Aftermath

INHERITOR by David Drake

"You need a dagger, caravan master," said the stranger to Samlor hi) Samt as he began to bring a weapon slowly out from under his cloak.

The man hadn't spoken loudly, but there were key words which rang in the air of the Vulgar Unicorn. Weapon words were almost as sure a way to get attention in this bar as the mention of money. Conversation stopped or dropped into a lower key; eyes shifted over beer mugs and dice cups.

Samlor was already in the state of tension which gripped any sane man when he walked into this bar in the heart of Sanctuary's Maze district. More than the word "dagger" shocked him now, so that his right hand slipped to the brass pommel and hilt-of nondescript hardwood, plain and serviceable like the man who carried it-of the long fighting knife in his belt sheath.

At the same time, Samlor's left arm swept behind him to locate and hold his seven-year-old niece Star. She was with him in this place because there was no place in the world safer for her than beside her mother's brother ... which was almost another way of saying that there was no safety at all in this life.

Almost, because for forty-three years, Samlor hil Samt had managed to do what he thought he had to do, be damned to the price he paid or the cost to whatever stood between him and duty.

The stranger shouldn't have called him "caravan master." That's what he was, what he had been ever since he had determined to lift his family from poverty, despite the scorn all his kin heaped on him for dishonoring Ordonian nobility by going into trade. But no one in Sanctuary should have recognized Samlor; and if they did, he and Star were in trouble much deeper than the general miasma of danger permeating this place. There were people in Sanctuary who actively wished Samlor dead. That was unusual; not because he'd lived a life free from deadly enemies, but because fate or the Cirdonian caravan master himself had carried off most of those direct threats already.

When he bedded his camels at night on the trail, Samlor walked the circuit of the laager prodding crevices and holes with a cornel-wood staff flexible enough to reach an arm's length down a circuitous burrow.

If there were a hiss or an angry jarring of fangs on the staff, he either blocked the hole or, as the mood struck him, teased the snake into the open to be finished with a whip-swift flick of the staff. That was the only way to prevent beasts and men from being bitten when they rolled in their sleep onto vipers sheltering against mammalian warmth.

The caravan routes were a hard school, but applying the lessons he learned there to human enemies had kept Samlor alive longer than would otherwise have been the case.

Sanctuary, though, was a problem better avoided than solved-and insoluble besides. Samlor had no intention of seeing and smelling the foulness of this place ever again, until the messenger arrived with the letter from Samlane.

It could have been a forgery, though the Cirdonian script on the strip of bark-pulp paper was illegible until it had been wound onto a message staff of the precise length and diameter of the ones Samlor's family had adopted when they were ennobled seventeen generations before. But the hand was right; the message had the right aura of terse presumption that Samlor would do his sister's will in this matter ...

And the paper was browned enough with age, despite having been locked in a banker's strong room, that the document might well have been written before Samlane died with her brother's knife through her belly and through the thing she carried in her womb.

Samlor couldn't imagine what inheritance could be worth the risk of bringing Star back to Sanctuary, but his sister had been foolishly destruc- tive only of herself. If the legacy which would come to Star at age seven were that important, then it was Samlor's duty as the child's uncle to see that she received it.

It was his duty as the father as well, but that was something he thought about only when he awakened in the bleak darkness.

So he was in Sanctuary again, where no one was safe; and a man he didn't know had just identified him.

Star put a hand on her uncle's elbow, to reassure him with her pres- ence and the fact she understood the tension.

The trio of punks by the door glanced sidelong with greasy eyes. They were street toughs, too young to have an identity beyond the gang mem- bership they proclaimed with matching yellow bandannas and high boots that made sense only for horsemen. They were dangerous, the gods knew, the way a troop of baboons was dangerous. Like baboons, they stank, yammered, and let vicious hostility to outsiders serve in situations where humans would have found intelligence to be useful.

Four soldiers, out of uniform but obvious from the way their hair was cut short to fit beneath a helmet, sat at a table near the bar with a pimp and a woman. The pimp gave Samlor and the situation an appraising look. The woman eyed the caravan master blearily, because he happened to be standing where her eyes were more or less focused.

And the soldiers, after momentary alertness to the possibility of a brawl, resumed their negotiations regarding a price for the woman to go down on all four of them in the alley outside.

There were a dozen other people in the tavern, besides the slope-shoul- dered tapster and the barmaid-the only other woman present-who slid between tables, too tired to slap at the hands that groped her and too jaded to care. The drinkers, solitary or in pairs, were nondescript though clothed within a fair range of wealth and national origin. They could be identified as criminals only because they chose to gather here.

"I don't need a dagger," said Samlor, releasing Star to free his left hand as his right lifted the wedge of his own belt knife a few inches up in its sheath. "I have my own."

There was nothing fancy about Samlor's weapon. The blade was a foot long with two straight edges. The metal had no ornamentation beyond the unsharpened relief cuts which would permit the user to short-grip the weapon with an index finger over the crosshilt. It was forged of a good grade of steel-though, again, nothing exceptional.

Recently, a few blades of Enlibar steel had appeared. These were forged from iron alloyed with a blue-green ore of copper which had been cursed by earth spirits, kobolds. The ore could be smelted only by magi- cal means, and it was said to give an exceptional toughness to sword blades.

Samlor had been interested in the reports, but he'd survived as long as he had by sticking to what he was sure would work. He left the experi- ments with kobold steel to others.

"You'll want this anyway," said the stranger, lifting his dagger by its crosshilt so that the pommel was toward Samlor.

Not a threat, only a man with something to sell, thought the Cirdonian •s he sidled away from the stranger to get to the bar. Harmless, almost certainly-but Samlor moved to his left, guiding Star ahead of him so that his body was between her and the weapon that the other man in- sisted on displaying. The fellow had sized up Samlor as he entered the Vulgar Unicorn, guessing his occupation from his appearance. A con man's trick, perhaps, but not an assassin's.

There was no reason to take chances.

"When are we going to sleep, uncle?" asked Star with a thin whine on the last syllables which meant she was really getting tired. That was understandable, but it meant she was likely to balk when she needed to obey- She might even call him "Uncle Samlor" despite having been warned that Samlor's real name would make both of them targets.

Star was an unusual child, but she was a child nonetheless.

"Two mugs of blue John," said the Cirdonian, loudly enough for the tapster halfway down the bar to hear him. They already had the attention of the fellow, an athlete gone to fat but still powerful. He was balding, and his scars showed that he had been doing this work or work equally rough for many years.

If something had cost him his left thumb during that time-he was still the one walking around to tell the tale, wasn't he?

'I want-" Star piped up-

"And two beers to wash it down," Samlor said loudly, cutting her off. As his left hand reached down for his belt purse, he let it linger for a moment where Star's hood covered the whorl of white hair that was the source of her name. She quieted for the moment, though the touch was gentle.

Star's mother had immersed herself in arts that had ultimately killed her-or had led her to need to die. Her child had terrifying powers when necessity and circumstances combined to bring them out.

But Samlor hil Samt had no need of magic to frighten anyone who knew him as well as the child did. He would not cuff her across the room; not here, not ever. His rage was as real as the rock glowing white in the bowels of a volcano. The Cirdonian's anger bubbled beneath -a crust of control that split only when he chose that it should, and he would never release its destruction on his kin, blood of his blood ... his seed.

Star was old enough to recognize the fury, and wise enough to avoid it even when she was fatigued. She patted her protector's hip.

The coin Samlor held between the middle and index finger of his left hand was physically small but minted from gold. It was an indication to the sharp-eyed tapster that his customer wanted more than drink, and a promise that he would pay well for the additional service. The man behind the bar nodded as he scooped clabbered milk from a stoneware jug under the bar.

There was no drink more refreshing than blue John to a dusty traveler, tired and hungry but too dry to bolt solid food. It was a caravaner's drink -and Samlor was a caravaner, obvious to anyone, even before he or- dered. He shouldn't have been surprised at the way a stranger had ad- dressed him.

Samlor wore a cloak, pinned up now to half-length as he would wear it for riding. When he slept or stood in a chili breeze, it could cover him head to toe. The fleece from which it was tightly woven had a natural blue-black color, but it had never been washed or dyed. Lanolin remain- ing in the wool made the garment almost waterproof.

The tunic he wore beneath the cloak was wool also, but dyed a neutral russet color. Starting out before dawn on the caravan road, Samlor would wear as many as three similar tunics over this one, stripping them off and binding them to his saddle as the sun brightened dazzlingly on the high passes.

The bottom layer against his skin was of silk, the only luxury Samlor allowed himself or even desired while he was on the road.

He was a broad-shouldered, deep-chested man even without the added bulk of his cloak, but his wrists would have been thick on a man of half again his size. The skin of his hands and face was roughened by a thou- sand storms whipping sand or ice crystals across the plains, and it was darkened to an angry red that mimicked the tan his Cirdonian genes did not have the pigment to support.

When Samlor smiled, as he did occasionally, the expression flitted across his face with the diffidence of a visitor sure he's knocking at the wrong address. When he barked orders, whether to men or beasts, his features stayed neutral and nothing but assurance rang in his chill, crisp tones.

When Samlor hil Samt was angry enough to kill, he spoke in soft, bantering tones. The muscles stretched across his cheekbones and pulled themselves into a visage very different from his normal appearance; a visage not altogether human.

He rarely became that angry; and he was not angry now, only cautious and in need of information before he could lead Star and her legacy out of this damnable city.

The clabbered milk was served in masars, wooden cups darkened by the sweaty palms of hundreds of previous users. As the tapster paused, midway between reaching for the coin now or drawing the beer first, Samlor said, "I'm trying to find a man in this town, and I'm hoping that you might be able to help me. Business, but not ... serious business."

That was true, though neither the tapster nor any other man in this dive was likely to believe it.

Not that they'd care, either, so long as they'd been paid in honest coin. "A regular?" asked the balding man softly as his hand did, after all, cover the gold which Samlor was not yet willing to release.

"I doubt it," said the Cirdonian with a false, fleeting smile. "His name's Setios. A businessman, perhaps, a banker, as like as not. Or just possibly, he might be, you know , . , someone who deals with magic. I was told he keeps a demon imprisoned in a crystal bottle."

You could never tell how mention of sorcery or a wizard was going to strike people. Some very tough men would blanch and draw away-or try to slit your throat so that they wouldn't have to listen to more.

The tapster only smiled and said, "Somebody may know him. I'll ask around." He turned. The coin disappeared into a pocket of his apron.

"Uncle, I don't like-'

"And the beers, friend," Samlor called in a slightly louder voice. There was little for a child to drink in a place like this. Star didn't have decades of caravan life behind her, the days when anything wet was better than the smile of a goddess- The beer was a better bet than what- ever passed for wine, and either would be safer than the water. "This is a very special knife," said a voice at Samlor's shoulder. The Cirdonian turned, face flat. He was almost willing to disbelieve the senses that told him that the stranger was pursuing his attempt to sell a dagger. In this place, a tavern where unwanted persistence generally led to somebody being killed.

"Get away from me," Samlor said in a clear, clipped voice, "or I'll put you through a window."

He nodded toward the wall facing the street, where wicker lattices screened the large openings to either side of the door. The sides of the room were ventilated by high, horizontal slits that opened onto alleys even more fetid than the interior of the tavern.

Samlor meant exactly what he said, though it would cause trouble that he'd really rather avoid.

Star wasn't the only one whom fatigue had left with a hair trigger. The man wasn't a threatening figure, only an irritating one. He was shorter than Samlor by an inch or two and fine-boned to an almost feminine degree. He wore a white linen kilt with a scarlet hem, cinched up on a slant by a belt of gorgeous gold brocade. His thigh-length cape was of a thick, soft, blue fabric, but his torso was bare beneath that garment. The skin was coppery brown, and his chest, though hairless, was flat-muscled and clearly male.

The stranger blinked above his smile and backed a half step. Samlor caught the beers that the tapster glided to him across the surface of the bar, "Here, Star," said the Cirdonian, handing one of the containers down to his charge. "It's what there is, so don't complain. We'll do better another time, all right?"

The beer was in leathern jacks, and the tar used to seal the leather became a major component of the liquid's flavor. It was an acquired taste -and not one Samlor, much less his niece, had ever bothered to acquire. At that, the smoky flavor of the tar might be less unpleasant than the way the brew here would taste without it.

The tapster had crooked a finger toward a dun-colored man at a comer table. Samlor would not have noticed the summons had he not been sure it was coming, but the two men began to talk in low voices at the far end of the bar.

The tavern was lighted by a lantern behind the bar and a trio of lamps hanging from a hoop in the center of the room. The terra-cotta lamps had been molded for good luck into the shape of penises.

There was no sign that the clientele of this place was particularly fortunate, and the gods knew they were not well lighted. The cheap lamp oil gave off as much smoke as flame, so that the tavern drifted in a haze as bitter as the faces of its denizens.

"Really, Master Samlor," said the stranger, "you must look at this dagger."

The Cirdonian's name made time freeze for him, though no one else in the Vulgar Unicorn appeared to take undue notice. The flat of the weapon was toward Samlor. The slim man held the hilt between thumb and forefinger and balanced the lower edge of the blade near the tip of his other forefinger-not even a razor will cut with no more force than gravity driving it.

