Liar's Oath

Chapter Eleven

Even in the changing climate that followed Gird’s death, Luap could not forget the cave and that strange place to which it had taken him. It had not been his imagination, a sort of dream or enchantment: it had taken Gird, too, the last man who could be fooled into believing what wasn’t there. And Gird had seemed to say, in that crowded few minutes before his death, that Luap was right . . . that he should take his mageborn relatives and go.

Had that been a gift of knowledge from the gods, a private message to Luap before the general message he had given them all? Or had it been Gird’s despair, the last of his human—and thus fallible—utterances? Should he act on it? Was the place even there, now?

As the new council of Marshals dithered about appointing a successor, Luap’s mind wandered often, always in the same direction. As it was now, the mageborn didn’t have to leave. Things were better, not worse. Gird’s dream of compromise and cooperation might well come to pass. But did that mean that none of them could leave, or should leave? The Marshals were, if not as hostile, still clearly frightened by the idea of the mageborn using their powers. Using the powers safely required training . . . and that distant, empty land would be a safe place to acquire that training. No one there to be frightened by a sudden light, a clap of thunder, a gust of wind. No one there to argue that a child who could lift buckets of water from well to water trough could also lift coins from one purse to another. And if the mageborn learned to use their powers safely, with guidance in the ethics involved, then perhaps they could demonstrate to the others how such powers should be used, and that would erase the old fears, and even improve on Gird’s vision.

“Luap!” Sterin touched his shoulder. They were all staring at him.

“Sorry,” he said, feeling his ears redden. “I was trying to remember something and just . . .”

“It’s all right,” said Cob, “but even if we bore you, you shouldn’t go to sleep: you’ve got to keep the notes.” He was grinning to take away the sting, but Luap felt it anyway.

“I wasn’t bored.” Of course he was bored; they’d been hashing over the same argument for a hand of days, with the same three or four people saying the same things, only louder. He was hot, his back in the sun from the windows in the council’s meeting room, and he could smell the stables all too clearly. “There’s something in the gnome laws Gird told me about one time, that I thought might help, but I just can’t remember.” Apparently that convinced them, or most of them; everyone shrugged and went back to the same things they’d said before. Luap took careful notes, even though he already knew what Foss and Sirk would say.

His own arguments continued in the same trails as well, but more smoothly, more logically, as time passed. It did make sense. The mageborn needed to learn to use their powers safely and properly; the safe and proper use of their powers would reassure those without them, as people recognized the safe use of any tool. They could not learn to use their powers here without frightening people, and threatening the fragile peace that Gird had bought so dearly. Therefore, they needed to find a place—far enough away that accidents or mistakes, common in learning, could hurt no one—to get that practice. Then the community Gird envisioned could be made of mageborn and former peasants, all using all their talents to the fullest, for the benefit of all. As for a place . . . well . . . it was logical to use a place which no one without the mage powers could stumble on by accident, and get hurt. The only such place he could think of was wherever the cave took him. Only a mageborn, he was sure, could do whatever he had done to make the pattern work.

It all made sense; it all fitted like the interlocking gears of a mill. If you start here, and the parts all fit, you come out over here, inexorably. Arranha had said that about logic: arguments are not made, he said, but found, by following all the rules of logic from any starting place. If the rules are not broken, the conclusion cannot be wrong, and has existed from the beginning of the world. He had not made it true that the only way to get to Gird’s dream from present reality was by taking the mageborn to the distant land of red stone towers, but he had found out, by logic, that this was true.

Of course he still might be wrong, and he would have to test it. Arranha taught that all human vision lacked completeness. Conclusions must be tested. At the least, he would have to return to the cave and see if he still arrived at the great hall, and if the stair still came to the same outside. He would have to take someone else, as witness and test both.

He found it easy to arrange some days away, on a pretext of gathering material for his Life of Gird. Not entirely pretext, for he intended to do just that; he foresaw that his work would be the foundation text, the way that Gird would be remembered generations after those who knew him had died. He intended to make Gird’s greatness come alive, breathe from the scroll, and to do that he wanted as much detail as possible. Still, he intended to visit the cave, and he was not going to tell the others about it until he knew if it still worked.

