The Ambermere Trilogy

The Door, The Sorceress, The Wizard of Ambermere

J(ames). Calvin Pierce

1992-3

The Door To Ambermere

Ambermere, Book 1

1992

ISBN: 0-441-15944-3

A Demon Delicacy

“From what you told me, I would say you drank a drop of demon’s blood,” said the magician with a cheerful smile.

“I’m glad you didn’t mention all this before breakfast,” said Daniel.

“Look on the bright side.” Rogan filled his cup, offering to pour for Daniel, who declined. “You’re perfectly safe, for the moment.”

“For the moment?”

“Well, there’s no telling what will happen when I call the demon tonight.” Rogan took a languid sip of wine. “I imagine he will be happy to see you. You know, you may be the first dinner to have escaped him in the last five or ten thousand years.”

Daniel decided perhaps he’d have some wine after all ….

To my mother and father

Chapter 1

To an observer viewing the avenue from behind a low garden wall, the object, passing as though in languorous flight, would have been something of a mystery, though one perhaps more likely to prompt speculation than active investigation. Could certain little-known plants walk the tops of garden walls? Had slinking cats taken to wearing disguises of leaves, berries, and dried flowers and grasses, cunningly woven together with bits of ribbon?

The object was, in fact, a hat. It sat, squared and true, on the head of a gray-haired woman who was rather short (a little over five feet in the kingdom of Ambermere, a little under five feet in the neighboring kingdoms) and who walked with such an unvarying perpendicularity, such a rigid straightness of spine, that her hat neither dipped nor swayed with her step, but drove forward as though traveling through the air by magic.

As it happened, there were no observers, or low garden walls either, on this particular avenue in the city of Ambermere. The only person observing anything was the lady beneath the hat, who had her eyes fixed on a point far down the street, where a different sort of mystery presented itself.

At first, Mistress Hannah did not recognize the light as an aura. In the distance it seemed only a spot of unexplained brilliance, as though a small hot fire blazed on the street three crossings away.

She kept her eye on the light as she walked. Surely no smith worked a forge on a city thoroughfare, blowing showers of bright sparks to dance and die on the paving stones. This would accord neither with the usual practice of smiths, nor with the customs of the city, and Ambermere was not a place where innovation was common.

Hannah wondered briefly if a magician might be busy with some mischief there, but the streets were nearly empty. With dark summer rain clouds rushing nightfall, all sensible folk were behind their doors, enjoying the aromas of supper bubbling in the pot. Hannah thought all magicians fools, but none was such a fool as to perform his tricks for no audience.

She crossed the next street. No farmers’ wains, no tradesmen’s carts crowded the way at this hour. The only sign that this city had a population was in the wavering glow from lamps and candles to be seen against the curtains at every window.

When she realized the distant light was an aura, Hannah stopped. Her first impulse, which she would not allow herself to obey, was to turn and leave, to avoid a meeting that was certain to be awkward, perhaps dangerous. Had her posture not long ago forgotten that it was possible to depart from the erect, that there were other angles than right, her shoulders would have slumped.

“Complications,” she said. She turned to look back down the cobbled street. In a moment a small shadowy cat trotted into view from behind a hedge. It stopped and sat licking a paw.

“You may as well go back and wait for me,” Hannah called, as though fully expecting the cat to understand her words. She turned and continued in the direction of the light. The cat lowered its paw gently to the ground, gazed after the receding hat for a moment, then turned and disappeared behind the hedge.

Hannah walked neither faster nor slower than she had before. She was accustomed to controlling more compelling forces than her own curiosity or anxiety. She would allow herself neither to hasten nor delay the moment when she must confront the source of the disquieting radiance.

Just ahead, a door opened and released a child, who darted past her on some urgent household errand. A woman wearing an apron and holding a long wooden spoon came and stood beneath the lintel. As Hannah passed she gave the matron a word and a nod, grateful for the chance to let her eye linger for a moment on an aura of no unusual properties, one that did not blaze like a beacon on a hilltop.

Waiting at the corner that had been Hannah’s destination, a young woman sat on a bench under a flowering tree. Her hair was dark, her build slight, and her clothing plain. Seen as most would see her, without the light and colors of the nimbus, she would be just another maiden, youthfully pretty, but not a girl to arrest the eye. For Hannah, the aura was so dazzling, it was hard to remember that to all but the rare adept among women, and to every man without exception—beggars, barristers, even wizards and necromancers—it was completely invisible.

A good thing at that, she thought. If everyone could see auras, much of a social intercourse, dependent as it was upon deception, charitable and otherwise, would be soured. The ordinary woman, blind to the auras of her friends and family, suffered quite enough, in Hannah’s view, from the workings of her natural sensitivity to the nuances of word and glance.

At Hannah’s approach the girl did not rise, but gestured for the older woman to take a seat at her side. Mistress Hannah settled herself on the bench, her back and neck still immovably upright, and folded her hands on the dark cloth of her long plain skirt.

They spoke together briefly, the girl saying little, Hannah less, then rose and walked together down the lane that left the avenue. Though the way was narrow, it was paved with heavy stones, for it ran by many warehouse doors where goods came and went daily by groaning wagons. In the middle of the block there was a tavern, marked by a faded wooden sign that hung above the door.

Inside, the aromas of cheese, smoked fish, wine, and ale mingled in the shadowy lamplight. A few old men sat around a table by the window; a serving girl, tall and slender, like an elegantly elongated figure in a painting, was propped against the bar as though she never meant to move again. Hannah left her companion among the empty tables and exchanged a few words with the barman before leading the way to a dark corner at the rear of the room. There the two women passed through a heavy door. They crossed a storeroom filled with barrels and crates and left by a door at the other side.

They found themselves again in a tavern, similar in some ways to the one on the other side of the storeroom, but with no warm light of flickering lamps, and no heavy aromas of kitchen and cellar. As in the tavern they had just left, a few men sat by a window. Behind the bar was a stout, white-bearded man in an apron.

“Greetings, Master Hugo,” said Hannah. “How is it we find you at work in this place and not with your Brothers at the table?”

“Well,” the man said with a nod to both of them, “Errin has gone to look at something with Jackson, and Gavas and Mervin are off somewhere, so I am left to tend the shop.”

Hannah introduced the young woman. “This is Miss Elise. I have brought her from Ambermere to assist Master Errin for a time, if your Order will permit it.”

Hugo bowed politely. “You are most welcome, miss.” To Hannah he said, “Any adept you present is acceptable, and I am sure young Errin will be delighted. He will hope it means his apprenticeship is coming to an end. In any event, Miss Elise will find much instruction from those who gather here and those who pass this way.”

After being introduced to the others, Elise left, promising to return with Mistress Hannah the next day.

Hugo watched the heavy door close behind her, then stared at it as though lost in thought. He turned to Hannah. “She didn’t stay long,” he said. “She didn’t even bother to look out onto the street.” He gestured toward a door at the other end of the room. “Most who are sent here manage at least a peek on their first visit. Of course, I don’t know her Order or her rank; perhaps she’s no novice despite her youth and her quiet way.” He folded his hands across his ample midriff. “In any event, we must not interrogate our guests. We are here to watch, and sometimes to teach, not to ask idle questions.” He looked at Hannah with an innocent expression. “I suppose one with your talents can see things in her aura that are hidden from me.”

Hannah nodded with a quiet smile. “Trust one of your Brotherhood to be curious. Master. You must remember that we all have our talents. And yours are many; you have no need to envy mine.” She made a completely unnecessary adjustment to her hat, which sat with blameless symmetry atop her gray hair.

“And now to my other errand.” She waved in passing to the men at the table and left by the street door.

On the sidewalk, she did not immediately set out, but gave herself a moment, as she always did on her visits, to get used to the noise and the smells. She stood by the door, her hands clasped in front of her, and looked slowly up and down the street. Beside her the neon sign, long dead, inertly spelled the word BAR in the window.

The evening snarl of cars and trucks sat motionless, filling the air with noise and noxious gasses. The trapped vehicles were making no more progress than the parking meters that stood like sentinels along the curb. Exhaust fumes hung so thick in the damp atmosphere that Hannah almost feared for the health of the herbs and berries in her hat. Hoping for fresher air on a wider street, she started in the direction of the nearest corner, where a malfunctioning traffic light stuck on yellow dangled above the intersection.

She turned the corner onto a boulevard where instead of two lanes of traffic, six were locked in perplexity. Like Master Hugo, she thought. It was said of his Brotherhood that its members pursued perfect awareness. Yet he talked of Elise’s aura, certain to be forever an abstraction to him, and said no word of her strange deep green eyes.

Daniel was thinking about Hell. He pushed through the revolving door from the hotel lobby to the street outside. Hell would probably be a bridge tournament, he had decided—one in which his particular punishment would be to have his sister-in-law Margaret as a partner for all eternity. And as the eons slipped by and the infinite future added inexhaustibly to an endlessly lengthening afternoon at the card table, she would never, ever progress beyond the level of smug incompetence.

On the street the situation was about normal for early evening, except instead of moving at an agonizing crawl, the rush-hour traffic had overflowed the intersection from all directions and come to a halt that looked permanent. Daniel watched in awe, wondering if he was witnessing the historical moment at which utter and irreversible gridlock finally took hold. But it wouldn’t do, he realized, to underestimate the resilience of the motoring public. For instance, though they appeared to be hopelessly trapped, many of the commuters had the presence of mind to blow their horns and swear.

The sun had disappeared behind the horizon of tall office buildings without noticeably lowering the temperature outside, but after a long afternoon of air-conditioned duplicate bridge, Daniel felt his body soaking up the heat like a stiff dry sponge softening in a hot bath. He enjoyed the sensation, knowing that his pleasure would be brief. Like rush hour, hot weather in the city had not been designed for pleasure.

He glanced back at the hotel entrance just in time to see a little wisp of a man make a narrow escape from the revolving door and stumble onto the sidewalk. He saw Daniel and came toward him grinning maliciously. Daniel felt ten degrees hotter just looking at the wrinkled wool suit, and the tie cinched tightly around the skinny neck like a noose. He tried to remember if he had ever seen old Milton wear another outfit.

“Hi, Milton. Congratulations on the win,” he said. “You played great.”

“Sure. I do okay. I been a bridge bum for fifty years, so how else should I play?” He looked around suspiciously and patted his suit jacket in the region of the inner pocket. “Plus, I get paid to play good,” he whispered. Milton was short. He leaned back to look up at the younger man and raised his upper lip to expose his front teeth in something between a grin and a sneer. “I hope you got a good price, too; you deserve it just for the suffering.”

Daniel sighed. “I wasn’t playing for money.”

“What, you was playing for the fun of it? With that woman? Don’t make me laugh.”

“She’s my sister-in-law.”

“Oh.” Milton seemed to be pondering the fresh information. “She’s old enough to be your mother,” he said.

“Almost,” said Daniel. “My brother’s a lot older than I am.”

Milton looked irritably at the sea of noisy automobiles.

“Why don’t these people go home?” he said. He lifted his hat by the brim and brushed his white hair back. “So, big shot, you wanna play poker on Friday?” Before Daniel could answer, the old man waved the hat in his face.

“Don’t tell me the stakes ain’t high enough, either,” he growled. “This is a totally different game. Not like that other one.”

Daniel took a step back to get out of range of the fedora. “I have a Friday game,” he said. “Charlie’s. Every week.”

Milton clamped his hat back on his head. “Okay, you are a big shot.” He leaned toward Daniel and looked up at him from under his hat. “But you’re a kid, so I’m gonna give you some free advice, which is: be careful. You gotta watch yourself with those people.”

“Thanks, Milton, but I’m not a kid, I’m just irresponsible. Ask my sister-in-law. Or my brother.” He smiled. “Actually, I’m thirty-one years old.”

Milton chuckled and shook his head. “That’s what I said. You’re a kid. I’m telling you, you gotta watch your step. Those things you hear about Charlie, you know? They’re true.”

For a second Daniel looked troubled, then he smiled again. “It’s just poker, Milton. Most of the players are businessmen.”

“It’s your funeral,” said the old man in a cheerful voice. He waved and started down the street. After he had gone about ten steps he turned around and trudged back.

“Hey. You wanna shoot some pool?”

Daniel grinned and shook his head.

“One-pocket,” said Milton. “Just for fun. My eyes are gone—I can’t play no more.” He examined his fingernails as though he had just noticed them for the first time. “Maybe fifty a game,” he said casually. He looked up with eyebrows raised. Daniel said nothing.

“C’mon, we can make a game,” he said. “I’ll give you a ball.” He paused. “And the break.”

Daniel shook his head again. “You know I’m not going—”

“Two balls,” said Milton.

“Have you ever seen me in a poolroom, Milton?”

“We’ll play nine-ball, then. That’s a young man’s game. You’ll kill me.”

“No, thanks.”

“The seven. I’ll give you the seven and the break. Twenty dollars a game.”

Daniel waited for him to subside. “Why don’t I just give you the money right now and save myself the agony?’

“Nah,” said Milton with an impatient wave of his hand. He started down the street again.

In a moment he was back. Daniel braced himself for another onslaught.

“I forgot,” said Milton, planting himself in front of Daniel. “I wanted to say about that one hand you played—if this had been a chess tournament, you’d have copped the brilliancy prize for making that ridiculous heart contract your partner stuck you with. I felt like standing up to cheer when you pulled that swindle with the clubs, but I don’t think Dr. Lennox”—Milton raised his chin and pursed his lips in imitation of his paying partner’s air of prissy hauteur—“would have liked it.”

This time when Milton left he didn’t come back. He stalked off and was soon out of sight among the after-work crowds.

Daniel didn’t bother to daydream about getting a cab; the traffic was still glued to the street. As he strolled to the corner he noticed that the signal above the intersection was stuck on yellow.

He left the curb and began to pick his way among the cars. His apartment house was three or four miles uptown. If he wasn’t overcome by carbon monoxide or run down by a frenzied suburbanite, he could expect to be home within an hour.

And in the mountains by tomorrow, he reminded himself. He had been neglecting his hobby, besides which, a nice lengthy rock-climbing trip might go a long way toward solving his current problems. Given Roxy’s presumed attention span, she probably wouldn’t even remember who he was by the time he got back, let alone think she was in love with him. And Charlie, having no way of knowing where he was, would not be tempted to do anything rash.

Daniel was trying to imagine Charlie as a father-in-law. It proved as difficult as imagining Charlie’s daughter as a wife.

“Take the girl out for a pizza. Give her a thrill. She thinks you look like a movie star.”

For someone who had been frequently referred to as a “reputed crime figure” in the newspapers, Charlie had been almost diffident, even shy, as though he brought the matter up with reluctance. Just a doting father indulging the whim of a silly girl. Daniel had been certain, erroneously as it turned out, that Charlie thought of this as a trivial matter—a twenty-two-year-old’s version of a schoolgirl crush.

Now, just a few weeks later, Daniel found himself facing the crime family equivalent of a breach-of-promise suit, me imagined penalties of which did little to encourage an optimistic outlook.

“I’m a reasonable man,” Charlie had said. His charming smile was reassuring. For a foolish moment Daniel had dared to imagine he was off the hook. “But if somebody breaks my little girl’s heart, I’m naturally not going to be happy.” The smile had vanished. “And if I’m not happy, I’m gonna make sure he’s not happy, either. You understand what I’m tryin’ to say?”

Daniel walked several blocks before he saw any vehicle move more than five yards. He turned to look back down the street. For as far as he could see behind him, the signals at every corner were yellow. He wondered if Margaret had managed to get out of the hotel parking lot yet.

“I just don’t see how you manage without a car,” she had said today, borrowing from his brother’s stock of inevitable remarks. “Of course, when a person doesn’t have a steady job …”

Daniel had waited, knowing the script.

“Have you checked with the high schools for the fall?” she asked. “They say there’s a shortage of teachers.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Margaret had not fulfilled her obligation to remind him that he was not in his twenties anymore, because she had been anxious to say some extremely silly things about the Bath coup, a fine point of bridge that she misunderstood thoroughly and, Daniel was sure, permanently.

The traffic rumbled and muttered like a mob in a bad mood. The assembled horsepower was having its usual effect on the city air but achieving little else. Daniel wondered how many buses it would take to hold every cursing commuter trapped in the acres of idling cars.

A half a block behind him a man who looked like a professional wrestler all dressed up for Sunday school was peering intently into a shop window. Daniel continued up the street. After two blocks of walking at a good clip, he looked over his shoulder. Half a block back, the man was rolling along in his wake.

Twenty minutes later Daniel was already thoroughly bored with playing silly games. He had walked around a block and cut through the same department store three times, and he still could not tell whether he was being followed. All he had accomplished was to attract the attention of a stunning clerk at the makeup counter who looked as though she was made of porcelain.

Still, if Charlie was having him followed, it would be by someone who was good at it. The big man he had thought might be shadowing him had turned off a few blocks back, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t taken his place. Daniel didn’t really know how subtle Charlie’s employees might be. He decided to stop thinking about it. If he was being followed, so be it. He was only on his way home anyway, and Charlie already knew where he lived. Besides, if he walked by the makeup counter a few more times, the porcelain figurine was either going to call a store detective or offer him a key to her apartment, and he already had one girlfriend too many.

On the street, the traffic had finally begun to move. When an empty cab appeared at the curb, he grabbed it On the way to his place he occupied himself with an attempt to think neither of hired thugs or bridge tournaments. He thought about his livelihood instead. He probably should have accepted Milton’s invitation to the poker game. Despite what he had said to the old hustler, he would not be showing up at Charlie’s until this soap opera with Roxy had been resolved.

In his apartment, he mixed a scotch and water and sat down to ponder his options. His experience as a gambler had taught him that in life, as in poker, you could usually keep out of trouble if you stayed alert. You did, however, need some cards to play, or at least fold, and in this game, Charlie seemed to hold all fifty-two.

Life with Roxy. That was one of the options. But Daniel could not imagine spending a lot of time with someone who thought television talk shows were “stimulating,” and whose most animated conversation was on the subject of the private lives of singers, actors, and anyone else who was grossly overpaid and notorious. Daniel did not think of himself as a particularly well educated man. He knew for an indisputable fact that his master’s degree represented only very slight learning. Nonetheless, his interests strayed beyond the boundaries of commercial television and popular music. As far as he could tell, Roxy’s did not.

“So much for Darwin,” he said to his drink.

It occurred to him that his older brother had finally been right about something concerning “the kid.” If he had pursued his high school teaching career, he doubtless would not even be acquainted with any crime lords, or at least none old enough to have marriageable daughters.

And, as his brother (“Remember, I’m old enough to be your father.”) never tired of pointing out, with the extra money he could earn teaching a rock-climbing course at the community college, he would be “really set,” as well as having a good time with his hobby. “Not to mention the prestige,” his sister-in-law would be sure to add. Margaret seemed to be convinced that teaching rock climbing at a community college made her brother-in-law a college professor. As far as Daniel could tell, she considered it the equivalent of holding an endowed chair at Harvard or Yale.

The phone rang. He did not consider answering it. No great loss anyway. If it wasn’t Roxy, it was probably his dentist, who occasionally called with a last-minute invitation to his Thursday-night poker party. But the play was of such low quality that Daniel felt like even more of an impostor than he usually did when playing with amateurs. And anyway, the stakes were too low. “Pretzel contest” was the term Charlie favored to describe suburban card games where the tables were always littered with snacks. “Hey, kid—you make any money at the pretzel contest last night?”

But Daniel didn’t expect to hear any more avuncular ribbing from Charlie. Nor did he know when if ever he would be welcome again at Charlie’s weekly poker game, which amounted to losing the income from a full-time job. Even counting the occasional losing night that was an unavoidable part of his trade, it had covered basic living expenses. In a way, he supposed, marrying Roxy would be like marrying the boss’s daughter. Daniel sighed. All the more reason for Charlie to be offended at his obvious lack of enthusiasm.

The whole proposition was very simple from Charlie’s point of view—Roxy wanted something; what else was there to say? It reminded Daniel of a novel—one by Faulkner, he thought—in which a father tells a grown son that a southern gentleman “never disappoints a lady.”

He put off thinking about how he would get out of town if he was being followed. For one thing, it was difficult for him to imagine he could be in any real danger from his poker pal Charlie. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to give things one more day. He could spend some time tomorrow wandering around the city and find out once and for all if anyone was watching him.

The phone rang again. He wondered if Margaret might be calling to talk over the day’s triumphs. Sometimes after she had shanghaied him into a tournament she tried to interest him in playing with her regularly. She thought it scandalous that her young brother-in-law played poker often enough, and well enough, to live on his winnings; but somehow she thought it would do him a world of good to spend a few nights a week at the bridge table—after working all day, of course.

Over the past year her favorite comment had become, “When a person is past thirty, they’re not a kid anymore.” Daniel could tell that Margaret thought she was being subtle and oblique. His brother was usually more direct. “Grow up,” was his standard advice, to which Daniel invariably replied, “No, thanks.”

From time to time it occurred to Rand that his position as principal adviser to the king of Ambermere must be envied by many of his fellow subjects, especially at court, where the scarcity of common sense made foolish errors in reasoning routine. This notion usually sought him out when he found himself in one of the thoroughly unenviable situations that were so frequently his lot.

“No, no,” said the king from his immense chair, waving away his valet, “I’m sure I wore that last time. Or maybe it was the time before. I don’t want to arouse suspicions by appearing in the same disguise too often.”

It was a sign of the well-known lack of justice in the universe, thought Rand, that a man of his years should find himself spending irreplaceable moments watching the king, who aside from his other attainments, was far the fattest man in the land, make meticulous choices from a collection of vast garments meant to counterfeit the dress of a prosperous commoner. This wardrobe existed for the purpose of allowing Asbrak the Fat, whose unmistakable silhouette appeared on signs over the doorways of tradesmen throughout the city, to pass unrecognized among his subjects.

The valet minced forth carrying a long jacket and a pair of pantaloons that together might have furnished the material for a capacious, if unusually colorful, tent. Rand turned his head fastidiously from the rude clash of patterns and hues as the little man spread the clothing before the king with a flourish.

“Perhaps,” purred the valet with an affected lisp that he evidently thought made him sound like an aristocrat, “one might be permitted to offer this ensemble to His Majesty. If he will ignore its undoubted vulgarity, His Majesty will perhaps agree that it is otherwise quite nice.”

“That might do. That might do.” The king looked at the ceiling. “I wonder what Rand thinks,” he said in the manner of one who is alone and talking to himself. He turned to his adviser. “What do you think, my Lord Rand?”

“As Your Majesty very well knows, I think it most imprudent for Your Majesty to go abroad unaccompanied, wandering the streets and alleys of the city in the middle of the night, inviting who knows what disaster.”

“But I shall be disguised.” The king turned laboriously on the thick cushions that lined his chair. “Men, and women, too, walk our streets unmolested.” He fixed his adviser with the regal stare. “Surely you don’t think I will be recognized?’

Though it was unthinkable. Rand thought of pointing out to the monarch that the very cats on the windowsills could not fail to recognize the king, however attired, by his unmatched girth and ponderous swaying gait alone.

“I concede that Your Majesty is a master of disguise,” he said. The king never failed to beam at this particularly cherished compliment. “Nevertheless, I find it difficult to understand how your deception can hope to succeed.”

Rand knew that to leap to his feet the king would need the help of some sort of mechanical contrivance; nonetheless, the glint in the monarch’s eye suggested that he had leapt to his feet in spirit.

“Please explain yourself, my Lord Rand.”

“Why, it should be obvious to anyone,” said the older man, covertly enjoying the growing incredulity of the kingly glare. He paused to relish the moment before continuing. Such sport was small recompense for hours wasted, but better than none at all.

“When Your Majesty appears among the populace, however cunningly disguised, it must be a wonder that you are not at once discovered.” He paused again for as long as he dared. “Your Majesty’s noble bearing must be obvious to all. Your kingly eye. Your …”—he brought his hands together and stared at them, as though searching for exactly the right word—“presence. These things could not escape the attention of the least alert of our citizens.”

The king was beaming again. He struggled from the chair and moved himself with stately step to the center of the room.

“But this, you see, Rand”—he turned as though better to display his kingly lineaments. Rand thought he looked rather like a large trained animal attempting a pirouette—“this is the essence of my disguise. What you say is undoubtedly true, my bearing, my carriage, and so on, but I can suppress it. I don’t change only my clothing when I go among the people; I change my glance, my step … everything. I think that had I been born poor, I would have made a success on the stage.”

To Rand, this was at once the most sympathetic and the most frustrating quality of his ruler. The man, a widower and a father, and old enough to be a grandfather, was in many ways like an immense boy. For all his bulk, and the gray in his beard, he spoke of his adventures with the enthusiasm of an urchin brandishing a wooden sword.

“As I said, Your Majesty is a master of disguise. But still I wish you would allow me to persuade Your Highness to stay at home tonight.” He walked to a window set deep in the stone wall. “You see, Your Majesty, that now it begins to rain, so you must abandon your plan.”

The king joined him at the window. Lights were already showing at the windows of the houses and shops beyond the castle walls. In the fading glow of day the colors of the tile roofs deepened as they were glazed by the soft rain.

“Rand, you came here during my father’s reign, and I myself have been on the throne for more than twenty-five years, so you are not a newcomer in this land.” The king gestured toward the sky. “It is dusk. At this time of year it rains every day at dusk. I point this out to you in case you have failed to notice it. It is no more unexpected than the midday bells.”

“But there is no need for Your Majesty to go abroad in this way.”

The king turned to his valet. “Leave us. I will ring when I am ready.”

The valet bowed and left quietly by an inner door. The king raised his hand to forestall conversation and listened in the silent room. He peered along the walls and into the shadowy corners as though there might be forgotten or hitherto unnoticed visitors with them in his dressing room. Or perhaps. Rand thought disconsolately, he was just counting the chairs. Asbrak stepped away from the window.

“I hope to learn something that may help us,” he said in a soft voice pregnant with significance.

Rand suppressed a sigh. “Your Highness, the only things that will help us are an army large enough to defeat King Razenor’s, which we do not have, or patience, which we must have.”

The king paced to the window and looked out at the rain.

“An army. How I wish I could ride to the walls of Ascroval at the head of my great-grandsire’s host. How sweetly our neighbor the viper-king would smile as he invented excuses for his vile treachery. And when he handed over the princess unharmed, perhaps, but only perhaps, I would not put his head on a spike, though my military ancestor would not have been so forgiving.”

“Your Majesty must remember that in those days a captured enemy could get his head on a spike for smiling too much—or not enough—or wearing colors that clashed.”

“But to have such an army!”

“Those armies and warriors, and their wars, are all long dead. Your Majesty. Your great-grandsire led troops who knew all the tricks of the battlefield and thirsted for the blood of their foes. Our soldiers know all the tricks of the parade ground and are acquainted with no thirst that cannot be quenched at a tavern. We live now in a world of bargains and diplomacy.”

“And vile treachery.”

“To be sure, Majesty. Always treachery.”

“But on the streets or in the taverns I may hear something that will be of use.”

“Your Majesty, we know everything we need to know. Our neighbor, King Razenor—”

“Son of my father’s cousin, and a lying snake his whole life!”

“Indeed, Your Highness. King Razenor, perhaps with the help of the wizard he is reputed to have in his service—”

“Rogan says that cannot be, that he may be a magician of high rank, but that wizards do not attach themselves to courts.”

“Your Majesty knows how earnest is my respect for our palace magician, Rogan the Obscure, as he wishes he could persuade everyone to call him.”

“He is very learned in his Art, and very long in its practice.”

“He is certainly old, I will grant. And that may be magical, considering the quantities of wine that disappear into his apartments. But speaking as a survivor of his recent fireworks demonstration, I am not inclined to overvalue his abilities.” The adviser’s lips turned to a near smile. “I will concede that, considering the livestock and stored grain that with a slight shift in the wind might well have been reduced to ash, it was the most terrifying celebration I ever attended.”

The king sighed and gazed from the window at the darkening sky. “Yes,” he said in a quiet voice, “the celebration of the engagement of the Princess Iris to the son of our richest neighbor. The marriage that will seal an alliance of endless prosperity and security.”

He turned back to his adviser. “And where,” he asked in a voice loud with anger and bitterness, “is our princess, my daughter, the Lovely Iris, Fairest Flower of the Kingdom? Held by Razenor the Snake, who does not wish to see this alliance become a reality.” The king clenched his hands as though they grasped his enemy by the throat. “He holds her there in his castle, and yet will not acknowledge it.”

“Not officially, Your Majesty. But his emissary has made it clear to me, nonetheless, in the customary way, without admitting anything.”

“I wish you had told me before allowing the ‘emissary’ to leave. I would have sent him back without his ears.”

Rand disregarded this, knowing it to be bluster. Aside from everything else, the oversize monarch was far too kindly and softhearted to mistreat even a diplomat.

“In any event, Your Majesty, I am confident we shall soon be in receipt of King Razenor’s terms.”

“Terms?” thundered the king. “I will give him ‘terms’ to consider when my magician finds a way to deal with this viper!” The king pointed to the ceiling. “Up there in his tower, Rogan the Obscure is working without rest to find a way to bring Razenor the Snake to his knees.”

Rand had frequently suspected the palace magician of drinking without rest, but he doubted he could be expected to persevere in any other project. Still, bringing a snake to its knees seemed one worthy of his talents.

“I hope Your Majesty will not be disappointed. His trade is ceremonial magic. And while I don’t think anyone is truly safe with Rogan at work, I cannot imagine what he could possibly accomplish that would be of any use.”

The king returned to his overstuffed chair, positioning himself carefully above it before dropping into it with a force that would have reduced most furniture to scraps of wood and cloth. Rand, who had witnessed this operation countless times, had always thought of it as the mirror image of leaping from a seat.

Once again the king sighed a royal sigh. “We must accomplish something soon. Secrets have short lives, and anyway, my subjects cannot be told endlessly that the Magnificent Iris has gone into seclusion to prepare herself for the great event of her life. The people expect to see her. The court, for that matter, expects to see her. And every lady of the court has a question on her lips, often about the choice of companion in this isolation, the commoner, what’s-her-name.”

“Modesty, Your Highness.”

“What? Are you being impertinent, Rand?”

“It’s the girl’s name. Your Highness. Modesty.”

“What? Oh. Ah, so it Is. Yes … pretty thing. Not like the princess, of course, but … Yes, I know her. Speaks right up. Put that lord, what’s-his-name, in his place. Very good. Yes …”

Both men were silent for a moment. A fragment of a distant song entered through the open window, then was lost in the soft noises of the rain.

“You see,” said the king, “it’s that she’s not an aristocrat. But what are we to do? There are no unmarried girls now at the court, except for two or three whose company my daughter cannot abide for more than a few hours at a time. So this common girl … you say her name is Mystery? How unusual. I don’t believe I care for it.” The king’s voice had become indignant. “Who are her parents?”

“The maiden’s name is Modesty, my Liege.”

“I’m sure you told me Mystery.”

“I was mistaken, Majesty.”

“Anyway, it’s a good thing she is a commoner. What excuse could we make to her parents if they were at court?”

Rand said nothing. He wondered if the king might forget his plan to venture forth in disguise. He tried to think of some further distraction.

“Have I seen her parents?”

Rand looked blank. “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon?” He leaned forward as though he had not heard the question.

The king sat up in his chair, straightening his back. He lifted his chin and fixed his adviser with a look of stern dignity.

“You must listen to me when I speak, Rand. I am the king.”

“Always, Your Highness.” The adviser bowed slightly. “What was the question?”

“What question?”

“I am sorry, Highness. I misunderstood.”

“Try to be more attentive, Rand.”

The adviser bowed again.

“Anyway,” the king said in a more cheerful tone, “I will be doing what I can in the taverns, and Rogan says, but in confidence, you understand—magicians must have their secrecy—that he has a plan that will cure all our problems.” The king looked reproachfully at Rand. “He has given me great hope. Great hope.”

The rain had stopped. In the highest window of the tower, looking down through the mist that still hung in the air, stood a tall, bony, gray-haired man. In one pale hand he held a piece of chalk; in the other, a goblet.

“Stars,” he muttered in a cracked voice. “I want some stars. What I am to do can’t be done on a cloudy night.” He sipped from the goblet. “That’s right, talk to yourself,” he said, talking to himself. “That will fix everything.”