Samlor's own belt knife was clear of its sheath, drawn by reflex without need for his conscious mind to reach to the danger. But the stranger was smiling and immobile, and the dagger he held ...

The dagger was very interesting at that.

Its pommel was faceted with the ruddy luster of copper. The butt itself was flat and narrow, angling wider for a finger's breadth toward the hilt and narrowing again in a smooth concave arc. The effect was that of a coffin, narrow for the corpse's head and wider for his shoulders until it tapered toward his feet again.

The hilt was unusual and perhaps not attractive, but the true wonder of the weapon was its blade.

Steel becomes more brittle as it becomes harder. The greatest mystery of the swordsmith's art is the tempering that permits blades to strike without shattering while remaining hard enough to cleave armor or an Opponent's weapon.

A way around the problem is to weld a billet of soft iron to a billet of steel hardened with the highest possible carbon content. The fused bar can then be hammered flat and folded back on itself, the process repeated until iron and steel are intermingled in thousands of layers thinner than the edge of a razor.

Done correctly, the result is a blade whose hardness is sandwiched within malleable layers that absorb shock and give the whole resilience; but the operation requires the flats to be cleaned before each refolding, lest oxide scale weaken the core and cause it to split on impact like a wand of whalebone. Few smiths had the skill and patience to forge such blades; few purchasers had the wealth to pay for so much expert labor.

But this stranger seemed to think Samlor fell into the latter category- as the caravan master indeed did, if he wanted a thing badly enough-

The blade was beautiful. It was double-edged and a foot long, with the sharpened surfaces describing flat curves instead of being straight tapers like those of the knife in Samlor's hand. The blade sloped toward either edge from the deep keel in the center which gave it stiffness-and all along the flat, the surface danced and shimmered with the polished, acid- etched whorls of the dissimilar metals which comprised it.

Because of their multiple hammered refoldings, the join lines between layers of iron and steel were as complex as the sutures of a human skull. After the bar had been forged and ground into a blade, the smith pol- ished it and dipped it into strong acid which he quickly flushed away.

The steel resisted the biting fluid, but some of the softer iron was eaten by even the brief touch. The iron became a shadow of incredible delicacy against which the ripples of bright steel stood out like sunlight on moun- tain rapids. Even without its functional purpose, the watermarked blade would have commanded a high price for its appearance.

Samlor's eyes stung. He blinked, because in the wavering lamplight the spidery lines of iron against steel looked like writing.

The stranger smiled more broadly.

"Unc-" began Star with a tug on the caravan master's left sleeve.

The iron shadows in the heart of the blade read "He will attack" in Cirdonian script. A moment before they had been only swirls of metal.

The stranger's hand slid fully onto the hilt he had been pinching to display. He twisted it in a slashing stroke toward Samlor's eyes.

Samlor didn't believe the words written on steel. He didn't even believe he had seen them. But part of his nervous system-"mind" would be too formal a term for reflex at so primitive a level-reacted to the strangeness with explosive activity.

The Cirdonian's left hand shot out and crushed the stranger's fingers against the grip of his weapon, easily turning the stroke into a harmless upward sweep- The metal that Samlor touched-the copper buttcap and the tang to which scales of dark wood were pinned to complete the hilt- were cooler than air temperature despite having been carried beneath the stranger's cape.

Samlor's right hand slammed his own dagger up and through the stranger's ribcage till the crosshilt stopped at the breastbone. The cara- van master could have disarmed his opponent without putting a foot of steel through his chest, but reflex didn't know that and instinct didn't care.

The stranger-the dead man, now, with steel from his diaphragm to the back of his throat-lifted at the short, powerful blow. His head snapped back-his mouth was still smiling-and hammered the hoop which suspended the lamps. They sloshed and went out as the heavy oil doused their wicks.

"Star, keep behind-" Samlor ordered as the light dimmed and his right hand jerked down to clear his weapon from the torso in which he had just imbedded it. The stranger flopped forward loosely, but the blade remained stuck.

Somebody's hurled beer mug smashed the lantern behind the bar. The Vulgar Unicorn was as dark as the bowels of hell.

Samlor ducked and hunched back against the bar while he tugged at his knife hilt with enough strength to have forced a camel to its knees.

There was a grunt and an oak-topped table crashed over. Somebody screamed as if he were being opened from groin to gullet-as may have been the case. Darkness in a place like this was both an opportunity and a source of panic. Either could lead to slaughter.

Samlor's dagger wouldn't come free. He hadn't felt it grate bone as it went in, and it didn't feel now as if the top were caught on ribs or the stranger's vertebrae. The blade didn't flex at all, the way it should have done if it were held at one point. It was more as if Samlor had thrust the steel into fresh concrete and were coming back a day later in a vain attempt to withdraw it.

One advantage to winning a knife fight is that you have the choice of your opponent's weapon if something's happened to yours. The Cirdoni- an's left hand snatched the hilt from the unresisting fingers of the man he had just killed, while his right arm swept behind him to gather up his niece.

A thrown weapon plucked his sleeve much the way the child had done a moment before. The point was too blunt to stick in the bar panel against which it crashed like a crossbow bolt.

Star wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere within the sweep of Samlor's arm, and there was no response when he desperately called the child's name.

Steel hit steel across the room with a clang and a shower of angry orange sparks. Someone outside the tavern called a warning, but there was already a murderous scuffle blocking the only door to the street.

That left the door to the alley on the opposite side of the tavern; stairs to the upper floor-which Samlor couldn't locate in the dark and which were probably worth his life to attempt anyway; and a third option which was faster and safer than the other two, though it was neither fast nor safe on any sane scale.

Samlor gripped the body of his victim beneath both armpits and rushed forward, using the corpse as a shield and a battering ram.

His niece might still be inside the Vulgar Unicorn, but he couldn't find her in the darkness if she didn't-or couldn't-answer his call. Star was a level-headed girl who might have screamed but wouldn't have panicked to silence when Samlor shouted for her.

He was much more concerned that she had bolted for the door the instant the lights went out, and that she was now in the arms of someone with a good idea of the price a virgin of her age would fetch in this hellhole-

Somebody brushed Samlor from the side-backed into him-and caromed off, wailing in terror. Samlor did not cut with his new dagger at the contact because Star could still be within reach of his blade ... He was willing to be stabbed himself to avoid making that sort of mistake.

Samlor stumbled on an outstretched limb which gave but did not twitch beneath his boot. Then the corpse hit the screen to the right of the door and the Cirdonian used all the strength of his back and shoulders to smash the wickerwork out into the street.

The screen was dry with age, and many of the individuals withies were already splitting away from the tiny trenails that pinned them to the frame. The wicker still retained a springy strength greater than that of thin board shutters, and Samlor felt a hint of infuriating backthrust against his push.

The frame snapped away from the sash, letting the corpse carry the collapsing wickerwork ahead of it into the street.

There was enough haze to hide the stars and silver moon, but the sky glow was enough to fill the window sash after the lattice had been torn away. Samlor dived over the sill, keeping his body as low as possible. He could have boosted himself with his empty right hand so that he landed feet first instead of slamming the street with his shoulder ...

But if he had done that, the knife that flicked through the air above his rolling body would instead have punched between his shoulder blades.

Some brawlers, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, don't need a reason to kill; only a target.

"Star!" the caravan master bellowed as he hit, the shock of impact turning the word into more of a gasp than he had expected. His cloak and shoulder muscles had to break the fall, because his left hand, the downside hand, held the long knife that could be the margin of survival in the next instants.

The door of the tavern beside Samlor was blocked by two men, the larger holding the smaller and stabbing with mindless repetition. The only sound the victim made now was the squelch of his flesh parting before the steel.

A watchman had stepped from a door down the street. The lantern he raised did not illuminate figures, but its light wavered from metal in the hands of half a dozen men scurrying toward the altercation.

Samlor had heard that there were local militias raised from every few blocks of the Old City. They differed from street gangs in their expressed determination to keep order and protect their enclaves-but that didn't mean it would be healthy for an outsider to fall into their hands after starting a brawl on their turf. Militiamen rarely saw the need for a trial when there was already a rope or a sword handy.

The squad marching toward the noise from the other direction was paid to enforce the law, but the priorities of the men comprising the unit tended to be more personal- They were regular army, and the quicker they silenced the trouble, the quicker they could get the fuck back to the patrol station where they didn't have to worry about showers of bricks and roofing tiles.

I One of the soldiers carried a lantern on a pole. The glazing was pro- tected by wire mesh, and similar metal curtains depended stiffly from the brims of the squad's dented helmets. They carried pole arms, halberds, and short pikes, and they shuffled forward with such noisy deliberation that it was obvious they hoped the problem would go away without any need for them to deal with it.

Samlor was wilting enough to do that. The problem was how. Star wasn't in the street and wasn't answering him. He'd find her if he ad to wash Sanctuary away in the blood of its denizens, but first he had to get clear of this mess into which Fate seemed to have dropped him tirough no fault of his own.

Why had that clumsy, suicidal stranger attacked him? Why had the silow even accosted him? But first, survival.

Samlor switched the dagger to his right, master hand, and dodged into an alley nearest him.

The passageway was scarcely the width of his shoulders, but a door- strapped and studded with metal-gave onto it from the building on the other side. The Cirdonian slapped the panel as he dodged past it. Had it opened, he would have dived in and dealt with those inside in whatever fashion seemed advisable.

But he didn't expect that; and, as he expected, the door was as solid as the stone to either side of it,

The alley jogged, though Samlor didn't recall an angle from inside the Vulgar Unicorn's taproom. He slid past the facet of masonry, into an instant of pitch darkness before someone within the tavern reignited a lamp.

There were two slit windows serving this side of the taproom. The grating still covered one, but the light silhouetted the crisp rectangle of the other from which the wickerwork had been torn since the caravan master last saw it inside- Even so, the opening was too narrow to pass an adult.

Samlor's mouth opened to call, but the child in the midst of four men was already screaming, "Uncle Samlor\"

There were three of them between him and Star, packed into the pas- sageway so that the child's dust-whitened garments were only a shimmer past their legs. They were the punks from the table by the door. Beyond them was a fourth man, tall and hooded, closing Star's escape route.

Light in the passageway was only the ghost filtering through the tavern windows and reflected from the filth-blackened wall opposite, but it was enough for Samlor's business. He drew the push dagger from its sheath under the back of his collar and held it so that its narrow point jutted out between the fourth and middle fingers of his left hand.

Before the caravan master could lunge into action, the hooded man stepped past the cringing Star and held his staff vertically to confront the trio of toughs. Either the hood was flapping loose or something tiny capered on the fellow's shoulder.

"What are you doing with this child?" he demanded in a clear voice. "Begone!"

"Hey," said the nearest thug, doubtful enough to step back and jostle a companion.

The staff glowed pale blue, a hazy color which seemed to hang in the air as the object trembled. The face beneath the hood was set with deter- mination which controlled but did not eliminate the underlying fear. The staff shook because the man holding it was terrified.

Reasonably enough.

Samlor paused. If the toughs did turn away in fear of what confronted them, he didn't want to be launched into an attack intended for their backs.

He didn't know what was going on. Sometimes you had to act anyway -but just now, Star was out of immediate danger, so there was no point in going off half-cocked.

Something-a man, there was no damned doubt about it, but he was only a hand span tall-stood on the right shoulder of the man with the glowing staff. The little fellow hopped up and down, then piped, "Do not be afraid to do that in which you are right!"

A thug swore and swung his weapon at the staff.

Instead of blades or ordinary clubs, this trio of street toughs carried weighted chains which Samlor had mistaken in the tavern for items of armor or adornment when they were coiled through an epaulette loop on each youth's shoulder. Each chain was about a yard long, made up of fine links which slipped over one another like drops of water. They were polished glass-smooth and then plated for looks-silver for two of the thugs, gold for the third who now swung his weapon in a glittering arc.

Both ends of the chain were weighted by lead knobs the size of large walnuts, armed with steel spikes. The knobs were heavy enough to stun or kill but still so light that they could be directed handily and with blinding speed. A skilled man in the right situation could pulp an oppos- ing knife artist, and he could do so with the sort of flashy display which on the street counted for more than success.

It was the wrong weapon for an alleyway which even at its widest point was straighter than the span of the chain fully extended, but the hooded man seemed to have no idea of how to defend himself. The weighted end of the chain wrapped itself tight against the staff-it clacked like wood, despite the glow which suggested it was of some eerie material-and the tough jerked it toward him.

The hopping manikin disappeared with a high-pitched shriek of terror. The hooded man staggered forward, managing to keep a hold on his staff only by lurching toward the punk whose weapon had snatched it. The blue glow was snuffed out as if the gold-plated chain had strangled the life from the wood.

The hooded man was a magician, had to be with his staff and capering manikin. Samlor-and probably the street toughs as well, though psy- chotic pride ruled the actions of their leader-expected magical retribu- tion for the attack. A thunderbolt might shatter them, or icy needles from nowhere might lace their bodies into bloody sieves.