He arrived, on a mild sunny afternoon, in a very different mood than before. Sunlight glittered on tiny crystals in the gray rock; lush green grass and scarred bark showed where years of travelers had tethered their mounts. The creek purled over its stony bed, hardly disturbing the summer growth of mint and frogweed. Luap dipped a pot of water, and sniffed the mint’s crisp aroma. He was aware that weather influenced his moods, but this was more than sun-induced relaxation; it was also the inner calm that had followed Gird’s death. He was not afraid, this time, of consequences; he was not stirred by useless ambitions or wracked by guilty memories. Signs of recent campfires in the cave did not disturb him; he knew that others sometimes used it for shelter while traveling.

When he had watered and fed his horse, he sat in the sun outside the cave, thinking about the stories of Gird he had heard so far, and how best to arrange them. In the old archives, the stories of great kings and mages began with a childhood full of portents. He wondered if all those tales were true. One young prince had been born, so the tale went, with heatless flames around him; another had brought frost-killed flowers to life in a snowstorm.

Gird’s life, as others remembered it, was depressingly free of portents. He had found no one from Gird’s original village, for one thing. Perhaps, he thought, squinting into the late slanting light, Raheli would know some childhood stories about her father. The few things Gird had told Luap weren’t much use. He’d been chosen for the count’s guard because of his size, and left it because of some misunderstanding. He’d never actually said what it was, but Luap assumed it was because he’d gotten drunk. That wouldn’t be impressive in a legendary figure. A mother dead of fever; a brother killed by a wolf. Half a life spent farming, apparently with enjoyment—he certainly retained a fondness for cows and even scythed the meadows a few times at haying time.

Luap shifted on the rock he’d chosen as a seat. None of that made a good story. Who, in a hundred years or so, would believe that a simple peasant lad with no more training than that could lead an army to victory? It had happened, yes: It was true, yes: But it was not reasonable. He had to make it believable to people who had never seen Gird, who had no idea what force of character lay in that lumpish peasant head. At least, he thought, the man was bigger than average, stronger than most. That would help. He might have been handsome when he was younger; that would help, too.

As the sun sank, he rose and stretched, watered his horse again, and made his own tidy campsite well inside the cave. He needed no fire, but he needed an explanation for the tethered horse outside, so he rolled his blanket and set his pack at one end before calling his own light and going back to the inner chamber.

On this, his fourth visit, the bell-shaped chamber with its walls covered in intricate patterned relief seemed almost homey. He did not hesitate to step out onto the central design of the floor; he felt no real apprehension before calling on his power. As smoothly as ever, as swiftly and silently, he was elsewhere, in the grand high hall he remembered. It, too, looked familiar, and the third arch, which had appeared when Gird visited, still opened off the far end. He thought about going out, up the stairs, to the outer world, but decided against it. This much worked as it had; surely the same world would be outside. And now he wanted a witness to share the wonder. He returned as quickly as he had come.

The next morning, he went on as he’d planned. He interviewed a veteran farming newly cleared land, who remembered Gird telling about the first winter in the forest, and two more in the next vill, who wanted to complain about the current edition of the Code rather than talk about Gird himself. Most of them had only secondhand knowledge; he had known Gird as long as they had, but he wanted to be thorough. The details that would make Gird’s life come alive later might come from anyone. By the time he returned to Fin Panir, he had two scrolls full of such tales. He had also decided that he must tell Arranha and the Rosemage, even though he foresaw awkward questions. With that decision made, he wasted no time, and the next day sent word to both asking them to meet him in his office.

The Rosemage, who had been teaching the more advanced yeoman to use a longsword, arrived with a bandage around her left hand. “Clumsiness,” she said, before anyone could ask. “Mine, as well as the yeoman’s. And no, it’s not dangerous, and yes, I would let Aris heal it if necessary.”

Arranha, Luap noticed, gave her the same smile he gave Luap. “Lady, no one doubts your ability.”