He looked up and squinted, as though to penetrate the clouds and mist with his gaze. “I know you’re there,” he continued. “Show yourselves. I have a job to do.”

He drained the goblet in one long swallow, his head tilted back, eyes closed.

“Fireworks,” he said, returning his gaze to the dark landscape below. “I’ll give them fireworks. Fireworks they’ll still be talking about a hundred years from now.” He turned his glance to the cloudy sky above. “If the clouds will go away and let me see the stars.” He tried to sip from the empty goblet, then looked into it with an expression of mild surprise before placing it on the stone sill of the window.

“A wizard. Hah! Let us say Razenor does have a wizard, though I know very well he does not. Cannot.” He spoke as though addressing an invisible audience suspended in midair outside his window, making flourishing gestures with his piece of chalk. “Let us say he has two wizards. Or twelve. Let us say twelve.” He stabbed the air with his chalk as though counting a large number of wizards. “We give him twelve wizards to protect himself against the magic of one palace magician.”

He turned from his imaginary audience, leaving the window empty. In a moment he returned carrying a dusty flask, from which he filled his goblet.

“Just one magician,” he resumed, before raising the drink to his lips. “Rogan, master of fireworks and other carnival tricks. A mere functionary. A humble servant of the monarch, like a cook. Or a hairdresser. No one mistakes Rogan for a wizard. No one fears the deep spells of power that might be wrought by Rogan. No, indeed. Rogan is to content himself working minute magic suitable for royal ceremony.” He paused to sip, daintily, from the contents of the goblet before returning it to the sill. He stared into the mist outside the window.

“Twelve wizards, deep in artifice, fearsome in secret knowledge, awful in their collective power. Arrayed against the fabricator of fireworks, Rogan, palace prestidigitator. Let them combine in confabulation and set their workings in motion against mine. Against the skills of Rogan the Obscure!”

He laughed grimly, picturing a group of self-satisfied wizards sitting around smirking and speaking of him in a belittling and patronizing way. Suddenly their foolish complacency is shattered as they are confronted with and utterly confounded by his, Rogan’s, little surprise. In confusion and dismay they are routed. Some attempt to flee, choosing doorways or windows, as they are close at hand. Some cower where they sit, too stunned to move. All have been undone. The opponent they derided and despised has prevailed. Rogan’s triumph is complete.

The magician smiled, savoring the imaginary scene of sweet justice. It was too bad, he thought, that Razenor didn’t actually have a wizard for him to overcome. He reached for the goblet, but brushed it with his hand, and saw it disappear over the edge of the windowsill and into the night. From far below, while he still stared at the spot it had occupied, came the faint clatter of metal striking stone.

A moment later he heard another noise. He peered through the gloom. It was just possible for him to make out the unmistakable figure of the king passing quietly through a private garden gate to the dark street beyond the palace walls.

Chapter 2

Daniel had planned to stay home for the night, but didn’t. After spending half the evening brooding about his unintentional entanglement with Roxy, the tedium of gambling as an occupation, Margaret’s inability to bid a bridge hand rationally, and, finally, the futility of life, he realized that he was ravenously hungry. His only meal of the day had been a late lunch before the tournament.

On the way downtown, he looked out the back window of the taxi a number of times before conceding that one set of headlights looks much like another, and that any one of fifteen or twenty cars could be following him. In the restaurant he found a table that would have suited a frontier gunslinger in an unfriendly town—facing the door with a wall at his back. From time to time he glanced out the nearest window to see if there were any suspicious characters lurking under the street lamps.

His meal passed without drama. No burly goons arrived to harass him with ungrammatical comments about his personal life, no threatening notes fell from his napkin when he unfolded it. The steak was cooked the way he ordered it, and the french fries were not cold. Considering that he had never before tried the restaurant, and had picked it solely because it was not the sort of place where he would be likely to run into Roxy or Charlie, he felt lucky. His luck didn’t run out until he ordered coffee, which was weak and tasted vaguely like flannel.

He ignored the coffee and listened to the Muzak instead, which had been monotonous and mildly annoying throughout his meal, but had suddenly become almost surrealistic. The tune leaking out of the cheap speaker above his table was from the seventies, and had originally been played at a volume meant to do permanent harm to the ear. This version was being whispered by violins in a saccharine arrangement and executed by studio musicians who played it with fatal precision. As he listened to the housebroken protest song, Daniel pushed his coffee away to get it out from under his nose.

As if he had been summoned by a bell, the maitre d’ came knifing across the carpet with quick, short steps. He was short and slight with swept-back hair and the posture of a man leaning into a stiff wind. His face in profile was triangular and culminated in an eager, outthrust nose. Daniel could not recall ever having seen such a streamlined human being. He appeared to have been designed entirely on aerodynamic principles.

He spoke in a bubbly Calcutta brogue. “Is your coffee cold, sir? I will sending you a fresh cup instantaneously.”

Daniel declined, telling a polite lie about the quality of the coffee and asking for his bill.

He left the restaurant and sauntered casually through the streets, checking occasionally to see if anyone was following him. At night on busy sidewalks, though, this turned out to be of no more use than watching headlights from the cab had been. Anyone could have been following him, and he was about ninety-nine-percent sure that no one was.

From somewhere ahead he heard a voice rise above the ambient racket of the city streets. His first thought was that he was approaching a disturbance of some kind. He looked for flashing lights.

“Eeeeeeee.” The wailing voice seemed to be coming from the next cross street. As Daniel turned the corner, the sound became momentarily louder, then trailed off into silence. Ahead was a small knot of people surrounding a man with a microphone in his hand. Daniel had nearly reached them when the man began broadcasting again.

“Jooooooze,” he cried, waving a finger in the air as his amplified voice was overtaken by feedback. He dropped to one knee and twisted a knob on an amplifier at his feet. As he got back up he blew noisily into the microphone. He fixed his audience with a manic stare.

“Presbyteeeeeerians,” he cried. Daniel stopped and joined the tiny congregation.

“Mooooormons.” The man’s burning eyes swept the people in front of him as though he suspected the presence of Mormons. He paused for a moment.

“Methodists!” he said in a conversational shout. He chuckled and shook his head sadly.

“You know where they’re going?” he called, then repeated the question at a greater volume. “Do you know where they’re going?” His amplified voice was loud enough for a much larger audience. “They’re all going to Hell. The Devil’s there waiting for them. Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Presbyterians, Mohammedans, all of them. They all have confirmed reservations in Hotel Hell.” He stared at his audience for a moment, then took a drink from the glass sitting on top of his single speaker.

“You can go, too!” he shouted suddenly. “They got plenty of room, my friends; they never turn a guest away.”

A tall, thin man wearing an apron appeared in the doorway of the bar next door and stood watching with a frown. After a few seconds he turned and went back inside.

“And it’s cheap!” The speaker crackled. “In fact, friends, it’s free. Won’t cost you a penny.” The preacher tugged his tie loose. His shirt was wet with perspiration. “All they want is your immortal soul.” He took another drink and bent down to adjust the amplifier.

“But don’t expect to see me there!” the preacher shouted as he rose from his crouch. “Because my plans are already made. I’m going to be in with God in glory!” he said, pronouncing the key words “gawd” and “glow-reh.” He leaned back and smiled broadly up at the rooftops. “Hallelujah! Boshamu beemah! Oppilee Boshilee bah!” Once again he raised the volume on the amp.

“And you can come to!” he thundered. He jumped up and clicked his heels, then whirled, leaping over the microphone cord like a jump rope. “Or you can go down to Hell, and fry there with the Jooooze and the Moooormons and the Caaaatholics and the Presbyteeeeerians, and all the other sinners that are stuck there forever in the eternal pit of fire.” He looked eagerly across his audience. “Let me tell you again, friends. Let me tell you who’s down there in the fire, ’cause there’s lots of them.”

As the preacher started back into his wailing chant, a large barrel-shaped man burst out of the bar as though he had kicked the door down. He pushed his way past the edge of the small audience, and without breaking stride, went to the loudspeaker and yanked it off the ground. The water glass fell to the sidewalk and shattered in a splash of droplets and shards. The metal amplifier bounced and skidded at the end of the speaker wire until the man tramped on it and broke the connection with a jerk. He took three or four rapid steps to the corner of the building and smashed the speaker against the angle of the brick wall. The particle-board case crumbled, spilling speaker cones and wires. The man let the pieces drop and, without a word or a backward glance, went back into the bar.

The preacher was still holding his microphone and staring down at the wreckage of his speaker. A tall gray-haired woman wearing a winter coat sidled over to Daniel.

“See? They, won’t let you talk.” She spoke in a near whisper out of the side of her mouth. She leaned toward Daniel. “People don’t believe me,” she murmured.

Daniel smiled politely at her as if she had mentioned the humidity, then turned his attention to the preacher, who was quietly gathering up what remained of his equipment. He had a placid expression on his face, as though what had happened had not disturbed him in the slightest. A deeply wrinkled old man with jet black hair that looked like it had been dyed with shoe polish detached himself from the crowd. As he drifted past Daniel he remarked, “Guess that guy must have been a Presbyterian.”

Daniel laughed, then stopped abruptly when he felt an elbow in his ribs. The woman was looking at him with earnest concern in her eyes.

“Presbyterian, nothing,” she said. “Did you see that nose?”

Daniel found he didn’t have a ready answer.

“He’s a spy. They all are.”

“Who?” said Daniel, knowing he shouldn’t ask.

The woman looked around cautiously. “Jews.” She spoke without moving her lips. “They’re all foreign agents.” She leaned closer to him. “The coloreds are in with them, too.”

Daniel pretended to be engrossed in watching the preacher load his equipment into the trunk of a ten-year-old Buick. Then, like everyone else there, he stared after the man as he crossed the sidewalk with a jaunty step and went into the bar.

The woman nudged him again.

Daniel waited to hear her next revelation.

“Can you give me a dollar?” she said.

Daniel had nothing smaller than a ten.

“Sorry,” he said with an apologetic smile. The woman turned and walked away slowly without saying anything. Daniel watched her wander off into the summer night in her heavy coat.

The barroom door was open.

Though it wasn’t amplified, he recognized the preacher’s voice from inside the bar. He started for the door, meaning to have a look. Then he stopped. “Nuts,” he said, shaking his head wearily. He wheeled and set out at a quick stride. From the bar, he heard a faint “Joooooze … Mooormons …” trailing off in a mournful diminuendo.

When he caught up with the woman, he slowed down just long enough to hand her the bills he had taken from his wallet. As soon as she took them, he hurried on as though he had a plane to catch. It had made him feel good to give her money he would never miss—even demented bigots have to eat—but he didn’t want to spend any more time with her. That would have been more charity than he was willing to extend.

He slowed down as soon as he dared. It was still too hot for any activity much more intense than a quiet stroll. He thought about looking up Milton in the poolroom. Milton had invited him to play poker, and not in a cheap game. It was probably worth looking into. It was certainly true that for the time being, his Fridays were open.

He tried to remember the location of the poolroom. It was somewhere nearby, he knew, and Milton would surely be there. He had told Daniel in the past that he only played cards to make money, but he played pool because he loved the game. The thought of Milton brought the crazy lady’s warnings about Jews to mind. Daniel laughed aloud at the picture of the old hustler making clandestine reports to a sinister foreign agent in a trench coat.

Somehow, the thought of spies and intrigues brought to mind the Internal Revenue Service. As usual, he had been putting off the quarterly ordeal with his taxes, which was part of the reason it was always such an ordeal. If he went home right now, his conscience informed him, he could get everything in order tonight and be ready to actually complete the whole stupid affair and get the forms and the check in the mail by tomorrow afternoon.

As he was trying frantically to think of plausible reasons for putting the chore off until Saturday or Sunday, an empty cab came drifting by at about the speed of a brisk walk.

Daniel’s shoulders slumped. “Providence,” he said, and waved it down. The invigorated taxi leapt into the stream of traffic. Half a block back, a big black car with windows of reflecting glass left an illegal parking space. At the corner it went through a red light and drifted up the street behind Daniel’s cab.

Dibrick the Roaster of Meats was engaged in a battle, or at any rate a skirmish, with his conscience. He was winning.

“As it is so early,” he said gravely to the maid at the barrel, “I believe I will have … another blagon … flagon of beer. Before I go home. To my wife.”

The girl took his pitcher and began to fill it.

“Do you know my … wife?” Dibrick said to her back.

She answered without turning from the barrel. “She is my mother’s sister, Uncle Dibrick.”

Dibrick screwed his face into a parody of incredulity. He leaned around the girl and squinted at her face from the side.

“Whose uncle are you?” he shouted in her ear.

She pushed him away, sloshing beer on his vest.

“I am got noing … Not going to pay for that,” he said, brushing his front with careful inaccuracy. He looked up at his niece with an expression that was both befuddled and befuddling. He seemed to be trying to prove that he could smirk while blinking.

The maid took him by the elbow and began to steer him toward the door. “Go home to your supper, Uncle.”

Dibrick grinned affably at the company on either side as the girl propelled his slender frame through the crowded common room.

“I roast meats,” he announced a number of times before they reached the door.

Outside, he happened to glance down the street. In the distance he could see a figure approaching. He bent forward at the waist, nearly falling, and watched as the silhouetted man passed beneath a street lamp.

“By the gods and goddesses, it is the king,” he said aloud, then clapped his forefinger to his lips.

“Shhh.” Though there was no one there to wink at, he produced a laborious wink that seemed to involve every muscle in his face.

He addressed himself in a sibilant whisper. “In disguise. Again. Walking the streets like any man of the city.” Dibrick set out with a stiff-legged and unintentionally meandering gait toward the advancing monarch.

“Like any doctor, or … or Roaster of Meats. Like a man that may be addressed by any other man.” At the thought of the magnanimous condescension of the king, Dibrick’s eyes began to fill with tears. He stopped and dabbed at them with his sleeve. He was startled, in fact amazed, if his feelings could be judged by the expression on his face, when a voice interrupted him.

“My man?”

Dibrick wondered how it could be that the king had reached him so quickly. He looked at him closely, congratulating himself on resisting the impulse to bow. When the king was in disguise, it was important not to do or say the wrong thing. He consciously arranged his features into an expression that would indicate to the monarch that the citizen who stood before him was a man of good humor, yet one of dignity and intelligence.

Before he opened his mouth, he reminded himself not to allow the bit of drink he had indulged in to slur his speech.

“I do not know you,” he said, being very careful to pronounce each word distinctly. He lingered on the vowels, and turned them on his tongue, giving his speech, he thought, a distinctive lilt. Quite pleased both with himself, and with the sound of his new accent in private conversation with the sovereign, he decided to add a few words. It was probable, he suddenly realized, that he was impressing the king with his bearing and his discourse.

“Not,” he said with a nourishing gesture that pulled him just a bit off balance, “having been seeing you before under … Previous circumstances.”

Asbrak leaned forward, squinting, and put his hand to his ear. “What?” he said querulously. “I can’t understand you. Who are you?”

Dibrick swayed before his sovereign. Before answering, he thought it wise to blink a few times in a judicious manner.

“Roaster of Meats,” he said finally, and then winked at the king to demonstrate his complete lack of suspicion.

The king snorted and moved on without another word.

Dibrick watched the departing figure, then wiped his eyes again before striking out for home with a step resolute in intention if not execution.

“We shall see,” he said with an air of triumph, “what my wife has to say to this!”

The king paused at the entrance of the tavern. From inside he could hear the sound of lively talk and laughter. But it was, he thought, an establishment too close to the palace, and too much attached to its own neighborhood, to be frequented by intriguers and spies. What he heard were the sounds of strictly local conviviality. He continued on his way, walking in the general direction of the waterfront. It was there that foreigners, from boats and pack trains both, drank, gambled, and talked far into the night.

In accord with local custom, he greeted everyone he passed with a word and a nod. He noted with pleasure the great civility of those he encountered, who never failed to yield the pavement to him in the many narrow walkways where there seemed somehow to be room for only one to pass. As was always the case on his anonymous visits to the city, the behavior of his subjects moved him to reflect that courtesy had the power to elevate all to the condition of royalty.

In fact, the king was satisfied that a city more gracious than his own was not to be found. Even the capital of King Finster the Munificent, though twice the size of his Ambermere, did not exceed it in grace and charm. In Asbrak’s view, Felshalfen was too big to be comfortable. The fact that his daughter, once married to Finster’s heir, Hilbert the Silent, would be residing in the metropolis was the only circumstance of the impending marriage that bothered anyone, and the only one it bothered was Iris herself.

It was not at all uncommon for a royal daughter to marry before the age of seventeen or eighteen. The Matchless Iris had celebrated her twenty-second birthday. She had been so long at her father’s court at Ambermere and, as Asbrak himself had been aware to the point of despair if not panic, so long unmarried, that any change, even one so happy for her kingdom, was alarming to her. How lucky, as Asbrak the Fat reminded himself a hundred times a day, that the rather retiring and backward heir of the richest kingdom on the sea had conceived this passion, or what passed for one in his case, for the Stunning Iris.

Whether his daughter returned Hilbert’s feelings was not a question Asbrak had inquired into. Certainly the princess would as a matter of royal duty accede to any union so advantageous to her kingdom and her people, but the king had heard no hint that his daughter was unhappy.

He walked for a while on a wide avenue where at every corner were to be found musicians, dancers, jugglers, or some other lively enterprise. The king stood among his subjects, joining them in the pleasures of the summer night. The clink of the coins they tossed at the feet of the entertainers was itself a music to lift the spirits. After lingering at a number of crossings, enchanted at one by the clever fingers of a lutanist, lost at the next in the melodies of a pretty singer, he remembered himself, recalled his duty, and pushed on.

On a quiet commercial lane dominated by warehouses and the back doors of trading houses he found a small tavern. He was yet some distance from the quays, but felt the need for some refreshment and a chair. He squeezed himself through a narrow entrance that opened not onto a hallway, as was usually the case, but directly into a small one-room tavern. The king looked for a spot from which he could listen and observe. As he stood blinking in the lamplight, a tall slender girl arrived to conduct him to a table by the wall. He lowered himself with great care onto a sturdy-looking stool and ordered wine.

A few minutes later, the king, who considered himself keenly observant, noticed a woman enter the room from a door in a far corner. She appeared to be a little older than he, perhaps Rand’s age, and was rather on the short side. Deducting for the outlandish hat she wore, he guessed her height at a little over five feet, or under it in the many neighboring kingdoms that insisted on using perverse and erroneous systems of measurement.

The woman looked around the room. Her posture, he noted, was exemplary. The king tried to recall when he had last seen a duchess who stood as straight as this commoner. Her eyes scanned the company, and when they turned in his direction, she waved. Asbrak shifted his gaze and pretended not to see her. He was, after all, acting as a spy. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her walk toward his table. As she drew nearer, he wondered if he had been mistaken for someone else. To his immense relief, she passed him without a glance, and joined a number of gray-bearded men nearby. They all rose in greeting, bowing as the matron took a seat. Here was courtesy, thought the king with a feeling of pride, that would have done credit to the court, if only dressed in finer clothes.

He sat for quite a long time, sipping wine and half listening to the seemingly aimless talk of the other patrons, who were mostly gray-bearded elders. By the time he had poured the last drops from his flagon, he had stopped listening entirely. After all, he thought, the quiet talk of old men was unlikely to tell him anything of the princess. He felt suddenly tired and discouraged. Rand was doubtless right. The king’s intrigues, Rogan’s magic—these things would prove to be futile.

Although she presented a picture of perfect indolence when she leaned inertly against the bar, the tall slender waitress proved most attentive. Asbrak allowed her to renew his supply of wine and, at her suggestion, indulged in a small snack of bread, cheese, olives, and some rather fine smoked fish. The nourishment served to revive his flagging spirits. The barman very thoughtfully provided him with a warm and fragrant moistened napkin for his hands. It pleased the monarch greatly that in his capital, even the taverns in the alleys were not without their luxuries.

Paying for things not being part of the common experience of royalty, the king forgot, as he frequently did, to ask for a reckoning, yet remembered to leave a few coins for the girl.

Outside, the sky had cleared, and told him the hour was later than he would have guessed. He had stayed too long, plowing sterile soil. Under the uncountable stars, Asbrak set out in the direction of the docks.

With the advancing night, there were fewer and fewer citizens to be seen out of doors, but in the area of the harbor the streets were never entirely still or lonely. Even when it was so late that all the other songs in the city had stopped, there was always someone at the waterfront, if only an overly merry sailor or staggering drover, with a tune on his lips.

The king strolled for a while under the bows of the moored ships where the deep water came to the very doorways of the city. How many more ships, sailors, and all the other signs and engines of prosperity would soon be crowding the wharves and streets in this neighborhood! When the royal marriage had taken place, this port would become the favored partner of the biggest and richest trader on the sea.

King Finster, of course, was well aware of the imbalance of material advantages the impending connection would provide—many for Ambermere, few for Felshalfen. It seemed to him, and he had made no secret of it in his talks with Asbrak, that a passable bride could surely have been found in one of the forest kingdoms, which would have made for a more economically diversified alliance. But Hilbert the Silent had turned out to be Hilbert the Stubborn on this subject, and Finster, who with only one son was understandably nervous about the royal line, had decided to accept the good without regretting the best.

If it were revealed, though, that the Lord of Ascroval had been able to detain the princess with so little difficulty, and defy his neighbor with so little to fear, this would be a strong hint that finances and other matters in Ambermere were on perhaps a less sound footing than Asbrak the Fat had been able to make the world believe they were. And this might (would, in Asbrak’s opinion) be the thing that would make Finster more stubborn than his son. Finster the Munificent had not maintained and increased the wealth of his ancestors by living up to his name. Finster the Stingy, if too harsh, would have been at least closer to the truth.

The king entered one of the principal taverns devoted to the entertainment of travelers and foreigners. With the thought ever foremost in his mind of remaining inconspicuous, he stood completely filling the large archway between the passage and the common room as he surveyed the scene in an attempt to locate potential nests of intrigue where he might hope to eavesdrop.

The common room was a riot of conflicting chanteys, shouted talk, and the high-pitched laughter of women whose virtue had long since ceased to be questionable. Asbrak managed to secure a chair in a dark corner. There he slaked his thirst for ale but for nothing else. He heard no secrets; only seamen’s gossip and the noisy wit of caravanners. In these surroundings the king was likely to witness no courtly courtesies.

He visited a number of other waterfront taverns. In one more staid than the others, he heard much talk of the benefits of the coming alliance with Felshalfen, but he gained no useful intelligence in any of the rooms he listened in.

It was at an hour past his normal bedtime that he made his way to the quiet place where he found his waiting groom with a footstool and a stout horse that would have looked more at home hauling a heavy wagon than bearing a cavalier. Once mounted, the monarch allowed the mighty beast to make its own way to the castle, and at its own pace. He was borne away from the harbor, through streets silent but for the fall of the hooves on the cobbles, brooding in his high saddle and mindless of the brilliant moon that shone above.

The night had cleared. The stars were thick in the sky above Regan’s tower. Inside, the magician brushed back a wisp of long gray hair and peered at the results of his labor. He dropped the last crumbling fragment of chalk on the powdery heap beside him and rose slowly to his feet. Now the circle, the runes, the signs—all necessary elements—had been inscribed carefully and precisely on the ancient stone floor. The flask stood on the shelf among clean goblets, ignored entirely while the critical work with the chalk had been done. He retrieved a sheet of parchment from the floor and walked around the circle slowly, checking for one last time the accuracy of his copy.

When he had satisfied himself that the chalk marks on the floor matched precisely and without variance the drawing in his hand, he went to a high wooden table in the far corner of the room. On it was a glowing lamp and a very large book that looked as though it would suffer damage if touched by any but the most gentle hand. Now, and with as much care as he had checked the floor against the parchment, he compared the parchment with a drawing in the book, not failing to trace each feature of the design with a careful finger and a close and squinting eye.

At length he lay the sheet aside. The circle on the floor was correct. If he could but read the words and names of the spell with equal precision—utter them without a mistake—he would have a weapon against which his opponents would have no defense. On the other hand, one mispronounced name, one formula incorrectly recited, and the very best he could hope for would be a quick death.

He carefully turned the pages of the book to a place marked with another sheet of parchment, larger than the first, on which he had laboriously copied the spell. He resisted the temptation to check it against the faded text in the book, a task he had performed repeatedly in recent days. It was accurate on the page; his concern now was that it be as accurate on the lips.

Although he knew the words well, he had never spoken them. Spells of this power were as far outside the province of a palace magician as of the royal hairdresser. He had not been certain that such a spell could be safely rehearsed aloud; he had been certain that the answer to that question was not one that he cared to pursue by experiment. He had always imagined that apprentice necromancers muttered spells of this sort by the hour and repeated them before their masters in the course of perfecting their art. He felt that was probably true, and that he could have been practicing it in his tower from the day he had bought the book. It was easy to suppose that without the chalk circle, the words were only words, without the power to summon so much as a chambermaid. It was, however, not impossible that the spell alone would summon much more, and do so with no circle to hold in check that which had been so summoned.

Rogan lay the copied spell carefully on the table and went to the only unshuttered window in the room. He glanced at the stars. The middle hour of the night was only coming now. He nodded and turned his lips into a small, unhappy smile. As he reached for the shutter, his gaze wandered to the courtyards and lawns quiet in the night below. The king had long since made his furtive return. At this late hour, even the most restless courtiers were no longer abroad. By now, all but he had found the comforts of the bed—if none better, then their own.

He pulled the shutter to. From the shelf he retrieved the flask and a goblet, carrying them with him to a wooden chair near the circle.

“Just time for one measure,” he said aloud.

The sound of his voice in the silent room startled him. Though he had spoken softly, the words seemed to echo from the stone walls and the shadows of the ceiling. It almost seemed that instead of his familiar chamber, this was a place he had never been before.

When he had emptied the goblet, he poured a little more, just to keep his throat from getting dry, as he put it to himself. He was quite sure that a spell of the sort he was going to cast had to be spoken without interruption, and this was a very long spell—very long and very complicated. Still, he reminded himself as he sipped, he had mastered this spell to the last syllable. He smiled comfortably in the direction of the chalk-marked floor. That work of this nature demanded close attention was undeniable, but he felt sure that he had executed it as well as any necromancer could. He replenished the depicted goblet.

Perhaps he had not, in the past, dealt with magic of this complexity, but he had wielded magic, nonetheless, all his life, save the first twelve years or so, and felt, really, quite comfortable, now that he happened to think of it, about what he was going to do. He emptied the goblet in small but frequent sips.

He began to pour again from the flask, then abruptly put it down. He hurried across the room and disappeared through a doorway in a corner. When he reappeared a few moments later, he was dressed in a deep blue robe that reached nearly to the floor and a high, pointed hat heavily decorated with a variety of magical insignia.

He filled the goblet past the halfway point, but not to a level that could have been considered full, then returned the flask to its place on the shelf. As he drank, he gazed calmly at the chalk circle on the floor. Far too much was made of this necromancer’s sort of magic. Magic was magic, after all—simply a matter of technique. The very fact that he had been forced to acquire the Dark Book, undoubtedly stolen, from a carnival magician of no apparent talent or skill, was scandalous. Such knowledge should be available to those with the wisdom and experience to put it to use.

He rose. The time had come. Following the instructions he had memorized, he retrieved from a small wooden cask a candle that he himself had made, infusing the wax with certain fragrant oils and herbs. From the candle, after it had burned to an inscribed mark, he would light the lamp that sat alone on a stand that had been precisely positioned to define, along with the center of the chalk circle and the place where Rogan was to stand, the Three Points of the spell—the Mortal, the Immortal, and the Eternal.

“The caller, the called, and the law that binds them,” said Rogan in a whisper.

The candle, once lit, burned more quickly than he had expected. It filled the room with a fragrance that was somehow disturbing. It suddenly occurred to Rogan to wonder if he was meddling with power too great for him.

He moved to the lamp, keeping his eye on the flame as it approached the mark. If he did not light the lamp, or lit it too early or too late, the spell would be affected in some unpredictable, and possibly hazardous, way. He wished the candle would not burn so fast, would give him time to think. He wished he could have one more cup of wine before beginning.

The candle had melted almost to the mark. Now was the moment to act. By force of will he stiffened his resolve. He straightened his back—lifted his chin. Now would he be more than the mere royal worker of petty spells. Now would his old hands know the deeper power. He touched the candle to the lamp. Now would he be one who dared to hold in his grasp the tether of a demon.

He moved to his point, the Mortal. He drew the parchment from his sleeve and held it so that it caught the glow from the lamp. It was only then that he noticed, greatly to his consternation, that every candle in the room had died.

“Baldersnarp,” he said in a shaky voice. The parchment trembled lightly in his hand, as though being troubled by a breeze. “Rassaddersnatt,” he continued. The names seemed longer when they were read aloud. Rogan wondered what would happen if a spell were simply abandoned, but this was another question that could not be prudently pursued by experiment. He read on, the syllables echoing in his dark, lonely chamber.

And elsewhere.

There was no sky in the Lower Regions. No day, no night. No sunny blue, no jeweled blackness. Instead, there was a reeking haze. Pools of sluggish waters reflected weak light that seemed a property of the atmosphere itself, as though the air were glowing. Low clouds of foul dark smoke drifted in the absence of any wind, walking the suffocating landscape, kicking at the reluctant haze. But no sky was overhead to be gazed on. No one there turned an eye to open heavens above.

Castles stood there under no sky, as did shanties, huts, and secret holes in the hot, rocky ground. Ways were marked by worn paths, ancient ruts, threading across the bare jagged hills and hollow valleys. And every fork and turning was lit by the eerie ambient glow.

And some there walked the ways, or crawled, or slithered, or lay in wait, lurking at places where the path was steep. And some hid in their holes, gnawing old flesh, cracking old bones. And some quarreled in their huts and shanties, brooding on their hates.

And some took their ease on cool stone slabs within their castle walls.

The names bit at him like rats worrying a corpse.

He stirred, disturbing the viscous yellow haze that lay around him. A season of repose, lying unthinking, beyond place, like a toad on a rock—this was to be interrupted. He raised himself. And by whom? He listened to the voice, as much inside his pointed ear as in the air around him.

Who dared to disturb the Lower Regions? What meddling fool with a Book called his names? Awakened, he felt empty. Hungry. Perhaps this incantation would go awry, as others had in the past. How astonished they always were, these mages, when they got something a little wrong and their chalk circles were only useless marks on a floor.

And if that is to be, then let him be a plump little witch-man, thought the demon, not gross and fat, but tender and appetizing. A feast to settle into. Or else, he thought, considering further as his appetite grew, he might be lean and muscular, meaty instead of fatty. But not scrawny; not all skin and gristle, all feet and elbows.

After a time, when all his names had been pronounced correctly, he rose to listen to the words that followed. The spell was an old one. Complicated beyond necessity, but of great potency. Hidden among the pointless formulations was a vocabulary of power that could not be ignored. He could feel it seize him as one by one the words of meaning emerged.

And yet he did not recognize the one who called. Numbered among those mortals of the Middle Regions who would dare to summon him were none who would use this wordy, bookish spell—this extravagant necromantic peroration. As the grasp of the magic closed around him, he listened for a mistake. The voice, almost faint at first, was louder now. Let it stumble on the wrong word, falter at the wrong time, and a circle of chalk, however carefully rendered, would not contain him.

Still in his own form, but no longer in his keep, he moved by the power of the spell through the sulfurous haze that veiled every feature of the landscape. In his eyes, as in those of all the inhabitants of this place, was reflected the dull yellow of the atmosphere. Ahead he could begin to see the image of the hated circle, growing ever closer. As he was forced toward it, the yellow mist gave way to a thick white fog, the veil of the Middle Regions.

The circle filled his path. He stopped before it. It remained only to be ordered through to stand in the presence of his captor. How he would seethe, bound and impotent in a circle before a cringing magician.

But if not on the magician, then on the magician’s enemies would he have the chance to be revenged. Someone in the Middle Regions was certainly meant to be the victim of this spell. Rarely did anyone call a demon but to do violence.

The voice droned on, becoming louder with each phrase, and then stopped. Now beyond the circle a figure could be seen, dimly—an old man in a pointed hat, bending to pick up a parchment from the floor. He retrieved it, dropped it, and picked it up again, turning it rapidly from front to back and top to bottom in his trembling hands.