Nothing happened except that the leading thug gripped his opponent by the throat and shouted, "Finish 'im, dungbrains!" to his fellows as the victim struggled to free his chain-wrapped staff.

The caravan master waded in to do the job that magic wouldn't take care of after all.

One of the three youths hung a half step behind his fellows. Samlor punched the base of his skull left-handed. The steel cap concealed be- neath the bright bandanna rapped the knuckle of the Cirdonian's index finger, but the bodkin point of Samlor's push dagger plunged in to its full length.

The youth turned and cried out, pulling clear of the two-inch blade that left a trickle of gore crawling toward the collar of his studded vest. He'd been spinning his chain between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, waiting for an opening to slap the weight into the hooded man. One of the balls gouged Samlor's thigh, but that was accident rather than deliberate counterattack.

The youth dropped his weapon and stumbled off down the alleyway, kicked in passing by the man still struggling for his staff- Star flattened herself against the wall to let him go. Her eyes and the white swirl in her hair were pools of reflected light as she stared at her uncle.

Samlor cut at the neck of the next thug with the watermarked dagger while drops of blood still winked in the air as they flew from the neck of his first target. The hilt of the unfamiliar weapon was slimmer in his hand than the knife he'd left in the corpse, but the blade's relative point- heaviness gave heft to the slashing blow. The youth got his left arm up in time to block the edge with his forearm while his leader sprayed curses and tried to clear his chain from the staff which now held it rather than the reverse.

There wasn't enough hilt for Samlor's hands. The shock threatened to jar the knife away from him as the blade sank deep into the leading armbone and cracked it through as the Cirdonian twisted. The youth squealed in hopeless panic, but luck or practice spun one end of his weighted chain in a loop around the weapon that had crippled him.

Samlor punched the tough in the chest lefMianded, then jerked down on the butt of his coffin-hiked dagger. The youth's leather vest was sewn with flat metal washers; the narrow point in Samlor's left hand scratched across the face of one before it sank deep enough into unprotected flesh to prick a lung.

Whether or not the metal in the dagger blade had spelled Samlor a warning, it served well enough for a fighting knife. At the Cirdonian's swift tug, the edges sawed through the silvered chain and freed them- selves. The severed knob spun to the muck on the alley's cobblestones with its bit of attached chain twitching like a lizard's tail.

The thug lost his footing and fell backward. He should have tangled himself with his leader, but the youth with the gilded chain danced clear.

On his toes, buttocks flattening against the tavern wall as his fellow sprawled beneath him, he whirled a spiked knob at Samlor in a down- ward arc that split the difference between vertical and horizontal.

The stranger's hood had flopped back and his cape was twisted so that its broach closure was at his left shoulder instead of his throat. When the street tough dropped him to deal with Samlor, the man raised a hand and began to stutter words in a language the caravan master did not know. As the spike chain spun at Samlor's skull in a curve as dangerous as a sword stroke, the stranger stopped talking and prodded the youth be- tween the shoulders with his staff-

Samlor dodged back to avoid the spikes, forgetting the bulge in the wall behind that rocked him to a halt. The knob sparked across the stone and tore the Cirdonian's left ear as the youth tried to recover from the push that sent him off balance.

He didn't get the chance,

The youth wore a necklace strung with the protective charms of at least a dozen faiths, and the front of his vest was strengthened with gilt and silvered studs. None of that helped him when Samlor stabbed up- ward from the groin level. While the punk thrashed like a gigged frog on the twelve-inch blade, the caravan master punched him repeatedly with the push dagger, aiming at the base of the jaw just below the bandanna and the steel cap it covered.

The youth collapsed. His eyes were open and his lungs were still work- ing well enough to form bubbles in the blood that drooled from the comer of his mouth. A mixture of body fluids and digestive products followed the blade of the long knife as Samlor withdrew it. Their foetor was briefly noticeable even in this alley.

He was probably fourteen years old or so. He looked younger, but bad diet pinched and stunted the faces of those bom here into permanent childhood,

"Now the others," chirped a little voice. "Do not kill a snake and leave its tail!"

The caravan master was on his knees. He did not recall closing his eyes, but he opened them now. The man with the staff was on his feet again and straightening his disordered cape. The manikin was back on his shoulder, strutting proudly with hands on hips.

"You," said Samlor very distinctly. "Shit it in or you'll join 'em."

The little figure yelped and disappeared again.

Samlor, Star, and the stranger were alone with the dying youth. The other two toughs had disappeared down the alley, and no one else seemed to have entered the passage behind the caravan master. There were voices from within the taproom, deep and hectoring, but Samlor didn't care enough to try to understand the words.

His niece, shivering also, minced over to him without looking down and put her arms around Samlor's shoulder. "I'm sorry you hurt your ear, uncle," she said in a voice that trembled with the child's attempts to control it. "I shouldn't have-"

She hugged him harder. "But I thought I could climb up from the bench when it was dark and I didn 't know where you were-" Her words tumbled out like flotsam in the current of the sobs wracking her little body.

"-and the, those men came and I couldn't do anything!"

"You did fine, darling," the Cirdonian muttered. He encircled the child with his left arm, careful that the point of his push dagger was turned outward. He couldn't put it away until he cleaned it, the way his right hand was wiping the watered steel of the longer knife on the pantaloons of the boy whose breathing had ceased in a pair of great shudders. "But you've gotta listen to me, or really bad things could happen."

The blade of the long dagger showed a nick midway up one edge, but it had come through the struggle at least as well as any other knife was likely to have done. Samlor tried to sheathe it and found the new blade was a trifle too broad near the tip to fit the scabbard meant for the knife it replaced.

He slid it beneath his belt instead; wiped the push dagger; and rose with that miniature weapon in his right hand while his left arm guided Star behind him again.

"Who would you be, my friend?" Samlor asked the man who was fingering his staff now that his cape was rearranged.

"My name is Khamwas," the fellow said in a cultured voice that tried to be calm. The peak of his hood must have added several inches to his height, because he was clearly shorter than the caravan master as well as much more slightly built. "I'm a stranger here in your city."

The manikin silently reappeared on Khamwas's shoulder. The tiny features were unreadable in the dim light, but the figure's pose was appre- hensive.

"Did you have a friend in that tavern?" asked the caravan master softly. When his right thumb turned to indicate the wall of the Vulgar Unicorn, the point of the push dagger winked knowingly toward Khamwas's eyes. There was an ethnic if not familial resemblance be- tween this man and the one who had died in the Vulgar Unicorn.

"I don't know anyone in this city," Khamwas said with cautious dig- nity. "I'm a scholar from a far country, and I've come to ask a favor here from a man named Setios."

"Uncle, that's-" blurted Star, catching herself before Samlor's free hand could waggle a warning.

"A bird who flies to the nest of another," chirped the manikin senten- tiously, "will lose a feather."

"What in hell is that?" asked the caravan master deliberately, pointing at the manikin with his right index finger. The bodkin-bladed push dag- ger paralleled the gesturing finger as if by chance.

The manikin eeped and cowered. Khamwas reached across to his right shoulder with his cupped right hand, as if to shield and stroke the little creature simultaneously.

"He does no harm, sir," the self-styled scholar replied calmly. "I- when I was younger, you understand-prayed to certain powers for wis- dom. They sent me this little fellow instead. His name is Tjainufi."

The manikin stared balefully at Khamwas, but his own arm reached out to pat the hand protecting him. "A fool who wants to go with a wise man," he said, "is a goose who wants to go with the slaughter knife."

Samlor blinked. He was confused, but that probably didn't matter, not compared to a dozen other things. "You know my name, then?" he said, harshly again, sure that Khamwas had to have some connection with the stranger in the tavern. A sorcerer who knew your name had the first knot in a rope of power to bind you ...

"Sir, I know no one in your city," Khamwas repeated, drawing himself up and planting the staff firmly before him with his hands linked on it. "I have a daughter the age of your niece, so I-tried, I should say, to intervene when she seemed to be in difficulties."

He paused. For an instant his staff flowed again. The grain of the wood made ripples in the phosphorescence, and a haze of light wrapped Khamwas's hands like a real fog.

Star reached past her uncle and touched the staff.

The glow flicked out as Khamwas started, but a tinge of blue clung to the child's fingers as she withdrew them. Samlor did not swear, because words had power-especially at times like these. His left hand caressed his niece's hair, offering human contact when he could not be sure what help, if any, the child required.

If Khamwas's toying had done any harm, he would be fed his liver on the point of a knife.

Star giggled while both men watched her with fear born of uncertainty. She opened her fingers slowly and the glow between their tips grew and paled like the sheen of an expanding soap bubble. Then it popped as if it had never been.

Khamwas let out his breath abruptly. "Sir," he said to the caravan master, "I didn't realize. Forgive me for intruding in your affairs."

Tjainufi, who had disappeared when Star lifted light from the staff, now waggled an arm at Khamwas and said, "Do not say, *I am learned.' Set yourself to become wise."

Khamwas would have stepped by and continued up the alley, but Samlor restrained him with a gesture that would have become contact if the scholar had not halted, "You saved Star from a bad time before I got here," he said. "And likely you saved me, besides distracting the little bastards. My name's Samlor hil Samt." He sheathed the little dagger behind his collar. "You and I need to talk."

"All right. Master Samlor," agreed the other man, though the way his lips pursed showed that the suggestion was not one he would have made himself. He gestured up the passageway, the direction from which the Cirdonian had come, and added, 'There are more suitable places to discuss matters than here, I'm certain."

"No," said Samlor flatly, "there's not."

It wasn't worth his time to explain that the direction in which Khamwas was headed would be a no-go area for at least the next hour. The passageway was narrow enough to be defended by one man, and both flanks were protected by masonry that would require siege equip- ment to breach. If their luck were really out, they could be attacked from both directions simultaneously, but that risk was better than being trapped in a cul-de-sac with no bolthole.

Given the nature of Sanctuary, this was probably the safest place within a league in any direction.

"What do you know about Setios?" the caravan master demanded, no more threatening than was implicit in the fact that he had already dem- onstrated his willingness and ability to kill,

Star was squatting, her skirts lifted and wrapped around her thighs to keep the hem from lying in the muck. A tiny glow spun within the globe of her hands as she cooed. Its color was more nearly yellow than the blue which had washed Khamwas's staff.

The glow was reflected faintly by the eyes of the dead youth.

Khamwas's face worked in something between a grimace and a moue of embarrassment as he watched the child. "Ah," he said to Samlor. "That is, ah-are you ... ?"

The caravan master shook his head, glad to find that the question amused him rather than arousing any of the other possible emotions. "On a good day," he said, "I might be able to recite a spell without stumbling over the syllables-if somebody wrote 'em out for me really careful." That was an exaggeration, though not a great one.

"My sister, though," he added, embarrassed himself for reasons the other man should not be able to fathom, "that was more her line."

To the extent that anything besides sex was Samlane's line.

"I see," said Khamwas, and he continued to glance down at the child even as he returned to the earlier question. "I don't know Setios at all," he explained, "but I know-I've been told by, well-"

He shrugged. Samlor nodded grimly; but if this fellow called himself scholar rather than wizard, he at least recognized that the latter was a term of reproach to decent men.

"Serve your god, that he may guard you," said Tjainufi, stroking his master's-could Khamwas be called that?-right ear.

"He has," Khamwas went on after the awkward pause, "a stele from my own land, from Napata-"

"Of course," Samlor interrupted, placing the stranger at last. "The Land of the River."

"The river," Khamwas agreed with a nod of approval, "and of the desert. And in the desert, many monuments of former times"-he paused again, gave a gentle smile-"greater times for my people, some would say, though I myself am content."

"You want to ... retrieve," said Samlor, avoiding the question of means, "a monument that this Setios has. Is he a magician?"

"I don't know," said Khamwas with another shrug. "And I don't need the stele, only a chance to look at it. And, ah, Samlor-?"

The caravan master nodded curtly to indicate that he would not take offense at what he assumed would be a tense question.

"I will pay him well for the look," the Napatan said. "It's of no value to him-not for the purpose I intend it-without other information. It will give me the location of a particular tomb, which is significant to me for other reasons."

The light in Star's hands was growing brighter, throwing the men's shadows onto the wall of the alley. Khamwas's face looked demonically inhuman because it was illuminated from below.

Samlor touched his niece's head. "Not so much, dearest," he mur- mured. "We don't want anybody noticing us here if we can help it."

"But-" Star began shrilly. She looked up and met her uncle's eyes. The light shrank to the size of a large pearl, too dim to show anything but itself.

"She didn't know how to do that before," said Samlor, as much an explanation to himself as one directed toward the other man. "She picks things up."

"I see," said Khamwas, and maybe he did. "Well."

He shook himself, to settle his cape and to settle himself in his resolve. "Well, Master Samtor," the Napatan continued, "I must be on." He nodded past Samlor toward the head of the alley.

"Not that way," said the caravan master wryly, though he did not move again to block the other man.

"Yes, it is," Khamwas replied with a touch of astringence. He stiffened to his full height. The manikin on his shoulder mimicked the posture, perhaps in irony. 'The direction of Setios's house is precisely"-he ex- tended his arm at an angle toward Samlor; hesitated with his eyes turned inward; and corrected the line a little further to the right-"this way. And this passage is the nearest route to the way I need to follow."