She chuckled, pulling one of Luap’s chairs to her, and sat down. “The class I was teaching no longer thinks I’m beyond injury, using magery to protect myself while thumping them. I think the fellow actually expected that his blade would turn aside rather than hit me. Luckily, he’s still using wood. Unluckily for me, it still hurts.” She had placed herself so that the injured hand could rest on a table, Luap noticed. He wondered if she were certain no bones had broken.

“We need to train more healers,” Arranha said. “Surely there are others among us who have, or can learn, that magery. Luap, would the Council of Marshals approve the use of healing magery in someone other than Aris?”

“I’m not sure,” said Luap, well-pleased that Arranha had given him an opening without needing any hints. “Aris had trained himself, in a time before the uses of magery were against the Code; whatever mistakes he made then, when he appeared here he functioned as a successful healer. That certainly influenced Gird’s decision, and the reaction of the other Marshals. The Marshals know, in their minds, that a child with Aris’s talent must learn to use it, just as a child must learn any adult skill, with many mistakes in the process—but in practice, they so distrust all magery that, without Gird, I suspect they would forbid it.”

“Mmm. So the child would have to be trained to be approved, and would have to be approved to be allowed to train—is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. I may be wrong, but this is the impression I get.” Then, before the others could speak, Luap went on. “In fact, I asked to see you because of just this problem and a possible solution.”

The Rosemage looked up sharply. “A solution!”

“Yes. You weren’t with us when I first discovered that I had some magery; Arranha may remember the incident—”

The old priest hid his expression behind folded hands, peering at Luap with bright eyes over his fingertips. “Are you certain you want me to tell all that tale?”

Luap smiled. “Enough know it already, or think they do. But I’ll be brief: we were camped in a cave, lady, and deep within I found a small chamber and had a . . . what I suppose you could call a revelation. A voice spoke, naming the king my father. And my magery woke, so that I had light in my hands. Unfortunately, the shock of that so unhinged my wits that I tried to argue Gird into a command—and sought to use my magery on him to convince him. You tried that yourself; you know its effect.”

“Gird knocked him flat,” Arranha said when Luap paused for breath. “Told everyone—perhaps especially me—that he’d kill him the next time he used his magery. Luckily, by the time you forced that, lady, Gird had changed his mind.”

“Not my most impressive moment,” said Luap wryly. “But some years later, after the war, and after Dorhaniya told me my real parentage, I went back there. I was hoping for another revelation, something to rattle my mind.”

“The study of logic . . .” muttered Arranha. Luap shook his head.

“Such studies settle your mind, Arranha, but don’t help me. At any rate, I returned, while on a journey for Gird, and found something quite different. I found a place—a far place—to which magery can travel.”

“A place.” It was almost the same tone as Gird had used. “What sort of place? Where?”

The same questions, and he had hardly more answers. “It’s a great hall and many chambers, all carved from living rock, and outside is a strange land of red stone, great towers and mountains and narrow steep valleys. Where it is from here I cannot say, but it’s apparently in a colder land than this.”

“And you can get there by magery . . .” Arranha mused. “So—”

“I took Gird once.” Luap said. “That is the place I meant, the time we quarreled so about moving the mageborn. As far as we could tell, it was a great land empty of all people; I thought it would suit us well. He said no—but you remember the day of his death—”

“And you think that’s what he meant, when he said you had been right, and he had been wrong? You think that was permission to take the mageborn there?” The Rosemage sounded doubtful, and in her voice he could doubt Gird’s meaning himself.

“I think you should come see it. No one knew, but Gird and I; he’s dead, and someone else should know. What I’m thinking now is that it’s a place no one without magery could stumble upon, a place where the mageborn could learn to use their powers safely, without risking harm to others, and without a chance to use them wrongly: there are no peasants to rule. With such training and discipline, our people might be more acceptable to those without magery—at least, there would be no beginners’ errors to be explained away.”

“Ah, that makes sense.” Arranha nodded, his eyes bright. “As weapons-practice is done in the bartons and granges, not in the marketplace or inside a home—this is a place for our young ones to learn properly.” Luap kept quiet, waiting for the Rosemage’s response.

