bite or a sip before the remainder was offered to Cashel.

The older female beside Tilphosa—her name was Seventeenth, if Cashel had heard right—tasted the girl’s food also. It wasn’t necessary anymore, but Cashel decided it was better just to ignore the business than to make a fuss that probably wouldn’t change anything. For all their small size and friendliness, the Helpers were about as stubborn as the nanny goat Squinty Offot used to lead his sheep.

“Lord Cashel?” Twenty-second asked, as Cashel lowered a tumbler of sparkling red juice that he hadn’t been able to drain. “Would you and the great lady care to bathe now that you’ve eaten? You’ve been travelling far, I can see.”

Cashel was glad that his suntan hid the blush that would’ve returned to his face. “I can see…” the old man had said, but he’d probably meant, “smell.” Ordinarily back home Cashel had ended his workday by scrubbing off, at least in any weather that didn’t mean he had to break ice in the millpond first. He hadn’t been able to do that since—well, since he’d dragged Tilphosa out of the surf.

“Down at the creek, you mean?” Cashel said. Down by that tree, was what he was thinking. It’d be a chance to see how things were going with Fourteenth, not that it was exactly his business….

“Oh, no, we have a bath hut here,” the old man said. He pointed to the hut on the left side of the passage into the courtyard. It was bigger than the others, but not enough bigger to remark on.

“If you’d like?” Twenty-second said. “Or perhaps your great lady would prefer to be bathed first? There isn’t room enough for both of you together, I’m afraid. You’re so much…so different from us Helpers.”

Cashel rubbed his eyes as he thought. Sunlight and a full stomach were making him sleepy. It sure would be nice….

“Tilphosa?” he said. “They’re offering us baths in the hut there. Would you like…?”

“Steam baths?” Tilphosa said, frowning. “But that can’t be, can it?”

She pursed her lips. “Why don’t you go ahead, Cashel?” she said after consideration. “Then I’ll decide.”

“Right,” said Cashel, rising with a studied control that concealed how full and stiff he was feeling. He had a flash of dizziness before the blood caught up to his brain, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Master Twenty-second, I’d be pleased to accept.”

The girls who’d escorted Cashel to the village clustered around him again. They were childlike; but not children, very definitely young women. Cashel looked at them, then to the chief, and said, “Look, sir, are they the bath attendants? Because I’d rather—”

“Of course, Lord Cashel,” Twenty-second said. He made what seemed an idle gesture, but at once the girls disappeared into the crowd and the youths who’d guided Tilphosa stood in their place. Two of them took Cashel’s hands.

“Wait,” said Twenty-second. He gestured with both hands, palms up, to Cashel’s ironbound quarterstaff leaning against the hut behind him.

Cashel snatched it, feeling calmer for the touch of the smooth hickory. It was a piece of his past, of his home. Life had been hard when he grew up an orphan in Barca’s Hamlet, but it was a life he knew. Almost nothing Cashel had seen since leaving home had been familiar, and even when it was good it made him uncomfortable inside. It was all confusing, whether people called him Lord Cashel and treated him like a king or when man-sized insects tried to cut him down….

The Helpers walked Cashel straight across the courtyard. Little people who’d been kneeling to eat moments before slipped out of the way without seeming to move. They had a marvelous grace, no matter what they were doing.

Two of the youths entered the hut ahead of Cashel. He squatted, peering inside. The floor had been slightly hollowed out, and the earthen surface was sealed with the same smooth gum as the drink tumblers had been. The door was low, but Cashel could fit on his hands and knees.

“Lord?” said one of the youths.

Cashel leaned his staff beside the hut’s door, then hunched forward and crawled through the doorway. The truth was, even bare-handed he’d be willing to match his lone strength against all the little folk who lived in this village. Besides, Cashel’s conscious mind couldn’t imagine the Helpers being any more hostile than a brood of ducklings.

A tingly, vegetable scent clung to the hut’s interior. Little hands loosened Cashel’s sash and drew first it, then his tunic, away from him.

The Helpers twittered cheerfully as they worked. One youth measured Cashel’s biceps with his fingers, and giggled. “So big, so very strong!”

“Lie down please, Lord Cashel,” said a Helper already inside the hut. Cashel obeyed; the floor was slickly cool, pleasant after the morning of direct sun. His eyes adapted easily. Light filtered in through spaces in the flimsy roof as well as by the open door.

Cashel lay on his stomach, his head toward the door and his left cheek cradled on his crossed arms. More Helpers entered the hut, then one still outside passed in a bowl of sun-warmed water and a number of long gourds.

One youth opened the gourds with what looked like a simple twist of the dried stem. They burst outward into balls that looked more like ripe dandelions than they did the loofas Cashel was familiar with. The vegetable scent puffed out fresh and strong as each gourd opened.

A youth sprinkled water on Cashel’s back and limbs. The rest of them, four or five at least, began rubbing him down with the gourds. The pods’ touch was as warm and soft as raw fleece, but they made Cashel’s skin tingle pleasantly.

A Helper worked his gourd over Cashel’s neck and shoulders. The touch of sunburn he’d gotten sitting in the sun vanished as if he’d been daubed with lanolin.

Cashel thought about spending a few more days in the village. He and Tilphosa had only the general goal of getting back to their separate homes, not a hard deadline, but…

Though Cashel didn’t know of a deadline, there might still be one; this wasn’t the place either he or Tilphosa was meant to be. And despite the Helpers’ generosity, Cashel knew well how slim the difference between eating through the winter and starving could be in a rural village. Tilphosa ate more than any of the Helpers did, and Cashel ate as much as a whole hutful of the little people. It wouldn’t be right to stay even for a few days.

It was nice to think of relaxing for a longer period, though, and the people were so—

Tilphosa shouted.

Cashel lurched to his feet. His head smashed through the hut’s roof. He tried to raise his hands to fling away the frame of dried branches, but his arms didn’t work. They felt cold—all his muscles felt cold.

Cashel’s senses were clear, but he couldn’t seem to move. The youths around him in the hut jabbered excitedly. A score of Helpers had brought down Tilphosa and were trussing her with Cashel’s own sash torn into strips.

He tried to take a step forward. If he could walk, maybe he could work off the effect of the poison and—

He couldn’t walk. He felt himself falling. He couldn’t even put his hands out to take his weight, though the impact didn’t hurt his numbed body either. “Duzi!” he would have cried, but his throat froze about the word.

Helpers gathered around Cashel in a circle. Twenty-second chirped quick orders. Cashel saw many tiny hands reach down to grasp him, though he couldn’t feel their touch. His body swayed upward, lifted on the massed strength of most of the village.

The youths who’d been bathing him walked in front of the procession; their arms dangled loosely at their sides. The poison had been in the gourds, then. He supposed it’d wear off in time.

Cashel met Tilphosa’s eyes as his body left the courtyard on scores of tiny feet. She’d been bound but not gagged. “I’ll pray to the Mistress for you, Cashel,” she called.

Cashel couldn’t speak in reply, but there wasn’t much to say anyway. It wouldn’t have helped to tell Tilphosa to save her prayers for herself, because he figured she was going to need them shortly.

The poison would wear off in time, but Cashel wasn’t going to have much time. The Helpers, the whole village of them together, were carrying him down to the man-eating tree.

He was about to replace Fourteenth as the tree’s meal.