"Do not do a thing you have not first considered carefully," Tjainufi suddenly warned.

The caravan master began to chuckle. He clapped a hand in a friendly fashion on Khamwas's left shoulder. "Nearest route to having your head stuck on a pole, I'd judge," he said. The Napatan felt as fine-boned as he looked, but there was a decent layer of muscle between the skeleton and the soft fabric of his cape.

"Look," Samlor continued, "d'ye mean to tell me you don't know where in the city Setios lives, you're just walking through the place in the straightest line your ... friends, I suppose, tell you is the way to Se- tios? Are these the same friends who gave you wisdom?" The caravan master nodded toward Tjainufi.

"I think that's my affair. Master Samlor," said Khamwas. He strode forward, gripping his staff vertically before him. His knuckles were white.

The manikin said, " 'What he does insults me,' says the fool when a wise man instructs him."

Khamwas halted. Samlor looked at the little figure with a frown of new surmise. There was no bad advice-only advice that was wrong for a given set of circumstances. And, just possibly, Tjainufi's advice was more appropriate than the Cirdonian had guessed.

"All I meant, friend," Samlor said, touching and then removing his hand from the other man's shoulder, "was that maybe there aren't any good districts in Sanctuary-but your straight line's sure as death taking you through the middle of the worst of what there is."

Star had stood up when Khamwas started to walk away. The light which now clung to her left palm had put out tendrils and was fluctuat- ing through a series of pastels paler than the colors of a noontime rain- bow. Impulsively, she hugged the Napatan's leg and said, "Isn't it pretty? Oh, thank you!"

"It's only a-little thing," Khamwas explained apologetically to the child's uncle. "It-I don't know how she learned it from seeing what I did."

Samlor noticed that the staff glowed only when Khamwas could con- centrate on it, but that the phosphorescence in Star's hand continued its complex evolutions of shape and color even while his niece was hugging and smiling brightly at the other man.

The light glinted on the bare blade of his new dagger, harder in reflec- tion than the source hanging in the air seemed.

The caravan master blinked, touched his tunic over the silver medal- lion of the goddess Heqt on his breast, and only then slid the weapon back from its temporary resting place in his belt. The twisting phospho- rescence gave the markings a false hint of motion; but they were only swirls of metal, not the script he thought he had again seen.

Khamwas watched with controlled apprehension. Deciding that it was better to go on with his proposal than to wonder why Samlor was staring at the knife whose guard still bore dark stains, the Napatan said. "Master Samlor, you understand this city as I do not. And you're clearly able to deal with, ah, with violence, should any be offered. Could I prevail on you to accompany me to the house of Setios? I'll pay you well."

"Do not walk the road without a stick in your hand," Tjainufi said approvingly.

"We need to find Setios, Uncle Samlor," said the child in a voice rising toward shrill. She released Khamwas and instead tugged insistently on the elbow of her uncle's right sleeve. "Please can we? He's nice."

Cold steel cannot flow, twist, parse out words, thought the caravan master. The nick in the edge was bright and real: this was no thing of enchantment, only a dagger with an awkward hilt and a very good blade.

Star pulled at Samlor's arm with most of her weight. He did not look down at her, nor did his hand drop. That arm had dragged a donkey back up to the trail from which it had stumbled into a gulley a hundred feet deep.

"Please," said the child.

"Friend Samlor?" said the Napatan doubtfully. The knife was only that, a knife, so far as he could see.

Go with him, spelled the rippling steel at which Samlor stared.

The words faded as the glow in Star's hand shrank to a point and disappeared.

"I was ready." said the caravan master slowly, "to find a guide in there."

He did not gesture toward the tavern. He was speaking to himself, not to the pair of living humans with him in the alleyway. They stared at Samlor, his niece, and the stranger, as they would have stared at a pet lion who suddenly began to act oddly.

"So I guess," Samlor continued, "we'll find Setios together. After all" -he tapped the blade of the coflin-hilted dagger with a fingernail; the metal gave off a musical ping-"we're all four agreed, aren't we?"

Star leaned toward her uncle and hugged his powerful thigh, but she would not meet his eyes again or look at the knife in his hand. Khamwas nodded cautiously.

"We'll circle out of the Maze, then," said Samlor matter-of-factly. "Come on."

The way down the alley meant stepping over the body of the youth he had just killed.

This was Sanctuary. It wouldn't be the last corpse they saw.

The body sprawled just inside the alley would have passed for a corpse if you didn't listen carefully-or didn't recognize the ragged susurrus of a man breathing while his face lay against slimy cobblestones.

"Mind this," said Samlor, touching first Star, then Khamwas, so that they would notice his gesture toward the obstacle. Human eyes could adapt to scant illumination, but at this end of the alley the dying man's breath was all that made it possible to locate him.

The manikin on Khamwas's shoulder must have been able to sense the situation, because he said, "There is no one who does not die." Tjainufi's voice was as high as a bird's; but, also like a bird's, it had considerable volume behind it.

The Napatan "scholar" reached toward his shoulder with his free hand, a gesture mingled of affection and warning. "Tjainufi," he mut- tered, "not now - . ."

Samlor doubted that Khamwas had any more control over the mani- kin than a camel driver did over a pet mouse which lived in a fold of his cloak. Or, for that matter, than Samlor himself had over his niece, who was bright enough to understand any instructions he gave her-but whose response was as likely to be willful as that of any other seven-year- old.

Now, for instance, a ball of phosphorescence bloomed in the cup of the child's hand, lighting her way past the dying man despite the caravan master's warning that illumination-magical or otherwise-would be more risk to them than benefit, at least until they got out of the Maze.

Star put a foot down daintily, just short of the victim's outflung arm, then skipped by in a motion that by its incongruity made the scene all the more horrible. The ball of light she had formed drifted behind her for a moment. Its core shrank and brightened-from will-o'-the-wisp to firefly intensity-while the whirling periphery formed tendrils like the whorl of silver-white hair on Star's head.

The child turned back, saw the set expression on Samlor's face, and jerked away as if he had slapped her physically. The spin of light blanked as if it had never been.

"Is he ... ?" asked Khamwas as he stepped over his mind's image of where the body lay. "One of those we ... met a moment ago?"

"The gang who came after us with chains, sure," said the caravan master as he followed with a long stride. The passageway was wide enough for him to spread his arms without quite touching the walls to either side; in the Maze, that made it a street. It held only the normal sounds of feral animals going about their business and, from behind shut- ters, bestial humans. "They're all dead, the two who ran off as sure as the one who didn't. Turn left here."

"The House of Setios is more to the-"

"Turn fucking left," Samlor whispered in a voice like stones rubbing.

"Do not be a hindrance, lest you be cursed," said Tjainufi on the Napatan's shoulder. The manikin bowed toward Samlor, but the caravan master was too angry to approve of anything.

Mostly he was angry at himself, because he'd killed often enough dur- ing his life to know that he really didn't like killing. Especially not kids, even punk kids who'd have caved his skull in with weighted chains and raped Star until they sold her to a brothel for the" price of a skin of wine ...

Sanctuary might be incrementally better off without that particular trio; but Samlor hil Samt wasn't Justice, wasn't responsible to his god for the cleansing of this hellhole.

They got out of the Maze with no problem worse than a pair of thugs -who fled in terror as Khamwas's staff sent a manlike phantasm of light staggering down the street toward them. Broader pavements made walk- ing easier, and many housefronts were lighted by lanterns in barred niches.

The lanterns weren't an act of charity toward travelers. They were intended to drive lurking footpads into somebody else's doorway.

Khamwas paused, then directed them up one arm of a five-way inter- section, past a patrol station. The gate to the internal courtyard was lighted by flaring sconces, and there was a squad on guard outside. An officer took a step into the street as if to halt the trio, but he changed his mind after a pause.

They were in the neighborhood of the palace now, a better section of the city. The residents here stole large sums with parchment and whis- pered words instead of cutting wayfarers' throats for a few coins.

And the residents expected protection from their lesser brethren in crime. The troops here would check a pair of men, detain them if they had no satisfactory account of their business; kill them if any resistance were offered.

But two men carrying a young child were unlikely burglars- Most probably, they were part of the service industry catering to Sanctuary's wealthy and powerful ... and the rich did not care to have their night- time sports delayed by uniformed officiousness. Samlor had no need for the bribe-or the knife-he had ready.

"We're getting close, I think," Khamwas remarked. He lifted his head as if to sniff the air which even here would have been improved by a cloudburst to ram effluvium from the street down into the harbor.

Samlor grimaced and looked around him. He wanted to know how Khamwas found his directions ... but he didn't want to ask; and any- way, he wouldn't understand if the scholar/magician took the time to explain.

Worse, Star likely would understand.

"I wonder what Setios is keeping for her," the caravan master whis- pered, so softly that the child could not hear even though Samlor's lips brushed her fine hair as he spoke.

"Is it going to rain?" Star asked sleepily from the cradle of Samlor's arm.

The caravan master glanced at the sky. There were stars, but a scud of high clouds blocked and cleared streaks across them at rapid intervals. There was an edge in the air which might well be harbinger of a storm poised to sweep from the hills to the west of town and wash the air at least briefly clean.

"Perhaps, dearest," the Cirdonian said. "But we'll be all right."

They'd be under cover, he hoped; or, better yet, back in a bolted cham- ber of the caravansary on the White Foal River before the storm broke.

Khamwas began to mutter something with his fingers interlaced on the top of his staff. Star shook herself into supple alertness and hopped off her uncle's supporting arm. She did not touch the Napatan, but she watched his face closely as he mouthed words in a language the caravan master did not recognize.

Left to his own devices-unwilling to consider what his niece was teaching herself now, and barely unwilling to order her to turn away- Samlor surveyed the houses in their immediate neighborhood.

It was an old section of the city, but wealthy and fashionable enough that there had been considerable rebuilding to modify the original Ilsigi character. Directly across from Samlor's vantage place, the front of a house had been demolished and was being replaced by a two-story por- tico with columns of colored marble. A lamp burned brightly on a shack amid the construction rubble, and a watchman's eyes peered toward the trio from its unglazed window.

The other houses were quiet, though all save the one against which Samlor's party sheltered guarded their facades with lamplight. At this hour, business was most likely to be carried on through back entrances or trap doors to tunnels that were older than the Ilsigs ... and possibly older than humanity.

It might be a bad time to meet Setios; but again, it might not. He'd been an associate of Star's mother, which meant at the least that he was used to strange hours and unusual demands.

He'd see them now, provide the child with her legacy-if it were here. If it were portable. If Setios were willing to meet the terms of an agree- ment made with a woman now long dead.

Samlor swore, damning his sister Samlane to a hell beneath all the hells; and knowing as he recited the words under his breath that any afterlife in which Samlane found herself was certain to be worse than her brother could imagine.

"This is the house," said Khamwas with a note of wonder in his voice. He and the child turned to look at the facade of the building against which the caravan master leaned while he surveyed the rest of the neigh- borhood.

"Looks pretty quiet," said Samlor. The words were less an understate- ment than a conversational placeholder while the Cirdonian considered what might be a real problem.

The building didn't look quiet. It looked abandoned.

It was a blank-faced structure. Its second floor was corbeled out a foot or so but there was no real front overhang to match those of the houses to either side. The stone ashlars had been worn smooth by decades or more of sidewalk traffic brushing against them; the mortar binding them could have used tuck pointing, but that was more a matter of aesthetics than structural necessity.

The only ground-floor window facing the street was a narrow slit be- side the iron-bound door. There was a grate-protected niche for a lantern on the other side of the door alcove; the stones were blackened by carbon from the flame, but the lamp within was cold and dark. It had not been lighted this night, and perhaps not for weeks past.

There was no sign of life through the slit intended to give a guard inside a look at whoever was calling.

"Perhaps I'm wrong," said Khamwas uncertainly. "This should be the house of Setios, but I-I can't be sure I'm right."

He made as if to bend over his staff again, then straightened and said decisively, "No, I'm sure it must be the house-but perhaps he doesn't live here anymore." The Napatan stepped to the street-level door and raised his staff to rap on the panel.

"Ah ..." said Samlor.

The caravan master held the long dagger he had taken from the man he killed in the Vulgar Unicorn. The weapon belonged in his hand when they prowled through the Maze, but it wasn't normal practice to knock on a stranger's door with steel bare in your hand.

On the other hand, this was Sanctuary; and anyway, the new knife didn't fit in the sheath of the one Samlor had left in the corpse.

"Go ahead," he said to Khamwas. The Napatan was poised, watching the caravan master and waiting for a suggestion to replace his own intent.

Khamwas nodded, Star mirroring his motion as if hypnotized by tired- ness. He rapped twice on the door panel. The sound of wood on wood was sharp and soulless.

"Won't be anybody there," said Samlor. His own eyes were drawn to the watermarked blade of the knife. His knife, now; the owner wasn't going to claim it with a foot of steel through his chest. The whorls of blended metals, iron black against polished steel, were only memories in the distant lamplight. There was no way Samlor could see them now, even if they began to spell words as he had watched them do-in defiance of reason-twice before.