“… the, ah, the summons so delivered, come or go ye then to some Middle Regions such as commanded, and by thy names so uttered, leaving the Lower Regions, and thy blood and substance, ah, rather, with … with thy blood and substance, and by forms, ah, my, that is, thy form so ordered as by my form, that is, my order … command … to, ah … such region be ye bound to my call …. Drat!”

The page dropped again, this time sailing across the circle before coming to rest on the floor. The demon watched the magician hesitate, squinting uncertainly in his direction, and then make a dash after the sheet of parchment.

The view of the circle faded, and with it the mist. The demon felt himself drifting. The fool of a magician had turned the spell inside out with his blundering. The mist cleared completely. The Lower Regions were gone. The magician was gone. Only the power of the spell remained.

He stood between high walls in a narrow space. Above, between the rooftops, he could see the full moon shining in a cloudless sky. Ten paces from him, an old man dressed in ragged clothing slept in a doorway. No one else was near. He could smell the man’s flesh. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. He was no trifling devil of one or two names, or even one or two dozen, and would not sit down to such a supper. This was a meal for slaves that dwelt in stinking holes, or shacks built against his castle walls.

The man awoke. He opened his eyes and looked directly at the demon across the alley, hideous with horns, fangs, and glowing yellow eyes. He started and gasped, stared for a moment from frightened eyes, then shrugged, turning his glance to the empty bottle under his hand.

Using the old man as a model, the demon transformed himself, squeezed himself, into the image of the tattered wino. He first contracted and distorted his shape, then molded his form until the demon was gone and the wino’s twin stood in his place.

The tramp in the doorway stumbled to his feet. His mouth hung open as he steadied himself against a garbage can.

“Hey, buddy. You got anything to drink?” He spoke in an utmost incomprehensible whine.

By timeless custom, those whose forms were copied were always left a little better off than they were found.

“What is your wish?” said the wino’s double. His voice did not resemble the old man’s.

The man staggered closer. He began to laugh, but his weak chuckle turned into a coughing fit.

“You look jus’ like my old man,” he said, laughing and coughing as he stumbled back against the wall.

He slid to the ground. He began to weep.

“But my old man’s dead. Been dead.” He began to cough again, holding his chest.

“They’re all dead now. All dead.” He looked at his empty bottle, at the garbage can next to him.

“Wish’t I was dead.” he said.

And in a moment, he was. The demon lifted him to his feet with one hand, broke his neck with a single heavy blow, and left his still corpse among the trash in the gutter.

He of the hundred names shuffled from the alley like an old drunk. The power of the spell, if not renewed, would diminish in time. The night air was heavy with smells, the street noisy with talk and music. The demon smiled. The color of his teeth matched the dull yellow of his eyes. This was not where he would choose to be, but it was where he was.

Chapter 3

The Friday lunch-hour crowds had thinned. Marcia left the park, hoping that if she took a brief walk, Hannah would be sitting on their bench when she got back. She checked the time. Surely it would be safe to be away fifteen or twenty minutes. In the way she had perfected by long habit, she began immediately to worry about her decision. Maybe ten minutes would be better, she thought. With a final glance over her shoulder, she crossed the street and set out at a brisk pace. At the first corner, she turned, not because she had any particular destination in mind, but just to avoid the neighborhood where she worked.

Up ahead, a group of well-dressed men emerged from an office building and turned in her direction. They walked three abreast, filling the sidewalk. As they approached, they looked toward her and through her but not at her, as if they had all been trained as waiters. At the last minute she sidled out of their way, squeezing between a parking meter and a pickup truck as the men breezed past in a hurry of small talk and cologne. She wondered, as she always did when this happened to her, what they would have done if she had simply stood in the middle of the sidewalk. Trampled her underfoot and gone on, she supposed. It was as though she were invisible. At times like this, Marcia wished that instead of 120, she weighed, say, 350 pounds. She imagined a great rotund version of herself plowing into a group of these movers and shakers and scattering them like a cluster of tenpins dressed in three-piece suits.

Marcia was beginning to regret taking the afternoon off. Hannah was late—probably not coming—and Mr. Figge had reacted as though he thought Marcia’s absence would threaten the survival of the firm.

“What about the Owens file?” he had demanded.

“Well, it’s already—”

“Just one moment, if you please, Marcia,” he snapped in the tone of a man who has been driven to the end of his patience. He frowned and shook his head. “I’ll have to check this with Colette.”

Colette, who was almost twenty years younger than Marcia and, nominally at least, lower in the company hierarchy, was disposed to be generous. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Figge. The team can cope. I was going to work through lunch anyway.”

Mr. Figge beamed.

Marcia started to speak in a timid voice. “All of my work is up—”

Mr. Figge interrupted. “Just one moment, if you please, Marcia.” Mr. Figge was not a man to vary a locution lightly. “After all, it is your problem that Colette and I are discussing.” He smiled at Colette. “You have everything under control, then?”

“Yes, sir. We’re talking all systems totally go.”

Nervous as she was, Marcia could not suppress a slight smile. She wondered how long it would take Colette to learn that their fastidious boss hated all fads, particularly in speech, that had arisen since his childhood. Prominent among the many things Mr. Figge did not approve of were the expressions “we’re talking,” “I was, like,” and all their kin. Yet Colette went to the trouble to arrange the things she said so that frequent occasions for their use would arise. When they did, she would roll her eyes, lower her voice portentously, and utter the appropriate formula.

Three blocks of daydreaming and inattention brought Marcia to the seediest downtown section the city had to offer. Strip joints and stores dedicated to the distribution of pornography—written, photographed, and filmed—were the principal enterprises. Marcia hurried past the stalls and loiterers outside the bars, keeping her eyes in front of her. She was making for the nearest corner when she saw something that stopped her.

The man loomed on the sidewalk. He was a sneer surrounded by stringy long hair, numerous tattoos, and an ample belly that was not entirely covered by the dirty T-shirt he wore under his black leather vest. Marcia hesitated for a moment, then crossed the street, both to keep her purse out of his reach, and to avoid a painfully close look at his especially nasty aura. Not that her ability to see auras yielded any extra information in his case. A glance was enough to convince anyone with common sense to stay out of his way.

That was often the case with auras. Marcia had been seeing them for as long as she could remember, and had found that frequently they only confirmed the conclusions she would have drawn without them. But not always. She had never really figured out if her natural pessimism was strengthened by her unusual talent. Certainly the ability to see auras and compare them with outward appearances did nothing to encourage a rosy view of the world.

From across the street, her eyes were drawn to the man. She did not often see an aura that dark, not even in the city with its hordes of people. She wondered what Hannah would say about it. She glanced at her watch. There was really little hope of seeing Hannah today, she supposed. She sighed.

She had dreaded asking for the afternoon off, and Mr. Figge, who never troubled to hide the slightest displeasure from an employee and was never without an obsequious smile in the presence of his superiors, had behaved as expected. Now it appeared that she could have saved herself the agony. She fully expected the park bench to be empty when she got back; it was well past the customary time for Hannah to arrive.

Marcia was positively dejected. She had looked forward to Friday all week, and was full of questions about the things Hannah had told her last time. She recalled their first meeting, only a few weeks ago. She had brought her lunch to the park and was alone on her favorite bench when she noticed the small woman with the irreproachable posture and the very strange hat. Not wishing to stare or, more accurately, not wishing to be caught staring, she kept her eyes on her sandwich and waited for the lady to pass.

That Marcia did not actually jump when she sat down beside her was to her credit. The woman arranged her long dark skirt and sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap. Marcia finished her lunch, keeping her eyes away from her companion.

As she sat politely pretending that the woman next to her did not exist, she thought about urban etiquette and the lengths people went to in observing it. Anyone who spent much time in the city developed impressive skills of strategic avoidance. Marcia was pretty sure the ability of each passenger on a crowded elevator to find a different empty space to stare at proved the existence of a fourth dimension.

She finished her lunch and brushed a few imaginary crumbs from her lap. She folded her lunch bag with self-conscious neatness, then consulted her wristwatch. It was still early, but she decided to leave rather than sit there feeling uncomfortable. As she was getting up from the bench, she glanced at the woman with an impersonal smile meant to communicate a nice anonymous urban farewell.

She bent forward to rise, then stopped, her smile replaced by an undisguised look of astonishment. She settled slowly back to her seat without taking her eyes from the woman and the aura that surrounded her. How, she wondered, had she failed to notice it? True, it was subtle and muted, but it was totally unlike any in her experience. Auras simply didn’t look like that. She stared as frankly as a three-year-old.

“Ahhh,” said the woman, smiling broadly and raising her hands from her lap. “I was sure you were not blind, my young witch.”

The combined effect of being referred to as “young” and “witch” left Marcia without a reply.

“My name is Hannah. May I call you Marcia?”

Marcia closed her mouth and nodded,

“You do talk?”

Marcia swallowed. “How do you know my name?”

“A trick. One that a person of your abilities can easily learn. I will teach it to you next time, if you like.”

Marcia found herself picturing a cheap storefront with a sign that said MADAME HANNAH, READER AND ADVISER.

“Next time?”

Hannah appeared not to notice the question. She looked around her with an expression of disapproval.

“In these surroundings, it’s a wonder you have been able to develop at all.” She was silent for a moment. “Is it always so noisy?”

Marcia, who came to the park because it was comparatively quiet, could only nod.

“Well, it will have to do, at least for now. After you’ve made some progress, I’ll see about finding us a more peaceful place. At least the tavern.”

Since Marcia didn’t have the slightest idea what the woman was talking about, she did not offer a comment.

“No one has ever been in touch with you, have they?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I am the first,” said Hannah. She smoothed her skirt over her legs.

“First what?”

“Witch, of course. Really, my dear, you must try to remain alert.”

Marcia had returned quite late from lunch that day, and then ruined Mr. Figge’s afternoon by being too distracted to cringe at his displeasure.

And now today Hannah had not arrived for their meeting. It was the first time she had not shown up when she had said she would. Marcia checked her watch again. She looked once more at the aura of the man across the street, then left to sit in the park for a while, just in case.

At the edge of the city of Ambermere, on a quiet unpaved street by the river, was a modest shrine dedicated to one of the obscure but potent goddesses of the Elder Truths. It was set well back from the road, among a grove of fruit trees.

The rays of the afternoon sun were just beginning to reach the small building, warming the stones of the ancient walls. Inside, the cooler air of the morning lingered. In front of the altar, a middle-aged woman with her hair wrapped in a bandanna applied a small broom to the floor.

Renzel never rushed at her work in the shrine. She felt whatever was done there was done in the presence of the goddess, and should be done with care and reverence, in the manner of a prayer. She thought, in fact, that anything done in the shrine was a sort of prayer, even if it was only the caretaker sweeping and polishing. Each bend and taper of the worn wooden rail before the altar she had rubbed to a glow, so that the humble material itself appeared to have received the blessing of the goddess.

She was surprised to hear the sound of voices through the open door. Midday visitors were not common except at times of public worship or festivals, nor had guests begun arriving for the long-awaited wedding of the Peerless Iris, Royal Daughter of the Beloved Monarch.

Nonetheless, of the two who entered, one was a stranger, a dark-haired girl. Or perhaps a woman just beyond youth; Renzel couldn’t tell. For one thing, the dim candlelight at the altar was reflected in the girl’s eyes in an unusual and distracting way.

She might be suspected of being an early-arriving royal visitor to the wedding, but for her clothing, which was plain, and her companion, not one to be found in the company of royalty.

Renzel put her broom aside.

“Good day, Mistress Hannah,” she said to the older woman, nodding politely to the other.

The witch returned her greeting distractedly and looked, Renzel thought, very much as though she wished she were elsewhere. Perhaps the dark one was royal, and liked to disguise herself, as the king did. Or might she be a witch of rank? Renzel didn’t think so.

The two visitors fulfilled the minimum obligations of respect to the altar of the goddess, then strolled around the small shrine examining the ornaments and decorations. When they had finished, the girl came to Renzel.

“You are the priestess?” she asked. Renzel was still holding her polishing rag. She found the girl’s eyes disturbing—something about the way they caught the light. Though not given to flights of fancy, Renzel found herself imagining what it would be like to look into the eyes of a wolf.

“No, miss. I tend the shrine.” Out of courtesy, Renzel tried to hide her disapproval. It pleased her when the shrine was admired, but when a visitor came only to admire it, that showed, in Renzel’s view, a lack of respect for the goddess.

The woman—girl?—looked again at the altar and the other appointments. She smiled at Renzel.

“You tend it well. It is exactly as it should be. I will visit it again soon.”

They had left before Renzel could decide if the stranger was an impertinent child or a visiting duchess. The witch, who had been known to linger for a comfortable chat, barely muttered a word of farewell on her way out.

Now Renzel, done with her chores, had leisure to worry about her niece, also a dark-haired beauty. How long was she to be absent, sending no word apart from the relayed messages from a palace functionary? Companion to the princess, she was, and off with her without a word of warning, but “expected back imminently,” she and the princess both. Renzel wished as she had many times in recent days that highborn girls were more plentiful in the city. Then her niece could admire the palace from without like the rest of the commoners rather than being a permanent resident there.

It had been put out by the palace that the Inimitable Iris Who Shamed Perfection had decided to spend the last weeks before her nuptials in seclusion and might not reappear until the eve of the event itself. The populace, apart from a number of merchants inconvenienced by her unavailability, and the royal dressmaker, who seemed to have achieved a permanent state of hysteria, were content that the Dazzling Iris should absent herself during her last days of virginity if that was her whim. But the populace had not had its niece vanish without a word, and did not have to endure explanations that always seemed to sound as though they were being improvised.

The door opened to admit the priestess. Her silk frock appeared to glow in the dim light.

“Are you still here?” she asked in a sharp tone.

“Yes, madam. Making the shrine tidy,”

“The shrine is tidy enough. You are to be working in the house today. I have guests coming for the wedding, as you know very well.” She looked around the shrine. “I don’t know what you find to do in here every day. You should devote more time to the domicile of your priestess. I need attention over there. You do not have to swipe at every mote of dust with your cloth, while I am without anyone to do anything for me.” She walked up to the altar without ceremony, which never failed to shock Renzel, no matter how many times she witnessed it, and picked up the coins from the wooden bowl.

“Not much here,” she said with a hard look in Renzel’s direction.

Renzel said nothing. It was a religious obligation to respect the priestess, and Renzel took religious obligations seriously.

The priestess strode to the door. “I expect the house to be finished by tonight,” she said. “When I permitted you to stay after the old priestess died, I explained that whoever cares for the shrine must care for the priestess as well. When you neglect me, it is like neglecting the shrine, or the goddess.”

Shocked again, Renzel could only nod. The priestess had absolute power over the shrine. Renzel could care for it only by her leave. In any event, whatever the priestess said was right by definition. She continued as priestess, the faithful had to presume, on sufferance of the goddess. And had she not been invested more than four months ago?

And of course with a new priestess some changes were to be expected. She had wasted no time in removing Renzel from the cottage behind the residence to a small room within it.

“I want you in my house, so you will be near when I have need of you,” she had explained. “It was not proper in my predecessor that she allowed you the use of the cottage. The cottage is too big for you. A small room in the residence is enough. You must remember that it is a great honor to serve the goddess, even in the meanest capacity.”

Renzel smiled. The fact that she spent more time in the shrine than anyone, and that she was allowed to care for it, was all that was really important to her. She had never been asked to act as a servant to the old priestess, who had in fact tended the shrine herself before her great age made it necessary to have help. But Renzel would do what she had to. She allowed herself the space of a few deep breaths before following her mistress through the door.

The bartender was seated, with his knees drawn up to his chest, on the bar itself. He was a small, sandy-haired young man, and looked, in the dim light, like an elf in a picture book.

The word BAR could be read on the floor, drawn there by the sun as it slanted past the neon tubing in the dirty window. The bartender, appreciating the marvel of the city sun penetrating to street level, however briefly, concentrated on the phenomenon. His Brotherhood taught that nothing was without its meaning, and it was through concentration that meaning could be sought.

At a large table in a corner seven men talked quietly, their murmurings punctuated occasionally by soft laughter. None were young, a few were old. One, a rather fat man who was dozing in his chair, appeared to be of great age. He was bald but for a fringe of wispy white hair and wore a thinning unkempt beard. Like all the men at the table, he was dressed in nondescript casual clothing that looked well used and comfortable.

The street door opened, admitting a surprising quantity of noise from outside, and a young man dressed in a business suit. When the door closed behind him, all the sounds of traffic and machinery were gone again, as though the bar were located in a deep woods somewhere far from civilization.

The bartender withdrew his attention from the shadow on the floor.

“Greetings, Jackson,” he called. “You look just like a local.” He slid himself to the edge of the bar and dropped lightly to the floor.

The newcomer took a seat.

“If you remember, Errin, I am a local. And speaking of locals, I have been meaning to ask why we don’t have a rebuff at the door.”

“No one seems to think it necessary. Gavas says an unnecessary spell is a bad spell.”

“Yes, Gavas always seems to have an axiom, when he’s awake. Has anyone come through since I was here last?”

“No. Nothing has happened. Mistress Hannah makes her regular trips.”

“That can hardly be considered news.”

Errin shrugged. “Oh, I forgot. There is one thing. I am to have help. In fact, she is late.”

“She?”

“A barmaid.”

“Not a local?”

“No, connected with some Order or another. An apprentice of some sort, I suppose. Who knows? Imagine, someone junior to me.” He struck a pose of exaggerated dignity.

“Mitzi,” he said sternly, “a glass here for Master Jackson, and be quick about it.”

“And,” Jackson added in a low voice, “a pillow for Master Gavas.” They both burst into laughter.

They were still recovering when a heavy door at the back of the room opened with a low-pitched moan from the hinges.

Errin leaned toward Jackson. “Perfect for a witch,” he whispered, at which they both began to laugh again.

“As you see, my dear, not all wizards are old, or dignified.”

Hannah stood with a dark-haired girl at her side. The young men bowed.

“This is Miss Elise,” she said. “This is Master Errin and Master Jackson. It is Master Errin you will work with, I believe. Master Jackson is a traveler and only stops from time to time.”

They presented Elise to the others. Even old Gavas got to his feet to greet her properly, at which Jackson caught Errin’s eye.

“It’s because she’s so pretty, and I’m so old, young sir,” he said in his cracked voice, astonishing Jackson, who had imagined he was being subtle. “Pray you find out someday what I mean.” Like many of the utterances of Gavas, this one was ambiguous.

“Come,” said a gray-haired man of middle years, “you must sit and join us.” He addressed Hannah, already on her way to the street door. “Mistress, won’t you linger and tell us what you’ve been up to lately? I had dealings with one of your Sisterhood when I was last away.”

“Thank you, Brother Mervin, but I am late for a meeting with the adept I am trying to cultivate. I hope she is still waiting. I must fly. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

After they had joined in a glass with the table, Elise and the two young men returned to the bar.

“You see,” said Jackson, glancing toward Gavas, “he is asleep again. I confess he is sometimes sharp, but I do not see what use he is asleep. Even in the small things I do, I would be grateful for some help sometimes.”

“Well,” said Errin, “I will speak to Gavas for you. Perhaps he will go with you.”

“That is not what I meant. But what about you? Now that Elise is here, maybe they mean to release you. You are long since ready.”

“No. Thank you, but I think they mean for me to be an apprentice forever. You heard what Mervin said about beginning Elise’s instruction. Not,” he said, turning to the girl, “that it will not be my very great pleasure to do so. You must not take our chatter too seriously.” He jumped up onto the bar and dropped to the other side.

“I will prepare us some tea, and you can take advantage of the presence of Master Jackson for some instruction at the hands of an expert.” He busied himself at the end of the bar.

Elise smiled at Jackson. “Please do not trouble yourself,” she said.

“Oh, it’s no trouble. We all like to talk,” he said, making a gesture that took in everyone in the room. “Are you familiar with the Orders and Sisterhoods and so on? It really doesn’t do to be confused on that subject. There is no telling who might pass through a place like this. And not just the travelers of the Middle Regions. An arch-wizard was here once, openly, and stayed for half a day. I actually saw him, and spoke to him. I had wondered before that if there really was such a thing as an arch-wizard.”

Elise looked at him questioningly.

“Well, not doubted, exactly. Arch-wizard is really just another name for necromancer. But it is one thing to tread the paths that I do, or even that you just did in order to get to this place from Ambermere, but to pass through other Regions … It is as though Errin were to tell us he had spent last night at the bottom of the river.”

Errin appeared with three cups of tea.

“As promised,” he said. “And I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” asked Jackson.

“Didn’t spend last night at the bottom of the river. But since Master Hugo was minding the store, so to speak, I did spend the evening in Ambermere. And,” he said with a flourishing gesture, “I saw the king. In fact, I stood right next to him.”

Jackson looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “He’s the one with the disguises.”

“Asbrak,” said Errin. “The Fat. I didn’t even notice him at first. Everyone recognizes him, of course, but they just ignore him. Anyway, there were some musicians and a pair of jugglers performing at a crossing on the avenue. The jugglers did some amazing things. And not magic, either, not a trace. Just skill and concentration.”

Jackson nodded in the direction of the street. “I’d like to see the mayor try walking around this city alone at night.”

The front door opened and the room was flooded with noise.

Jackson watched as three men approached the bar. He turned to Errin.

“Locals,” he said. “I think Gavas should have to wait on them.”

They had only been out for forty-five minutes, according to Judy’s watch, and already they had startled three or four men, and completely terrified one jerk who had been walking a dog of his own.

“You’re a real good dog, Monster, real good.” Monster, a veteran of attack training and many months of Judy’s walks, held his position. The two of them took up the entire sidewalk on this quiet side street. Judy was not petite, and Monster, who unlike his mistress was all muscle, outweighed her by a couple of pounds.

Judy looked admiringly at Monster’s new collar.

“Spikes!” her uncle had said, touching them as though to verify the evidence of his eyes. “Now I know you’re nuts. What the hell does that dog need spikes around his neck for?”

“In case some other dog attacks him.”

“What dog’s going to attack him, the Hound of the Baskervilles?”

Judy looked interested. “The hound of what?” she asked.

“Never mind. It’s from a book.”

“Oh,” she said with no enthusiasm at all.

Judy was pleased to see that even on a cloudy evening, the spikes were noticeable, especially when they walked under a streetlight. She decided to take Monster downtown tomorrow. Saturday was a good day for a downtown walk. People would be sure to notice his collar as they jumped out of the way. She wrapped the leash around her wrist one more turn, still leaving plenty of slack. The leash was a stout cord of braided leather, purchased when Monster graduated from the choke chain.

“That’s a hell of a leash,” the clerk at the store had commented.

“I got a hell of a dog,” had been Judy’s reply.

A block ahead, she saw someone cross to the other side of the street. She crossed immediately, leading the big dog between the cars and vans parked at the curbs.

There was not enough light for her to tell at that distance if the man had noticed Monster. Sometimes people crossed the street to avoid passing him. Those that didn’t, usually slowed down, and then gave Judy and her dog wide berth.

The man was getting closer. When he was nearly to them, Judy flicked the leash with her wrist. Monster bared his teeth and snarled at the approaching man, who jumped back in a very satisfactory way.

“That’s enough, boy,” she said as they passed the astonished pedestrian. “Just a warning to let them know you’re here, that’s all.”

“What the hell’s the matter with you, lady?” shouted the man from behind her. Judy’s heart began to pound. She turned, pulling on the leash. Monster growled and moved toward the man.

“You looking for trouble, mister?” she said in a loud voice. “You keep bothering me, and I’ll turn him loose.” Monster pulled on the leash, straining toward the man, who was backing up. Judy took a triumphant step forward.

The man retreated.

“I’m not bothering anyone,” he said angrily.

Judy advanced another step.

“You better get away from me,” she said with conviction. “I mean it.”

As the man turned with a curse and walked away, quickly, Judy had a mental image of Monster unleashed, chasing him down.

“One of these days,” she muttered, “some bastard’s going to push me too far.” She turned.

“Heel!” she said with an angry and unnecessary tug on the leash.

For the next twenty minutes, the walk was boring. Judy was getting ready to call it a night when she saw the wino at a lighted intersection two blocks ahead. Though not fond of moving fast, she quickened her pace. She was able to slow down a moment later when the man began to walk in her direction.

“Here he comes, Monster,” she whispered. Her pulse quickened again. One of these days she was going to have to turn the dog loose on someone. Who knew when?

The man, dressed in rags, crossed the next street. He didn’t turn off. Judy took a deep breath. He was half a block away. Her pulse quickened. If he had noticed them, he didn’t show it. He was walking right toward them. Probably half-drunk. Judy almost grinned. She knew a way to sober him up.

“He better not act up,” she said fiercely to her pet. It was almost time. She made sure she was taking up all of the sidewalk, moving Monster a little to the right.

Without warning, the dog halted, staring at the approaching figure and sniffing the air. Judy was almost pulled off her feet.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Monster whined and looked up at his mistress.

“Shut up,” she said. She took another turn of the leash around her wrist. The wino was only thirty feet or so away. She pulled on the leash, putting her weight and her temper into it, but without success.

“What do you want with a pet that’s stronger than you are?” her uncle had asked.

She thought of those words now as her pet began pulling her up the street. Judy pulled back as though in a tug-of-war. She stared at the heavy spiked collar where the leash was attached with a metal ring. Step by step she was pulled along. She glanced over her shoulder. The bum was almost to them.

With a yelp echoed by a scream from Judy, the huge dog took off at a gallop. For a few steps Judy kept her feet under her, running madly and clawing at the leash on her wrist, and screaming in rage at Monster to stop. She tripped, stumbled forward, recovered, and then fell and was dragged, screaming, over curbs and pavements for almost a half a block before the leash parted from the collar, leaving her writhing and bloody in the middle of the street.

The houses in the neighborhood emptied, and Judy was surrounded by a crowd of people who couldn’t imagine what had befallen her. No one noticed the dirty little man with the yellow eyes who passed the scene with no sign of curiosity.

Ferris was getting tired of waiting for Jaybee. Jaybee had money that belonged to him, and he wanted it. Jaybee was a tough man, but he wasn’t so tough that he wanted to mess around with Ferris. Ferris had advice for people that were in danger of annoying him. He advised them not to make him mad. Jaybee was beginning to annoy him.

He looked up and down the street. It was Friday night, and every strip joint and barroom was full. Harsh, icy light spilled onto the pavement from the windows of the twenty-four-hour bookstores. Among the crowds of college boys, punks, and winos, the hookers in their working clothes and makeup glowed like neon signs.

But no sign of Jaybee. Ferris’s practiced eye noted a young man in expensive clothes half stumble from a bar opposite and walk unsteadily up the street He considered following him. He could always find a use for some easy money. A punch and a kick and that powder puff would be offering to put him in his will.

Before he had made up his mind, his potential victim had stopped to talk to a miserable little wino he had practically tripped over. The young man was making extravagant gestures and laughing as though he had run into a bosom friend. As Ferris watched, he took out his wallet and handed the tattered old man some money. After a parting oration, he continued down the street.

The bum shoved the money carelessly into a pocket and shuffled ahead until he was just opposite Ferris. There he stopped and peered across the street, grinning at the big man as though overcome with delight at the mere sight of him.

Ferris directed his sneer toward the wino. He couldn’t believe the puny little bum was standing there grinning at him. Maybe he thought Ferris couldn’t see him. Maybe his brain was so fogged with booze and old age he thought he was a long way away. But he was just across the street, and Ferris could see him just fine.

“So what about it, Ferris?”

“What about what, Marsh?” he asked. He knew what Marsh wanted. He was surprised that he had the guts to mention it.

“The twenty dollars.”

“Yeah?” He sneered down at him. Marsh was only about six feet tall. Someone Marsh’s size was a midget to Ferris.

Marsh seemed to have run out of ideas.

“Come on, Ferris,” he said with a cautious whine, “you said you’d pay me last week.”

Before answering him, Ferris stared at him for a long moment.

“You don’t want to make me mad, man.”

“But …”

“You don’t want to make me mad, man.” Ferris liked to say things twice when he was bullying people. He didn’t know why; it was just something he enjoyed. That, and kicking someone who was trying to get up and run away, were both really fun, in his view. Maybe Marsh would get mad, or brave, and try to mess with him. He hoped so. He pulled on the lapels of his leather vest.

When he looked across the street, the little bum was still there, still staring. Ferris didn’t like people to stare at him. Not openly. He liked it when they pretended not to see him but were careful not to get too close. He liked it when they glanced and whispered and looked scared. But this old guy was staring right at him, and grinning, and looked like he wasn’t planning to quit.

Ferris wondered how much money the kid had handed the wino. No telling, plastered as he was. He pushed himself away from the building he was leaning against.

“I’ll be back in a minute. If Jaybee comes by, you tell him.” He walked across the street slowly, doing his best to disrupt traffic, and hoping someone wanted to make something of it.

By the time he had crossed the street, the little bum had gone. He just caught a glimpse of him turning into an alley in the middle of the block. Ferris smiled as he followed. Two days ago, a construction crew had blocked the alley at the other end. He had been down there this afternoon, looking. He wondered if the man would try to fight. When old guys tried to light, it was really funny. They sputtered and swore, and got red in the face, and swung their fists like babies. Or sometimes they tried to box, stumbling over their own footwork as they tried to land their puny jabs.

The bum was all the way at the end of the alley, sitting on a large barrel swinging his legs. Ferris wondered how he had gotten up on it without breaking his neck. The man looked calm. He was even smiling as Ferris walked up.

“That smile’s not going to look like much when I knock your teeth out.” Ferris spoke in a conversational tone. “Of course, it don’t look like much now.”

The old man continued to smile. “This is not your lucky day,” he said in a soft voice that didn’t go with his appearance.

“Talk’s not gonna help you, pop. Want you want to do is give me that money in your pocket.”

“Except for being unappetizing,” the man continued. “That’s luck of a sort, I suppose.”

Ferris was conscious of the muscles in his arms. Conscious of just how hard he could punch. He felt good, and strong, and in control. This would be a nice little warm-up. He looked forward to an entertaining night.

“You talk an awful lot for someone in bad trouble,” he said.

He was surprised when the old man began to laugh. He was also mad. Ferris didn’t like to be surprised, and he didn’t like people to make him mad.

He stood still for a moment longer, feeling his anger turn to something hotter. When he was finished with this joker, the wino was going to hurt all over, and real bad. He leapt forward suddenly, reaching out to snatch the wino off his barrel. It would be a long time, he thought, before this old bastard laughed again.

Ferris felt like he had walked into a tree. As his head cleared, he could see the old man standing over him. He realized he was sitting on the sidewalk. Grunting and swearing, he began to struggle to his feet, only to be slapped down again with what felt like a shovel. He put his hands up to his face and groaned. He looked around. There was no one there but him and the bum. And the bum was empty-handed. Ferris groaned again. Someone was hitting him with something heavy. The bum was old and skinny, more than a foot shorter than Ferris, and less than half his weight. It had to be someone else. He looked around again. There was no one else there.

“You are completely repulsive,” said the old man. He made it sound like a compliment. He reached down with one hand and, without noticeable effort, pulled Ferris to his feet by the arm, as though he were a teddy bear stuffed with cotton.

Ferris stared into his dull yellow eyes.

“Perfect,” the man said softly. He didn’t sound old. “And more my size.”

It was just getting through to Ferris that this skinny old man had picked him up with one hand. He had reached down like a mother grabbing a two-year-old. Ferris was puzzled. It couldn’t be that he was some kind of former athlete. Ferris had been around plenty of those. Last year he had beaten a dilapidated old ex-heavyweight boxer nearly to death without ever getting hit.

“You don’t get a wish,” the man said, addressing Ferris, “but then, you don’t get ripped open, and that’s something.”

He let Ferris’s arm drop and slapped him, almost lightly, with his open hand.

Ferris saw the slap coming, but couldn’t make his arms move. When the hand hit his cheek, it felt like a brick. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

When Ferris stumbled from the alley ten minutes later, he was in a state of total confusion. He felt weak and sick. It seemed a great effort to make it to the curb and steady himself on a parking meter. His vision was blurred. He blinked repeatedly, expecting it to clear up. Across the street he saw, dimly, a big man in dark clothing. He moved closer, staggering through the traffic. He was almost too tired to cross the street. When he finally made it, he leaned against, almost lay across, a parked car and peered at the man standing thirty feet away. One by one, he looked at the tattoos, remembering each one, then at the T-shirt and leather vest, and finally at the stringy hair and at the sneer … on his face … with the yellow eyes staring at him. He shifted his eyes to the window of the car, focusing on his reflection there. Ferris tried to scream, but it came out a coughing fit. As they passed, people stared at the little old man dressed in rags leaning against the car, coughing and staring into its window.