“I’m surprised you didn’t tell us before this,” she said. Luap shrugged.

“Gird preferred that no one else know,” he said. “He thought it was a secret best kept close, lest disaffected mageborn try to use the cave. Now, I think you two should know, but no one else, until you’ve seen the place and considered how it might be used.”

“Tell us about it,” said Arranha. “What sort of great hall? How large? How many could stay there at once?”

“I’d rather you saw it for yourself,” said Luap. He could not possibly describe it all, and besides that, he wanted their reaction; he wanted to see someone like himself arriving.

“How far from here is the cave?” asked the Rosemage.

“A few days’ travel by horse; it’s between Soldin and Graymere. At this season, the ford at Gravelly should be passable, which cuts a day off.”

“It will do my hand no harm to rest from teaching sword-work,” the Rosemage said. “Why not leave tomorrow?”

Luap opened his mouth to protest, and then shrugged. If they were that eager, why not? He had planned to suggest a more elaborate, less obvious journey, with each arriving separately, by a different route, to meet by “coincidence” if anyone found out. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell Marshal Sterin or Cob that I won’t be at the Council.”

Traveling with Arranha and the Rosemage was nothing like traveling alone. Arranha wondered, aloud, about half the things he saw: what was that rock, and why did it break into squarish lumps when another rock the same color didn’t? Why would any bird build a nest that hung swinging from a limb? If the weaving patterns of peasant women had the names of plants and animals, why didn’t they look like that plant or animal? He noticed everything that Luap normally rode by without seeing it: tiny wildflowers, the speckles on river frogs, the relative numbers of red and spotted cattle in fields they passed. He greeted everyone they met on the road, and if Luap had not reminded him that they had a goal, would have stopped to talk of anything that caught his mind.

He’s like a bur, Luap thought. Everything clings to him; he could stop and be stuck anyplace until some stronger attraction yanked him free. By the end of the first day, Luap was exhausted by the relentless intelligence with which Arranha attended to his surroundings.

The Rosemage, on the other hand, seemed to view the country as a military map: this position defensible, that one not. She said little, in contrast to Arranha, but the little she did say had to do with the possibility of brigands up a narrow valley, or the way someone with any knowledge at all could control the trade roads. Luap had not, since the war’s end, felt nervous about trouble on the road, but he found himself eyeing places where travelers were vulnerable. Then Arranha would exclaim over some novelty, and he had to make some comment in response.

The cave, when they reached it on the fourth day, felt welcoming. Luap thought longingly of the silence in that distant hall, and was tempted to vanish there, leaving his companions behind. Instead, he took the horses to the creek, while Arranha and the Rosemage set up their camp inside. It was hot, even standing above cool water; he felt itchy and obscurely distressed. Here, with the water chuckling softly around the horses’ fetlocks, with their gentle sucking, he began to relax. No one pointed out the swirl in midstream where something had come to the surface from below—he noticed it, which he would not have four days before, but in silence.

Arranha’s horse lifted its head, water dripping from its muzzle, and yawned. It shivered its withers, and Luap saw its knees begin to buckle.

“No, you don’t,” he said firmly; the other two lifted their heads to watch as he yanked Arranha’s horse back to dry land. It blew, spraying him in the face. Muttering, he got them all back from the bank and safely into the trees. The Rosemage was coming from the cave when he came in sight of it. She waved and came down to help feed them.

“I’ve never seen a cave like this,” she said, almost eagerly. Sunburn had given her a rich color. “Where I was in Tsaia, the caves were dank little holes under graystone bluffs—big enough for one shepherd and a few sheep in a blizzard, no more. This thing’s big enough for an army.”

“That’s what we had,” said Luap.

“—And that chamber,” she went on. “Arranha says those designs aren’t anything from Old Aare. If Gird didn’t recognize them as his peoples’, what could they be?”

“You’ve been in the chamber?” Anger raged through him; he had expected them to wait. It was his secret, after all.