The caravan master shook himself out of the clouded reverie into which fatigue was easing him. He needed rest as badly as his niece did, and it looked as though there was no way he was going to clear up his business tonight anyway.

"Look," he said, irritated because Khamwas still faced the door as if there were a chance it would open. "There's nobody here, and-"

Metal clanked as the bar closing the door from inside was withdrawn from its staples. The door leaf opened inward, squealing on bronze pivots set into the lintel and transom instead of hanging from strap hinges.

"No one will see you," said the voice of the figure standing in the doorway. Whatever else the doorkeeper might be, it was not human.

The creature was shorter than Star. Fur clothed its body and long tail in ashen luster, but the frame beneath was skeletally thin. Its features had the pointed sharpness of a fox's muzzle, and there was no intelligence whatever in its beady eyes.

"Wait," said Samlor hil Samt as the doorkeeper began to close the portal again. He set his boot against the iron-strapped lower edge of the door. "Your master holds a trust f-for my niece Star."

"No one will see you," the creature repeated. Behind it was another set of door leaves, reinforced like the first, combining to form a closet-sized anteroom which could probably be flooded with anything from boiling water to molten lead.

If there were anyone alive in the house to do so. The doorkeeper spoke in a thin, breathy voice, but its chest did not rise and fall.

'It isn't real," Khamwas was saying in a universe in which Samlor was not focused in terrified determination on the unhuman-unalive-door- keeper of this house. "It's a simulacrum like the-"

"No one will see you," the doorkeeper repeated without emphasis. It swung the panel shut, thrusting Samlor violently backward even though he tried to brace himself by stiffening his supporting leg behind him.

"I will have Star's legacy!" the caravan master shouted as he hurled himself back against the door, slamming into it with the meat of his left shoulder.

The panel thumped but did not rebound. The bar crashed into place.

"I will!" Samlor cried again, "Depend on it!"

His voice echoed, but there was no sound at all from within the house.

"It wasn't really present," said Khamwas, touching the other man's shoulder to calm him.

"It's there enough for me," said Samlor grimly, massaging his bruised shoulder with the faceted knife hilt. "Might've tried t' stop a landslide for all I could do to keep it from slamming the door."

At a venture, he poked his dagger blade through the slit beside the door, in and out quickly like a snake licking the air. Nothing touched the metal, nor was there any other response. "He who shakes the stone," said-warned?-Tjainufi, "will have it fall on his foot."

"I mean," said Khamwas hastily to deflect possible wrath from his manikin, "that it's no more than a part of the door. A trick only, without volition or consciousness. It's carrying out the last order it was given, the way a bolt lies in its groove when the master releases it. No one may be present."

"If we go in there," said Star distinctly, pointing at the door, "we'll be ... krrk." The child cocked her head up as if her neck had been wrung. "Like chickens," she added as she relaxed, grinning.

Samlor's breath wheezed out. He had thought ...

"Well, Star," said the Napatan scholar, "I might be able to keep the wraith from moving for a time, long enough for us to get past the - . . zone of which it's a part. I might. But I think we'd best not go in by this door until Setios permits us to pass."

The two of them smiled knowingly at one another.

Samlor restrained his impulse to do something pointlessly violent. He looked at the blade of his knife instead of glaring at his companions and began in a very reasonable tone, "In that case, we'd best get some sleep and-"

"Actually," said Khamwas, not so much interrupting as speaking without being aware that Samlor was in the middle of a statement, "nei- ther of us have business with Setios himself, only with items in his posses- sion. I wonder ..."

"I want my gift now," said Star, her face set in the slanting lines of temper. Either she tossed her head slightly, or the whorl of white strands in her curly black hair moved on its own.

Go IN NOW read the iron letters on the blade at which Samlor stared in anger. There was too little light for the markings to be visible, but he saw them nonetheless.

"Heqt take you all to the waters beneath the earth!" shouted the Cir- donian in fury. He slashed the air with his dagger as if to wipe away the message crawling there in the metal. "I'm not a burglar, and coming to this damned city doesn't make me one."

"When you are hungry, eat what you despise," said the manikin on Khamwas's shoulder. "When you are full, despise it."

"Anyway," said Star, "ifs going to rain. Uncle Samlor." She looked smug at the unanswerable truth other latest argument.The caravan mas- ter began to laugh.

Khamwas blinked, as frightened by the apparent humor as he had been by the anger that preceded it. Emotional outbursts by a man as danger- ous as the caravan master were like creakings from the dike holding back flood waters.

"Well," the Napatan said cautiously, "I suppose the situation may change for the better by daylight. Though of course neither of us were considering theft. I want to look at a slab of engraved stone, and you simply wish to retrieve your niece's legacy from its caretaker-who seems to be absent."

"We don't know what it is." said Star. "My gift."

"Ah," said Khamwas, speaking to the girl but with an eye cocked toward her uncle. "That shouldn't be an insurmountable problem. If we're inside"-he nodded toward the door-"and the object is there also, I should be able to locate it for you."

"Will you show me how?" Star begged, clasping her hands together in a mixture of pleading and premature delight.

"Ah ..." repeated the Napatan scholar. "1 think that depends on what your uncle says, my dear."

"Her uncle says that we're not inside yet," Samlor stated without particular emphasis. "And he'll see about getting there."

Without speaking further to his companions, the Cirdonian walked to the comer of the building.

Setios's house was two feet away from the building beside it. There were no ground-floor windows in the sidewall either, but the second story was ventilated by barred openings.

Samlor stepped through the gap, too narrow to be called an alley anywhere but in the Maze. He ignored his companions, though they followed him gingerly in lieu of any other directions.

The vertical bars of the window above him were thumbthick and set with scarcely more room than that between them. Star might have been able to reach through one of the spaces, but the caravan master was quite certain that his own big hands would not fit.

"Are there going to be things like that door-monkey waiting by the windows?" Samlor asked the other man quietly. He nodded upward to indicate the opening he had studied.

Khamwas shrugged in darkness relieved only by the strip of clouded sky above them. "I would expect human servants if anything," he said. "They're ... more trustworthy, in many ways. And from what I've gathered, Setios is a collector the way I'm a scholar. Neither of us, you understand, are magicians of real power."

He paused and tucked his lip under his front teeth in doubt, then added, "The way your niece here appears to be, Master Samlor."

"Yeah," said the caravan master without emotion. His left hand tou- sled Star's hair gently, but he did not look down at the child. "And he collected a demon in a bottle, among other things."

Samlor grimaced, then went on, "Let's get out t' the street again. You wait, and I'll go talk to the fellow across the way there."

"Ah, Samlor ... ?" Khamwas said.

"Just wait here," the Cirdonian repeated. "I'm going across the street to talk with the watchman there." He nodded toward the guard shack on the construction site opposite.

"Yes, of course," Khamwas said with enough disinterest to hint at irritation. "But what I wanted to say was-Setios, you see, may not be avoiding you. There's been a recent upheaval in the structure of, you see, magic. He may have become frightened and fled from that."

The Napatan grinned. "He'll have left behind the stele I want to read, surely. Probably his whole collection, if that fear is why he left. And, as for this child's legacy"-he touched Star's cheek affectionately-"if we don't find it here, I'll help you locate it. Because you've helped me. And because I am honored to help someone as talented as your niece."

"The plans of gods are one thing," said the manikin on his shoulder. "The thoughts of men are another."

"Yeah, well," said the caravan master, then strode across the street with a swaggering assurance which immediately set him apart in a city where lone men habitually slunk. The watchman edged back from his window so that his eyes no longer reflected light.

It took five pieces of Rankan gold and ten minutes cajoling the nervous watchman at the construction site before Samlor returned to his compan- ions with the house jack he had borrowed.

"Khamwas," he said gruffly, "come help me with the window."

Star was curled in the comer of the door alcove, dozing with the Napatan's cape for a pillow. Khamwas stood in front of her, watching the street as well as the caravan master. He was very slim without the bulk of the outer garment, and his bare chest was no garb for this night.

"I, ah," he said, looking down at the child. "I thought it would be good if she got some rest, so - - - She's very like my own daughter, you know."

"Wish I had more talent for what she needs," said the caravan master quietly, staring at the child also. "Wish I knew what she needs, what any kid needs. But you do what you can."

He grimaced again. "Bring 'er along, will you? I need you at the side to hand me this jack when I'm ready for it"-he fluffed his cloak open to display the tool-"and I don't want her in plain sight on the street, even though it means getting her up again."

The sky had closed in above the passage between the two buildings. It was as dark as a narrow cave, and for the time being the air was as motionless as that of a cavern miles below the ground. Samlor found his location by subconscious memory of the six cautious paces which had brought him beneath the window when he could see it.

Samlor climbed to the window by bracing his hands and feet against the closely adjacent buildings. That wasn't hard, but he almost fell when he bent to take the jack which Khamwas raised to him. He was tired, and it was affecting him.

Already.

The window grate might have withstood a battering ram. The screw jack, butted against the stone sash, exerted its pressure sideways across the bars and their frame. The grating crumbled as the Cirdonian inexora- bly levered the jack through it, ignoring what the effort was doing to his fatigued muscles.

With the last of his strength, Samlor lurched through the opening he had just torn and sprawled onto the floor of the room beyond.

"Praised be Heqt in whom the world lives," murmured Samlor as his senses returned him to the world beyond his own effort and necessities. The marble floor beneath him was cold and slick with water. The glazed windows had not been closed the last time it rained; and that, from idle chatter overheard at the caravansary, had been more than a week ago.

Khamwas called from the alley, his words blurred but the worry in them clear.

"It's all right," the caravan master said, then realized that he wasn't sure he could understand the croaked words himself. He gripped the window ledge, fragments of the grate chiming around his knees.

"It's all right," he repeated, leaning back through the opening by which he had entered. "Just a minute and I'll find"-his hand brushed a tapestry beside the window-"yeah, just a second and I'll have some- thing for you t' climb by."

He ripped the hangings down and dangled them from the window for his companions. Samlor no longer cared what damage they did to this place-so long as they got out of it soon.

The window was scarcely visible as a rectangle, and the still air smelled of storm.

There was a discussion below. Star came up the tapestry, flailing her legs angrily behind her. There was a pout in her voice as she demanded, "What is this old place? I don't like it."

Maybe she felt something about the house-and maybe she was an overtired sever-year-old and therefore cranky.

There wasn't time to worry about it. The caravan master gripped the child beneath the shoulders with his left arm and lifted her into the room. Star yelped as her head brushed the transom, but she should've had sense enough to duck.

"My staff. Master Samlor," said Khamwas.

The Cirdonian leaned forward and caught the vague motion that proved to be the end of an ordinary wooden staff when his fingers en- closed it. Behind him, the room lighted vaguely with pastel blue.

Star shouldn't have done it without asking; but they needed light, and a child wasn't a responsible adult. Samlor slid the staff behind him with his left hand while supporting the tapestry with his right hand and his full weight to pin the end to the floor.

The Napatan scholar mounted gracefully and used Samlor's arm like the bar of a trapeze to swing himself over the lintel. Only then did the caravan master turn to see where they were and what his niece was doing.

Star had set swimming through the air a trio of miniature octopuses made of light. A blue one drifted beneath the ceiling frescoed with scenes of anthropomorphic deities; a yellow one prowled beneath the legs of a writing table sumptuous with mother-of-pearl inlays.

The third miniature octopus was of an indigo so pale that it barely showed up against the carven door against which it bobbed feebly.

"Where's ..." Samlor said as he looked narrowly at Khamwas. "You know, your little friend?"

Tjainufi reappeared on the Napatan's right shoulder. The manikin moved with the silent suddenness of an image in an angled mirror, now here and now not, as the tilt changes. "The warp does not stray far from the woof," he said in cheerful satisfaction,

"Khamwas," the Cirdonian added as he looked around them, "if you can locate what we're after, then get to it. I really don't want t' spend any

longer here than I need to."

"Look, uncle," Star squealed as she pranced over to the writing desk.

"Mommy's box!"

Samlor's speed and reflexes were in proper form after his exertions, but his judgment was off. He attempted to spring for the desk before Star got there, and his boots skidded out from under him on the wet marble. Because he'd swept the long dagger from his belt as part of the same unthinking maneuver, he had only his left palm to break his fall. The shock made the back of his hand tingle and the palm bum.

Khamwas had retrieved his staff. He stopped muttering to it when the Cirdonian slapped the floor hard enough to make the loose bars roll and jingle among themselves. "Are you ... ?" he began, offering a hand to the sprawling bigger man.

"See, Uncle Samlor?" said the child, returning to the caravan master with an ivory box in her hands. "It's got mommy's mark on it."

"No, go on with your business," said Samlor calmly to the Napatan. He felt the prickly warmth of embarrassment painting his skin, but he wouldn't have survived this long if he lashed out in anger every time he'd made a public fool of himself. "Find the stele you're after, and then we'll see what Star's got here."

He took the box from the child as quickly as he could without letting it slip from his numbed fingers. Even if it were just what it seemed-a casket of Samlane's big enough to hold a pair of armlets-it could be extremely dangerous.

Much of what Samlor's sister had owned, and had known, fell into that category, one way or another.