Chapter 4

Rogan awoke in his chair well after dark. He went hurriedly to the window and was relieved to see that the time for beginning the spell had not passed. He closed the shutters and poured himself some wine.

A full day had passed since his first attempt with the spell. He couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong. One or two times, it was true, he had not been quite perfect in his recitation, but still, he had almost seen the demon, almost had him trapped in the circle of chalk.

The lamp still burned. At the proper hour he would take his position and begin again to call the names. Tonight he would surely be successful.

By late Friday afternoon, Daniel had had enough of his apartment and of tax forms and poorly kept records. He had finally unplugged his phone the night before. It had been somewhat discouraging for him to realize what a small sacrifice it was to do without that particular contraption. What it amounted to was that there was no one he cared to hear from anyway. Of course, there was the danger of missing a telephonic lecture from his brother on the virtues of steady employment, but he had decided to take the risk.

He had given up on the idea of Milton’s game. At the moment, an evening of cards and bets sounded positively purgatorial. He went downtown and caught the early showing of a movie that had sounded interesting but wasn’t. Afterward he treated himself to what he secretly regarded as a perfectly balanced meal—a pizza and a half bottle of Chianti Riserva. He was persuaded to indulge in dessert because of a new Italian item on the menu that was translated alluringly as “a simple country tart.”

By the time he finished dinner it was dark outside. He walked the main streets for a while, enjoying the summer evening and the Friday-night crowds. He found himself thinking that maybe things would straighten themselves out with Charlie. Maybe a week from tonight he would be back at the game.

He strolled along the waterfront and ended up going farther than he had intended. Daniel liked long walks, but not after dark in the wrong part of town. He struck out for home by the shortest route, which took him through a downtown fringe the mayor and Chamber of Commerce would have gladly seen burned to the sidewalks. The main enterprises, other than empty storefronts, were adult bookstores, and bars that advertised exotic dancers. It was remarkable, Daniel thought, that this was the only part of the city that could in any way be represented as being devoted to literature and the performing arts.

A pretty girl in boots and denim skipped out of a bar ahead of him and took off up the street with a businesslike stride calculated to cover ground in a hurry. You could always pick out the dancers on the strip. They were the only people that looked wholesome and healthy. The prostitutes dressed, used makeup, and fixed their hair in ways that made them look like recent arrivals from other planets. The bag ladies and derelicts uniformly gave the impression they were sleepwalking. The petty criminals and random thugs propped against the buildings all looked dirty and gray.

Daniel walked a little faster, simply for the harmless pleasure of keeping the girl in view. She wore a loose blouse that hung halfway down her back pockets. Under its hem, the bounce and shift of the tight denim was as entertaining as any show she could have put on in a strip joint.

But even with a distraction of such potency, it was impossible not to notice the big guy in the leather vest. His sneer alone was worth a second glance, and the total effect of his appearance was positively artistic. He looked like a parody of a vicious bully. Daniel found it difficult not to stare as he passed the man, but he managed. He kept his eyes occupied with the dancer until she turned off a block later. Daniel figured she had worked an extra set. Just for him.

Three blocks further on, now out of the busy part of the downtown area, he gave up looking for a cab. He turned north, away from the waterfront, and walked past the darkened storefronts in the deserted part of the business district. It was when he paused to look at a window display that he noticed the man in the leather vest.

He was a couple of blocks behind him on the deserted street, but it was unmistakably the same man, Daniel watched him for a moment. He was moving with a shambling stride that, though not graceful, seemed to be propelling him forward more quickly than might have been expected for one of his size and shape.

Daniel turned from the window, no longer interested in the adult toys it displayed. Until this moment he had seen no indication that Charlie was having him followed today. Now was his chance to find out. He set off up the street at his fastest walk. He was confident that he could outwalk the man behind him, or outrun him if necessary. He had carried his boyhood hobby of rock climbing into adulthood, with the result that he was both fit and very strong. If it came to that, he might well be a match even for such a bruiser except, he reminded himself, that the bruiser could very well be armed.

Daniel strode along the wide street. Surely this could have nothing to do with Charlie. It was hard to imagine the dapper gangster having dealings with such a disreputable-looking thug. The guy probably just happened to be taking the same street as Daniel. After two blocks of hard walking, he stopped in front of another store and glanced behind him.

Impossibly, the man had gained on him. He was now hardly more than a block behind. Daniel took the next side street. As soon as he was out of view he sprinted lightly to the next corner and turned north again, now on a smaller commercial street devoted to vacuum cleaner repair shops and other businesses unlikely to make their owners wealthy. He felt silly, a thirty-one-year-old poker player running down a deserted street wearing a sport coat. At least, he thought, I’m not wearing a tie. He had a mental picture of himself running down the street in a three-piece suit. Except that he did not own a three-piece suit.

Despite his feelings, he ran another block, then slowed to a walk again. His pursuer, if he was in fact following Daniel, had to be at least three blocks behind by now. No one with a belly like that could possibly be a runner. He checked behind him. The street was empty.

It was two blocks further on that he looked down a side street toward the avenue. There, shambling in his direction, was the thug.

Daniel broke into a run. Someone with a car must be helping him, he thought, without bothering to check his logic. He moved at top speed, covering the distance to the next corner in no time at all. He angled across the street and turned without slowing down. The thug must have a portable phone or something, and be coordinating with a car, and Daniel did not want to be in his sight.

The next corner was an alley. Before he turned into it, he checked behind him. The last thing he wanted was to be cornered somewhere. There was no one in view. He ran silently on the broken asphalt. He was scarcely breathing heavily. He knew he could run for a long time if he had to. But he could not outrun an automobile. From somewhere nearby he heard the sound of a motorcycle engine.

This was getting serious. Was there a net tightening around him? He stopped. Opposite was a building that eighty years ago had probably been a workshop or small warehouse. The sound of the motorcycle was getting closer. Daniel took a deep breath. He peered across the alley at the two stories of stone between the pavement and the roof of the building. He quickly noted every windowsill and crevice, plotting a path to the top as easily as if it had been marked with painted arrows. He started to remove his jacket, then thought better of it. He was not in a position to leave clues.

He checked the alley once more, then darted across and began to climb up the stone wall. He moved lightly and with practiced ease, reaching the wide sill of the second-floor window as quickly as he would have on a ladder. As he had seen from below, the second story was going to be trickier. He wished he had a few basic climbing tools with him. His path to the roof depended on getting an adequate fingerhold in a shadowy horizontal gap between two stones. Unfortunately, and as he had foreseen, it was necessary to commit himself to the rest of the ascent without knowing for certain that his grip would be secure.

This, however, was a pot he had already decided to bet on. Like a good gambler, he was playing the odds. Like a professional gambler, he had considered the possibility that the odds might let him down. He was confident that if he went down instead of up, he would be no worse off than he had been. The pavement where he would land was level and unbroken, and a fall would not surprise him. He could take off down the alley again and hope to find another hiding place. In any event, there was nothing to be gained by delay.

Hugging the wall like an insect, he committed himself, sliding the fingertips of both hands into the crevice. It was deep and roomy. Having gained purchase, he felt more secure than he often did crossing a busy street. Moving as slowly as he had to and as quickly as he could, he felt his way up the path he had laid out in his mind, making his climb, as he had known he would have to do, purely by feel, since to move his cheek from the cold stone would be to drop like one to the pavement below.

Less than one minute later, he was pulling himself over the ledge and onto the flat roof. He went carefully. He could see little point in gaining the roof only to fall through a hole or a weak spot and break his neck. The roof, however, proved to be sound. He lay there, safely out of sight, and listened for the sounds of pursuit. Hearing nothing, he peeked over the edge. The alley was empty. He lay back, smiling. He could stay on this roof all night if need be. He certainly had no plans to leave for an hour or two.

In fact, he realized, staying all night was just the thing to do. If, as seemed likely, though inexplicable, this had to do with Charlie, he could not return to his apartment. They would be watching it. And the idea of walking back through the deserted streets to get to a hotel held little attraction. Anyway, getting down from the roof would be easier in the morning, when there would be some light on the subject. Descents were always more troublesome than ascents, and jumping or dropping from the roof when not absolutely forced into it would be irrational, as well as just plain dumb. He moved carefully back from the ledge and settled himself as comfortably as he could, leaning against an ancient stone chimney.

Five minutes passed before he was startled by the noise. From the alley he could hear footsteps. They sounded as though the person was not picking up his feet, but shambling along. Daniel was sure it was the man in the leather vest. He wished he could have a look, but did not want to take the slightest chance of revealing himself. A rational gambler did not bet his life on any odds. He was perfectly secure where he was. There was no action he could lake to improve his position. He sat quietly against the chimney and listened.

When the footsteps stopped, Daniel almost jumped. He could not have left a sign below. He quietly checked his pockets. Everything was there. He felt like a fugitive pursued by bloodhounds. He listened intently. The local silence of the alley was intact. Only the basic noisy hum of the city could be heard. He pictured the man standing below, probably wondering where he had disappeared to.

When he heard the next sound, it was not a footstep. It was a slapping sound, as though the man in the alley was hitting the side of the building with the palm of his hand. Daniel listened without great attention, content to wonder what the man might be doing. He only realized that the noise had been getting closer the moment before the man pulled himself, belly and all, over the ledge and onto the roof.

He did not pause, but headed straight for the chimney. Daniel only gained his feet in time to grapple with him. His thoughts were clear and calm. He must surprise the fellow with his strength, knock him down, preferably slipping in a good kick to the gut, and then get off the roof toot sweet, as Charlie would say.

The man clamped one hand on his forearm. Daniel struggled to pull away, only to feel the grip tighten painfully. He put his other forearm against the man’s neck and pushed, hoping to twist away and break free. He didn’t—the flesh was cold and unyielding, the man immovable. It was like trying to wrestle with a statue.

“Baldersnarp.” The voice had been a whisper.

“What?” Daniel said. His voice sounded high and shaky.

The man was not looking at him. He had turned his head to the side as though listening to someone. Daniel looked around to see if there was anyone else on the roof.

“Rassaddersnatt!” Daniel jerked his eyes back to his captor. The man seemed to be looking right through him. Daniel felt the granite hand relax a bit on his arm.

When the next word was pronounced, Daniel was looking directly at the man. The sound of the word hung in the dark air, yet the man had not uttered a syllable. It occurred to Daniel, absurdly, that his attacker was a ventriloquist.

Yet another incomprehensible polysyllable came from nowhere. The grip on his arm lightened, became almost companionable. The man still seemed to be in a daze.

Every few seconds, another strange word was in the air. The man had not moved since they began. Daniel decided to pull himself free while he had the chance. He braced himself, then cried out in pain as the grip on his arm became tighter than ever. He felt as though the bone would be crushed.

Without any warning he was seized by panic. He heard himself scream in anger and pain as he began to fight with unrestrained fury, striking out wildly with his free arm, kicking with feet and knees, and even tearing with his fingernails and teeth at the arm that held him.

Finally the man seized him with both hands and shook him like a child, lifting him completely off his feet. When he stopped, Daniel could scarcely get his breath. The man had released him. He held him only with his eyes, which seemed in the night shadow to be lit from behind by a dim yellow flame. Daniel’s arm throbbed with a deep ache. He could taste blood on his lips.

“Baaldersnaaarp …” It was a distant wail.

The man’s sneer contorted itself into a sort of smile.

“He has my names on his lips as you have my blood on yours,” he said. He laughed softly as Daniel wiped his lips with his sleeve and spat on the roof.

Daniel could hear the strange voice pronouncing the names as though it came from inside his head. The big man moved closer to him and stared deeply into his eyes. Daniel tried to step back, but found he could not move. The night air seemed suddenly dark and heavy, as though a black mist had settled on the rooftop. Daniel could not tear his gaze from the man—could see nothing but the burning yellow eyes.

It was the ache in his arm that awakened him. He was facedown on a surface that was cold and hard. He willed himself to lie motionless, listening as he tried to gather his thoughts. His last conscious memories were of the eyes and of the chanting voice in his head. Now the voice had stopped. Yet still he seemed to hear its echo, like the memory of a bedtime story transmuting itself into the fabric of a child’s dream.

He heard no other sounds but distant ones. He struggled to think rationally. Was he alone, or was the man with the yellow eyes standing over him, waiting for him to move? How long had he been unconscious? Had it been seconds—or hours?

He was chilled. It was hard to imagine that the day had been scorching. He forced himself to calculate, to draw conclusions. If he was cold, enough time had passed for him to get that way. It was silent, save for the night sounds of the city. The man had left him on the rooftop, bruised but alive.

Or would he find, when he moved and opened his eyes, that the yellow stare he remembered was fixed on him still?

He sat up and looked around in confusion at the trash cans, telephone poles, and ramshackle garages. He was in the alley, next to the old building he had climbed. He pulled himself painfully to his feet, leaning against the stone wall. Had he fallen? Had he climbed down and forgotten? He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He had no memory of getting down from the roof; no memory of anything after the chanting of the names had entered his head. He remembered the rooftop and nothing more.

He walked three blocks before getting a taxi. He shivered with cold all the way home, and was in bed under a pile of blankets for twenty minutes before the chill began to drain from him and let him fall into a heavy sleep.

On Saturday Daniel was too sick and weak to try to work out what had happened to him the night before. He spent all day in or near bed. His arm was badly bruised and scratched. The fever that had plagued him through the night, awakening him with alternate sweats and chills, persisted into the afternoon. Late in the evening he became ravenously hungry. He had pizza sent in and drank almost an entire bottle of Chianti with it on the grounds that it would be good for him. Afterward he watched television for as long as he could stand it, and then went back to bed feeling rather good, all things considered.

The chanting of the names disturbed his sleep profoundly without awakening him. When he awoke early in the morning he had vivid memories of the dreams that had troubled him. Besides the names, which had seemed to strike him with physical force, he recalled a heavy mist, and in it, a bright circle that sometimes approached, sometimes receded.

His fever was gone and his arm greatly improved. Feeling positively cheerful despite his restless night, Daniel showered and then went out for his favorite Sunday-morning breakfast of lox and bagels and fresh orange juice, for which he paid far too much in the dining room of a downtown hotel. On his way back home, he had the cab driver swing by the block where he had first seen the man in the leather vest. There were a number of seedy and disreputable-looking characters roaming the neighborhood, but Daniel saw no sign of his assailant.

After breakfast he went back to bed and slept till noon. He awoke refreshed and with no memory of dreams or other annoyances.

For a while he tried to piece together what had really happened to him two nights before. His memory of the events was obviously unreliable. The number of patent impossibilities was sufficient proof of that, as far as he was concerned.

Nothing fit. For anything resembling what he recalled to have happened, there had to have been more than one other person involved. That strongly suggested it had to do with Charlie. But if it did, then how was it he had not been bothered since? Charlie certainly knew where to find him.

That meant it wasn’t Charlie. But if not Charlie, then who? He had been attacked by the strongest gutter bum on the planet and his wallet hadn’t even been lifted.

The only thing he could think of was the Russians. He had been mistaken for a brilliant nuclear physicist with important knowledge, and the KGB had sent their secret Bionic Biker to kidnap him. Except the Russians didn’t even do those things in books and movies anymore. Daniel spent the rest of the day watching baseball on television and went to bed early.

He had been asleep for four or five hours when the names started. This time he woke up.

“… vile propensities. Rassaddersnatt the unremittingly vicious …”

Daniel was on his feet, his heart pounding, before he had been awake long enough to remember who he was. As the sound of the voice died away, he sighed with relief. He wondered if a drink would help him sleep without further bad dreams.

He didn’t remember closing the heavy drapes before going to bed, but the bedroom was completely without light. He couldn’t see so much as an outline of a piece of furniture to guide him to the door. He thought he would go to the kitchen and have a glass of wine to help calm him down. He took a careful step forward.

“Baldersnarp!”

Daniel froze. His heartbeat seemed to be located in his throat.

“Who’s there?” he said in a startled shout.

“By all thy names and all thy traits and all thy sins I summon thee.”

The voice stopped. Daniel listened intently in the silence that followed.

“This is a dream,” he said aloud. He took a deep breath. “This can only be a dream.”

“With this spell I bind thee and charge thee come! Appear before me!”

“Right,” said Daniel. He had had vivid dreams before in which he had suddenly become aware that he was dreaming. In a moment now he would awaken, still in bed. He decided that when he did, he would get up and have the wine anyway.

He put his hands together in the dark. He felt a twinge from his bruised arm. It was amazing how realistic and undreamlike this dream was. The air seemed damp; he could almost feel a mist around him. In fact, he realized, he could see a faint mist in the air, despite the deep darkness. He recalled his fevered dreams of the night before.

“Mine is a summons that must be obeyed! The power of the circle cannot be denied!”

Beneath Daniel’s bare feet, the floor was cool. He moved his right foot. He smiled. It was not his bedroom rug he was standing on, but a floor of something hard and smooth and uneven. This was definitely a dream.

He could not tell how far away the circle of light was. Like a star in a dark sky, it could have been inches from his eyes, or miles.

“Now I call thy blood come to this circle. Thy blood and form I will thee bring to stand before me in this circle I have made. Here the circle and the lamp and the Law all bid thee come. Here thy blood must draw thee now!”

Daniel had not noticed when he began to walk, but only knew that he was walking. With every step the circle loomed closer and larger, as though each pace were covering a great distance. He willed himself to stop, but kept walking. He had the strong impression that even if he could stop his feet, he would pitch forward and be drawn ahead by the force that gripped him.

The voice continued, but he didn’t listen to the words any longer. He was surrounded by a white mist, made ever more visible by the growing light of the circle.

As he had walked without willing it, so he stopped. The circle now lay at his feet. He could see the stone he stood on, and the circle before him. He breathed as though by conscious effort. The air felt damp and cool. The voice had stopped. The silence was complete.

Daniel felt a presence behind him. Knowing what he was going to see, he looked over his shoulder. In the darkness was a large form, indistinct but for a pair of burning yellow eyes. Daniel stared for a moment, then turned away.

He stepped into the circle.

“Aha! Aha!” Daniel stared at the man. He was wearing a high pointed hat decorated with sickle moons, stars, and a variety of other symbols. Daniel was dressed in a Saint Christopher medal and nothing else.

“I knew it would work!” The man waved a large sheet of heavy paper excitedly. “Now let them bring their wizards! Now let them sneer at Rogan the Obscure!” He laughed in a wild, high-pitched cackle. Daniel decided to buy a book on the interpretation of dreams.

“Just a moment,” the man shouted at him. He got a bottle and a glass from a table. Daniel looked around the room. Except for a lamp burning in front of him, there was no light, but he could see stone walls and the shadowy forms of chairs and tables scattered about. The man in the funny hat was trying to pour from the bottle. And pouring he was, but with such violent shaking of his hands that the inside of the glass remained completely dry. When he noticed, he gave up and drank from the bottle, wiping his lips on his sleeve.

The room was cool, the floor positively cold. Daniel wished he had put on some pajamas. He began to shiver. He would have to wake up and adjust the air conditioner soon. He must have set it too low before he went to bed. In a way, he thought, it was a shame to leave such a crazy dream. He knew he would regret it when he woke up. It would be nice if you could come back and finish a dream, he thought.

“Why are you naked?” The man took a step toward him. “Don’t you have clothes in the Lower Regions?” He looked him up and down.

“Baldersnarp?” He lit a candle from the lamp and raised it above his head, peering at Daniel from beneath it. He took another step.

“You don’t look like Baldersnarp. Baldersnarp is a demon. He’s thousands of years old. You don’t look thousands of years old, and you don’t look like a demon, either.” Daniel smiled.

“In fact,” Rogan said, his voice rising indignantly, “from the look of you, I would say you’re not from the Lower Regions at all!”

“That wouldn’t be wine, by any chance?” said Daniel, stepping out of the circle.

Rogan shrieked and leapt backwards with agility astonishing in one of his years. His pointed hat fell to the floor and occupied the spot he had vacated.

“What are you doing out of the circle?” he shouted. “You get back in there!” He stumbled over a chair while attempting to walk backward.

“I command it,” he screamed from the floor.

“I’m cold,” said Daniel.

Chapter 5

As Marcia rode the elevator to the ninth floor, she felt like a high school girl arriving after classes had begun and walking guiltily through the empty hallways. Not only was she late for work, she was almost late for the carefully timed coffee break that Mr. Figge grudgingly allowed the staff.

She checked her watch again for perhaps the tenth time that morning. There was hardly more than two hours left before lunch.

“What on earth could persuade you to wear such a thing?” Hannah had asked on the first day they had met. “The sun and your stomach can tell you everything you need to know about the time of day.”

Marcia had described Mr. Figge and his ideas about strict punctuality, strict tidiness, strict formality, and the other strictnesses that Mr. Figge espoused.

Hannah had gestured to the wristwatch. “So that device is to dictate the length of time we may speak together?” She shook her head. “I must remember to bring you a cure for this little problem.”

And on Friday, for she had finally shown up in midafternoon, the first thing Hannah had done was present her with a tiny brass box, the contents and use of which she had patiently explained.

“I wouldn’t ordinarily start you with something like this,” the older woman had said, “but we must be practical. You just follow the instructions I have given you and everything will be fine.”

And now, on Monday morning, Marcia was actually planning to follow those instructions. A month ago, they would have seemed either absurd or insane. Considered from the perspective of everyday common sense, it was profoundly disturbing that now they did not. After only a few meetings with the strange woman, Marcia was increasingly prepared to believe things that contradicted what she had thought of as incontrovertible facts.

But whatever else could be said or thought about Hannah and her stories, it was certain that she knew some very good tricks. On Friday they had walked back to the place where Marcia had seen the man with the nasty aura. The spot where he had stood was empty. Hannah was interested, though, and insisted on combing the neighborhood in search of him.

For the next forty-five minutes they walked up and down streets Marcia had never thought of visiting. If Hannah noticed the appalling seediness of their surroundings, she didn’t mention it to her companion. She seemed to be unconscious of the fact that the two of them, particularly Marcia in her prim business outfit, were radically out of place among the hookers, drunks, and petty criminals that populated the locale. Marcia, always accommodating, tried to maintain a positive attitude, expressing her misgivings only with nervous sidelong glances as they picked their way through the broken glass and rubbish.

Finally, though, Hannah went too far. Ignoring Marcia’s protests, she had struck off down the kind of alley mothers warn their children of. Marcia lagged behind, hands clenched, mouth open as though to present another argument. She would not have dreamed of walking in such a place, but she liked Hannah, and couldn’t bear to see her go on alone. After an anguished moment of hesitation, she hurried after her.

Marcia had been brought up to believe that if she ever dared step into an alley like this she would at least be robbed, probably raped, and possibly murdered. She found she believed it still, judging from her sensation of surprise, almost shock, when the predicted consequences were not immediate. But then, she reminded herself as she caught up with Hannah, she was the person for whom Sunday mornings meant a late breakfast, a thick newspaper, and twinges of religious guilt at the sound of every pealing bell. Her mother was in her grave, but her lessons were imperishable.

And so it happened that when they did run into trouble in an alley that ran between windowless brick walls, Marcia was very sorry and very frightened, but not at all surprised.

Like some creature of the forest or the desert that has undergone an evolutionary adaptation to blend in with its surroundings, the man was invisible until he stepped into their path. In one hand he held a knife that Marcia found the more horrifying because it was so small. It had a short, broad blade with a curved edge—a perfect instrument for slashing.

“Don’t make any noise.” The man’s voice was flat and harsh. It matched his aura. He flashed an ugly, joyless smile as he walked toward them.

“What do you want?” asked Hannah. She did not sound friendly.

Marcia put her hand on the older woman’s arm. “Hannah …,” she began in a shaky voice.

“Please be silent, my dear,” said Hannah without taking her eyes from the man. She waved the fingers of her left hand nervously in the direction of his feet. Marcia wondered if her friend was going to become hysterical.

The mugger had stopped six feet from them. Marcia was painfully conscious of the fact that he, and his little knife, were only two quick strides away. How could they be standing here? How had she permitted Hannah, who was obviously unused to the city, to fall into such a predicament? It seemed to Marcia that in all justice there should be a way to undo her error, that they should be allowed to unwalk the steps that had brought them here.

“What do I want?” said the man. “What do you have?” He was tall and stood with his knees bent slightly. He seemed relaxed, as though enjoying himself. “Let’s start with your money.”

Marcia began to open her handbag. Hannah did not move.

Marcia supposed she was more badly frightened than she appeared to be. She noticed, though, that Hannah’s posture remained impeccable. To look at her standing so straight with her funny little hat adding inches to her height, one would think she felt no fear at all.

“I suggest you put your knife away,” said Hannah.

The man grinned down at the knife resting in his palm. “I don’t think so, Granny,” he said. “I suggest you find some money for me”—his grin vanished—“while you’re still healthy.” He shifted his weight and raised the knife from his side, staring hard at Hannah.

Marcia felt detached, as though she were in a dream. If he went after Hannah, she was not going to stand and watch. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. If she had something to hit him with, they might get out of this yet. There was nothing nearby but scraps of paper and plastic.

Hannah stared back at the man. “I am only required to warn you once,” she said in a voice so changed and tight with anger that Marcia jumped. “I shouldn’t have to warn you at all. Any vicious dog would know to keep away from me.”

The city seemed to have become completely silent as the mugger narrowed his eyes and focused his angry stare on Hannah. She returned it with a look of utter contempt. If there were sounds from the streets and buildings in the area, Marcia did not hear them.

“Time’s up.” The man spat the words and started toward the women. Marcia tensed, her eyes focused on the blade that protruded from the clenched hand. She felt ill. She knew that when she tried to help Hannah the man was going to cut her.

With his second step, the man’s legs went out from under him as though he were walking on a patch of wet ice. He fell back and to the side with an astonished cry and hit the ground hard. He sat up shouting curses, then stopped abruptly and stared at the bloody slice in his jeans where he had cut his thigh as he tumbled to the ground.

Hannah spoke softly. “Put the knife away.”

The man jerked his head up and stared at her with bulging eyes. “What?” he shouted, almost screamed. He looked at his knife—reached across with his other hand to grasp his thigh. From where he stood, Marcia could see him trembling.

“Lady, say a prayer,” he whispered, slowly rising to a crouch. He stared at Hannah as a stalking cat stares at a bird. When he made a quick feint with the knife, Marcia gasped in fright. He laughed softly without taking his eyes from the older woman. He swayed and hunched his shoulders, gathering himself like a runner at the block.

When he fell he pitched forward too suddenly and was too close to the ground to get his hands in front of him. He broke his fall with his chin instead. He lay so still and silent that for a moment Marcia thought he was unconscious. She began to tell Hannah they should run, but was interrupted by a stream of ugly profanity.

The man rolled over and raised himself on one arm. There was a spot of blood on his shirt. His chin was scuffed and raw. He got to his knees, glaring at the two women. There was blood on his knife. He examined the pavement in front of him with his hands and eyes like someone looking for a lost earring.

When he suddenly leapt to his feet without warning, Marcia jumped backward. Hannah remained where she was and watched calmly as he nearly performed a split when he fell again. He landed heavily on a section of broken curb and lay there moaning. After a few moments he ran his hands over the soles and heels of his shoes and then with great care tried to get up, ignoring the women and giving all his attention to the pavement and his feet. As he planted his hands and pushed, his feet skidded from beneath him as though they had been yanked away by a rope. He landed flat on his back and lay panting and staring straight up.

Hannah glanced at him with distaste before turning to Marcia. “Let us go on, my dear.”

As they walked away, the man called after them. “I can’t get up,” he wailed.

Hannah turned and walked back a few steps. “I suggest you pray,” she said.

The man looked at her with an expression of disbelief. He clutched at his injured thigh and shook his head as if to clear it. “Are you nuns?” he asked in a hushed voice.

Although, or perhaps because, the violence and blood had unnerved her, Marcia was overcome by a fit of giggles that came and went until dinnertime.

They never did locate the man with the bad aura, but for the rest of the search, Marcia had followed her unusual friend to the most unthinkable places without the slightest hint of worry.

But Hannah was not with her now, as she was about to arrive in the office late, very late, for work.

When she saw Marcia, the receptionist rolled her eyes.

“Figge’s looking for you, girl. I think he’s going to scalp you this time. In fact, he might just cut your head off.”

At her desk, Marcia took from her purse the little box Hannah had given her and dropped it into the pocket of her jacket. Then she carefully folded a clean sheet of paper twice and put it in the same pocket.

She was not at all surprised when Colette rushed over to her.

“I’m afraid the boss is really mad at you, Marcia,” she said, obviously relishing the thought. “I mean, we’re talking Major Trouble here. I mean, when you didn’t show up this morning, I was, like, uh-oh, we’re talking Big Problem.” Marcia wondered how Colette’s dates could stand an evening of her chatter. Even Mr. Figge, who had shown no indication that his capacity to absorb her persistent and incessant flattery had a limit, seemed sometimes to notice the annoyances of her diction.

“Anyway, I wanted you to know that when I was in his office this morning”—Colette often found it necessary to “meet” with Mr. Figge—“I told him it wasn’t like you to inconvenience everyone else like this.”

“I’m very grateful, Colette.”

“Well, you know, I mean, he’s got a lot on his mind. I mean, we’re talking Very Busy Man. He’s literally buried in work. I mean, the man needs, like, an assistant. To help run things around here.”

Marcia smiled, wondering when Colette would feel she had gotten in enough gloating.

“I mean, someone said I could do it, since I work so closely with him, but I was, like, no, I’ve only been here eight or nine months; it should be someone like Marcia, who’s been here for years. Of course, I guess if he was going to promote you, he would have already done it.” She smiled insincerely and got up from the chair, moving in a way that emphasized her ample bust. It was as though she were reminding Marcia, who really didn’t have a noticeable chest, how much more qualified in one important way she was for advancement.

“Well, I have a lot of work to catch up on. I’ll probably go right through lunch. I guess you will, too.”

Marcia watched her as she returned to her desk at a high-speed flounce.

In Mr. Figge’s office she had to go through the usual routine of standing in front of his desk while he pretended to be working on something much more important than anything an underling could possibly have to say. She waited patiently if not calmly until he raised his eyes.

“Marcia,” he began in the stern tone of a high school principal lecturing a truant, “this is the second—”

“Excuse me,” she said, cutting him off. He looked up at her in disbelief. Mr. Figge was not used to interruptions from his staff. As he stared, Marcia had the sudden thought that it was not too late to back out. This—Mr. Figge’s dull office and Mr. Figge’s dull aura—was reality. Hannah’s little brass box was out of place here, and she, Marcia, was simply late for work.

“Well?”

Marcia reached into her jacket pocket. “I have something very important to show you,” she said. She unfolded the piece of paper onto the desk. Mr. Figge’s desk was invariably tidy, so there was plenty of room. Next she produced the brass box and, placing it in the center of the paper, opened its tiny hinged lid with great care. Mr. Figge was following every movement of her hands with close attention. Marcia emptied the contents of the box onto the paper.

“You see this powder?” she said. She found herself wondering how she was ever going to explain what she was about to do.

“Yes, of course I do.” Mr. Figge was not fond of answering such questions. They wasted time. He leaned forward to have a closer look.

Marcia leaned forward, too. She inhaled slowly. She wondered idly if she could have perhaps lost her mind. Then she blew the powder into Mr. Figge’s face.

When Marcia got back to her desk, Colette was waiting.

“Well, how was it?” she said excitedly. “I’ll bet we’re talking Major Encounter, right? I mean, he can really be tough. Of course, he does have to keep things going. You know.”

Marcia dropped a folded piece of paper into the wastebasket.

“He decided I should change jobs.”

Colette’s jaw dropped and she assumed an expression of sympathy and concern, the effect of which was seriously compromised by the sparkle of her eyes. “Oh, that’s what I was afraid might happen. I mean, you know, like, when you didn’t come in, and I had to take over some of your work, he was, like, really upset.”

“He’s calmer now.”

“Yeah, but what about you? Where will you go? I mean, what kind of recommendation can you expect?”

“Oh, I’m not leaving. I’m just going to work on a consulting basis from now on.”

Colette looked more blank than usual.