“We didn’t try to use it,” the Rosemage said. Luap managed not to say anything sarcastic, and she went on. “Although it’s thick with magery in there—I suspect anyone sensitive at all could trigger it.” She put two handfuls of grain in the nosebag of her bay horse and tied it over the halter. “How long do you think we’ll stay?”

“Not above a glass or so, I think. Time enough to see what Gird saw.” Luap finished with the other two horses and led the way back to the cave. Deep inside, where dimness should have faded to blackness, a faint glow showed that Arranha had no qualms about using his magery here. Luap called his own light—if the old priest could be that bold, he wasn’t going to chance falling over any stones.

As he came past the ledge where Gird had stumbled, Arranha said, “It’s very interesting, this pattern.”

“It’s more than interesting,” Luap said.

“Oh yes—I know—but my point is, I doubt if it’s a pattern wrought by humans. It’s not Old Aarean, nor any pattern of the northern branches, and you say Gird did not recognize it . . .”

“By the gods?” Luap felt a cold chill down his back and arms.

“Perhaps. But the Elder Races, particularly the sinyi, use patterns of power. Have you asked any elves about this, Luap?”

“No. Remember, Gird wanted it kept secret.”

“Hmmm.” Arranha’s bright eyes glittered before he blinked and turned away. “Strange—he had scant love for secrets, in most things. ‘Bury a truth, and it rots.’ he told me more than once.”

“Well—I never asked him if I could ask the elves; it never occurred to me. His reasons concerning the mageborn seemed so strong, to him—”

Arranha said, “I daresay it doesn’t matter. You’ve used this pattern three times now; if it were a matter for elves, you would surely have heard from them.”

Another shiver, as if icy water had funneled beneath his shirt; Luap twitched, but said, “Then let us go, and you judge what you see.”

This time his mind clung to the pattern and the remembered place; almost before he could think, they had arrived. He did not know which face to watch. The Rosemage, to his quick glance, seemed almost turned to stone. Her face paled, then flushed; her eyes widened. Arranha, too, seemed stunned to silence.

Luap repeated the same prayer he had uttered the first time he came, and heard Arranha and then the Rosemage repeat it. Then he led the way off the dais.

“We can talk now,” he said quietly, looking back. They had said nothing but the prayer. They were looking up, around, faces as full of awe as Luap had wished. The Rosemage brought her gaze back to him.

“It’s—impossible,” she said, shaking her head.

“That’s what I thought the first time. That I had dreamed it, perhaps. But Gird saw it too.”

“If the gods did not make this, they blessed it,” said Arranha softly. “I have never felt such presence, not even in the Hall in Fin Panir when Esea blessed Lady Dorhaniya’s belief.”

Is that what happened? thought Luap. He felt uncomfortable thinking of Dorhaniya in this place.

Arranha had moved down the hall, slowly; now he approached the arches at the far end. The Rosemage stayed near the dais. “Do you know what this is?” called Arranha, his voice louder than any Luap had heard in this place. He was pointing at the arch with the harp and tree entwined.

“Gird said it might be an elven symbol,” Luap said.

“As you should well know,” Arranha replied. “And the other—that is surely dwarfish. And you did not think to ask them?”

Luap felt his face burning. For a moment he was not sure what to say, but the great place eased him, as it had before. “Gird saw what I saw; it was his decision. Perhaps he was upset enough with me that I had used magery to bring him.”

Arranha did not reply, but walked, as Gird had, through the arch with the High Lord’s circle above it. Luap followed, and behind him he could hear the Rosemage coming.

“Up those stairs,” Luap said, “is a land unlike any I’ve seen. Bare red stone, deep canyons with trees and rivers—” He had not actually seen the rivers, but where there were trees, rivers must be also. “Not good land for farming, Gird said, but I think it would support a small number.”

“Mmm.” Arranha looked at the stairs. “Shall we go up, then?”

“Certainly.” Luap led the way, wondering again why the light that filled the hall and passages below did not extend to this. Because it was an entrance? As before, the sound of their boots on the steps echoed off the floor below, and as before they came to a darkness close above their heads. But this time Luap called his light before it was too dim to see, and pointed out to Arranha the whorls and interlacements Gird had noted. He himself, this time, put his thumb in the groove and traced the interlocked spirals in and out, and Arranha prayed.