Khamwas's face showed the concern which any sane man would feel under the circumstances, but he resumed his meditation on-or prayers to-his staff.

Star's palm-sized creatures of light continued their slow patrol of the room. The caravan master seemed to have broken into a large study. There was a couch to one side of the door and on the other the writing desk with matching chair. The chair lay on its back, as if its last occupant had jumped up hastily.

"Open it, uncle'" Star demanded.

Khamwas still murmured over his staff, so the caravan master got up with caution born of experience and walked over to the writing desk. A triple-wicked oil lamp hung from a crane attached to the desk top. It promised real illumination when Samlor lit it with the brass fire-piston in his wallet.

"There's no oil, Uncle Samlor," said Star with the satisfaction of a child who knows more than an adult. She cupped her hand again and turned it up with a saffron glow in the palm. The creatures of light still drifting about the room dimmed by comparison. "See?"

The bowl of the lamp was empty except for a sheen in its center, oil beyond the touch of the wicks. Only one of the three wicks had been lighted at the lamp's last use. When the flame had consumed all the oil, it reduced the twist of cotton to ash. The other wicks were sharply divided into black and white, ready to function if the fuel supply were renewed.

Setios had really left in a hurry.

"Fine, hold the light were it is, darling," Samlor said to his niece as calmly as if he were asking her to pass the bread at table. The casket wasn't anything which the Cirdonian remembered from his youth, but the family crest-the rampant wyvern of the House of Kodrix-was enameled on the lid. Beneath it was carved in Cirdonian script the motto Samlor's parents had never forgiven him for running high-risk, high- profit caravans like a commoner instead of vegetating in noble poverty. But they'd lived well-drunk well, at least-on the flies he snatched for them, and the money Samlor provided had bought his sister a marriage with a Rankan noble.

Which couldn't save Samlane from herself, but was the best effort possible for a brother who didn't claim to be a god.

The lid did not rise under gentle pressure from his left thumb. There was no visible catch or keyhole, but the little object had to be a box-it didn't weigh enough for a block of solid ivory. Samlor put his dagger down on the desk to free his right hand ...

And read the superscription on the piece of parchment there, a letter barely begun:

"To Master Samlor hi! Sami If you are well. it is good. I also am well.

I enclose w.........

The script was Cirdonian, and the final letter trailed off in a sweep of ink across the parchment. Following the curve of that motion, Samlor saw a delicate silver pen on the marble floor a few feet to the side of the desk.

Samlor set down the ivory box, and he very deliberately kept the weapon in his hand. From the look of matters, Setios might have been better off if he'd been holding a blade and not a pen a week or so earlier. Instinctively, the caravan master's left arm encircled Star, locating the child while he turned and said, "Khamwas. This is important. I think I've been doing Setios an injustice, thinking he'd ducked out to avoid me."

The other man was so still that not even his chest moved with the process of breathing. The absolute stillness was camouflaged for a mo- ment by the fact that the octopuses threw slow, vague shadows as they circled the room- The manikin on Khamwas's shoulder was executing some sort of awkward dance with his legs stiff and his arm akimbo.

"Khamwas!" the caravan master repeated sharply. "I think we need to get outta here now."

Tjainufi said, "Do not say, 'I will undertake the matter,' if you will not."

Almost simultaneously, the Napatan shook himself like a diver surfac- ing after a deep plunge and opened his eyes. He stood, wobbling a little and using the staff for support. His face broadened with a smile of bright relief.

"Samlor," he said, obviously ignorant of anything that had happened around him since he dropped into a trance. "I've found it-or at least we need to go down."

"We need to-" began the caravan master angrily. Tjainufi was watch- ing him. The manikin's features were too small to have readable expres- sion in this light, but the creature must think that ...

"Look," Samlor resumed, speaking to-at-Tjainufi, "I don't mean I want to get out because we found what / wanted, I mean-"

"Oh!" said Star. There was a mild implosion, air rushing to fill a small void. "There's nothing inside."

She'd opened the box, Samlor saw as he turned. His emotions had gone flat-they'd only be in the way just now-and his senses gave him frozen images of his surroundings in greater detail than he would be able to imagine when he wasn't geared to kill or run.

A narrow plate on the front of the ivory box slid sideways to expose a spring catch. When the child pressed that-the scale of the mechanism was so small that Samlor would have had to work it with a knifepoint- the lid popped up.

To display the inner surfaces of the ivory as highly polished as the exterior; and nothing whatever within.

Star was looking up at him with a pout of disappointment. She held the box in both hands and the ball of light, detached from her palm, was shrinking in on itself and dimming as its color slipped down through the spectrum.

For an instant-for a timeless period, because the vision was unreal and therefore nothing his eyes could have taken in-Samlor saw blue- white light through a gap in the cosmos where the whorl of white hair on Star's head should have been. It was like looking into the heart of the thunderbolt ...

And it wasn't there, in the room or his daughter's face-for Star was that, damn Samlane as she surely was damned-or even as an afterimage on Samlor's retinas when he blinked. So it hadn't really been there, and the caravan master was back in the world where he had promised to help Khamwas find a stele in exchange for help locating Star's legacy.

Which it appeared they had yet to do, but he'd fulfill his obligations to the Napatan. He shouldn't have needed a reminder from Tjainufi of that.

"Friend Khamwas," Samlor said, "we'll go downstairs if you want that. But"-his left index finger made an arc from the parchment toward the fallen silver pen-"something took Setios away real sudden, and I wouldn't bet it's not still here."

Khamwas caught his lower lip between his front teeth. He was wearing his cape again, but the caravan master remembered how frail the Napatan had looked without it.

"The man who looks in front of him does not stumble and fall," said the manikin with his usual preternatural clarity of voice.

"Samlor," said the Napatan, "I appreciate what you say ... but what I seek is here, and I've made a very long-"

"Sure," the caravan master interrupted. "I just mean we be careful, all right?

"And you, child," Samlor added in a voice as soft as a cat's claws extending. He knelt so that Star could meet his eyes without looking up. "You don't touch anything, do anything. Do you understand? Because if the only way to keep you safe is to tie you up and carry you like a sack of flour-that's what I'll do."

Star nodded, her face scrunched up on the verge of tears. The drifting glows dwindled noticeably.

"Everything's going to be fine, dearest," the caravan master said, giv- ing the child an affectionate pat as he rose.

It bothered him to have to scare his niece in order to get her to obey- while she remembered-but she scared him every time she did something innocently dangerous, like opening the ivory box. Better she be fright- ened than that she swing from his arm, trussed like a hog.

Because Samlor didn't threaten in bluff.

Khamwas said something under his breath. His staff clothed itself in the bluish phosphorescence it held when the caravan master first met him in an alley. With the staff's unshod ferule, the Napatan prodded the study door, lifting the bronze latch. When nothing further happened, he pulled the door open with his free hand and preceded Samlor and Star into the hall beyond.

Samlor touched the latch as he stepped past it. Not a particularly sturdy piece-typical for an inside door, when the occupant is more concerned with privacy than protection. But it had been locked, which meant somebody had paused in the hallway to do so with a key after he closed the door.

Otherwise, it would have to have been locked from the inside by some- body who wasn't there any more.

In the old Ilsigi fashion, a balustraded hallway encircled a reception room which pierced the second floor. There was a solid roof overhead rather than the skylight which would have graced a Rankan dwelling of similar quality.

The stairwell to the ground floor was in the corner to the left of the study door. Khamwas's staff, pale enough to be a revenant floating at its own direction, swirled in that direction.

"The, ah," Samlor said, trying to look in all directions and unable to see anything more than a few inches beyond the phosphorescent staff. "The doorkeeper. It's not ... ?"

"We wouldn't meet it even if we opened the front door ourselves from within," said Khamwas as he stepped briskly down the helical staircase. "It isn't, you see, a thing. It's a set of circumstances which have to fit as precisely as the wards of a lock.

"Though it wouldn't," he added a few steps later, "be a good idea for anyone to force the door from the outside. Even if they were a much greater scholar than I. Ah, Setios collected some ... artifacts ... that he might more wisely have left behind."

The reception room was chilly. Samlor thought it might have some- thing to do with the glass-smooth ornamental pond in the middle of the room. He tested the water with his boot toe and found it, as expected, no more than an inch deep. It would be fed by rainwater piped from the roof gutters. Barely visible in the shadow beneath the coaming were the flat slots from which overflow drained in turn into a cistern.

Except for the pond, the big room was antiseptically bare. The walls between top and bottom moldings were painted in vertical pastel waves reminiscent of a kelp forest, and the floor was a geometric pattern in varicolored marble.

"Well, which way now?" the caravan master demanded brusquely, his eyes on the doorway to the rear half of the house. Star was shivering despite wrapping her cloak tighter with both hands, and Samlor didn't like the feel of the room a bit either.

"Down still," said Khamwas in puzzlement. He rapped the ferule of his staff on the floor, a sharp sound that contained no information useful -at least-to the caravan master. Perhaps it just seemed like the right thing to do.

"There'll be a cistern below," said Samlor, gesturing with a dripping boot toe toward the pond. "The access hatch'd be in the kitchen, most likely. Not in this room."

He started for a door, ill at ease and angry at himself for that feeling of undirected fear. Part of his mind yammered that the Napatan was a fool who again mistook a direction for a pathway ... and Samlor had to avoid that, avoid picking excuses to snarl at those closest to him in order to conceal fears he was embarrassed to admit.

Star poked a hand between the edges other cloak. She did not look up; but when her finger cocked, a bright spark swam rapidly from it and began coasting the lower wall moldings.

"D-dearest," said the caravan master, glancing at the withdrawn, mis- erable-looking face of his niece, then back to the light source. Star said nothing.

The droplet of light was white and intense by contrast with the vague glows that both-he had to admit the fact-magicians had created earlier in the evening. It might even have looked bright beside a candle, but Samlor had difficulty remembering anything as normal as candlelight while he stood in this chill, stone room.

Pulse and pause; pulse and pause; pulse ... He'd thought that the creature of light was a minnow, or perhaps no more than a daub of illumination, a cold flame that did not counterfeit life.

But it surely did. A squid rather than a fish, too small to see but identifiable from the way it jetted forward with rhythmic contractions of its mantle.

The marble floor was so highly polished that it mirrored the creature's passage with nearly perfect fidelity, catching even the wispy shadows between the tightly clasped tentacles of light trailing behind. The colors and patterning of the stone segments created the illusion that the reflec- tion really swam through water.

"Star," the caravan master demanded in a restrained voice. "Why are you-"

The reflection blurred into a soft ball of light on a slab of black marble, though the tiny creature jetted above it in crystalline purity. The squid pulsed forward and hung momentarily over a wedge of travertine whose dark bands seemed to enfold the sharp outline.

Then source and reflection disappeared as abruptly as they had spurted from the child's gesture.

"What?" said Star, shivering fiercely. She scrunched her eyes shut so that her uncle thought she was about to cry. "What happened?"

Samlor patted her, blinking both at the sudden return of darkness and his realization of what he had just seen. Star might not know what she had done or why, but the caravan master did.

"Khamwas, come over here, will you?" he said, amused at the elation he heard in his voice as he strode to the sidewall where the thing of light had disappeared. "You know, I'd about decided we were going t' have t* give up or come back with a real wrecking crew."

"A hundred men are slain through one moment of discouragement," said the manikin on Khamwas's shoulder.

"In this town," the caravan master responded sourly, "you can be slain for less reason 'n that."

"I, ah," said the Napatan scholar. "What would you like me to do?"

"Star, come closer, sweetest," Samlor cajoled when he realized his niece had not followed him. Something was wrong with her, or else she was reacting strongly to the malaise of this house-which affected even the relatively insensitive caravan master.

She obeyed his voice with the halting nervousness of a frequently whipped dog. Her hands were hidden again within her cloak.

Samlor put his arm around her shoulders, all he could do until they'd left this accursed place, and said to the other man, "Can you make it lighter down here? By the wall?"

Khamwas squatted and held his staff parallel with the edge molding. The phosphorescence was scarcely any light at all to eyes which had adapted to the spark from Star's finger, but it was sufficient to distinguish the square of black marble from the pieces of travertine to either side of it in the intaglio flooring.

Samlor could not discern a difference in the polish of the black marble from that of the rest, but the way it blurred the light which the others had mirrored proved what would have been uncertain under any other conditions.

He tried the stone with the tip of his right little finger; the rest of the hand continued to grip the hilt of his long knife. The block didn't give to light pressure, neither downward nor on either of its horizontal axes, but it didn't seem to be as solid as stone cemented to a firm base ought to be.

"Is there something the matter with the floor, here?" asked Khamwas, resting easily on his haunches.

Samlor would rather that the Napatan keep an eye out behind them, but perhaps he couldn't do that and also hold the staff where it was useful. The glow was better than nothing.

Besides, he doubted that any danger they faced would be as simple as a man creeping upon them from the darkness.

"This block doesn't have the same sheen as the others," explained Samlor as he stood up slowly. "It's not on any path, particularly, so maybe it's been sliding or, well, something different to the rest."