“Consulting, Colette,” Marcia said emphatically. “I’ll be setting my own hours from now on.”

“But they pay consultants …”

“Well, of course it works out to a higher rate of pay. But it’s just a different arrangement,” Marcia said with a reassuring smile.

Colette actually said the word you five times in a row before she could find a way to continue a sentence that expressed her delight that Marcia had not only not been fired, but had been given what amounted to an unheard-of promotion.

After a trip to the personnel office, Marcia worked through lunch to catch up with her backlog. She did not have company, though, Colette having gone home with a headache.

After work, Marcia did not go directly to the bus stop. For one thing, she thought, she could now afford to take a taxi home anytime she pleased. Also, she had to check on the man with the dark aura. Hannah still wanted to have a look at him.

She wished it were later in the week. Hannah would not visit again until Friday. (“You’re wishing your life away,” her mother would have said.) Of course, Hannah did not have to be reassured about the powder, she had known all along that it would work. But Marcia was anxious to tell her about using it, probably because she had proceeded with such heavy doubts.

Six blocks of walking brought her to the edge of the neighborhood she and Hannah had visited on Friday. She stepped over a broken bottle and peered ahead. Uncomfortable, she advanced, wary as a soldier going behind enemy lines. From the next corner, she had a view of the place where she had seen the man leaning against the wall. The spot was empty. Marcia gave a small sigh of relief. She looked around for a cab. This was no place, as the saying went, for a lady.

It wasn’t until she was scanning the street for a taxi that she saw the man in the leather vest. He was almost a block away, but even at that distance Marcia could tell by his unmistakable shape and clothing that it was the man she had seen before. She could further tell, even at that distance, that something was badly wrong with his aura.

As she drew closer, she felt both fear and fascination. Physically the man looked the same—large, dirty, pugnacious. But his aura, impossibly, had completely changed. It had been, before, an aura unusual in its dark portent—one of the worst she had ever seen. Now she was directly across the street from the same man and his aura was unspeakable, impossible, inhuman. What traces of color there were in the gloomy emanation were lurid opacities—clots of red that were almost black; a purplish blue that might have disfigured a bludgeoned corpse; oozing yellows that shone with a repellent glow. Never in any nightmare had Marcia ever imagined such a sight.

She stared in horrified wonder. The fear that gripped her was sickening in its intensity. She would not have been more acutely aware of the danger on the street if a tiger or a grizzly bear had suddenly appeared. She felt as though she should shout a warning; there were people walking within a few feet of this thing.

As she stared, he turned his eyes to her. She could see the dull yellow fire burning behind them. Marcia was sensitive to more than auras, and she knew that the man—the thing—recognized her ability to see him as he was. She felt sick and dizzy, and then panicky at the thought of losing consciousness.

“Lady, you want a cab?”

Marcia bumped her head, both elbows, and her left knee getting into the taxi, then sat with her eyes closed for the first dozen blocks of the trip.

She rarely drank, but the first thing she did after locking herself into her apartment was to pour a stiff measure of cognac into a water glass. She drank it standing at the sink, then made another and took it to the living room, where she sipped it while staring at the wall from her chair.

She did not sleep well that night.

As soon as Renzel was certain the priestess was well away from the house, she put aside her work in the kitchen. She could easily finish it later, and this was likely to be her only chance to attend to matters in the shrine. She hurried across the garden path, not daring to linger and enjoy the mingling scents of the flowers. That pleasure would have to wait for another day, probably after the royal wedding was over and all the visitors had gone home. Renzel knew from past experience that while the priestess had guests she would not be invited to join them in the garden, nor would she have time to do so, since she would be acting as servant to the household.

She entered the shrine by the little side door. Though the sun was high and the day warm outside, inside it was cool and rather dark. Renzel waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the shadows before ascending the five worn steps to the altar room. The priestess had curtailed the former generous use of candles in the shrine. She thought it an extravagance except for holidays or other times when more visitors than usual could be expected.

All the more reason, thought Renzel, as she started up the steps, to welcome the wedding of the Incomparable Iris. That and the return of Modesty, her missing niece. Renzel stopped on the second step, arrested by the happy thought that always accompanied her thoughts of the wedding of the Matchless Princess. With the princess married, Modesty would be free to marry as well, ending her unnaturally prolonged maidenhood. Although she herself had never married, Renzel thought it scandalous that her niece should have reached the age of twenty-four and yet languish a virgin.

Now, of course, since Modesty had been companion to royalty, her aunt would not be permitted to have a hand in the arrangement of the girl’s marriage. The king, meaning, Renzel supposed, some royal flunky, would find her a husband, and find him in the ranks of the nobility.

She chuckled to think how proud her late sister would have been at this elevation of her daughter. Renzel’s view was different. It seemed to her that as there were so many more commoners than aristocrats, there must also be a much greater chance of finding a good bridegroom among them. She was prepared to displease anyone of mortal flesh, howsoever royal, who offered an unworthy husband, be his blood ever so icy noble, to her innocent niece.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she was surprised to find a visitor in the shrine. The girl who had been there before with Mistress Hannah had come back by herself. Renzel was always pleased to see visitors, but this one, as she had before, seemed to Renzel to be interested in the shrine itself, without any feeling of reverence for the altar or the goddess. Something indefinable, perhaps in her posture, seemed to display a complete lack of the proper feeling of awe that the presence, however hypothetical, of an immortal being should inspire.

Renzel greeted her without any fear that she might be breaking a mood of devotion.

“Good day, miss.”

“Good day, Reverend Mother,” the woman replied, using a form of address that was both rarely used, and reserved for priestesses of particular holiness.

“Please, miss, I am not the priestess,” Renzel protested. She refrained from adding that she had told her so two days before. “The priestess allows me to care for the shrine.”

“Yes, I remember that you told me. But it is your care for the shrine that keeps it immaculate and keeps it beautiful, and I believe that the one who cares for the shrine is the true priestess.”

Not having a diplomatic reply, Renzel said nothing. She wondered what it could be about this girl’s eyes that made them look so strange and deep in the dim light of the single candle. Something about her presence made Renzel feel uncomfortable, even here in the familiar surroundings of the sanctuary. It was as though the place itself had been altered somehow. Again she was visited by the image of the feral eyes of a wolf. When the girl left a few minutes later, she was not sorry to see her go. She walked to the entrance behind her and watched until she had passed from view on the dusty lane to the city.

A very short time later, Elise was on the short narrow street of the tavern. She entered, nodded to the barman, and passed from the room through the door at the rear.

Errin was perched in his customary seat atop the bar.

“How are things in the Kingdom?” he called, as she closed the heavy door behind her. “Is the king still fat?”

She seated herself at the bar. “It is as it always is,” she said. “The nights are still, the ale is still, and the king is still fat.”

Errin dropped to the floor. “And with that answer,” he said with a broad grin, “you have told me you are from Ambermere. You have given me the answer to a question I am not permitted to ask. You must never forget that wizards, even apprentice wizards, are tricky.”

“Mistress Hannah said wizards are overly fond of riddles.”

“And what does she say about magicians?”

“That they are fools and meddlers.”

“And witches, then. What does the witch have to say about witches?”

“That what they practice is simply a craft, like knitting or cooking.”

Errin burst into laughter. “How fortunate you are to have met a witch before you came to us. From a witch you learn things in one sentence that would take a wizard all afternoon to explain. And it’s because of the nature of their gifts.”

Errin took the seat next to Elise.

“For instance, it’s only natural for a witch to belittle a magician. Magicians do not possess power at all, but simply operate spells. A magician is someone who has learned to use a vocabulary of power. When a magician uses a spell, the power comes from the spell. He is merely using the power in the spell as he might use the power of a draft animal.”

He smiled at the young woman. “You should be hearing this from Jackson, since he’s in the neighborhood. He is really quite brilliant. That’s why he is so impatient with the older Brothers. But since he is not here, I will be your teacher for the moment. And you may be lucky at that. I, knowing less, will be more brief.”

Elise laughed softly. “According to Hannah, it is impossible for a wizard to be brief.”

“But still,” he protested, “there are degrees.” He shook his head. “You must not let me get started on degrees,” he said with mock seriousness.

“Anyway, I’ve mentioned magicians. Let me go on to wizards, and then to witches. And then,” he promised, “to the brewing of a pot of tea. But to continue, as I am charged with some small part of your education:

“Wizards are practical. We are the engineers of magic. We incessantly devise. We begin with small powers and build greater ones, usually in concert, sharing and splitting and conniving to make more from less, much from little. We stoke the fires of our talents. We know that even a weakness can be turned into power.

“To the witch, hers may be a craft like weaving or pottery, except that it is a craft that can only be practiced effectively by an initiate, and only the gifted are initiated. Magicians manipulate power that lies outside themselves. This is as true of First-Degree Magicians, who can safely use spells of deep potency, as it is of Eleventh-Degree quacks who play shells and peas at fairs to cheat the gullible of their pennies.

“Witches contain power, are themselves powerful, as wizards are, except we labor to augment and amplify our power, while a witch must strive to tame and contain hers. The cities and towns in the kingdoms are full of incompetent magicians. They can be found readily at every marketplace. But there is no such thing as an incompetent witch. Any lad can aspire to be a magician, and can gain a rating for the level of skill he reaches. Witches add to the Sisterhood by finding the gifted and cultivating them.

“Part of the power of the witch lies in her talents of perception, in the same way that much of the talent of a musician, a true musician, lies in hearing deeply into music. A witch forbidden to act as a witch remains a witch, with her special powers of seeing and hearing and knowing, just as a musician denied his instrument still hears and understands things in music that are hidden from others.

“On the other hand, a magician stripped of his tricks and spells becomes just an unemployed man whose wardrobe happens to contain a number of robes and pointed hats.”

Elise laughed again.

“You see?” Errin said. “We are not so bad. And you will go a very long way indeed before you find a witch with a sense of humor.

“And I may also claim to be brief, for I have finished my lecture. I have covered magicians, wizards, and witches. There remain only necromancers and arch-wizards, which are, I think, two names for the same thing, but in any event, about whom little is known; and the various Immortals of the Upper and Lower Regions, about whom I, like anyone else you are apt to meet here, know absolutely nothing.”

“But Master Jackson said there was an arch-wizard here once.”

“Yes, he told me about it. But I understand he confined his conversation largely to a discussion of the quality of the ale he had encountered in his travels. I think I am just as happy that he came before my time here. To think that one who has walked such paths and possesses such power would speak only of commonplace things …”

“Perhaps,” said Elise quietly, “mere words are best suited to the discussion of commonplace things.”

Errin looked at her for a moment with a bemused smile, then shook his head in mock earnestness.

“You sound exactly like old Gavas.” He giggled. “Won’t Jackson be pleased.”

Chapter 6

When Daniel awoke it was gradually—a slow, warm rise to consciousness. He lay with his eyes closed, enjoying the soft comfort of the bed and pillows. The air in the room smelled fresh, and carried the faint perfume of flowers. In the distance, the lonely song of a single bird could be heard, accentuating the silence it broke.

He lay, hovering at the threshold of sleep for several minutes before awareness suddenly gripped his brain. He thought: The smell of flowers? Maybe. A bird singing? Possibly. Silence? No chance.

He opened his eyes. He stared at the shadowy ceiling. The bed felt very soft. It would be the easiest thing in the world to go back to sleep, but he had things to do. In a minute, when his head had cleared, he would get up and make coffee. In fact, he thought drowsily, this would be a perfect day to go out for breakfast He could sit at his favorite table and work out a way to deal with Charlie. His eyelids dropped; closed. Maybe he would end up just marrying Roxy. At least if he were married, he’d have someone to wake him up from his nightmares.

Daniel could still hear the bird. He tried to remember when he might have brought flowers into the apartment. He listened for the sound of traffic, jackhammers, sirens. The bird was beginning to annoy him, It was as though the quiet little song were drowning out the hum and rumble of the city. Somewhere a woman started singing.

He opened his eyes, then closed them again and tried to concentrate. He could still smell the flowers. A distant door slammed. He heard a shout, laughter. Still the bird sang, repeating the same small melody over and over again.

When the bells began he woke up with a start. The room was lighter now than before. The ceiling above him was no longer hidden in shadow. He stared up at the unfamiliar wooden planks as the bells clanged away merrily. He remembered his dream of the night before. Of standing naked on the stone floor with the old man screaming at him from behind a chair. Then later, when things calmed down, of being given a long crimson nightshirt and sharing a quantity of wine before being shown to a warm bed. He remembered that no matter how much the old man drank, he remained ill tempered and churlish, saying little beyond “Hand me that flask,” and “Lower Regions indeed!”

Daniel had a strong prejudice in favor of logic and against panic. Since he knew it was difficult to be rational while running around in circles, he resisted the impulse to leap up and do so. Nothing was on fire; no immediate response was required of him. All that was wrong was that he had gone to bed in his apartment and had awakened … elsewhere. Either that, or someone had replaced his bedroom ceiling while he slept.

He tossed back the quilt that covered him and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. When he managed to pull his eyes from the crimson nightshirt he wore, he looked around the room. The light came from an unshuttered window on the opposite wall. Next to the window was a stand, a basin and a pitcher, and other substitutes for plumbing. There was a carpet next to the bed, colorful with scenes of the field and the hunt. Nearby, next to a bare stone wall was a chair with clothing draped over it. In the corner on the gray stones of the floor stood a pair of boots. This was not his apartment.

He shook his head in bewilderment as he looked at the candles, lamps, and other anachronisms. He stood up slowly. This room had very much the look of a smaller version of the magician’s room in his dream. Except he could no longer tell himself he was dreaming. He did not entirely discount the possibility, but he didn’t think it made a useful working hypothesis. Insanity or hallucinatory coma, however plausible, were similarly unlikely to lead to useful conclusions.

He touched the bed, his face; checked the fading bruises on his arm. A few steps brought him to the stone wall. He kicked it lightly with his bare foot. “I refute it thus!” he said, at once quoting, and imitating, a favorite literary figure and satisfying himself that the wall was no illusion.

The stone floor was cold. “Thermal mass,” he murmured, very nearly exhausting his knowledge of physics. He moved back to the carpet. He stared at his bare feet surrounded by the colorful designs. He forced himself to remain still. Allowing himself to become frantic would do nothing to improve his situation. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. In a moment he opened his eyes. Nothing had altered. An experimental pinch (for the sake of tradition) brought a twinge of pain and a transient red mark but no other changes.

He sat back down on the bed and reviewed the events of the night before. Everything that happened after he stepped into the circle had seemed quite real—as real as what he was experiencing now. But in the middle of the night, exhausted from the events of the two previous days, he had found it, if not easy, at least possible to believe that he was in a bizarre dream. This morning it seemed instead a bizarre reality.

And that reality included a definite chill from the stone of the floor and walls. The sun was bright outside the window, but the room was cool. Asleep or awake, sane or mad—alive or dead, for that matter, he had to get some clothes on. He decided to behave—for the moment, and only provisionally—as though sanity had not deserted him.

“One thing at a time,” he said. He collected the strange clothing from the chair and put the boots by the bed. In ten minutes he was washed and dressed, and fell thoroughly prepared to stroll onto the set of a Robin Hood movie.

From the open window he could see a walled garden three or four stories below, and beyond the walls, the brick facades and tile roofs of what appeared to be houses and shops, the latter distinguishable from the former by having signs over their doors. On a distant avenue he saw pedestrians passing in and out of view and one large wagon being pulled, very slowly, by a pair of animals with horns.

He took a seat on a wooden bench by the window. No riddle could be solved, no problem conquered, without information. Daniel was passionately interested in figuring out what had happened to him, but since nothing in his surroundings made any sense, he was without a starting point. It was, he thought, like trying to play a form of poker in which the cards were all dealt facedown, and could not be examined until the betting was over.

He raised his eyes from his boots. On the wall opposite was an unframed drawing. It was of a single figure, drawn as though in haste and with a leaky pen, on a plain white background. Daniel smiled, then began to laugh. The subject was an elaborately dressed man in the process of making a courtly bow that involved a complicated articulation of the limbs and joints. It seemed clear that such a posture could only be achieved by one willing to practice attitudes by the hour. The smirk on the gentleman’s face left no doubt that to bow well was his highest ambition.

Daniel wanted to have a closer look, but was laughing too hard to get up from his seat. Successive glances from tear-filled eyes brought successive waves of laughter until he slid from the bench and sat on the floor. Even as he laughed helplessly he wondered in a corner of his mind how much of his reaction to the admittedly humorous drawing was due to disorientation. Not that he cared; laughter was always to be welcomed. He was grateful to the artist.

He crossed the room to the bed and stretched out on his back. Maybe if he relaxed for a few minutes something would occur to him. Or maybe he would go to sleep and wake up in his apartment.

Neither of those things happened. He got up and crossed the room again. The sun was well up in the sky. The bells that had awakened him hadn’t been announcing early Mass. Lunch, maybe. He realized that he was hungry.

He stepped up onto the deep sill of the window and, holding on with one hand, leaned out as far as he could. Daniel was indifferent to heights; the view from his vantage point held no terrors for him. He looked down, and then up, studying the stone walls as well as he could. There appeared to be perhaps three stories above him, terminating in what looked like a parapet at the top. The wails themselves were of undressed stone, fitted crudely, and had many sills, ledges, and vaguely decorative outcroppings. This building could be more easily climbed than the garage where he had met with the trouble.

He dropped back to the floor of his room, satisfied that if he wasn’t dreaming, and hadn’t lost his reason, but was a prisoner, escape would be hazardous but definitely possible. He was about to try the door when the incantation started.

“Demon’s blood!” Daniel immediately recognized the voice. He did not bother looking around to see if the old man, Rogan, his name was, could possibly be in the room with him. That would, he knew by now, be far too much to hope for.

“I summon thee hither. Come you now and stand in my presence.”

Daniel felt as he had in the dream when he walked without volition. But this time his steps moved him forward but one pace at a time. Beyond the door was a hallway and a narrow flight of stairs, which his feet obediently climbed. Two flights up he found a door. It opened at his approach. Daniel was not greatly surprised to find himself back in the room he had come to last night, nor to find himself standing in the presence of Rogan the Obscure.

The old man looked up at him with a complacent smile.

“I’m getting pretty good at this,” he said. “Care for some wine?”

Daniel declined, mentioning breakfast.

“Food?” Rogan made a face. “Isn’t it kind of early in the day for that?”

Daniel decided there was no point in going around perpetually flabbergasted. If, after all, this was a dream, it was his dream; if insanity, it was equally his. And, it suddenly occurred to him, if it was real it was real. In any event he would have to eat. Questions and explanations could wait. Breakfast could not.

“I don’t suppose you have lox and bagels?”

“Locks? You’re free to come and go as you please,” Rogan laughed with a high-pitched cackle that Daniel found particularly irritating. “After all, I can summon you whenever I want to. Go and eat, by all means. Just don’t bring any food in here.” He sipped from a goblet. “Isn’t a bagel some kind of musical instrument?” he said. He refilled his glass and settled himself comfortably on his cushioned chair. After a moment he looked up.

“Still here?”

“I have no money and no idea where to find a meal.”

“Well, as for money, you need none. This is a castle, not a tavern. And as for food, it’s hard to avoid it in this place. This is the residence of the fattest king now at large.” Rogan looked at him expectantly.

“No pun intended,” he said finally.

“What?”

“Never mind,” said Rogan, then added angrily, “Don’t they have humor where you’re from?”

“Not before breakfast.”

The old man gave him a bitter look. “Fine. Just go down the stairs …” He stopped. He stared out the window. “That’s not a good idea,” he said, as though to himself. He stood up and pulled a bell cord at the wall. In a moment running feet could be heard on the stairs. The door opened and a boy slipped into the room. He was carrying a flask.

“I want some food up here,” Rogan said brusquely.

The boy looked stunned.

“Not for me, you idiot! For my … guest.”

The boy looked at Daniel, smiling with recognition. “Oh, that’s the man that was climbing out the window,” he said. “I thought he was going to jump,” he added cheerfully.

Rogan looked at Daniel with a speculative glance, then waved his hand at the boy. “That’s all,” he said.

The boy turned to leave. Rogan stopped him with a quick gesture.

“You may as well just leave that,” he said, pointing to the flask.

The boy closed the door behind him.

“What’s he talking about?” he said.

Daniel thought about it for a moment but he could see no possible advantage in dissimulation. “I was not climbing out the window,” he said. “I was leaning out to see if there was a way to climb up or down the walls.”

“You must be out …” Rogan began in a loud voice, then stopped in midsentence and took a sip from his never-distant goblet. When he spoke again, it was in a quiet, conversational tone.

“And what was your conclusion?” he asked with an unconvincing attempt at a friendly smile.

“That up would be easier than down, and a mallet, some spikes, and a rope would be a big help,” Daniel answered promptly. He could hardly wait to see of what possible interest the preliminary escape plans of one who was patently trapped in some sort of magical snare could be to the magician who controlled him.

“You’ve done this sort of thing?”

“More or less.”

Rogan pointed out the window. “Could you climb up here?” he asked in a casual tone.

Daniel looked out the window. As he suspected, it was directly above the one in his room.

“Yes.”

“From the garden?”

“With the things I mentioned, yes.”

Rogan stepped back and looked Daniel up and down.

“I noticed when you arrived last night dressed, as you were, in only that talisman you wear on your neck, that you looked rather strong. If you climbed up here with your rope, could you take something from this room and carry it back down with you?”

“Something like what?” Daniel asked. This was beginning to sound like a “theft” for insurance. Daniel knew because Charlie had once tried to engage him in a similar conversation, all very hypothetical, of course.

“Something heavy.”

“How heavy?”

Rogan looked as though he wished they were talking about the weather. He hesitated before answering.

“A dog,” he said. “A big dog.”

“I wouldn’t be able to hold a dog. I have to have both hands for climbing.”

“A monkey,” Rogan said quickly, “but big; some kind of ape. It could hold on to you.”

Daniel was getting exasperated.

“If the ape were big enough, I could hold on and it could do the climbing. Apes are real good at climbing.”

Rogan looked annoyed.

“All right. A woman.”

“A human woman?”

The magician nodded.

“Not a very big woman?”

“No, a slender young woman.”

“With a good rope and something to tie it to, it could be done.”

“By you?”

Daniel nodded. “Yes, by me, but she’d have to hold on.”

Rogan smiled and walked to the door with a light step.

“Enjoy your meal,” he said. He picked up the flask the boy had put by the door and left the room.

“So you tried to summon a demon. That makes sense.” Daniel had finished his meal and was engaged in what he privately considered the most ridiculous conversation he had ever had, or heard of.

“What else was I to do?” asked Rogan. He looked sincerely interested in getting an answer.

“How should I know? What I want to know is how did you end up with me? As you have remarked more than once, I am not a demon.”

“I just got done explaining it to you. I saved your life.”

“By sending a demon after me; I think I have it now.”

“No, you do not. Sending the demon was a mistake. But if I hadn’t called him when I did, you would be just a pleasant memory of his. A little rooftop repast. I would think you’d be grateful.”

“Okay, I am. Thank you. But how does that get me here?”

“From what you told me, I would say you have a bit of his blood in you. After all, I did not go to all this trouble for the purpose of summoning a gambler to Ambermere. We already have plenty of gamblers, and we didn’t have to use magic to get them, either. What brought you was his blood.”

“I’m glad you didn’t mention all this before breakfast.”

“So you drank a drop of the demon’s blood.” said Rogan with a cheerful smile. “The only other possible outcome was that he drink all of yours. You should look at the bright side.” The magician filled his cup, offering to pour for Daniel, who declined. Rogan settled back into his chair.

“After all,” he continued, “you’re perfectly safe, for the moment.”

“For the moment?”

“Well, there’s no telling what will happen when I call the demon tonight. You are going to be caught in the spell, too. I’m afraid you may be trapped in the circle with him.” Rogan took a languid sip of wine. “I imagine he will be happy to see you. You know, you may be the first dinner to have escaped him in the last five or ten thousand years, and once I have him trapped, you will be of no further value for deflecting the spell. Of course, I may be able to control him.”

“You aren’t sure?”

“Well, there is obviously something wrong with the spell, or he’d be here and you wouldn’t.”

Daniel decided perhaps he’d have some wine after all.

“So the Inimitable what’s-her-name is missing, and you want this vicious demon to find her for you?” he said, pouring for himself.

Rogan sat up straight in his chair.

“You are speaking of the Inimitable Iris, Fairest Flower of the Kingdom, the Dazzling Daughter of the king, the Most Stunning Maiden of This or Any Other Court,” he said with stiff dignity.

“And,” he added, “she is not missing; I know the very room she occupies at this moment.” He rose and pointed from the window with a straight and trembling arm.

“She is there, held in captive by the evil king, Razenor,” he announced impressively, “locked in the tower of his castle at Ascroval!”

He peered from the window, as though trying to see the distant kingdom. He moved his pointing arm ninety degrees to the left.

“Actually,” he said in a softer voice, “Ascroval is more in that direction, I think.” He raised his cup to his lips.

Daniel sat quietly. The sun cast a lengthened shadow of the wine flask onto the scratched and dusty tabletop. He looked out the window. From his chair he could see nothing but blue sky and white clouds. He thought, in a detached way, about the fact that familiarity tended to make even difficult things easy. As a professional gambler, he was familiar with the process of making choices from among unpleasant alternatives.

He wondered if there was any chance that Rogan thought he was being subtle.

“In a tower?” he said, finally.

“Yes, yes, a tower,” the magician replied absently.

“Stone, I suppose?”

Rogan turned to face him. “What’s that you say?”

“I said I’ll bet it’s made of stone. Like this one.”

“What is?”

“The tower at Ascroval. Where the princess is being held.”

“Oh. Yes, why, so it is. Just like this one. That’s right.”

Daniel poured himself some more red wine. He sat for a moment, staring at his reflection in the cup.

“When do I leave?” he said.

Rogan smiled at him.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow morning.”

After Daniel obediently studied the maps to and plans of the castle at Ascroval that Rogan supplied him with, he and the magician paid a visit to the weaponsmith.

“A small hardwood mallet weighted with lead?”

“To drive the spikes that we’ll be picking up in the morning,” Rogan said, handing the astonished craftsman the drawing that Daniel had made for him. The man glanced at them.

“Which morning might you be speakin’ of, Master Rogan? Some day next week, was it?”

“Tomorrow, three hours after dawn,” Rogan replied. “Have you seen my brevet from the king?” he added, drawing from his pocket a heavy card bearing the royal seal.

The smith gave it a close look. He sighed.

“But what of Baron Sote’s dagger?” he said disconsolately, gesturing to a glistening shaft of steel.

“It will make a nice spike,” said the magician. “Remember, three hours past dawn. No later.”

As they walked from the smithy, Rogan leaned toward Daniel.

“We’ll have them by noon,” he whispered triumphantly.

Rogan gave Daniel a purse and sent him into the town with the serving boy.

“No doubt you’ll be wanting to eat again, and you need to learn the price of things and the value of the coins for your journey.” The old man glanced at the sky. “Just see that you’re back by late afternoon. I have someone for you to meet, and I wouldn’t want to have to summon you.” Daniel could still hear his cackle as he and the boy passed through the gate.

By the time they got back to the castle, Daniel had bought, and watched his companion consume, a sample of every confection, tart, and sweetmeat known in the city. Daniel himself had lunched most satisfactorily on cold meats and cheese, a crusty loaf, and the best mug of ale he had ever been cheered with.

They had also visited, at the nearby edge of the city where the boy had taken him for the purpose of seeing the river, a small shrine dedicated to some goddess whose name Daniel had never quite caught. He had entered, the boy remaining on the lane finishing a berry tart, and been impressed by the sense of peace he felt there. It was cool, almost cold, inside, and dark but for the light of a single candle.

He knelt before the altar almost by reflex, a habit from hundreds of early Masses in his boyhood. “Confession on Friday,” he murmured to himself. He added to the coins in the bowl an amount sufficient to purchase an entire tray of nut pastries and turned to leave. Only then did he realize that he was not alone. A middle-aged woman holding a broom was beaming at him from a shadowy corner.

Back in the apartments of the magician, he found waiting with Rogan a man he was certain was a gambler. Some gamblers, never the best, just looked like gamblers. Daniel had often tried to isolate the identifying characteristics. The best he had come up with was an approximation. They seemed to radiate a mixture of fragile confidence, cunning, and fear. This guy would have looked very much at home in a cheap green suit and a clashing tie with a complicated knot.

“The Count Reffex,” Rogan announced with a flourish, and then presented Daniel in the more or less apologetic tone appropriate to the introduction of a commoner to an aristocrat.

The magician brought out a deck of playing cards. Daniel found their crude beauty intriguing. They appeared to be block prints, trimmed to a uniform size. The colors were vivid, the figures and numbers almost hypnotic.

“If you are to go out as a traveling gambler,” he said with an unnecessary wink that was supposed to be surreptitious, but which Daniel knew Reffex had not missed, “you’ll have to understand the games that are played in the inns and taverns. His Grace has generously offered to instruct you.” Rogan smiled archly, which made him look very silly. “The count is a great gamester,” he said, looking at the two men expectantly.

“No pun intended,” he said, laughing lamely, and by himself.

Reffex explained the rules of the most popular game in the land. Despite the fact that he did so with perfect clarity and economy, Rogan insisted on adding explanatory comments that demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles of games of chance, and greatly protracted the period of instruction.

When they were finally ready to play, Daniel watched the count deal the cards and pick his hand up with a faint smile. Daniel took up his cards and examined them quickly, at the same time watching as Reffex rearranged the cards in his hand.

Early in his apprenticeship, Daniel had learned that the ability to detect crooked deals and other forms of card manipulation was a valuable skill for someone in his line of work. The authoritative word was, “You can’t see ’em if you can’t do ’em.” Accordingly, and because he turned out to have a flair for it, he had spent quite a long time becoming adept at every species of fraudulent sleight-of-hand known to the card table. For him, it was purely a defensive maneuver. Cheating at cards was not to his taste. Besides which, it was totally unnecessary for a competent poker player.

Reffex apparently did not share his sentiments.

Daniel turned to Rogan. “I’m going to need some money,” he said.

“What for?”

“Stakes.”

Rogan favored him with a blank stare.

Daniel put his cards facedown on the table. “Money to play cards with.”

“You don’t have to play for money. Reffex owes me pl … I mean, His Grace is willing to instruct you. Just learn the games.”

Daniel caught the merest suggestion of a smile on the face of the count.

“The game I am trying to learn has no meaning unless it is played for money. If there are no stakes, there is nothing to risk. If there is no risk, there is no game.” Daniel stood up. “And anyway,” he added, “I don’t play cards for fun.”

Rogan made a great show of counting out Daniel’s dole, then grudgingly handed it over to him, muttering unconvincingly to the effect that he absolutely could not afford to lose so much as a tithe of the sum.

It turned out that Reffex knew only one crooked deal. Every time he tried it, Daniel would simply note the location of the good card Reffex had slipped himself, and play and bet accordingly. Daniel resisted the temptation to ruin the count’s afternoon by retaliating with some really high-powered cheating. He reminded himself that he was there not to act as an agent of justice, but to learn some new card games.

The two men played for a few hours, covering all the games that Daniel was likely to encounter. As he had known they would be, Daniel’s discipline and money-management skills were as valuable in these new games as they were in seven-card stud. Once he had studied the deck, he was able to make estimates of odds that were as close as he would ever need, and his card memory worked as well with these cards as it did with the fifty-two he was accustomed to. He always knew what cards had been played, always knew the pot odds, and always knew the odds of getting what he needed and how likely it was that his hand would win.

The count was no better than a superior pretzel-contest player. He broke even in each game only in the first few hands, and kept his losses down by introducing new games frequently.

“Well, you’ve learned enough of this one to get by,” he would say briskly, as though taking satisfaction in Daniel’s progress. “You can pick up the fine points later.”

In fact, the fine points in all card games were essentially the same, and were contained in the set of skills and habits that Daniel had “picked up” long ago. It was for this reason that he could help to further the bridge ambitions of his sister-in-law, even though he rarely played the game except in tournaments she entered. Reffex could teach him no refinements, only rules.

Daniel noted with interest that the aristocrat seemed much more concerned about preserving the illusion of his status as the teacher and the better player than he was about actually winning at cards. Of all the follies of the gaming table, this was one of the most dangerous.