When the ceiling close above them vanished, Luap half-expected the snowy blast of his first visit. But even here—wherever here was—spring had come, and warm sunlight spilled down the stair. Only a light breeze stirred his hair as he climbed the last few steps and came out to the view he remembered so clearly.

It was still there. He had been afraid, in some corner of his mind, that it was less majestic than he remembered, but in the clear cool sunlight that land lost none of its grandeur. The vast blocks of red stone, the endless vista of stone and sky. He could see farther than before, but still had no idea where the place lay, or how deep the canyons were.

Arranha and the Rosemage reacted as he had hoped. “It’s . . . like nothing I’ve seen anywhere,” Arranha said. “Certainly it’s not anywhere near Fintha, nor down the Honnorgat valley as far as I’ve traveled, nor like anything I heard of Aarenis or Old Aare.”

“It’s so—big,” the Rosemage said. Luap glanced at her. Few things ever seemed to daunt her, but this did. “Even the sky seems bigger. And how do you get down from this, or up into those trees?”

Where Gird and Luap, in the cold and snow, had seen what might be the bristling thatch of a forest above another level of stone, now the forest showed clearly. It seemed to stand on the topmost level of the stone, far above their heads or across great crevices on other blocks, as if Luap’s imagined city of castles were roofed with trees and not slate.

“We didn’t stay long enough to find out,” Luap told the Rosemage. “It was snowing when we got into the open, and though the snow ceased, it had been blown away by a bitter wind. We were glad to get out of it.”

“And you never came again, to explore?” Arranha asked. He had put back the hood of his cloak, and turned his face up to the brilliant sunlight. With his eyes closed, and his arms held out, he looked to Luap a little like a bird drying itself after rain.

“I had no time,” Luap said, “and no reason. I suggested to Gird that he allow me to bring the mageborn here, when all that trouble started. But you know what he thought of that.”

“Mmm. Yes.” Arranha opened his eyes, as bright and penetrating as hawks’ eyes. They seemed to have absorbed the brilliant light and now it poured from them. Luap blinked. It must be something to do with being the Sunlord’s priest. Arranha stared in all directions, as if looking for something in particular. “I don’t feel anything dire,” he said finally. “I see no sign that anyone inhabits this land. Do you?”

Luap shook his head. “It felt empty to me from the first. That’s why I thought it would bother no one if we came here.”

“Lady?” asked Arranha of the Rosemage. “What can you sense about this land?”

“Its size,” she said, her voice still muted by the land’s effect on her. “It is so large, so empty . . . it does not care about us at all, did you realize? Everywhere in Fintha or Tsaia, there’s a sense—I think the elves call it taig—that the land is almost aware, that it cares what we do. I’ve heard the farmers say a field is generous, faithful, or that another field is bitter and hard-hearted. When I had sheep, I felt that way myself at times, held in the land’s palm. Nothing so grand as Alyanya’s notice, but perhaps some of her power running over into the land itself. But here—” she shook her head. “If this is even in Alyanya’s realm, it would be hard to think so. This land has no interest in us, in our welfare; it is neither generous nor mean. It has its own affairs, and what they are I cannot imagine.”

“Does it frighten you?” asked Luap.

“No. Not as a threat would. But that indifference feels strange; I did not know how I had depended on our land’s sensitivity until I felt nothing like it here.”

“I felt it as cleanliness,” Arranha said. “As if this were newmade land, its stone washed clean by light and water on the first day, untouched by history. And yet it feels old, at the same time. I wonder if it is just untouched by our history—we have no little stories about this rock or that, about who chased a stray cow into which canyon—and so we feel it has no history. Surely it must.” His face sobered. “And surely we should know that history, however strange it is, before we lay our own upon it. As there are metals that must not touch, for they cause corrosion in each other, so there may be histories that must not be laid one upon another.” He looked from one to the other; Luap wanted to argue that expression, but could not. Then Arranha sighed and shook his head. “No—I feel no menace here; the Rosemage is right. But it is in the nature of Esea’s priests to seek knowledge and more knowledge, the god’s light upon ignorance. We expect trouble to come from ignorance more than malice—our weakness, as Gird showed, but nonetheless trouble can come from ignorance. Here is a land—a great land, as the Rosemage has said—about which we know nothing, not even how to find our way to water. So I have qualms, which will probably be foolish in the end.”