He stepped gingerly on the block, which was only slightly longer in either dimension than his foot. By shifting his weight from toes to heel and then to the edge of his boot, the caravan master hoped he could induce the marble to pivot on a hidden pin. He was poised to jump clear at the first sign of movement,

There was none.

Well, then ... if he pressed the block toward the wall-

Samlor's hobnails skidded, then bit into the marble epough to grip as he increased the weight on them. The black stone slipped under the molding with the silent grace of mercury flowing.

There was a sigh from behind them. The two men jerked around and saw that the ornamental pond was lifting onto one end. The water, which had dampened Samlor's boot a moment before, did not spill though it hung on edge in the air.

There was a ladder leading down into the opening the pond had cov- ered.

"Collector, you called him," said the caravan master grimly as he watched the reflection in the vertical sheet of water.

"A good trick," responded Khamwas, nettled at the hinted contrast of his knowledge against that of the missing Setios.

The Napatan stood and began muttering in earnest concentration to his staff. Samlor assumed the incantation must have some direct connec- tion with their task and their safety.

When the phosphorescent staff floated out of Khamwas's hands, dip- ping but not quite falling to the ground, the Cirdonian realized that it was merely a trick-a demonstration to prove that Khamwas was no less of a magician than the owner of the house,

It was the sort of boyish silliness that got people killed when things were as tense as they were just now.

Apparently Tjainufi thought the same thing, because he turned and said acidly into the scholar's ear, "There is a running to which sitting is preferable."

Star's hands wavered briefly from the folds of her cloak; Samlor could not be sure whether or not the child mumbled something as well. Flecks of light shot from her fingers. They grew as they shimmered around the room, gaining definition as they lost intensity-jellyfish of pastel light, and one mauve sea urchin, picking its glowing, transparent way spine by spine across a "bottom" two feet above the marble floor.

The staff clattered and lost its phosphorescence as it fell. Samlor snatched it before it came to rest on the stone. He handed it back to his male companion. "Let's take a look, shall we?" he said, nodding to the ladder. "Guess I'll go first."

"No, I think I should lead," said Khamwas. "I-"

He met the caravan master's eyes. "Master Samlor, I apologize. It'll be safer for me to go first, and I'll spend my efforts on making it safe."

The multicolored jellyfish made the reception room look as if it were illuminated through stained glass. The sea urchin trundled its way for- ward to the opening in the middle of the floor, then continued downward at the same staccato pace as if the plane on which its spines rested lay in a universe in which sideways was up.

That might be the case.

The two men walked to the opening and looked down while Star hugged herself in silence.

The room beneath the floor was a cube or something near it, ten feet in each dimension. Mauve light filled the volume surprisingly well, though the simulated urchin did not itself seem bright enough to do so. The floor shone with a sullen lambency.

The furnishings were simple. A metal reading stand, high enough for use by a standing man and empty now, waited near the center of the room.

To its right stood an elaborate bronze firebox on four clawed legs, a censer rather than a heating device. The flat sides of the box were covered by columns of incised swirls, more likely a script unknown to the caravan master than mere decoration. The top was smooth except for a trio of depressions-an inch, three inches, and six inches in diameter. Aromatics could be placed there to be released by the heat of charcoal burning in the firebox beneath.

At each corner of the top was a decorative casting. They were minia- ture beasts of the sort which in larger scale could have modeled the censer's terrible clawed legs. The creatures had catlike heads, the bodies of toads with triangular plates rising along the spine for protection, and the forelegs of birds of prey. Serpent tails curled up behind them, sug- gesting the creatures were intended as handles for the censer; but anyone who attempted to put them to that purpose would have his hands pierced by the hair-thin spikes with which the tails ended.

There was no other furniture in the room, but a pentacle several feet in diameter was painted or inlaid on the concrete floor to the reading stand's left. It was empty. The floor and white-stuccoed walls were other- wise unmarked.

Khamwas's lips pursed.

"Go ahead," said Samlor with a shrug. "Maybe your stone's on the ceiling where we can't see it."

"Yes," said the Napatan, though there was doubt rather than hope in his tone.

Khamwas thrust his staff as far into the mauve light as it would go while his hand on the tip remained above floor level.

Nothing happened, but Samlor was not foo! enough to think it had been a pointless exercise. His companion was doing what he had prom- ised, concentrating his talents-better, his knowledge-on the task at hand.

Still holding the staff out in his direction of travel, Khamwas backed awkwardly down the ladder. The ferule banged accidentally on the cen- ser as he turned. It made Khamwas jump back but did not concern Samlor, who saw what was about to happen.

But the crash and shattering glass from upstairs spun the caravan master, his teeth bared and his left hand groping for the throwing knife in his boot sheath.

"The wind," murmured Star, the first words she had spoken since the three of them left the study upstairs. She wasn't looking at her uncle or at anything in particular.

But she was right. A door banged shut, muting a further tinkle of glass. One of the window sashes had not been secured properly. A gust had slammed it fiercely enough to shatter the glass.

"Are you all right?"called Khamwas.

The question impressed Samlor, for it sounded sincere-and in similar circumstances, he himself would have been worried more about his own situation than that of his companions.

"We're going to get drenched when we leave here," the caravan master said. "Leaving'll still feel good. Any luck yourself?"

The Napatan grimaced. "The room's empty," he said. "The brazier's as clean as if it was never used. I'm not sure it's here at all."

"Do not ask advice of a god and then ignore what he says," snapped Tjainufi, who was rubbing his tiny face on his shoulder like a bird preen- ing.

"Step back," said Samlor. "I'm coming down."

He turned to his niece and said, "Star, dearest7 Honey? Will you be all right for a minute9"

She nodded, though nothing in her face suggested that she was listen- ing

The quicker they found what Khamwas needed, the quicker they- Samlor-could sort out his niece's problem He jumped into the cubical room without touching the ladder

Samlor landed in perfect balance, feet spread and his left hand ex- tended slightly farther than the right so that leverage matched the weight of his long dagger Despite Samlor's care, his hobnails skidded and might have let him fall if Khamwas hadn't clutched the Ordonun's shoulder The floor was dusted with sparkly stuff, almost as slick as a coat of oil

Jumping might not have been the brightest notion, but the caravan master hadn't liked the idea of doing exactly what an intruder was ex- pected to do.

The concealed room had an underwater ambiance which wasn't wholly an effect of the glowing sea urchin trundling across an invisible bottom at waist height The mauve light had ripples in it, but neither the furniture nor the two men cast distinct shadows on the walls.

"What does your"-Samlor said, making a left-handed gesture to indi- cate either Khamwas's staff or nothing at all-"your fnend say about what you're looking for9"

"That I've found it," Khamwas replied, turning his head to view sur- roundings which were no less void on this perusal than on earlier ones.

Samlor stamped his foot. Sparkling dust quivered, but the concrete was as solid as the bedrock on which it was probably laid. Then he kicked the nearest wall

Stucco blasted away from the hobnails as they raked four short, paral- lel paths and squealed on the stone beneath.

"Well, I think we know where t' look," said the Cirdonian in satisfac- tion.

The stucco his boot had scraped was covering two distinct blocks of stone-a slab of polished red granite, and another of marble shadowed with faint streaks of gray. Both stones were inscribed, though on the softer marble the markings had been weathered and were further defaced by Samlor's boot

He brushed at the stucco with his left hand, flaking away a patch his kick had loosened The writing on the granite slab was Rankan but of a form so old that the doubled consonants and vanant orthography made all but a few words unintelligible to the caravan master

"Why, this is wonderful, my friend," said the Napatan with a smile brighter than the mauve glow as he bent over the cleared patch.

Tjainufi beamed and added, "There is no good deed save a good deed done for one who has need of it."

"We're not outta the woods yet," said Samlor with a dour glance at the walls around them If they had to clear all the stucco-or even half, if their luck were average-which it probably wouldn't be-it was going to take a lot longer than the caravan master wanted to spend in this place

"No, that's all right," explained the Napatan with the uneasy hint of mindreadmg which he had displayed before. "I'll use a spell of release and the covering will come away at once He must use the ancient writ- ings because they focus the power with which the years have imbued them."

Maybe that was what Setios used to do with them, Samlor thought as his companion knelt before his upright staff again, but he'd bet Setios hadn't much use for them or anything else in the world just now.

Khamwas was whispering to himself and his gods Samlor looked at him, looked at the dagger-saw that the watered steel blade was only that, only metal, probably all it ever was, except in his mind.

"Star?" he called toward the rectangular opening. "You all right, sweetest?"

He could barely hear the reply, "All right . . ," but a couple of the pastel jellyfish were drifting over him in placid unconcern. She'd be fine, Star would.

If any of them were, she'd be fine.

Samlor squatted and squeezed up dust from the floor on the tip of his left index finger It was colorless (save for the mauve light it reflected) and much too finely ground for him to be able to tell the shape of the individual crystals

A caravan master has plenty of opportunity to examine decorative stones, jewels and bits of glass cut and stained to look like Jewels in the dim light of a bazaar The dust could be anything, powdered diamond even, but most likely quartz, spread in a smooth layer across all the flat surfaces in the room ...

Except for streaks-shadows, almost-stretching from the reading stand and the legs of the bronze censer. The dust seemed to have been sprayed violently from the direction of the pentacle in which Khamwas was almost standing

"K-" Samlor began in sudden surmise.

The Napatan had been whispering, but now his voice rose in a cre- scendo Khamwas's eyes lifted also, they were wide open but obviously not fixed on anything in the room.

Stucco shattered away on all sides, raining over Khamwas and the caravan master who reached for the ladder with his left hand and swung his blade at anything which might have slipped behind him as he crouched.

Nothing had. The choking flood of sand and lime dust filling the air as the walls cleared themselves made Samlor pause where the attack he feared would only have driven him to swifter motion.

The slow tumble of the mauve light source continued, though the mineral-laden air absorbed the illumination. A ball a few feet in diameter glowed in place of the urchin's sharply limned spines and carapace. As dust settled out, the glow spread and paled while the features of the source at its heart slowly regained definition.

"Khamwas," said the caravan master. His eyes were slitted and a fold of his cloak covered his mouth and nose, a response made reflexive by years of dry storms whipping across his caravan routes. "Where did Setios keep his demon in a crystal bottle?"

"The gods preserve me from such knowledge, friend!" said the Napatan as his eyes swept the upper levels of the walls which could already be viewed with sufficient clarity. He filtered the air through his cape; a desert-dweller himself, Khamwas must have more experience with dust storms than Samlor did. "Believe me, Setios was mad to keep such a thing by him-and you and I would be even madder to carry it off ourselves."

"That's not what I mean," the caravan master said. He raised his voice so that it could be heard through the muffling cloth-and because he was at a desperate loss to know what he should do next. He would have climbed out of this place at once, except for his fear of what might follow him to where Star stood shivering.

No wonder the child had been terrified into a near coma. She must have known ...

"Here it is!" cried Khamwas, brushing the reading stand as he swept closer to a wall. "Here it is!" he repeated, then sneezed.

The walls of the sunken room were formed entirely of inscribed stones, but the pieces had little commonality beyond that. Some were squared columns, set with one face flush and the other three hidden even now that the stucco had fallen away.

A few bore symbols which were not writing at all. One of them was a small block of peridotite. polished smooth before a single diagonal was cut across its coarse crystals. The block had marked the victim's place in a temple ofDyareela. Samlor could not imagine anyone removing it from its original location-or being willing to have it close to him thereafter.

The Napatan was brushing his left palm across the face of a slab of gray granite, cleaning it of dust that had settled there after the spell of release. The stele was about three feet high and half that across. Figures -presumably gods-filled the upper portion, and there were about twenty vertical lines of script beneath them.

"-to the blessings of Harsaphes," Khamwas said, his index finger pausing midway down one of the later columns. "Harsaphes. not Somptu as I'd always assumed, and the ruins of the temple of Har-"

"Khamwas, listen to me!" Samlor shouted. He gripped the scholar with his left hand, though that meant dropping his cloak while there was still dust in the air. "You say something happened to magic a little bit ago. Would that have broken the crystal that held Setios's demon?"

"The townsman," said the manikin who was not in the least affected by the choking atmosphere, "is not the one who is eaten by the croco- dile."

And men who leave magic alone, translated Samlor as he whirled toward glimpsed motion, aren't destroyed by its creatures.

A hand was emerging from a slab of limestone on the far wall. It was tenuous enough that the settling dust coexisted with the limb, which was so thin that it would have been skeletal were it not for the gleam of a scaly integument.

The three fingers each bore a claw an inch long and sharp as shattered glass.

"Get up the ladder!" Samlor shouted as he leaped for the apparition behind the watered steel blade of his dagger. The hilt was adequate for his big hand when he slashed with it, though it was shaped wrong and would have been uncomfortably short had he chosen to thrust ... Which would have done as much good; as much, and no more. The clawed hand twisted to grip the blade while an arm as wire-thin as the hand continued to extend from the wall. Steel parted the limb like smoke, and the claws slipped through the whisking dagger as if it in turn had no substance.

Another hand was reaching through the stone beside the first. The blur above and between them was growing into a narrow reptilian face.

"Get out!" the caravan master shouted again when a glance toward the ladder showed him that Khamwas stood where he had. He had crossed the top of his staff with his left forearm.