The count left them only after spending several minutes being ludicrously patronizing on the subject of Daniel’s progress under his tutelage.

“There were, of course, a number of times when I thought it best not to press an advantage,” he explained to Rogan. “But his play was very good. Very good. And very promising. I hope I have been able to help him.” He smiled grandly and with great insincerity and swept from the room like an emperor.

Daniel turned to Rogan shaking his head. He accepted the offered glass of wine.

Rogan sat quietly for a few minutes, then leaned forward.

“You see,” he began earnestly, “when I say the count is a great gamester, well, games and counting, you see. That is, all games, well, most games, involve counting. Don’t they?”

“Definitely.”

Rogan stared at Daniel.

“Apparently you are totally bereft of any trace of humor,” he said angrily. “If I sent you to the Lower Regions, they’d probably send you back.”

Daniel sat up in his chair.

“Sent me where?”

“Not on purpose, my boy. I was just thinking about how to get you home, after you rescue the Flower of Maidenhood, of course. The problem is, the only spell of that sort I have is the one that returns the demon to his demesne in the Lower Regions, and I doubt you’d like it there.”

Daniel spent some time, and energy, questioning the magician about Regions, demons, and precisely where he was now in relation to his own world. The answers he got were inconclusive, but informative in strongly suggesting that the limits of Rogan’s knowledge on the subject were narrow. When he had learned all he thought he was likely to, which was practically nothing, he left Rogan to his wine and went to his room.

In bed, Daniel reviewed the events of the day. He no longer thought he was dreaming, or crazy. He had decided to follow the principle of Ockham’s razor, which he understood to recommend against seeking exotic explanations when simple ones were available. And in the face of the palpable reality of the day’s experiences, the simple explanation seemed to be that he had been transported to another … place, and was under the power of Rogan the Obscure, a not entirely sane magician who was immoderately fond of red wine and black puns.

Daniel went to sleep fully expecting to awaken in Ambermere, and not back in his apartment.

Chapter 7

His night of restful sleep was interrupted, finally, by a noisy dream. In it, the city employees who were perpetually making repairs to the street in front of his apartment building had found use for a large machine whose only function seemed to be the production of a monotonous pounding noise.

But when Daniel awoke, the noise did not fade with the dream. He got out of bed shaking his head, as though to clear it. He looked around, still in a daze of dream and sleep.

The pounding was coming from his door. When he opened it, it was to the sight of Rogan’s boy standing in the hallway holding a huge breakfast tray, and with his boot poised for another kick.

He looked at Daniel with an expression of keen disappointment, and then glanced toward the window.

“My master said to bring you this,” he said sullenly, stepping forward and thrusting the tray at Daniel.

When Daniel took it and thanked him, the boy did not leave, but stood by the door as Daniel put the tray on a small table.

“Don’t bother to wait,” said Daniel.

“What about my tip?”

“You want me to give you a tip?” said Daniel, advancing on him.

The boy nodded and held out his hand. Daniel seized him by the upper arms, lifted him easily from the floor, and set him down in the hallway.

“Okay, here it is: If you ever pound on my door like that again, it will be you that goes flying out the window.”

When he showed up at Rogan’s rooms, the old man had the charts and maps out again.

“I must admit there’s something I haven’t quite worked out yet,” he said. “I was rather counting on accomplishing this with the demon, who would go into Ascroval, devour a few dukes and earls, generally terrorize the place, knock down a couple of walls, and then grab the girls and bring them back to me.”

“Girls?” Daniel said. “Yesterday it was the Royal Knockout, Irene. How did she get to be plural?”

“It is the Peerless Princess Iris,” said the magician stiffly. “Of course she has a companion with her, some commoner whose name I can’t recall.”

Daniel looked at the magician, making sure he had his attention. He spoke slowly and distinctly. “Rogan, listen to me. I cannot carry two women down a rope.”

“No, no. Of course not, my boy. You get the Matchless Princess; the diplomats will attend to the other girl in good time.” Rogan walked slowly to the window.

“Unfortunately, that is not the problem that is troubling me. My concern is what you are to do once you have her safely on the ground. No one was going to pursue the demon; they would all be busy running in the opposite direction. But now, once the princess is missed, there will be a great hue and cry.”

“But by the time anyone notices, we could be across the border. It doesn’t look that far on the map. I assumed you would tell her to be ready at a time of night when she wouldn’t be likely to be missed.”

Rogan looked uncomfortable. “Tell whom?” he said.

Daniel stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘tell whom’? The princess, of course.” He tried to catch Rogan’s shifting eyes. “She is going to know I’m coming, right?”

The old man began a close examination of one of the maps. “Not exactly,” he said without looking up.

Daniel dropped into a cushioned chair and leaned back. “Would it be rude to ask why not?” he said in a monotone.

“It’s just not feasible,” the magician said airily. His manner suggested they were discussing a minor detail.

“Bui you must have spies or friends there. You said you know exactly where she is.”

“Yes,” said Rogan, “but our spies work for Lord Rand, a completely unreasonable and incompetent man. If he knew what I was doing, he would find some idiotic reason for objecting.”

“You mean like the four-percent chance of success?”

Rogan turned from the window.

“We have a much better chance than you imagine. You see, my boy, you are forgetting one very important thing. We are dealing here with royalty. This is not some hysterical chit of a girl you are going to save. This is the Incomparable Iris, who has grown up at court, with all its intrigues. Since childhood she has been surrounded by noblemen, diplomats, priests, and other deceitful and dangerous people.

“Why, even if I had a way to alert her, I would hesitate to jeopardize the undertaking by doing so. The message might be intercepted; or her companion might betray the secret.”

“The other girl? Why would she do that?” Daniel asked, his voice skeptical.

“Not on purpose, you understand. But she is only a poor commoner. Undoubtedly she is by now thoroughly demoralized, and susceptible to pressures to which her royal fellow prisoner would be immune.”

Rogan smiled at Daniel.

“Of course, you are right,” he said. “With any luck at all you will have the princess back at the Feathermere Inn before those larcenous buffoons at Ascroval know she is gone. From there it will be easy. I can have a horse and a suitable escort waiting for her without arousing suspicions. That close to the border it is necessary to be circumspect, but I am foolish to fall prey to pessimism. You don’t by the slightest chance ride, do you? You could pass for an aristocrat and get there two days sooner.”

Daniel shook his head,

“Well,” said Rogan philosophically, “then you must remain a traveling gambler and use your own feet.”

Daniel did not bother to ask about other forms of transportation. From what he had seen of the carts and wagons in the city, walking would be infinitely more comfortable and somewhat faster.

“Besides,” the magician added, “this way you will attract no attention at all. There is nothing more commonplace than gamblers at inns.”

The spikes and mallet were ready by late morning. The rope Rogan himself provided. Daniel, who had been expecting something suitable for mooring an ocean liner, was delighted when Rogan showed him the smooth, light coil. He tied it to a heavy brass fixture in the fireplace and pulled on it as hard as he could.

Rogan watched from his chair. “I would scarcely go to all this trouble and then endanger the Princess with an inadequate rope,” he pointed out. “That comes from the Fishermen’s Quarter. When we prepare fireworks, we hoist items much heavier than princesses and card players with it, I can assure you.”

He gave Daniel a traveler’s bag with a broad shoulder strap. It contained a change of clothes, a few decks of cards, and had enough room for the climbing gear. Daniel put the bundle of spikes, the mallet, and the coiled cord into the bag.

“Don’t close it yet,” said the magician, fetching a hooded cape from a hook on the wall. “You probably won’t want to wear this until later in the day.”

Daniel took the garment. “I don’t need this,” he said. “If I put it on I’d look like the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“Don’t you have weather where you’re from?” asked Rogan. “Damp, chilly days? Cold nights? Rain?”

Daniel rolled up the cape and put it in his bag.

The old man went to a table and opened a drawer.

“One more thing,” he said.

“Mittens?” asked Daniel.

Rogan handed him a purse. Daniel sensed that he did it with great reluctance.

“Remember this when the king rewards you. It is not my intention to finance this expedition from my own shallow pocket.” He poured two goblets of wine.

“It would be unthinkable to send you off without a drink to your success,” he said, raising his goblet to his lips. “When we next share a glass, eight or nine days from now, all will be well in this kingdom.” Rogan poured himself another, “Unless, of course, you are unsuccessful, in which case I shall have to summon the demon after all.” He peered at Daniel across the rim of his goblet.

“You don’t have to remind me,” said Daniel. “A good gambler always knows where he stands, I want the princess back as much as anyone does.”

It was not until he had left the city that Daniel felt he was truly on his way. Despite the fact that he could be recalled by Rogan’s spell at the magician’s whim, he experienced a sense of liberty, of boundless freedom, as he left the city and the castle behind him. The dusty lane he traveled was in fact a highway that stretched, according to the maps he had studied, through four kingdoms before wandering into the mountains at the end of settled lands.

He had been assured that there was no village so mean as to lack an inn, and that he would pass at least three in a normal day’s walk.

“You should not have to skip a single one of those meals you are so fond of,” Rogan had said with an expression that suggested he was in no danger of forgetting whose purse would be growing lighter at each stop.

“I would not want you to delay yourself, my boy. But there will be no harm if you can manage to win some money at cards while you are traveling,” he had said in a tone of great earnestness. “After all, you are posing as a gambler.”

When he had hardly left sight of the city, Daniel came to the shrine he had visited the day before. On an impulse, he entered. As before, it was dark and cool inside. And as before Daniel felt the deep sense of peace that seemed to pervade the place. He had the sudden unbidden thought that the power of Rogan’s spell would not be able to penetrate the stone walls of this particular little building.

He stayed for longer than he had meant to, feeling the peculiar efficacy of the altar and the room. It was as though the shrine was located at a geographical point where some unknown beneficial forces happened to be concentrated.

He had lunch at the principal inn of the first market town he came to. It was not long after noon, and a sizable crowd had congregated in the public room. He shared a table, the universal custom when space was scarce and customers plentiful. By the time he had taken to the road again, he knew more about the details of cultivating turnips than he had learned in his previous thirty-one years. Until meeting farmer Zernick, Daniel had not realized just how long it was possible to talk about one vegetable. It was all the more remarkable, he thought as he left the town behind, considering that his contributions to the conversation had been confined largely to nods and an occasional “I see,” or “you don’t say.”

Before long, he had left the village and surrounding farms far in his wake. He felt a great sense of solitude as he progressed along the road. The land was flat, and had few trees. Daniel could see a long way in all directions. Behind him, he knew, lay the sea; far in the distance ahead, the mountains. Before lunch he had passed a number of travelers, a few mounted. Now, for all he could see, he might be the only man in the universe. It would be, he thought, a very good time to wake up in his apartment. In the lonely and silent landscape it was easy to imagine that none of the events of the last thirty-six hours had occurred.

Daniel stopped. He realized that the only sounds he had been hearing were his own footsteps. He listened in the silence. It was absolute. The still air carried not so much as the song of a bird, the rustle of a leaf.

Now his sense of displacement was keen. The effect of the silence and peace in the shrine of the goddess had been to give him a feeling of orientation, of focus. The silence and peace here were like those he might have felt adrift in the middle of the ocean.

It was fairly late in the day before Daniel had to resort to wearing his cape. He had noticed that the sky was darkening far in the distance when he had passed through the last village, an hour before, but had given it little thought. When the temperature had begun to drop, he had still been close enough to turn back, but he decided to press on; he had never been fond of backtracking. Now, as the first timid gusts of wind brought the smell of rain, and then the rain itself, he had a vision of himself seated in a comfortable chair by a window with a mug of tea, observing the weather rather than experiencing it.

The cape turned out to be large enough to be worn over his bag. With the hood up, Daniel remained dry, though he could not dismiss the image of the chair and the window. As soon as he came to a tree large enough to give any shelter, he took what refuge it offered. He settled himself on the dampened grass and leaned against the trunk.

He sat there enjoying the sound and smell of the rain for quite some time before reluctantly admitting to himself that this was more than an afternoon shower. The wide and lonely sky was gray on all sides. It was impossible to imagine that there could be a place where the sun was shining. He couldn’t be sure how far it was to the next inn, but he was quite sure he wanted to reach it before darkness or wet roads made travel difficult. Daniel had no intention of spending the night out of doors when he had a pocket full of Rogan’s money.

It was a muddy and discouraged poker player who finally reached a village just as evening was threatening to become night. The air was turning cold. Daniel was happy to see billows of smoke rising from the chimney of the public house, and the light of many lamps glowing in the windows.

No one but he was abroad. The rain was still falling, though not so hard as it had. Daniel trod the wet and slippery lane between the houses until he stood before the inn. For a moment he paused at the door. From inside he could hear laughter.

The innkeeper’s wife took his cape to dry it at the kitchen fire.

“A very handsome wrap,” she said. “You’ll have it back brushed and dry in the morning, good as new.”

Daniel dined on boiled meat and slabs of buttered bread, and thought it an incomparable supper. The ale was dark, and still as water from a well.

At a number of tables there were card or board games in progress. Daniel glanced at them without interest as he climbed the stairs to his room.

He awoke early and was on the road within an hour of sunrise. The rain had stopped at midnight, and the well-packed road was dry enough for travel. Again, once out of the village, he was alone on the highway. But now the air was full of the song of birds. They started from the weeds and hedges at his approach, rising up and settling in waves as he passed their hiding places. Meanwhile, far above in the cloud-strewn sky, great birds of the ocean soared on private errands, wandering their trackless ways aloof and unconstrained.

Despite the clouds, there was no rain. By afternoon the road was dusty again, bearing out what he had learned from farmer Zernick about the deplorable lack of “a good soaking rain” during the current turnip season.

Now Daniel met travelers more often. Most were bound from one village to the next, and were in no hurry judging from the way they loitered along. Daniel felt that he was moving at a comfortable, efficient pace, but the way he passed the country folk on the highway made him look like a one-man army on a forced march.

That day the cape stayed in the bag. By the time the inevitable evening shower arrived, Daniel was indeed seated in a comfortable, chair by a window, sampling a concoction of hot wine and spices. He played cards after dinner with the innkeeper and some other local merchants. Not wishing to victimize them, he amused himself by using every crooked deal he knew to throw pots to the other players, and winning only enough to pay his keep.

“We might as well not o’ bothered,” said the innkeeper as the game broke up. “There’s scarce enough money changed hands at this table to buy a bean.” He looked at Daniel. “And you a gambler,” he said, shaking his head as he walked away.

As Rogan had predicted, Daniel arrived at the Feathermere Inn not having skipped a single meal in the four days he had been on the road. It was market day in the border town. When Daniel arrived, early in the afternoon, the streets were still crowded with merchants, farmers at their stalls, and shoppers. He engaged a room at the largest inn, disposed of his bag, and then strolled aimlessly along the narrow ways.

He stopped at a number of farmers’ stalls to inspect the early turnips with a connoisseur’s eye and discuss the urgent need for a “good soaking rain.” At the stand of an ancient person who looked more like a small, wrinkled tree than an old woman, he purchased a length of coarse homespun cloth. It was meant to serve as a cover for a farmhouse kitchen table, but Daniel had another use in mind. He folded it as carefully as if it had been the finest lace, and carried it off under his arm.

In the morning he had a late and hearty breakfast. On his way out of town he supplied himself with a loaf of bread, a large smoked sausage, a waxed cheese the size of a softball, and two flasks of the best wine.

“Thank you, Rogan,” he said as he stowed his purchases among the clothes and gear in his bag.

By late morning he was in the forest. On each day of his journey, he had seen more and more trees. Yesterday he had even passed through a large woods on his way to Feathermere. But now he was within the realm of the forest proper. The map he carried showed that from just before Ascroval all the way to the distant mountains, the forest ruled. From this point farms and villages were only to be found on land that had been cleared by the heavy labor of men and their draft animals. In these lands there were no cities like Ambermere, with its miles of streets and buildings radiating from the harbor. Here the towns were walled.

In Ambermere the residence of the king was in the capital city. In the mountain and forest kingdoms the reverse was true. The walls and towers of Castle Ascroval contained the city, embracing a population of craftsmen and merchants, as well as courtiers and soldiers, and streets and buildings in a planless maze that none but natives could hope to know completely.

By late afternoon he had reached his destination. Daniel did not think that his gear would necessarily be instantly recognized as the tools of a burglar, but he did not risk entering the city through the gate with its keeper and guardsmen. With any luck at all, he thought, he would never see the inside of more than one room in this place. He contented himself with a distant glance at the walls, then continued on the highway between the dark trees of the forest.

As he had hoped, he had many hours of daylight to scout the vicinity of the castle. Rogan had assured him that he would meet with no guards or watchmen outside the walls.

“They have nothing to fear, or so they believe,” he had cackled, looking at Daniel as though he wished for a demon still.

The woods were dark, the trees ancient and tall. Though thick and impassable in places, the undergrowth was intermittent and easily avoided, or so it appeared from the road. But Daniel was keenly aware that terrain that presented no challenge in the light of the afternoon sun, however screened and filtered, could be a nightmare of impassability after dark.

When he had traveled a short distance beyond the castle, he left the road He moved quickly through the trees until he was out of sight of anyone who might pass.

He got just close enough to the walls to keep them in view as he followed a semicircular route back to the side of Ascroval occupied by the castle itself. He was encouraged by the ease with which he was able to make his way through the woods. The ground was carpeted with the leaves of uncountable autumns. Before long he was seated with his back against a smooth-barked tree, picnicking on sausage and cheese, and studying the window of the room that held the prisoners.

It was some seventy-five feet above the ground. The edge of the forest was fifty or sixty feet from the walls. Daniel, keeping well back among the trees, could not get a close look at his goal, but he could see from his hiding place that with the spikes and mallet the ascent would be straightforward enough, always assuming he didn’t fall and break his neck, a possibility when climbing without a secured line. It was only when compared to his chances in a rematch with the demon that making an unmoored vertical climb became attractive. He rather hoped, in fact, that he would never be called upon to make another.

The trip back down on the rope, of course, was going to be quick, easy, and without any real danger, but he could hardly expect his passenger to view it thus. Daniel had had plenty of time to think about the rescue. He had decided that it would be pointless to engage in any long-winded attempts to persuade the Envy of Every Maiden that departing by way of the window made sense. He was going to enter the room prepared to carry the Royal Abductee down the rope by force, then discuss the points of etiquette with her later.

He finished his lunch and began to walk in the direction of the road. He was determined not to suffer the risks of the climb and then wind up wandering lost in the forest until morning came and Iris was missed. “Whom the Flowers Cannot Hope to Rival,” he said, feeling guilty for having even thought of the Royal Name without an attending epithet.

When he found the highway, he retraced his steps carefully, and then made the trip two times more, until he was sure he could do it on the darkest night. On his route, it was necessary to cross a small stream, along one bank of which was a narrow, but well-defined path. With hours remaining before it would be late enough to climb, he decided to follow it.

The path followed the flowing water deeper and deeper into the forest, leaving the bank only occasionally to skirt heavy growth or tangled brush that grew there. In a little over an hour, he came to a small clearing, where he found a building made of logs. It had a few windows, which were shuttered, and a door at each end, both latched but not otherwise secured.

He entered, calling out, though he was sure the place was empty. Inside was a stone fireplace and chimney, two large tables with benches, and a number of wooden platforms that, judging from the stacks of neatly folded blankets, were meant to serve as beds.

Daniel was satisfied he had found a winter shelter for aristocratic hunters. Though it lay less than an hour from the castle on a summer afternoon, he supposed that in bad winter weather, the shelter of the castle might be half a day from this spot. He opened the shutters. He imagined that the place might be quite cozy on a cold day, with a roaring fire, and wine and hot food laid out on the tables. He unfolded several blankets and made them into a mattress for one of the beds. He removed his boots, improvised a pillow from another blanket, and lay down to compose himself and rest for the excitement that the night would bring.

Chapter 8

Having little else to do, Daniel napped. He slept lightly, opening his eyes every once in a while to check the approach of night. At dusk he got up. Within a few minutes the cabin was closed and he was on the path to the castle.

As the daylight was dying, he reached his spot near the wall. While there was yet a little light, he retraced his way to the road, coming to within sight of it before turning back. When darkness had completely fallen, he made the trip once more. It was, of course, more difficult in the dark than it had been before, but he had done it enough that he was in no danger of losing his way. Feeling rather proud of himself, he returned to his place by the tree to await his moment.

The tower was windowless except for the one he was to climb to. On either side he could see high windows, some of which were lit, as was the princess’s, with the flickering light of candles or open lamps. As time passed, one window after another went dark. Finally he felt he could wait no longer. If the princess was asleep when he made his entrance, things would be even more complicated than they promised to be already. About to embark on the scheme, Daniel realized, as though for the first time, how truly insane it was. But the fact that he was here, in a place called Ascroval, and at the bidding of a magician who had summoned him (by mistake) from a high-rise apartment building in another world, made all else seem sane by comparison.

He took from his bag the bundle of spikes, the wooden mallet, and the neatly coiled rope. He placed them on the ground in front of him. Then he brought out the homespun tablecloth. He unfolded it, then refolded it lengthwise and, working with great care, knotted the two ends together securely, making a loop, which he put over his right shoulder so that it fell across his chest and low against his left hip. The rope he arranged similarly in the other direction.

It was not until he was twenty feet above the ground and had placed his first spike, driving it home in a narrow crevice that could not have afforded a finger—or toehold, that he figured out the right way to go up and down the wall. The material the smith had used for the spikes was much stronger than he had guessed. The first one he drove seemed to find a path to the heart of the crack between the stones. Daniel was sure that it would remain there until the next earthquake. Clinging to the wall like an insect, he paid out the rope, then knotted it onto the spike right next to the rock. He quickly lowered himself back to the ground. There he sat against the wall of Razenor’s castle and recoiled the rope so that he could use it in the way he had just devised.

Soon he was standing on one foot on the first spike. He left it, climbing only while the placement of the heavy stones made it easy for him. Again he drove a spike and secured the rope to it, not failing to leave a fair amount of slack between the spikes. The mallet he promised himself he would keep forever. Used properly, it was virtually silent as it wedged the pins of steel into the wall.

It did not take him twenty minutes to ladder himself to the window, and at no time had he been in danger of plunging to his death. Lacking any fear of heights, Daniel was relatively happy to find himself perched on a spike seventy or eighty feet above the ground tying a knot onto the stonework of a windowsill. Although he was sure that the pins would stay put, it was no longer vital that they do so. Taking great care to move silently, he shifted his position so that he could see inside the room.

Seated in a large cushioned chair was a woman so pretty that Daniel stared for several seconds before remembering that he had business to attend to. He felt that finally he could understand how the princess had managed to accumulate all the hyperbolic epithets that were cemented to her name. At her feet was another young woman—a girl, really—in tears and with an expression of stricken hopelessness knit into her features. Her head rested against the thigh of the seated beauty, who was smoothing her hair with a gentle hand, and speaking to her softly.

When he suddenly opened the window and entered the room, the weeping girl shrieked and then slumped to the floor. The young woman did not hesitate for a moment, but jumped from the chair and came straight at him. The look in her eye left no doubt that as far as she was concerned, he was going back out the window. The girl on the floor raised her tear-streaked face and screamed. The woman turned at the sound.

Seeing that the situation could only deteriorate, Daniel moved quickly and decisively. Without regard for her high birth he seized the young woman roughly and used all the force necessary to manhandle, her into the tablecloth sling.

“I’m a friend,” he whispered implausibly as he dragged her through the open window. He did not have to tell her to hold on as they went over the edge.

Her gasp on the sill he was certain was the last breath she drew until they reached the ground. For Daniel, on the other hand, the descent was simply a matter of keeping his head and paying attention to his feet. He had room in his brain, he was startled to notice, to be intensely conscious of the Royal Thighs clamped to his hips, the arms around his chest, the soft breasts pressing against him, the cheek on his shoulder. It was little wonder, he thought again, that they spoke of this princess in the extravagant way they did.

On the ground, he did not wait for her to recover, but lifted her unceremoniously and ran for the shelter of the trees. Only when they had reached his bag did he stop to untangle her from the twisted sling.

The moon had come out in a cloudless sky. Some little of its light reached them beneath the trees. He watched her quietly as she recovered from the shock of the last two minutes. Breathing deeply, she looked disheveled, confused, and unbelievably beautiful. She stared at the wall and the window above, then closed her eyes and took three slow deep breaths. When she opened her eyes, she looked more or less as she had when she sprang from the chair. Daniel found himself wishing that it was someone else who was fixed in that angry gaze.

“Thank you for rescuing me,” she said. She spoke in a low, even voice. “Now what are we going to do about the princess?”

Daniel was confused. It was as though he had just laid down four aces, only to have them beaten, somehow, by a pair of fives.

“You are the princess,” he asserted, but without confidence.

The young woman did not reply.

Daniel waited. The woods, he noticed, were very quiet.

“Where is she?” he asked finally.

“She is up there where we left her,” she replied, pointing to the tower window. “Except now she is alone.”

Daniel sighed. “You’re her companion.”

“My name is Modesty,” said the young woman.

Daniel listened in the silence for sounds from the castle.

“She screamed,” he said. “Will someone come to the room?

“No,” said Modesty, “Iris … the Princess Iris has been very upset every day. No one pays any attention.”

“Then I can go and get her,” said Daniel, picking up the sling.

Modesty put her hand on his arm. Daniel instantly recalled every detail of the feeling of her body against his.

“Can you bring her down unconscious?” she asked.

“Impossible,” said Daniel immediately and with great conviction. This was something he was quite certain of.

“Then you can spare yourself the climb. She fainted at the sight of you. Try to imagine her coming out the window.”

Daniel started to put the sling in the bag.

“Wait,” she said, still touching his arm. He waited. For a moment she said nothing. Most of Daniel’s attention was focused on the part of his arm where her hand rested.

“Can you carry me back up?” she asked, brushing away a straying lock of dark hair.

He resisted the impulse to lift her on the pretense of judging her weight. She was a little above average height and, though she looked very fit and lean, was not in any way petite. He could carry her down a rope or run with her in his arms, but he was not strong enough to pull them both up the tower wall.

“No,” he said simply.

Modesty nodded. “Then I have to climb it myself,” she said. She started toward the castle.

“Wait!” said Daniel.

She turned. “I can’t abandon her there. She won’t be able to stand it by herself.”

“You want to go back?”

“Of course not,” she said calmly, “but I’m going back just the same.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “I know what I am talking about and I am telling you the truth. You look pretty strong. You might be able to climb high enough so that when you fell you’d break your neck. But you will never get even halfway to the window.” He gestured in the direction of the forest. “Right now we have to get away from here. I know a place we can go. If you want to come back, I promise I will help you.”

Modesty looked directly into his eyes.

“All right,” she said.

They had not walked far before Daniel halted.

“We’re going to have to stop here,” he said. “I can barely make out the path. There’s not enough light.”

Modesty brushed past him. “I can see it. My aunt says I must be part cat.”

They reached the cabin when Daniel would have thought they had some way yet to go. It seemed to him that he had had his eyes locked on the graceful motions of her body for only fifteen or twenty minutes.

Modesty found candles and something to light them with in the dark room. Once there was light, Daniel closed the door. When he turned back, she was sitting on his bed with her head in her hands.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She looked up at him. Daniel missed the sarcastic expression on her face, his attention being entirely occupied with the details of her eyes, the turn of her lips, the shape of her chin, the hint of color on her cheek.

“No, I am not,” she said.

Daniel said nothing. Modesty turned away from his stare.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you say?”

Modesty straightened her lips to remove from them the traces of a smile, then turned to face him with a serious look.

“I said, no, I am not all right. Not after that trip down the rope. I am not fond of heights.”

“But you asked me to carry you back up.”

“I must get back to the princess. I thought that would be better than showing up at the city gate in the morning.”

“Is that what you are planning?”

“I have no plan. I am going to return to the princess. If she does not have a friend to support her, I truly think that she might die.” She brushed away the tears that came to her eyes.

“But that’s a worry for tomorrow, not tonight.” She looked at Daniel speculatively. “Where do you come from that you could mistake me for the princess?”

Where he had come from was a far more complicated question than Daniel was prepared to discuss, but he was sure he could deflect it simply by being frank and honest about the mistake he had made.

“When I looked through the window in the tower, I saw a woman so beautiful that all those outlandish compliments about shaming the flowers and so on almost started to make sense. It never occurred to me to doubt that you were the princess.”

Modesty turned away quickly. Her eye fell on Daniel’s traveling bag.

“You didn’t by some chance bring food with you?” she asked after a moment.

While Daniel laid the food and wine on one of the tables, Modesty located platters and cups. They sat together on a bench.

“Wait,” she said, before they began. “This is most improper. If I am to dine alone with you, I must at least know your name.”

Daniel introduced himself.

“And another thing,” she said, starting to laugh. “What do you mean, the compliments ‘almost’ made sense?”

Daniel couldn’t help laughing with her, despite his suspicion that she was making fun of him.

“Real food,” said Modesty, inspecting the table with approval. “I wish the princess were here to share this. I’m sure she’d feel much better if she had a proper meal. At Ascroval they’ve been feeding us like rabbits. Dainty food is all right if you don’t have to live on it,” she said, cutting a piece of sausage.

“You don’t have to go back,” said Daniel. “I can take you to Feathermere before morning.”

She stopped eating and turned to him with a serious expression.

“I know where Feathermere is. If I wanted to go there, I would already be on my way. In the morning, I am going to Ascroval.” Her dark eyes caught his and held them. “There is no reason for us to talk about this. None at all.” She returned her attention to her meal.

Although he had not eaten since his afternoon snack, Daniel found that his interest in food was slight. He sipped wine and watched as Modesty attacked the little feast with warm enthusiasm. He was not quite sure how it was, but this woman, dressed in a plain shift, wearing no trace of makeup, every hair out of place, eating a piece of rather greasy sausage from her fingers, presented to his eye a picture of stunning beauty. He felt as though he could be completely happy just watching her for hours.

She glanced over to him.

“Yes?” she said with a lazy smile.

When Daniel answered, it was with the eerie feeling that he was listening to someone else speak. He knew it was not polite to stare, and his intention was to mutter some excuse and change the subject. But when he opened his mouth, that is not what came out.

“I know I’m staring,” he said, “but I don’t think I can stop.” He paused for a moment, then continued in an unpremeditated rush of words. “Modesty, I would climb that wall a hundred times just to be allowed to look at you. I have never met anyone like you; I have never seen anyone as beautiful as you. I have been with you for two hours, and I seem to be in love with you. I’m sitting here watching you and I can hardly remember to breathe.”

Modesty lowered the sausage to her place. The color rushed to her cheeks. The knife slipped from her fingers as she brought her hands to her face.

For a moment she said nothing.

“Excuse me,” she whispered from behind her hands, “but I thought you were just going to ask me to hand you the wine.”

Daniel felt a rush of embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean … I didn’t say that to upset you.”

Modesty removed her hands from her face and spoke facing straight ahead, as though addressing someone seated across the table from her.

“You free me from a prison. You tell me I am beautiful. You say that you are in love with me.” She looked at him, moving only her eyes. “Shall I now demand an apology?”

She turned to face him. “Do you think I hate to hear you praise me? I can see that you are not some courtier using compliments like coinage. You have proved that you are strong and daring and”—she smiled faintly—“except for the first moments of our acquaintance, you have treated me with respect. I cannot despise your compliments. Besides,” she added with a pretty grin, “you are a very handsome man. Perhaps if I had followed you on the path I would have stared at you in the way that you stared at me.”

Modesty laughed at the expression on his face. She put her hand on his shoulder.

“This is not a time for you to speak of love, but I am flattered that you like me, and that you like to look at me.” Her smile faded. “I don’t know what is going to happen at Ascroval,” she said. “Yours may be the last compliments I am ever to hear in this life.” She smiled at him again. “So don’t regret them; not on my account. But please, you must share this meal with me. Or else in time you may just remember me as the girl who ate so much.”

After their picnic supper Modesty seemed distracted. They sat by a window and talked, but she did not ask Daniel any awkward questions about his hometown. She seemed satisfied with his rather ambiguous description of his dealings with Rogan.

“That makes sense,” she said. “It didn’t seem like the sort of plot Rand would have worked out.” She finished the sip of wine in the bottom of her cup. “On the other hand, it’s awfully direct for Rogan the Obscure,” she said absently.