“I hope so,” said Luap soberly. “I feel nothing but promise here, a promise of peace and—with enough hard work—security. If you have definite warnings—”

“No,” said Arranha. “Nothing definite, and not really a warning. Just the awareness that what you don’t know can kill you.”

“We’ll learn,” said Luap, feeling confidence rebound in him. “And the first thing, I suppose, is to map the inside of this place, and find another outlet. Surely there is one.” He gestured. “Shall we go back inside?”

Down the stair, under the arch, into the great hall. With their footsteps behind him, he could feel it a procession, almost a homecoming. He led them past the dais, into the corridors behind. To his surprise, he remembered clearly which turnings he had made, both on his own and with Gird. Both Arranha and the Rosemage were more uneasy than he felt; his courage rose as he perceived himself the boldest of the party. He chose a downward-trending ramp at one turning, and found himself in an unfamiliar passage.

“Listen!” The Rosemage held up one hand. They all held their breath. A distinct musical plink repeated at irregular intervals. “Water,” she said finally. They followed the sound along the passage to an opening in one wall; it gaped a few handspans wide and high, dark within, unlike the regular doorways they had seen so far. Luap put his hand through, made his magelight, then looked. A chamber as large as the common dining hall in Fin Panir held clear water . . . he could not tell how deep, but he could see the stone below it clearly. Its surface lay within reach of his hand. Above, the chamber rose higher than the passage ceiling, marked here and there with the dark stain of dripping water. From a line around the chamber, Luap saw that the water rarely if ever rose as high as the opening in the wall. He stretched his hand down and touched the surface: ice-cold. He sniffed it: pure, with no hint of salt or sulphur.

“We need not fear thirst,” Luap said. He stepped back; Arranha and the Rosemage both leaned in to look, kindling their own light. “Now if we can find a lower entrance—” He was sure a lower entrance existed. It must be there. Farther down, they found a great room that could only be a kitchen, with hearths and ovens cut into the stone. Here was a draft of cool air, sweet and fresh, from the chimney shaft. Another passage, that seemed darker, less full of that sourceless light. Luap headed for it. The spiraling stair had been darker . . . did all the outside ways begin where the light failed?

The passage ended in a blank wall; Luap was not surprised. Nor was he surprised when his own light revealed the same incised patterns on the passage wall to one side. He traced them carefully as before, and as before the wall melted away, letting in a fresh breeze, pine-smelling. The opening let in abundant light; Luap thought two horsemen could ride through it abreast. They looked out onto a narrow terrace supporting great pine trees, and heard the cheerful gurgling of water among rocks below. One tree, larger in girth than Luap could span, stood square athwart the opening . . . clearly it had grown there since someone last used the passage. Luap edged past it, and came out into the sunlight. Some small animal let out a squeak and fled upslope, a flurry of gray fur, hardly seen. High above a hawk squealed; Luap could not see through the pines where it flew.

“With running water so near, why store water inside?” asked the Rosemage, coming out into the sun. “There’s enough in there for three rivulets this size.” She had moved to the lip of the terrace, and was looking down into the minute creek, which made far more noise than its size suggested. Then, before Luap could answer, she had moved lightly downslope and skipped across, a matter of hopping on two rocks and grabbing the drooping branch of a bush on the far side. She climbed out of Luap’s sight; he followed her, out from under the pines, and then realized how narrow the place was. The Rosemage stood atop a cottage-size boulder at the foot of a rock wall that matched the one they’d come out of. He looked up . . . and up. Those soaring red walls, so near and high that he could not see the flat shoulder of the mountain, or its higher forested crown, delighted him even from below. Nothing had ever looked so impregnable, so defensible. Once inside, no imaginable army could possibly harm him or his people.