"No, run!" Khamwas replied. He had been chanting under his breath, and his face spasmed with the effort of breaking back into normal speech. "I released it again, but I can hold it for long enough."

The demon's head and torso had emerged from the wall. One leg was striding forward in slow motion. The creature was half again as tall as Samlor, and it was thinner than anything could be and live.

One hand shot out and snatched the sea urchin which shattered be- neath the claws into a cascade of mauve sparks. As the demon's arm withdrew, the sparks formed again into their original shape. The creature of light continued to pick its way through the air. Samlor was quite sure that if the claws closed on his niece, their effect vould be permanent.

"Run. Star!" he shouted, afraid to turn from the demon. It continued to pull itself from the stone.

Khamwas hadn't moved, though his mouth resumed its unheard chanting. Maybe Samlor could jump for the ladder himself since the fool Napatan refused to do so. Slam the lid back over this hellish room-if the lid would close without a search for another mechanism. Run out the front door with Star in his arms, praying that he could work the bolts swiftly enough ... praying that the doorkeeper would ignore them as they left, the way Khamwas had said it would ...

Samlor stepped forward and swung at the demon again. He wasn't going to abandon Khamwas to the creature unless there were no other choice.

He chopped for a wrist. Instead of slipping through like light in mist, the caravan master's steel clanged as numbingly as if he had slashed an anvil. The demon seized the blade and began to chitter in high-pitched laughter,

All of the demon but its right leg had pulled free of the wall. That leg was still smokily insubstantial, but the claws of the left foot cut triple furrows in the concrete as they strained to drag the creature wholly out of the stone. The left hand-forepaw-was reaching for Samlor's face while the right gripped his knife.

Samlor's mouth had dropped open as he breathed through it, oblivious of the dust that would have made him cough another time. He jerked straight down on the dagger hilt, ducking from the swipe that started slowly as a boulder rolling, then completed its arc at blinding speed.

The blade screeched clear. If a man had held it, his fingers would have been on the floor or dangling from twists of skin.

The demon's paw was uninjured, and its claws had streaked the flat of the blade against which they were set.

Samlor caught the throat-clasp of his cloak. He could throw the gar- ment like a net over the creature and-

-and watch the claws shred it as the demon, steel strong and more than iron hard, leaped free to dispose of the men before it. The creature's eyes had no pupils and glowed orange, a color which owed nothing to the urchin which still tumbled innocently around the room.

"Khamwas!" the caravan master shouted, because the demon was al- ready in the air and perhaps Khamwas could get up the ladder while the Cirdonian occupied the creature with the process of being slaugh- tered ...

The demon halted in midair, its left foot above the concrete and its right leg, spindly and terrible as that of a giant spider, lifting to deliver a kick that would disembowel Samlor. Dust settled and the urchin of light rolled jerkily forward, one spine at a time, but the creature hung frozen like an idol of ravening destruction.

Its eyes were as bright as tunnels to hell.

Samlor started another cut at the demon. Light reflecting from the triple scratch on his blade reminded him how useless that would be. so he turned instead to Khamwas.

Who had not moved since last Samlor had leisure to glance at him.

Khamwas hunched slightly forward, his left forearm crossing the top of his staff and his eyes fixed on the demon with a reptile's intensity. Tjainufi still perched on his shoulder.

The Napatan's lips had been moving soundlessly, but now he said in a cracked whisper, "Go on ... quickly."

The demon was not quite frozen. The movements the creature began before Khamwas's spell took effect were still going on. The leg that stretched toward Samlor at a glacial pace quickened noticeably when the Napatan spoke, and the demon's mouth gaped slowly to display arrays of interlocked teeth like needles in the upper and lower jaws.

"But how can you-" the caravan master began as he slipped a step back, beyond the present arc of the claws. The demon bent at its girl-slim waist as it leaped, because otherwise its flat skull would have banged the ten-foot ceiling.

"Samlor," said the Napatan scholar, "get out! I brought you here!"

The demon had trembled back to near stasis for a moment. Now it lurched far enough forward in its unsupported motion that it was clear one hand was reaching for Khamwas's head even as the kick extended toward the Cirdonian.

"There is none who abandons his traveling companion whom the gods do not call to account for it," said Tjainufi.

"Fuck your gods," said Samlor, who was already sliding the knife back under his belt to free his hands. He encircled the Napatan's waist, under- neath the cape for a firmer grip, with his left arm.

"No-" said Khamwas desperately.

"Do yowjob," Samlor snarled back as he lifted the smaller man. The air swirled with the demon's renewed movement, but the claws now behind the caravan master did not rend him as he stepped with regal determination to the ladder.

Focusing on the creature from the stone was for Khamwas. Samlor hil Samt had the responsibility of getting them both back up the ladder while his companion did that job, eyes, arm, and staff locked into their duty

Khamwas's body was muscular, but weight wasn't the problem. Carry- ing him upright while Samlor's right hand needed to grip the ladder for balance was brutal punishment, and it reminded him of how badly he had strained himself getting into this damned house

One foot above the other, each step a deliberate one because a jolt at the wrong time might break Khamwas's concentration irrevocably No way to tell what was happening behind him, nothing to do about it if things weren't well One foot and then the other.

A gust of wind shocked Samlor as his head lifted above the floor of the reception hall Fabric, a curtain or a counterpane, had been snatched from a room on the upper floor and was flapping from the railing

Star was calm as molten glass as she watched her uncle struggle up the ladder with the other man clamped to his side At his first wild glance, Samlor thought the whorl of white hair on the child's temple was one of the creatures of light which pulsed through the reception hall It was so bright

He couldn't bend over to balance with his palm on the floor as he neared the top of the ladder, so the caravan master mounted the last three rungs at a quickened pace Toppling backward would mean the floor killed them if the demon didn't, but if Samlor sprawled on his face the result would be no better He'd seen the creature start to move, it would be on them in an instant if Khamwas were flung out of his concen- tration.

Samlor stepped from the top rung to the marble floor, sucking in his lips as he strove to move as smoothly as a duck gliding on water He set the Napatan down, conscious of the man's weight only after he was free of it, and with the same motion strode for the wall and the latch mecha- nism.

Khamwas's voice was audible again, breaking with strain as he chanted over and over again a dozen or so words Sweat from the Napatan's face had splashed Samlor's left forearm as he climbed

The caravan master's boot skidded when he tried to slide back the piece the marble which was half withdrawn beneath the molding Instead of trying again with his hobnails, Samlor knelt and scrabbled at the black stone with both sweaty palms It moved into position with the same greasy certainty with which it had opened

The pond of mirror-smooth water slipped down to cover the demon Soundlessly.

Samlor skidded as he ran from the sidewall to the front door Hobnails weren't the footgear for these polished stones . . and this house wasn't a place for humans Not now, and probably not before Setios's pet got loose.

There was no inside door latch.

"You didn't let them out, Master Khamwas," said Star, patting the hand of the scholar who had knelt and was sobbing with exhaustion 'They're playing with us "

"Come on," Samlor shouted There was certainly a way to open the inner and outer doors from here, but he didn't have time to fool with it. "We're leaving the way we came'"

"There's six of them. Uncle Samlor," said Star. "They're playing with us"

Something emerged from the pilaster beside the stairs to the second floor It was a clawed hand like that of the demon below Instead of streaming like smoke from the stone, it broke free as a chick emerges from an egg Rock shattered away from the groping limb, and a section of the wall started to lift.

Khamwas rose to his feet His face was blank and his body swayed with fatigue He crossed his arm over the staff again and began a whis- pered chant.

The wall from which the demon crashed, already formed, was load- bearing Tortured roof beams squealed as plaster in chunks of up to a hundred pounds broke away A big piece hit the center of the pond and blasted water out across the reception hall.

Samlor caught his niece with one arm and Khamwas with the other He flung them, all three together, to the floor against the nearer sidewall A block of stone, notched for the butt of a crossbeam, tumbled from the roof to the rail of the second-floor walkway, then caromed to the floor in a shower of dust and chips.

"We'll get out through the back'" said the caravan master who doubted that they would. The wall beside where they hunched under cover of the walkway was crumbling as gray claws harder than the stone emerged from it.

Across the reception room, the other sidewall was disintegrating m a shower of bits and blocks They hid but did not disguise the cause of the destruction One of the demons was clasping a dismembered human leg Samlor figured he knew where Setios and his servants had gone.

Six of 'em, Star'd said Likely five more than they'd need, but you didn't quit Just because you couldn't win.

The three humans rose and scuttled for the room's back wall and the door there They were bent over because the walkway's partial roof was no protection against blocks bouncing from the floor at crazy angles.

The front half of the house staggered forward into the street with a roar. The sound did not seem loud until Samlor realized that he could not shout with enough volume to be heard by the two companions he had dragged with him into the temporary safety of the door alcove.

Skeletal, inhumanly tall figures minced toward the trio, shrugging off the tons of rubble that had thundered down on them. There were four, and the mound of stone and timber covering what had been the floor of the reception room heaved as the creature in the room beneath rejoined its fellows.

Sheets of pain flapped across Samlor's body from a center where his right hip had blocked a ricocheting chunk of stone that weighed as much as he did. The crosswall dividing the house was built as solidly as the exterior. It remained essentially undisturbed when the emerging demons had shattered the front of the house. That portion of the building had demolished itself as brittle stone shifted in a vain attempt to find new foundations.

The door in front of Samlor was locked or possibly jammed when ruin made the house twist, but the panel was only thin wood inlaid with horn and ivory in patterns which were probably significant as well as decora- tive. Khamwas pounded it with the ferule of his staff, breaking off scales of ivory without doing anything to get them through the doorway.

Samlor would have kicked the latchplate, but he was pretty sure that his right hip would neither support him alone nor lift his boot high enough for the purpose. Wondering how many seconds they had before a demon lunged onto them, he rotated on his left heel and grabbed a torso- sized block from the wreckage that had spilled inward during the col- lapse.

The demons were advancing with tiny steps, chittering in self-satisfac- tion. When they chose to, they picked their way over the piled rubble, but one of the four figures strode through the tons of jumbled rock like a man wading in the surf. The fifth of the creatures heaved itself into sight with the ease of a toadstool bursting pavement to reach the open air,

"Care-" cried Samlor, turning with the block in his hands. The movement was so painful that he could feel only his scalp, his palms, and the ball of his left foot.

"-ful!"

The stone splintered the door and carried on, crashing on the floor of the hallway beyond and then bouncing harmlessly from the legs of the sixth demon poised there with its arms spread across the passage.

The air was dead still. The caravan master turned again, no more conscious of his pain than a fox is conscious of the way its lungs burn from its running when the hounds encircle it for the last time.

"The sky," Khamwas said hoarsely. "Look."

Samlor drew the long dagger from his belt and lifted Star to his chest with his free arm. The semicircle of demons waited, crouching slightly, with their spindly, steelstrong arms interlocked. They were close enough that if one of the creatures leaned forward, it could rip the caravan master's face away in its pointed teeth.

"Look!" Khamwas screamed, and even so his voice was smothered by a sound like the scream of a giant snake.

Samlor looked up. He could see almost a mile into the sky, up the lightning-lit throat of a descending tornado funnel.

The lower end was shaggy with tentacles of water vapor condensing in the lowered pressure surrounding six separate suction vortices. They ex- tended toward the ruined house.

"Down!" cried the caravan master, but Star twisted like an eel from his arms and stood while the two men tried to flatten themselves.

One of the demons leaped away, covering twenty feet of the distance toward the street before being caught by a suction vortex- The creature reeled upward into the main funnel, like a crab being lifted into an octopus's crushing beak. Blue-white lightning licked soundlessly but with coronal radiance from one side of the void to the other-

The funnel hovered at the level of what remained of Setios's roof. A miniature vortex snaked past Star's erect head, so close that it should have touched her hair but didn't. It was no more than the diameter of a wine jar, spinning widdershins though the main cloud rotated with the sun.

Samlor lay on his back, clutching the medallion of Heqt in his left hand as he watched transfixed. The broken door panel exploded into splinters. They cleared themselves up the shaft of the screaming vortex. The demon flashed out in the grip of the wind, upright and battling momentarily while its hinder claws gouged pieces the size of a man's fist from the stone of the doorjambs. Then the creature was gone, falling upward into the sky in a helix so tight that its limbs had been plucked from the body before it disappeared into the tunnel of lightning.

The tornado was lifting and folding in on itself like a purse whose drawstrings were being tightened. Samlor hadn't seen what happened to the four remaining demons, but they had vanished when he knelt to look around.

"If you are not slack," said Tjainufi in a perfectly audible voice, "then your god will be active for you."

Samlor uncurled his fingers from the amulet of Heqt; but it had not been to the toad goddess that he screamed his prayers in the last in- stants ...

"I thought Mommy's box was empty," said Star as her eyes met the caravan master's "But it wasn't "

The tornado funnel flattened into the overcast almost a mile above Sanctuary Only then did the normal wind return, a huge gust of it, and with it the start of a cold downpour It was as dark again as the inside of a tomb.

But the whorl of hair on Star's temple burned for a moment like the heart of the lightning.