For a few minutes neither spoke. The silence was broken only by the intermittent bursts of song from a nocturnal bird somewhere nearby. Daniel was content to sit quietly and observe his beautiful companion. The beautiful companion herself seemed to be off somewhere in a private world. Once or twice she raised her eyes to meet his for an instant and then looked away, smiling to herself.

From the beginning of their brief acquaintance, Daniel had noticed that when Modesty’s eyes caught his, he was unable to see anything else. Now that they were lowered, he was tracing the lines of her features, mapping her every charm.

With her eyes averted still, she rose silently and paced to the other end of the room. It occurred to Daniel to wonder if he was making her uncomfortable. He reminded himself that she was, after all, hardly more than a girl, and caught in very difficult circumstances. As a companion to a princess, she had undoubtedly led a sheltered life. Her seeming self-possession might be only a fragile veneer. He tried to pull his eyes from the mesmerizing sway of her hips, the line of her thigh against the thin cloth of her shift. What she needed was not lecherous stares, but whatever comfort he might be able to offer her.

She walked back to the table and poured herself some more wine. She drank it quickly, then turned with an abrupt motion and walked the length of the room again. She stood in the shadows by the far wall for the space of a dozen heartbeats, then walked slowly back. She seemed to be in a state of agitation. Daniel tried to think of something he might do to calm the fears she must be feeling.

His reaction when she bent suddenly and kissed him on the cheek was surprising in its intensity. His face tingled and he felt a wave of dizziness pass over him. Modesty stepped back as he got to his feet. She fixed him with her dark gaze.

“Daniel,” she said in a soft voice pitched low, “I’m ready for bed. Are you?”

Daniel was.

A while later they lay in a quiet embrace. Modesty’s eyes were closed as she whispered to him.

“Now I know something about the future that I didn’t know before,” she said with a soft smile. “I still don’t know what may happen to me, but I know I will not die a virgin.” She laughed mischievously. “It was very kind of you to assist me in this way. And now Iris can stop worrying about her wedding night. She will be so relieved when I tell her about this.”

“Tell her about it?” said Daniel, shocked.

“Oh, I must. She’s very worried. No one at the court will tell her anything. One old countess has talked to both of us, but only to say we must ‘submit,’ and that she fears I lack pliancy, as if I am to make myself pliant for some mincing courtier or blustering lord.” Modesty began to raise her voice indignantly.

“Peace,” whispered Daniel. “You’re perfect the way you are.”

“Am I? I think you must be perfect, too. I will say nothing of love, but I like you very, very much.”

They lay together silently for a while. Finally Modesty put her lips next to his ear.

“I don’t want to be greedy,” she whispered, “but …”

The plan came to Daniel in his sleep. He awoke instantly, fearing that it might already be too late, but the night was still dark. Modesty lay facing him, her dark hair mingling with the shadows, one hand resting on his shoulder. He woke her with a kiss.

“Oh,” she said, with a sleepy smile, “I remember you.”

Daniel explained his idea to her.

“But what can we do, even if we are within the walls?” she protested.

“We can try to get the princess out of there.”

“I don’t see how.”

Daniel smiled at her.

“Neither do I,” he admitted, “but you’re just going to join her again. Anything is better than that.”

“You will be captured. That’s not better.”

Daniel could think of no good reason to trouble Modesty with stories of his summons, the danger from the demon, or anything about Rogan. Besides which, his reasons for wanting to free the princess now had more to do with the woman who lay beside him than with the “practical” considerations of danger from supernatural beings.

“Modesty, I love you.”

“Please don’t talk of love,” she said. “We must take the joy that the moment gives us, and be grateful.”

“All right. I will just say I want to help you. There’s no reason why I should be captured. It’s a big place, Ascroval; there must be many strangers there. There will be no harm in looking around.”

“I fear there may be great harm to you, but I cannot stop you.”

“Are you sure you will not be missed until midmorning?”

“Quite sure.” Modesty stretched slowly like a cat, and with devastating effect on the staring Daniel. She smiled. “We have lots of time.”

Chapter 9

Daniel and Modesty arrived at the gate within two hours of dawn. At her insistence, they entered the city separately, Daniel going first. He watched from a public well as she passed the guards among a crowd of farmers with their carts.

They wandered the twisted alleys for a time, familiarizing themselves with the neighborhood of the castle. The ways were lined with stalls and shops. Daniel noticed that, as they walked, Modesty was paying close attention to the wares of the clothing merchants.

“Do you want something?” he asked. “I have money.”

“Good,” she said. “Give it to me.”

Daniel handed over the purse with a grin. Modesty removed a few coins and returned it to him. They were at the edge of a small square with a fountain. She pointed to a cafe opposite.

“Wait for me there,” she said, and was gone before he could answer.

Daniel took a table under a tattered awning and sat there sipping strong tea and thinking about his lover and his predicament. Modesty was unwilling to leave the princess alone for more than perhaps another day, and that grudgingly.

“The princess is a lovely person. There is much in her to admire. But she is fragile. She cannot endure this captivity alone.” So Modesty had told Daniel in answer to his arguments against her return. Arguments with Modesty, Daniel had already learned, were apt to be brief and unsatisfying. As far as he could see, the old countess had a point—pliancy was not a quality his new friend had cultivated.

Daniel caught himself drifting into a reverie on the virtues of his lover. Very pleasant, but not of any real use in the present situation. He had to find a way to rescue the princess from this citadel, despite the fact that rescuing princesses from citadels was not his regular line of work.

Although, he reminded himself, the original harebrained scheme had actually succeeded. He had rescued a stunningly beautiful, cool-headed, and courageous young woman from her prison. She would be halfway to Ambermere right now if only she had been the princess. Daniel, of course, had ample reason to be thankful that she was who she was, but it did complicate matters.

“Why,” he had asked Modesty on the way to Ascroval, “is she spoken of as a great beauty? You would think there had never been a woman to compare with her.”

“It’s a custom. It wouldn’t matter what she looked like. But she is very beautiful. When she’s at her best, she is most impressive. This prince—Hilbert, his name is—is making no bad bargain.”

Daniel ordered more tea. A boy stopped on the cobbled pavement outside the awning. He wore a turban and baggy clothing, and was singing a song with incomprehensible words in a hoarse alto. Daniel flipped a coin to him, hoping he would go somewhere else. The boy stopped singing. That’s a start, thought Daniel.

“Master, you need a serving boy?”

Daniel shook his head.

“A guide? I can guide you everywhere.” The boy spoke as he sang, in a voice hoarse and raucous.

Daniel smiled. “No,” he said, hoping he wouldn’t have to repeat that syllable a dozen times, but expecting to.

“Master, I think you need me to serve you. If you look at me, you will see what a good boy I am.” He stepped to the table. Daniel glanced at him and shook his head again.

“But, master, you didn’t really look.”

Daniel looked, and felt his pulse quicken as his eyes were trapped in the familiar dark gaze he had known only since yesterday.

They found a room above a public house not far from the castle gate. Inside, Modesty twisted from Daniel’s eager embrace.

“That was for last night, my beautiful lover,” she said, blushing deeply. “Now the princess frets and worries without me to help her. We must find a way to enter the castle, or else I must simply surrender to the guards.”

Daniel resisted the impulse to protest, contenting himself with a more or less innocent question.

“Are you related to the princess?” he asked.

“Goodness no. I am a commoner.”

“Then how do you come to travel in such high and mighty company?”

“Daniel, you must speak of her with respect,” said Modesty in a sober voice.

“Because she is a princess?”

“Because she is my friend.” Modesty took his hand.

“As for how that can be, we met when she was a girl of seventeen. She noticed me one day at the shrine where I lived with my aunt, and came to the garden to talk to me. I was nineteen at the time. She wouldn’t let the great ladies who were with her come near us. We talked for a long time. Then she invited me to the castle. The ladies didn’t know what to do. Then they were offended because my aunt didn’t like the idea any better than they did, while they expected a common working woman to be thrilled at the great honor of it.

“At the end of the day, the princess sent a footman to ask my aunt’s permission for me to remain a few days. You understand, she didn’t inform her of the royal intentions; she asked her permission.

“I will tell you, because she is my friend, and I want you to like her, what made her seek me out in the garden. Despite the pampering and spoiling she has always lived with, she is very sweet and modest.” Modesty paused, looking uncomfortable. “She said that she wanted to have a companion so pretty that people would stop saying all those silly things about the very flowers in the garden suffering by comparison with her. And she begged me that first day at the palace not to use her titles when we were alone.” She brushed a tear from her eye. “She was so desperate to have someone call her by her name.”

They returned to the topic of getting into the castle. When Modesty learned that Daniel was a gambler, she became optimistic.

“Why did you not tell me this before?” She laughed. “Of course, we have not spent much time in conversation since we met.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “I suppose I must expect that if I ask a man to lie with me.” She giggled. “You must think I am very poorly named.”

She questioned him about his skills, how well he played, what games he knew. Daniel told her of his evening with Count Reffex.

“He cheats,” she said indignantly. “I have seen him do it.”

“I believe it,” said Daniel. “Anyone who can see in the dark the way you do must have a quick eye. But Reffex is not so clumsy that he could not fool most people.” He got out a deck of cards and demonstrated a number of phony deals.

“But,” she said in a troubled voice, “I can’t catch you at it.”

“That’s because I know how to do it right,” laughed Daniel.

Modesty didn’t say anything for a moment. She walked the length of the room twice while Daniel put the cards away. She knelt down in front of his chair to bring her eyes level with his and stared at him with a sober expression.

“Why do you know these things?” she asked finally. Daniel thought she looked as though she would burst into tears.

“If you don’t know them, you can’t protect yourself against them,” he replied. He took her hands in his. “I don’t cheat at cards,” he said.

She nodded contritely. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think you did, but I suddenly realized I do not know you at all, except …”

She kissed him lightly and smiled at him. She stood up and unwound the turban from her head.

“Now I have an idea of how we can get inside the castle. You must draw attention to yourself at the gaming houses in the neighborhood, demonstrate the techniques of cheating. I will rush around the streets and talk of it, as though of some marvel. Some passing lord or other is bound to invite you to show these things to the court.” She sat down on the bed and removed her sandals.

“Of course,” she said, sending a glance toward him, “no one will be at the tables until afternoon.” She stretched, flexing every muscle in her body. “How ever shall we occupy ourselves in the meantime?”

A few hours later Modesty, dressed as Daniel’s servant boy, darted down a narrow street lined with shops, attracted by the sound of angry voices. She found a richly dressed man shouting at an old fellow in an apron outside a modest shop.

“You will be paid when I see fit. I am not to be dictated to by a wretched tradesman.”

“But you have the merchandise, my lord. Am I not to have my fair return?”

“Of course I have the merchandise. I ordered it. Who would have it?” The nobleman pointed an angry finger at the cringing merchant. “I suggest you return to your shop and find something better to do than pester your betters. If you spent more time working and less time whining, you’d be even richer than you are already.”

He wheeled and nearly ran over Modesty.

“My lord, my lord,” she cried hoarsely, “you must come and see this wonder.” She dodged a halfhearted kick in her direction.

“No, truly,” she persisted, following him down the street, “it is a marvel.”

“It will be a marvel if you survive the beating I am going to give you. Be off!” He turned and continued on his way.

“Nay, but listen, my lord,” she called after him, raising her voice as he departed. “The man is a magician with the cards. He is a virtuoso of cheating,” she wailed in a hoarse shout, “and is showing his tricks in the taverns.”

The nobleman stopped and turned. He took a coin from his purse and beckoned, smiling.

“Perhaps I should have a look,” he said. She ran after him, being careful not to get too close. He flipped the coin to her. She caught it without taking her eyes from him. “There’s a good lad,” he said, “show me where to find this fellow.”

Daniel did not fail to notice the arrival of his serving boy and the overfed young man with the florid complexion. He shuffled and dealt the cards with rapid deftness, giving himself an unbeatable hand, which he then displayed.

The lord moved up to the table. Those crowded around gave way, stepping on each other’s feet and bumping into chairs. Having been coached by Modesty, Daniel got to his feet and managed an obsequious nod.

“You’d best come with me, my man,” said the nobleman. He made it sound like an arrest.

“We will be delighted, my lord,” Daniel answered, gesturing for Modesty. The nobleman sniffed. He turned and led the way without waiting to see if he was being followed.

When they had left the vicinity of the tavern, his aloofness disappeared.

“You must dine with me in my apartments.” he said eagerly. “I find your skills fascinating. I myself am interested in cards. You might say it is a sort of intellectual hobby I find amusing.” They walked along in silence for a block.

“Not really the sort of thing, though, to demonstrate to just anyone. In the wrong hands, such tricks could be misused, don’t you think? How much better if they are known only to a few.”

Gaining entrance to the castle took no more than the wave of His Lordship’s hand in the direction of the guards. Once inside, he turned to Modesty.

“You’d best go to the kitchens, boy. I have my servants to wait on us upstairs. You tell the cooks Lord Scropp says to feed you.”

Daniel’s protest was drowned out by his servant’s hoarse protestations of gratitude.

“Yes, sir. Just the thing for me, sir. Thank you, sir. Don’t you worry. I can find it, sir.”

Daniel’s mouth was still open when the turbaned head disappeared around a corner.

In no time at all, Modesty was busy making a nuisance of herself in the vast kitchens. She opened pots and lifted the cover of every dish she could get to. But she seemed such a likable and pretty boy that the cooks tolerated her and answered her silly questions. They whispered to one another what a charmer this lad would grow to be with his beautiful dark eyes, smooth skin, and nimble, flirtatious ways.

And flirt she did, with every serving wench no matter how plain, and exerted herself to befriend the boys as well, gathering them in a corner to make jokes at the expense of the cooks, bakers, and any adults who passed through.

And while Daniel and Lord Scropp were lingering over dessert, she had spent her last coin for the privilege of carrying lunch to the lady in the tower.

“Mind you tell no one,” said the serving girl, pocketing the coin and dazedly touching her cheek where the soft quick kiss had surprised her.

The guard unlocked the door for the turbaned boy with no show of interest. He was of the king’s personal guard, and had only today been put here in place of the much less exalted trooper whose job it had been to keep awake in a lonesome hallway far from any amusement. Some trouble had occurred, apparently, but not of a sort to enliven a dull assignment.

Inside, Modesty looked at the familiar room cautiously. The princess lay on her couch.

“Thank you, I want nothing.”

“You must eat, miss,” said Modesty in her hoarse serving-boy voice.

“Must I?”

Modesty did not want to shock Iris, but neither did she want to waste precious time.

“Miss, I want you to take a deep breath and remain calm.”

“Go away.”

“Iris, please don’t scream,” she said in her own voice.

To her very great credit, Iris did not scream.

She stared at her companion, dressed as an urchin, without moving. Modesty came to her, pulled her to her feet, and hugged her. The princess was crying silently.

“I thought you must be dead,” she whispered. “What happened?”

Modesty told her, including every detail that modesty did not forbid.

“Iris, you mustn’t be shocked; he is so … Anyway, I am going to free you from this place, if I can. And if I can get to you so easily, what may Daniel and I together not be able to accomplish?” She hugged the princess again. “Courage!” she said from the door. She smiled conspiratorially. “And remember the sweet secrets I have told you.”

It took her the better part of an hour to find Lord Scropp’s rooms. The nobleman had taken unto himself a fair measure of wine, and did not appear to be following with complete success the intricacies of cheating at cards.

Daniel extricated himself with a promise to return the next day. “I’m afraid I am not able to explain this with the necessary clarity after such an ample repast,” he said, shifting to himself the blame for his pupil’s stupidity with the adroit insincerity of a seasoned diplomat.

“Well, here then, my man,” mumbled Scropp, producing a small purse with an air of reluctance reminiscent of Rogan.

Daniel’s polite protest was anticipated by his serving boy, who nimbly plucked the purse from the noble fingers and began a barrage of profuse thanks that did not cease until after the great man’s servant had put them through the door.

“You are a marvel,” said Daniel back in their room above the tavern. “I couldn’t see what we were going to accomplish with this nobleman beyond adding another clumsy cheat to the gaming tables. But while I’m watching him drop cards on the floor, you are talking to the princess. I am amazed.” He shook his head bemusedly. “Again.”

“Well,” she said, “your servant is about to perish from hunger. I suggest you feed him.”

Daniel had eaten his fill at Scropp’s. At a back table of the nearest cafe, he sipped tea and watched Modesty be so true to her masquerade as to eat with the appetite of a teenage boy.

They didn’t tempt fate by talking where they might by some chance be heard. It was not until they were back in their room that they tried to formulate a plan. The best they could devise was for Modesty to spend the next day trying to learn something that would be of use.

“But I must see her as well,” she said. “She is being very brave, but if I can’t visit her and give her reassurance, she will become frantic.” Modesty drew back the curtain to look out the window. “My poor princess,” she said. “She would feel abandoned when I visited my aunt for a day or two. Now she is locked away in a room no bigger than this one.” She turned to Daniel.

“But here, I have you. She has no one. While I lie in the arms of my lover tonight, the princess trembles on her couch alone.”

Since Daniel had only a vague agreement to join His Lordship sometime after noon, he and Modesty allowed themselves the lazy luxury of sleeping late. But they were awakened and greatly alarmed in the midmorning by a loud knock at their door. Reacting faster than Daniel, Modesty sprang from the bed and began to hurriedly wind her turban as she called through the door in her servant’s hoarse shout.

“Who disturbs the master gambler at this early hour?” She jumped into her baggy disguise on the way to the door. “My employer is not a maker of bricks to be at his kiln at dawn,” she bawled.

“A message from the castle,” said a voice from the hallway.

Obeying Modesty’s whispered order, Daniel lay yet among their rumpled bedclothes. Modesty disengaged the heavy latch and opened the door partway. From where he lay, Daniel could see her take a note from an invisible hand.

It was a summons in the form of an invitation. Lord Scropp wished Daniel to present himself sooner than they had agreed, for the purpose of being displayed before some guests who were expected to arrive before noon and could be assumed to be interested in Daniel’s arts.

Daniel and Modesty had a quick breakfast and a whispered discussion, and then presented themselves at the castle steps. Once they were inside, Modesty set off for the kitchens. They had agreed that she would look in on him when the opportunity offered itself.

At Scropp’s apartments, Daniel found his pupil in the company of three other men, one of whom was dressed in so outlandish and extravagant a costume that Daniel could scarcely refrain from staring. The man wore robes that would not have been out of place on a wealthy bride. His hat was an enormous pointed contrivance decorated with a galaxy of arcane symbols vaguely reminiscent of astrological runes. It was only after having been presented, in the customary apologetic manner, to this personage, introduced as “the great wizard, Remeger, who has consented to view your tricks,” that Daniel realized that of the other two men, out of all the multitudes of all the kingdoms of this world, he was acquainted with one.

“Your grace,” he said, nodding with appropriate humility to his erstwhile teacher, Reffex.

The good count launched into his impersonation of gracious condescension, greeting Daniel with something approaching familiarity, and being very jovial with his pal Lord Scropp.

“You see, Scropp, I’ve bested you again. I know the man from Ambermere, where I think he’ll tell you he learned a few things from me, if I say it myself.”

The third man was another aristocrat from Ambermere, a Baron Sote, whose name Daniel thought sounded familiar, though he couldn’t imagine how it could be.

“How is it, then, Reffex,” he said with an affected drawl that Daniel hoped he would not hear much of, “that I don’t know this fellow? I’m no stranger to the gaming tables at home.”

“No, no,” said Reffex, with a languid imperial wave, “he came to me for instruction, you see.”

“But he’s not of the court, certainly?”

Daniel found it interesting to be the subject of a discussion that did not acknowledge his presence. He wondered if these noblemen would be so foolish as to play cards with him for money.

“Oh, didn’t I mention, the wizard will be interested in this, he was a guest of Rogan’s.”

The great Remeger pretended not to know who Rogan was until Reffex reminded him.

“Oh, yes,” the wizard said, “it is he who fashions himself ‘the Obscure,’ is it not?” He uttered a “ha-ha-ha” that was evidently meant to be taken as a disdainful laugh, the reaction of an eminent wizard to the predictable follies of a mere magician.

Daniel, not being part (except as subject) of the conversation, had leisure to wonder at a trio of grandees in whose company even Scropp began to look like a fellow of wit and charm.

Baron Sole turned to Daniel.

“So,” he said, “then it is you I have to thank for the fact that my dagger was not ready on time?” Without waiting for Daniel’s reply, he turned to the others.

“The weapon smith told me that Rogan had turned up with a stranger and authority from the king, and had made him drop everything to fill an order overnight. What was it again?” he asked Daniel.

“I’m not quite sure, Your Grace. It had something to do with magic or fireworks, I believe.”

“Oh, I remember. The smith showed me the drawing when I thought he was lying. Spikes, he said they were. Thin, not terribly long. I can’t imagine what they were for.” He patted an empty sheath at his belt. “I still don’t have my dagger.”

In no face did Daniel, whose occupation involved reading facial expressions, see signs of trouble. Remeger, unfortunately, had been looking toward the window when the spikes were mentioned. He turned to them and took a step toward Daniel.

“Well then, sir,” he said with an empty smile, “let us see these tricks of yours.”

The wizard left before long. It was only by calling on discipline that Daniel was able to keep his mind on what he was doing. He was painfully conscious that as long as Baron Sote was at this court, there was a chance, perhaps a good one, that the wrong person would hear of the spikes. Daniel was still trying to work out a way of ensuring that the subject of spikes would not arise again when a servant came to say that he was wanted in the corridor.

He excused himself and went to the doorway hoping for a moment of privacy to consult with Modesty about the complication. Perhaps, he thought, she would know if Reffex and Sole could simply be informed of the situation. It was even possible, though hard to imagine, that they might be of some help.

But instead of Modesty in the corridor, he found the wizard with half a dozen guards waiting to seize him. They marched him quickly to a windowless room off a narrow inner hallway. Before locking him in, the wizard sent the guards from the door.

“Do you think we are fools?” he hissed. “The lady you kidnapped is back with the other guest. Everything is just as it was before you came with your rope and spikes to commit this outrage.” Remeger favored him with an ugly grin. “Except you are locked in this room now, guilty of a crime against this kingdom and its sovereign.” He started to close the door, then opened it again.

“Fool! I am not some palace magician like Rogan the Obscure. How dare he send you here to challenge me? How could you think to breach the defenses of a castle protected by the magic of a wizard?”

Daniel could not see how his situation could be improved by pointing out that he had been breaching those defenses for days, and had only been caught through the agency, not of magic, but bad luck. He did his best to look contrite, sitting with his head bowed until the door slammed and the bar dropped into place.

Chapter 10

Jackson was in a cab crawling through city traffic three blocks from the bar when he saw Elise. She was standing in front of a cigar store next to what was certainly the last wooden Indian in the city, possibly in the state. As she gazed off in the direction of the harbor, four or five blocks away, she appeared to be totally lost in thought. Jackson was used to seeing adepts of all sorts, especially those of his own Order, exert their powers of concentration. Errin, for instance, seemed always to be trying to penetrate some mystery by staring at something. But whatever Elise was doing, it was something quite different. Jackson himself had suggested tricks she could use to improve her concentration. Elise, though, looked almost as if she were not really standing there, or was someplace completely different at the same moment. As the cab moved on, Jackson glanced back at her. She looked as though she were entirely alone. As though the street, the traffic, and maybe the planet itself did not exist. He shrugged. Her talents, her interests, were not really his concern. He had been asked to give her instruction when the opportunity arose. To show any further curiosity about her would be not only pointless, but improper. Unless of course he could trick her, as Errin had done. That was not curiosity; it was instruction. Jackson thought it odd that she would be so unguarded. Total innocents were not sent to places like the bar. This could not be her first brush with the Order.

When he got to the bar, finally abandoning the cab in despair, he mentioned seeing the barmaid.

“She could be standing on the moon,” he said.

“Nothing wrong, surely?” asked the bartender.

“No. She probably looks distracted to anyone who notices her, but there’s nothing amiss. I saw it because I know how to look, and I know who she is.”

“Oh?” said Errin, eyebrows raised.

“You know very well that I mean I know she is one of us, not a meter maid or a lawyer.”

“And she’s a local from Ambermere.”

“Probably. Assuming she wasn’t just being more clever than you. Remember we don’t really know each other in the Order, especially when we are young. Maybe I am really”—he raised his eyebrows and twisted his features—“a necromancer,” he said dramatically, making complicated motions with his fingers and hands.

The other young man laughed. “Or the new conductor of the philharmonic.”

When they stopped laughing, Jackson looked around the room. Gavas was in the corner, asleep or awake, Jackson could not tell.

“He hasn’t left here for weeks, has he? He never does anything. I have never seen him study, and he never offers to teach, unless you count the occasional incomprehensibility he bestows upon us.” He stood up to remove his jacket.

“You know,” he continued, “I have books in my room ….”

Errin raised his eyebrows.

“It’s okay. Mervin and Gavas both approved. Anyway, when I am there I am usually studying. And when I come here, I end up sitting with Elise. Not that I mind, exactly”—he lowered his voice—“but Gavas doesn’t even do that, and to tell you the truth, I get the impression Elise would rather I didn’t bother. She’s polite, but she could not be called an eager pupil.”

Errin nodded. “She is always telling me not to trouble myself. But I assumed it was because you are a better-informed teacher.” He laughed. “Or, of course, an arch-wizard.”

The street door opened, letting in the usual din along with a blast of hot city air. Elise waved to Gavas and the others as she passed, and joined the two young men at the bar.

“Did your taxi ever get here,” she asked Jackson, “or did you give up and walk?”

The back door opened with a groan, admitting Hannah. She chatted briefly, stopped to talk to Gavas for a moment, then left the quiet sanctuary of the bar by way of the street door.

Marcia had been waiting for Hannah for over an hour, never remaining seated on the bench for more than a minute. She had walked every path of the little park a dozen times. It had been ten days since she had seen Hannah. It was then that the witch had given her the little box that had proved so effective on Monday morning, just one week ago. But on that same day, after work, she had seen the monster, as she thought of him for lack of a better term.

She had stayed at home on Tuesday; it wasn’t really until Tuesday morning that she had been able to get to sleep. On Wednesday she had returned to work, though she regretted it when she got there; the bustle of the office seemed almost intolerable to her frayed nerves.

Marcia would have gone back home, except the thought of sitting alone all day was less attractive than staying at the office, even if it meant enduring the sudden sycophantic friendship of Colette, who had discovered that her work often required the “input” of the newly created consultant.

After work, Marcia did something that she had been sorry for every moment since then. She got a cab outside the office, but instead of going directly to her apartment, she asked the driver to go by way of the street where she had seen the man in the leather vest.

He was not where she had last seen him. Marcia was relieved. She had made herself come back to this place, but she had not wanted to endure again the sight of the monstrous aura. She settled back in the seat as the taxi stopped in a line of cars waiting for a red light.

The focus of another person’s dislike or ill will was something Marcia could detect as an almost physical sensation of weight pressing against her. Sitting in the cab, she felt the sudden weight of concentrated malevolence bearing down on her.

She was gripped by an icy fear that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her. Knowing what she would see, she forced herself to turn her eyes to the near sidewalk. There, not twenty feet away was the monster, his yellow stare burning into her. Marcia would have screamed if she had been able to breathe. She saw the booted foot step off the curb in her direction. The light changed. One by one the cars ahead of them began to move. The thing, whatever it was, came closer.

With nightmarish sluggishness, the cab drifted ahead. Marcia was sure the light would change, trapping her. She saw the green give way to yellow, then felt the sudden jolt as the driver pushed the accelerator to the floor and roared through the intersection with a muttered curse.

In front of her building she handed her pocketbook to the driver.

“Pay yourself,” she said.

The driver hesitated. “Are you all right, lady?” he asked. Marcia’s hands were trembling violently.

“Yes,” she said. She managed a brittle smile. “Give yourself a good tip.”

The man insisted on showing her what he was taking, counting out the bills deliberately and calculating the tip with niggling precision. Marcia forced herself to be patient, rather than yielding to her earnest desire to scream and run into the building.

On Thursday she had gone to work, though late, and worked until the office closed. She told the receptionist she wouldn’t be in until Monday and took a cab directly to her apartment.

She awoke in the middle of the night, certain that if she went to the window, she would see the monster on the street below, looking up at her. The longer she lay there, the more certain she became. Finally she got up and sidled to the window, disturbing the heavy drapes just enough to get a view of the street.

The fact that it was totally empty gave her comfort, but not so much that she had any hope of further sleep. She sat up till dawn, then slept half the morning. She followed this routine until Monday, sitting up most of the night and sleeping at odd times during the day. On Monday she slept through half the morning, and did not leave the bed until time to go to the park, though she had been awake for some time.

When she saw the now familiar dark dress of the witch she ran to her. Hannah’s smile at seeing the shy and reserved Marcia running toward her like a twelve-year-old faded when she saw the expression on her adept’s face.

When she had heard everything that Marcia had to tell—the aura, the fact that the monster was aware of Marcia—Hannah insisted on taking a quick walk through the park and the streets immediately surrounding it.

Back at the bench, Marcia was horrified when Hannah said she had to leave.

“It is only for a very short while, and only because I must get help. There is no danger near, but this is very serious. Do not leave this place.”

The trays from the tavern in Ambermere had arrived and Elise and Errin were being kept busy. The three locals who had taken to frequenting the strangely silent little bar with the rich amber ale and platters of bread, cold meats, and cheese, were relishing their peaceful lunch. They had shared a solemn vow not to tell anyone else about the place, for fear it would be spoiled by crowds of vice presidents and accountants.

At the big table in the corner, every chair was occupied. Jackson was seated with the others, earnestly disputing a point with a bearded man who looked roughly three times his age.

Errin had vaulted over the bar to transform himself from waiter to barman and had just given Elise fresh glasses for the locals when the door opened to admit the witch.

“What an honor,” he said as she approached. “You’ve not taken a meal with us since …”

Hannah passed him as though he wasn’t there. He watched as Elise, carrying a tray of food and drink to the locals, turned to face her. It was most unobservant of him, he thought, that he had not noticed until that moment how very odd her eyes were.

When she reached the waitress, the witch crossed her hands on her chest and bowed.

“Forgive me, Holy One; my adept has seen a demon.”

With a gesture, Elise stopped the wizards in the corner from leaving their chairs.

“When?” she asked, at the same time placing the tray on the table of the gaping locals. Hannah told her.

“Where is she now?”

The witch gave her directions to the park. Except for her voice, the room was utterly silent.

“You will stay here,” Elise said to Hannah. “I will see to your adept.”

The witch nodded.

“Master Errin,” said Elise, turning to the bartender. She gestured to the locals. “These men may not leave until I return.”

Errin had been staring in openmouthed astonishment. He remembered himself in time to bow. “Yes, Holy One,” he murmured hoarsely.

The young woman strode to the door, nodding to Gavas as she passed. When the door to the street closed behind her, he raised his hand.

“Let us continue our meal,” he said quietly. “Mistress Hannah would have noticed if there were any danger near. We will talk when it is time to talk ..”

No longer in a mood for leaping, Errin walked around the bar and went to the locals.

“Gentlemen,” he said with an effort at a smile, “do you have everything you need?”

“What’s going on here? What does she mean, we can’t leave?”

“Just until she comes back,” said Errin.

“And just who is she?” asked one of the men.

Errin shook his head slowly. “I’m sure that if I knew, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you.”

As intently as she had been watching for Hannah’s return, Marcia couldn’t imagine how she had failed to see the woman who was walking toward her, but she had no leisure to dwell on the question. The effect of the aura she was seeing was perhaps similar to what an unusually sensitive listener would experience in the presence of the most exquisitely beautiful singing. She rose to meet her, then sat back down, confused. The woman took a seat next to her.

Marcia found her voice. “Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Elyssa. That is my true name, for you, but you must call me Elise. What it is needful for you to know of me, you can see.”

Marcia nodded.

“Good. Now tell me what has happened.”

Marcia repeated her story, exactly as she had related it to the witch.

“What you have seen is a demon,” said Elise, “and the demon has seen you, and knows you.”

Marcia gasped.

“I don’t mean the demon knows where to find you, but you are in great danger nonetheless.” She removed a ring that she was wearing and, taking Marcia’s right hand, placed it on her finger. “Do not take this ring off for any reason. It is mine and it will help protect you. You must wear it until I take it back. Remove it for no one else.” She paused. “And if anyone asks you whose ring it is, you must tell them it is Elyssa’s ring.”

Elise released Marcia’s hand.

“Whose ring is that?” she asked.

Marcia looked down at her hand.

“This is Elyssa’s ring,” she replied softly.

“And so you must say when the demon asks you.”

A look of horror replaced the smile on Marcia’s face, and did not depart when she heard what Elise had next to say.

“The demon seeks you, and will find you in time. I want you to seek him as well. He should not be here. He must not stay here. The sooner he is found, the sooner he will be gone. When you find him, I will know it, and I will come. If you can find the strength, it is my will that you become the hunter.”

Elise touched the ring on Marcia’s hand.

“Whose ring is that?”

“This is Elyssa’s ring,” said Marcia She looked at it where it glistened on her finger. It seemed to pull her eyes to its beauty. When she looked up, Elise was gone.

When Elise returned to the bar, she walked directly to the locals. “You must leave. You may speak of this only to one another. You may return, but may never bring any other person with you, or send another here.”

The men looked at each other. One of them folded his hands on the table and peered up at her over his glasses.

“Now, look here, little lady, we’re—”

“You will not speak,” said Elise in a monotone. She pointed to the door.

The three men rose together and filed out without a word.

Elise turned to Gavas. “Where is this Old One, this free necromancer? I want you to go to him, and if this is his work, you will bring him to me.”

The old man bowed. “I am sorry. Holy One. He is on the other side of the continent.”

“Then I must go.” She beckoned. “Come tell me the place, then while I am absent, you and your wizards can prepare this door in case the demon should come upon it.”

The old man and the young woman walked to the door in the back and spoke quietly. When she passed through, he returned to the others. He beckoned to Errin, forgotten behind the bar.

“Come, Master, lend your strength to this magic we make, for it must be strong indeed.”

As Jackson joined the circle the men were forming, he looked bewildered. He peered at Gavas. “You know an arch-wizard?” he said in a subdued voice. “A necromancer?”

It was morning in the garden. Alexander leaned on the stone parapet and let his gaze wander. Far below was the ocean, hidden just now beneath thick fog, making it, he supposed, more of a proposition, or perhaps a hypothesis ….

“Necromant!”

He glanced over his shoulder.

“My, my,” he said in a dry old voice that sounded like the rustle of silk. He straightened up and turned to face Elise.

“I must be getting careless,” he whispered. He gathered the fingers of his right hand and pressed them to his forehead just above the bridge of his nose. He made a sudden gesture at Elise as though swatting a fly. For a moment he gave every appearance of being unaware of her continued presence.

“What,” he said, “still here? How unusual. Begone,” he said lackadaisically. He peered at her from beneath nonexistent eyebrows. “Look here, sweetie, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Why don’t you just scrim? Or is it scram?” He looked puzzled. “Anyway, don’t force me to be dramatic.”

“Have you loosed a demon?”

“What?” For one who scarcely spoke above a whisper, Alexander sounded outraged. “Who are you anyway?” He walked closer to Elise. He raised his voice to conversational volume. “Listen,” he said, advancing on her, “how would you like to spend the next five hundred years …” His voice trailed off. He stopped one yard from his visitor.

“Oh, dear,” he said in a very small voice.

“Have you loosed a demon?”

“No, Holy One.” Alexander made a deep bow that would have done credit to a far younger man. “Nor have I ever, nor would I.”

“But you summon them.” It was not a question.

“I do, yes. But rarely, and only for talk. They know so many …,” he began. “But of course I needn’t tell you.”

Elise nodded. “You know the proverb about cats, do you not?”

“Yes, Holy One,” he replied, bowing again.

“Who else could accomplish this? This is an old, powerful demon, not one to be summoned by triflers.”

“Besides the holy men in the mountains, only one called Gavas, that I know of, but he would not.”

“I have just left him,” she said. “You know nothing of this?”

“Nothing.”

“Then I leave you as I found you.”

“But you leave me the knowledge of your visit, Holy One?”

“Of course.”

“And may one know the name that … ?”

“You have been threatening Elyssana.”

The old man looked stricken. “Holy One, I never meant to, I mean, knew …”

“That was meant in jest, necromancer. Be at peace; we are not so easily offended.”

Alexander bowed. When he looked up, he was alone. He passed through the French doors to his study and went to a lectern where a large book of obvious antiquity was open. “Elyssana,” he repeated as he leafed carefully through the brittle pages. He found what he sought and read, stopping at intervals to look through the doors to the spot where Elise had stood.

After a time he returned to the garden wall and stared at the fog below.

Elise stood at the back of the bar. The wizards were gathered at the front door.

“But surely, Gavas,” Jackson was saying, “we may do more than hide in here and defend a door. I was reading that demons are only …”

Gavas turned and bowed to Elise. The others followed suit.

“Pray finish your instructions, Master Gavas,” she said.

“The demon must not have the freedom of the passage,” he said, “and until we know what we face, Master Jackson, we dare not risk more. This could be a demon of a hundred names. You must not be tricked into contending with a potent being. Simply hold the door against the demon. Try to perform more, and while you are artificing together, you may be struck with irresistible force.”

“Good,” said Elise. “These stout wizards, Master Mervin and the rest, can protect the way here, but you know, Gavas, that your place must now be on the streets.”

The old man nodded. The others stared at him.

“And I want Master Jackson to go with you; he is local here and must know the city well.” She turned to the young wizard.

“Master Jackson, listen to me well. Do not leave the side of your companion for any reason.” Jackson bowed, smiling. Elise continued in a voice that, though it was no louder, had suddenly become sharper. “You must understand this clearly, young one.” Jackson’s smile disappeared. Elise gestured to Gavas. “The arch-wizard cannot protect you from the demon unless he can put his hand on you. Do not stray beyond his reach. Beyond these doors it is only in the ambit of the necromancer’s power that you are safe.” She turned from the dumbfounded Jackson to Errin.

“Master Errin, this demon has been summoned from Ambermere, probably by a magician or someone else who didn’t understand the forces he was using. Go and find the one who has done this thing.”

“And return with him, Holy One?”

“No. By no means. You are a wizard. Deal with him as you see fit. This is a wizard’s problem; I leave it to you. And I will not be here. I have other paths to tread.”

Rogan was beginning to worry. Six days had passed since Daniel had left. He should have easily arrived at Ascroval two days ago. If he had accomplished the rescue that night, the princess could have left the inn at Feathermere on a fast horse by yesterday morning. This, then, was the day on which she should arrive, and she might have managed it by last night if she had made any effort at all.

Still, there were several hours of daylight left. He turned from the window. He was just in time to see his chamber door open quietly. A young man stepped into the room.

“How did you get in here? I have a spell on that door.”

Errin closed the door behind him.

“Doesn’t that suggest anything to you?” he said. Errin walked to the chalk circle on the floor.

“Keep away from that!”

“Where is the book?”

“What book?” said the magician, looking at the book where it lay open on the table.

Rogan and Errin worked together to efface the circle of chalk. In a quarter of an hour, the stones that had borne it carried only the marks of age and wear.

“All that work,” said the old man in a despairing tone.

“All that mischief,” said Errin.

“Are you going to take my book?”

“Have a look at it,” suggested the wizard.

Rogan walked to the table slowly, as though he was afraid the book would explode or burst into flames. With a suspicious last glance at Errin, he bent over it. He began paging through it, slowly at first, and then with greater speed, until he was flipping through the pages at a terrific rate. He slammed it closed and turned to his visitor.

“Very amusing,” he said sourly. “I paid a lot for that book.”

“Well,” said Errin, “now you can write your own. You have all those blank pages you can fill. If you’re really lucky you might be able to sell it.” He joined the magician at the table.

“Now tell me exactly where you sent this victim of yours, and what you hoped he would accomplish.”

Chapter 11

Night had fallen by the time Errin had prepared himself for his journey to Ascroval. He had sat, motionless as a brass effigy, through the evening, while Rogan drank wine, paced, and muttered out the window, watching for signs of the return of the princess.

When finally the wizard stood up to leave, Rogan hastened to open the door for him.

“If you encounter the princess on the road, you will see her safely home, will you not?”

“I will not meet your princess on the ways I pass tonight,” was the reply.

At dawn the heavy battle gate at Ascroval was raised with strain of cables and creak of wheels. The wood sang and rumbled against the polished stone of its ancient track, ceasing only when the timber braces were laid in place upon their sills of granite.

A short distance away, Errin watched the operation from where he lay with his head pillowed on the bole of a flowering tree. When the keeper and the troopers had completed their work, he rose lightly to his feet and strolled in the direction of the city.

*

Remeger stood, dressed only in a nightshirt, before a closet stuffed with gaudy robes and a number of enormous pointed hats. On this day did he want to appear especially magnificent. He could picture the scene now. The room would be filled with the most important aristocrats of the court. The page would announce him in a loud, clear voice that everyone would hear: “The famous and great master wizard Remeger.” He himself would be outside the door. He would wait just the right amount of time, then make his entrance to gasps of admiration.

He frowned. He could picture the scene, but not his robes and hat. He paced back and forth in front of the closet, stopping occasionally to pull the hem of a robe across his arm and study the effect.

When he turned at a slight noise and saw the young man standing in the middle of his bedroom, he said “Yeep!” and jumped high enough to win a prize.

“What are you doing in here? Who are you?” he screeched. “I have a spell on that door.”

Errin looked genuinely surprised. “That door right there?” he said, indicating the one he had just passed through. “Are you sure?” He shook his head. “At least I noticed the rebuff Rogan had working. It was actually pretty good.”

“Rogan? At the palace at Ambermere? He is a mere magician.” Remeger struck a pose of supercilious menace, the effect of which was seriously weakened by his bare feet, lumpy ankles, and wrinkled nightshirt. “I warn you now,” he intoned, “you are in great peril. I am Remeger the wizard!” He accompanied his announcement with a haughty, wide-eyed glare and much waving of his hands in Errin’s direction.

Errin, remembering Jackson’s arch-wizardry antics in the bar, dissolved helplessly into a fit of giggles.

Remeger watched with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides. He looked bewildered, like a raving lunatic in the grip of a sudden fit of lucidity.

“In strict point of fact,” the young man said when he stopped laughing, “you are Remeger the magician, I would say of about the seventh degree. That’s two or three grades below Rogan’s rank.” The older man opened his mouth to speak, but was stopped by a gesture from Errin.

“You are also Remeger the uncommonly lucky imposter,” Errin continued. “Rogan was very nearly successful in summoning a demon.” Remeger looked ill. “Guess where he was planning to send it.”

The magician slumped into the nearest chair, paying no heed to the carefully cleaned and polished shoes he sat upon.

“Now,” said Errin, “you will tell me about the Princess Iris, her companion, and any other person connected with them.”

Remeger stared silently from his chair. Errin came and stood over him.

“Remeger,” he said in a conversational tone that nonetheless carried a note of menace, “I am not pretending to be a wizard. I am one. I suggest that you not force me to demonstrate my power over you.” He turned and walked to the other side of the room.

Remeger sat staring disconsolately at the floor. “The princess is locked in the tower with her companion. The man who climbed the tower is also a prisoner, in an inner room not far from here. Today they are to appear before the king to answer for their crimes.”

“Their crimes?”

The magician nodded. “Yes. Treason, for one. Slander of the monarch.”

At a questioning look from Errin he elaborated. “The actions of all of them have made it appear that the king holds the princess captive.”

“And so he does.”

“But to charge the king with such behavior is slander, which is treason, of course. And anyway, the man, the one who climbed the tower, kidnapped the companion of the princess. And then he and the girl were apprehended within the castle, she in disguise, obviously plotting some mischief.”

“Rescue of the princess or some such?”

“It would not surprise me,” the magician said with a bleak look expressive of world-weary cynicism.

Errin extracted from Remeger the time and place of the meting out of royal justice before turning to the door.

“Remeger, you will see me soon again, and after that meeting you will have cause to remember me.” Errin caught the magician’s eye. “But now, when I leave this room, you will have no memory of me or of anything that has passed between us.”

Remeger leapt to his feet. “No!” he shouted. “Wait! What is to become of me? What are you going to …?”

Errin passed through the door without answering.

As Remeger turned to his closet, he noticed the light ballroom shoes crushed on the seat of the chair. He picked them up, turning them over with a puzzled expression. After a moment, he tossed them aside, reflecting that he had much more important things to worry about than shoes.

He walked pensively across the soft carpet. On his face was an expression of intense concentration. Gold, he thought, was a very impressive color, but was it perhaps too gay for proceedings of such gravity? The green robes were sober, yet not without their highlights ….

Errin pondered the question of what to do. He did not have the power of a demon, to simply round up the captives and walk out the gate with them. Even an arch-wizard—like Gavas, he thought with a sudden whispered laugh, remembering his own astonishment and Jackson’s incredulous stare—would have difficulty managing such a trick without the benefit of fairly elaborate planning. It was one thing, and a fairly easy thing, to get yourself where you wanted to go without interference from guards and the like. It was quite another to do it in a party.

If Elise were there … Errin had not allowed himself to think about Elise. “Holy One” was an ambiguous and general term that did not tell him who or what she was, only that she was exalted in some remote degree. But clearly her powers, whether her own, which, it occurred to him, was an almost terrifying thought, or bestowed, were far beyond anything within his ken. Judging from her conversation with Gavas about the other necromancer, she had crossed the continent and returned in moments. The ability to do that sort of thing did not come from wizardry or necromancy, but was found at some higher source of power. Like the demon, she could without doubt simply do what she felt like in this situation.

But it was only the wizard Errin who was here, and he had not much time to prepare himself. He banished idle speculation from his mind and concentrated on the problem at hand. His only legitimate concerns were for the man Rogan had displaced with his botched spell and with the bogus wizard Remeger. Rogan he had dealt with already, though leniently. But even though wizards were not primarily in the business of righting wrongs and correcting monarchs, magic not being required for those chores, Errin thought it only reasonable that he make some effort to relieve the distress of the damsels while he was in the neighborhood.

The problem was that wizards were very good at doing one thing at a time, sometimes quite marvelous things, but not particularly good at juggling many problems at once. Errin could protect himself from virtually any mortal danger, and could be of great help to a single companion. But to do more was going to require trickery, and trickery, though part of the wizard’s stock in trade, could be tricky.

Yesterday Marcia had waited for as long as she dared after Elise had left her. She had hoped that Hannah would come back to tell her what to do. But the longer she remained in the little park, the more convinced she became that the demon would find her there if she did not leave.

In the twenty-four hours since, she had been in her apartment with the curtains drawn. More than once she had begun to take the ring from her finger. She wondered if wearing it might draw the monster to her. Perhaps if she were not meddling in these things, not meeting with these strange people, she would not be in the terrible danger that so clearly threatened her.

Witchcraft, she thought. She tossed her head as though to dismiss such a silly thought. Which in itself, she knew, was silly. What of the powder and its indisputable effect on Mr. Figge? And if not that, what of Hannah’s disposal of the mugger? And more than any of those things, what of the woman who had come to her in the park? And what of her aura? Marcia was not a skeptic on the subject of auras. Elyssa’s aura told her things that she understood, yet could not define, even to herself. Like a word hidden on the tip of the tongue, the message of the aura was known in some deep place, but not open to analysis.

And yet the woman that wore this aura, Elyssa—Elise—had told her she should go out and look for the demon. Elise wanted her, Marcia, to be the hunter. Marcia shuddered. She had a vivid memory of the monster as she had last seen him … it. The thing had been bad enough as a man. She would not have cared to face him when he was nothing more than a particularly nasty-looking thug. The idea of facing, not to mention discussing the ownership of the ring she wore, with a demon, whatever that was, was pretty nearly unthinkable.

Except that Marcia had thought of little else since she had left the park. She had been able, surprisingly, to sleep during the night, and had not been troubled by the dreams of the monster. She had dreamed, in fact, of pleasant things that had slipped beyond the reach of memory when she woke up.

She checked the time. She decided to go out for lunch. She would even walk. It would do her good, she thought. It certainly beat hiding under the bed.

By the time she had passed, first the closest restaurant to her building, then her favorite of those nearby, and continued walking to the verge of the downtown area, she had stopped trying to fool herself.

I’m doing it, she thought, then repeated the words aloud, not caring if people saw her talking to herself. If you can find the strength, it is my will that you become the hunter. Those were the words Elyssa had spoken to her. Marcia looked down at the ring, thin against her finger. A flood of misgivings engulfed her. It was a little, ordinary ring of heaven-only-knew-what metal. For all she knew it would turn her finger green. She raised it closer to her eyes, stopping on the sidewalk to look at it. It was, she decided, a beautiful ring. Small and plain, but beautiful nonetheless. “This is Elyssa’s ring,” she said as she began walking again.

She had lunch, finally, at a little place in a declining neighborhood. It was a bar and grill left over from two generations ago, had a great deal of ramshackle charm, and served food that was very nearly inedible.

After her meal, she turned in the direction of her apartment and took a different route on the return trip. Back home, she read her mail, such as it was, took a long soaking bath, and then followed it with an official nap—in bed, wearing pajamas, blinds drawn. She drifted into sleep conscious of the ring on her finger.

She awoke to the thought of food. “Good,” she murmured as she got out of bed. She was glad she had slept the afternoon away. She opened the blinds and looked down on the early-evening traffic while she dressed.

Marcia got a light sweater from a drawer. It was summer, but she expected to be out late, and the nights were usually cool. She got her biggest handbag from the closet. As she refolded the sweater to fit in the bag, she felt as though she were watching a stranger. This skinny woman in the slacks and flat shoes, taking a sweater so she wouldn’t get cold walking lonesome streets of the city after midnight, this couldn’t be Marcia.

She felt a strange combination of elation and fear. The feeling was probably, she imagined, just what she would feel if she were setting out to commit a robbery or take part in a military operation. Except that this was more like setting out to be the target of a robbery or raid, she reminded herself. She forced herself to conjure up a mental picture of the monster as she had last seen him. She held the image in her mind, concentrating on it and on holding back the accompanying sense of panic.

She ate a quick meal in a restaurant not far from her office. In the taxi on the way to the street where she had seen the monster before, Marcia realized she had no idea what to do if she found him. She didn’t have a chance to experiment, because the man was nowhere to be seen. The driver categorically refused to drive down the alleys as she timidly asked. Marcia watched him adjust his rearview mirror so mat he could keep his eye on her in the backseat.

“You got a destination, toots?”

“No,” she said, embarrassed. What must the man think of her? “Just, um, just let me out here,” she said.

“I hope you find what you’re lookin’ for,” he shouted after her as she crossed the street.

Marcia felt, and was, completely out of place on this tough and ugly street. All the other women in sight were either prostitutes or bag ladies. But this was the logical place to begin. She walked along, trying to behave naturally, as though she were accustomed to spending evenings in such surroundings. A block ahead she saw a scandalously dressed girl lounging by a parking meter. Marcia picked up her pace a bit. It only made sense that a streetwalker would know the neighborhood regulars. Marcia had never knowingly talked to a prostitute before. She was working up her courage when she saw the aura.

It was the original dark pall that had marked the man in the leather jacket. She recognized it as easily as she would have recognized his face or shape, except that she saw she was clearly mistaken. The man slumped against the building was a sick old wino. As she walked past, he stared at her with eyes that were glazed and dull.

When she was not more than a few steps from the prostitute, who appeared to be in her mid-teens, a car pulled up. The girl wobbled hazardously from the curb on her impossible heels and leaned into the window. As Marcia walked past, she was inserting her tightly wrapped torso into the front seat.

Marcia looked back at the wino. He was struggling to his feet, clawing at the wall for support. She started to walk back in his direction, watching him stumble his way up the street. As she crossed an empty intersection against the light, she saw him enter an alley and disappear from view. When she reached it, she peered into the shadowy way. She did not intend to walk down any alleys without Hannah, but she thought the man could not have gone far. It had suddenly come to her that if the big man with the sneer and the tattoos could become a demon, then the wino could be the thug. Either it was all absurd and impossible, or none of it was. Marcia reminded herself that if she was to function, she was going to have to change her ideas about rational thought and what was and was not possible.

She took a few steps into the shadows of the alley. She wondered how a man that was barely able to keep his feel could have gone far enough to be out of sight. Feeling rather brave, even daring, she made herself go a little farther as she peered ahead looking for the old man. Marcia felt an echo of the carefree spirit with which she had followed Hannah on their recent expedition through this place and others just as bad. The two of them had been completely free of constraints that were matters of unreflective habit with Marcia.

She heard the noise behind her too late. Before she could move, a hand covered her mouth with the force of a blow. She could taste dirt and sweaty skin as the rough fingers pulled her lips painfully out of shape and wedged against her nose. She was yanked backward, felt her heels bouncing on the pavement, saw dark walls rush past. Her mother’s warnings seemed to scream inside her head.

When she was released, she nearly fell, but was caught and set ungently on her feet. Her vision cleared; her heart began to pound. The man before her was not, as she had momentarily imagined, the wino who in any event could scarcely drag himself along. Nor had she been seized by the demon, which she only thought of after she could see it wasn’t so. Breathing in her face was a hard-looking man dressed in rumpled clothes and wearing an angry frown.

He pushed her roughly against a brick wall. When he tried to take her handbag, and she did not immediately let go but held on to it in a stupid daze, he smacked her, knocking the back of her head sharply against the bricks.

“Jewelry,” he said in a quiet, businesslike tone. He might have been a surgeon asking for a scalpel.

Marcia shook her head.

“Watch.”

She held out her arm. He dropped the watch into his pocket. He took her wallet out of her bag, removed the cash and credit cards, and tossed it over his shoulder. He glanced toward the street, then began pulling things from the bag and throwing them to the ground. Marcia stared at her sweater lying crumpled at his feet. Her eyes filled with tears. She was trembling. She felt a sick fear crawling inside her.

She hardly felt it when he slapped her again.

“The ring,” he said. “Take it off.”

Marcia looked at him stupidly. The man grabbed her wrist and yanked her arm up. The back of her hand rapped against the bridge of her nose. She felt his fingers on the ring, twisting at her finger. With a convulsive movement, she balled her hand into a tight fist.

She did not feel, but only heard, the angry scream that seemed to originate at the balls of her feet. She had the sudden vision of making a noise loud enough to knock down a wall. The mugger jumped away from her, raw shock in his face. Marcia felt the fear inside her changing to cold, hard anger. She had a sudden sense of expanded time, as though things were happening very slowly. The clenched hand that protected Elyssa’s ring felt like the carved fist of a statue, impossible to open.

She saw the man’s knobby fist as he drew it back with implausible languor.

“You stupid bitch! I’m gonna smash your stupid face in!”

She watched his look of furious concentration and his approaching fist. She wondered if she was seeing things in microscopic detail and glacial speed because this was a deathblow, and the last sight she was to see. The fingers and knuckles were growing, filling her vision. She stared, fascinated by the sight, then moved her head out of the way in time to observe the details of the collision between the fist and the brick wall.

In undistorted time, the man turned quickly to her with an expression of offended surprise that vanished from his face as suddenly as it had appeared.

She looked indifferently on his suffering as he screamed and rolled on the worn bricks that paved the alley. She coldly retrieved her belongings from his pocket. The handbag, sweater, and other things were too filthy to bother with. She picked up her wallet and brushed it off. Marcia wondered if the deep anger that she felt would ever entirely leave her again. As she stepped around the writhing man, she had to restrain herself from spitting on him.

Back on the lighted street, she was not able to loosen her fist until she made a conscious effort to do so. She rubbed her aching hand, feeling the ring secure at her knuckle. Of the few cabs she saw, none would stop for her. By the time she had walked to her apartment, she was too tired to undress. She fell across the bed with her clothing and her bruises and slept till morning.

It required little attention to cook up a spell for entering the audience chamber. Errin wandered in with the titled gentlemen that were taking part in the business. No eye of guard or noble rested on him; glances slid from his features, unable to stop; Anyone counting the occupants of the room would have been able to reach an accurate total. But if he had then listed the names of those present, and counted the list, he would have met with a puzzling discrepancy.

Most of those in the room had entered by a door from a great hallway, some few from inner doors. From one of them now entered a page.

“The great and famous master wizard Remeger,” he piped in a boyish soprano. A few nobles glanced in his direction, then resumed their quiet conversations. Errin watched the door, but saw no sign of the magician. After enough time had passed that his entrance seemed unconnected with the announcement, Remeger, wearing a fiercely dignified scowl, made a gradual entrance, first a sleeve, then a boot, and finally the entire personage, adorned in a robe of a blinding color for which Errin did not know a name, and a hat the size of a small building.

He stalked across the room looking neither left nor right and settled himself in solitary glory behind the throne. In a few moments another man, dressed modestly, entered quietly by the same door. He walked to the throne and stood next to it.

The king was announced by a herald who possessed a deafening basso that he inflicted on his auditors with evident relish.

“His most puissant highness, monarch of all Ascroval,” he intoned, raising his voice at each measured syllable, “protector of the poor”—a bejeweled duke standing next to Errin laughed into his hand, feigning a cough—“father to every maiden, benefactor …”

“Enough,” said the king, breaking in as he seated himself. “We’re all friends here.”

The herald bowed deeply and backed out of the room. Errin restrained an urge to tangle his feet in a spell. When the door had closed behind him, the king directed a stern gaze in Errin’s direction.

“Just how is it,” said the king, “that you laugh, Mikkermill? I do defend the poor. So do we all.” The royal gaze wandered the room. “We see that they are defended from the dangers of accumulating too much money.” The king rushed to end his sentence and was overtaken with laughter almost before he could finish. Every nobleman laughed with the king, and none stopped before him.

“And as for being a father to every maiden,” the monarch went on, “perhaps that is saying too much, but I do give my attention to every maiden who merits it. My undivided attention.” The king laughed uproariously. By some coincidence, so did everyone else in the room, save the three members of the royal guard, who could not have been more silent if they had been stuffed or carved soldiers.

“The royal wit is sharp today, Your Highness,” said the man next to the throne.

“And when is it not, Femigris? As my adviser, you can testify to my love of gaiety, of a light heart.”

“Indeed, Highness. So can we all.”

“Well, let us see if this doesn’t prove diverting.” The king nodded to the guards. “Bring in the prisoner.”

Chapter 12

Daniel was brought from his cell by half a dozen taciturn guards. They halted before a door in a dim hallway and knocked. When the door opened, Daniel was escorted in by two of the soldiers. There were twenty or thirty men in the room. Scropp, he noticed, was not among them. In fact, the only person he recognized was the wizard, dressed in an outfit that in its inflated grandeur would have satisfied the most exalted leader of the most childish fraternal order ever known.

The king was, by comparison, dressed conservatively, though the cost of his silks and jewelry could have fed and housed a peasant family for a generation.

Daniel was brought to a position in front of the king. He did not resist when he was seized by four guards and placed, not gently, facedown on the floor. He lay there listening to the laughter from the gallery behind him. When it subsided, the king spoke.

“A very pretty curtsey. Let him rise.” Daniel got to his feet.

The king stared at him, looking him up and down.

“So this is the kidnapper?”

“It is, Your Highness,” agreed his adviser.

The king had not taken his eyes from Daniel.

“How is it,” he said, “that you came to my castle to commit this vicious crime?”

Daniel knew he had a hand consisting of only one card. Folding was not an option, and he couldn’t see a bluff in the situation. He played his hand.

Having thought it out beforehand, he was able to answer the king’s question with admirable brevity. And that is precisely what he did. He told the king in outline how and why he had come to scale the tower wall, leaving out little that had passed before Modesty’s rescue, and most of what had happened after it, and emphasizing me fact that if he failed, the demon would be sent.

The king turned to the wizard.

“Well?” he said.

The magical one more curtsied than bowed, being encumbered by his headgear.

“Preposterous, Your Highness. Not even I would call a demon. Not that I do not know how to,” he said with an ominous glower, “but that is reserved for necromancers. Rogan, the Obscure, he styles himself, is a mere magician. I doubt he has the skill to summon a rat to a garbage heap.”

His remark was greeted with uproarious laughter from the king and gentlemen of the court. Finally everyone was quiet, except for the wizard, who seemed unable to overcome the effect of his own witticism until a pointed glare from the monarch silenced him.

“You must think we are children here at Ascroval,” the king said, returning his attention to his prisoner. “You think to frighten us with tales of demons and necromancy. But when I pronounce your sentence … and your punishment, you will alter your view, I believe.” The king raised his eyes to look beyond Daniel to his gathered gentlemen.

None was giving him closer attention than the smallish chap whose face he couldn’t quite make out, but whose eyes trapped his for an instant with a gaze of concentrated intensity. For a king, Razenor was a man of few words, but he fell suddenly that this was perhaps an occasion upon which one might indulge in a bit of eloquence. Some slight display of philosophy might not be out of place.

“Patience, nobles. I know you are angry,” he said. A contagion of frowns and scowls spread through the room. “But justice will prevail here, as it always does in the end, I promise you.” The royal finger pointed to Daniel. “This miscreant will pay for the crimes that have infuriated you.” The king turned to his adviser.

“Femigris, is this not the criminal who abducted the companion to the princess, our guest here at Ascroval?”

“Your Highness is correct, as always.”

“And has he not broken our laws, insulted our sovereignty, and violated the security of our royal guest, setting her life at risk?”

“He has. Majesty.”

“Did he not, under cover of darkness, creep to our walls, like a duck, to rob us?”

A puzzled expression crossed the face of the adviser.

“Just so, Your Royal Highness,” he said after hesitating the space of a breath.

“But our walls are not made of feathers, are they, Femigris?” Razenor raised his eyebrows and favored his adviser with a smile that managed to be both condescending and conspiratorial.

“Indeed they are not, Your Most Royal Highness,” replied the adviser, sure of his ground.

“Nay, our laws are stone,” proclaimed the king. He paused for a moment, staring over the heads of the assembled aristocrats. “That is, our walls are like our laws … and vice versa, so to speak. That’s it. The wall is a law.”

“Your Majesty exceeds the philosophers,” said Femigris.

“As the ducks exceed the fishwives, wouldn’t you say, Femigris?”

“I …” The adviser cleared his throat. He pulled a handkerchief from his tastefully embroidered sleeve. “I suppose I might. Your Majesty,” he said without great conviction.

“Then must I not, bound by the law as I am, pronounce the just sentence of that law, that all may know the king is not a fishwife?”

“Certainly not. I mean, you must, Your Highness, and are not, too … either …”

“Well, then,” continued the king, “is it not meet the fishwife wait upon the duck?”

“Ah,” said Femigris with a panicky smile, “I see what Your Majesty means. Of course.”

“What?” roared the king.

“I mean, of course not, Your Puissant Majesty, as all must agree.” Femigris looked at the stony visages of the nobles out of the corner of his eye.

“The ducks and tailors all must yield to sausages,” announced the king with a wink.

“Your … Your Majesty’s wit is ever apt,” said Femigris, emitting a series of rapid yelps meant as laughter. He sent a wild-eyed look to the wizard, who seemed to be studying the toe of his left boot.

The king rose, pointing at Daniel.

“All the bells of all the ducks will waken the fishwives with their sausages, lest the yards of tailors shall be heated,” he intoned solemnly.

The silence that followed was intolerable, especially to Femigris, who finally spoke in a flood of words.

“Sometimes the … the … the … the … royal wit goes beyond the ability of lesser men to fathom. Your Majesty must forgive us our mean abilities.”

The king turned a withering stare on Femigris.

“Previously!” he hissed, with a dangerously darkening eye.

Femigris groaned.

The king stamped his foot like a gigantic out-of-temper six-year-old.

“There are ducks in every chair of contrast!” he screamed. He turned to the soldiers.

“Slim ducks will be entered by the portico,” he shouted in a tone of angry command.

The guards, left in doubt, did not move.

The king snatched a mailed glove from his belt and aimed a dangerous swipe at the nearest soldier. The soldier remained motionless as the blow missed his cheek but not the king’s, where it landed with enough force to draw blood. Razenor cried out. He dropped the glove and brought his hand to his injured face. With a howl of rage, he drew his dagger and raised it over his head to strike at the trooper, then looked up to see the point turned in his direction. He moaned, dropped the knife to the floor, and collapsed onto his throne.

“The ducks,” he said, then continued in an inaudible mutter.

The duke that had stood next to Errin pushed forward.

“Hold the prisoner,” he said to the guards as he joined Femigris beside the throne. Others came forward, standing nearer to or farther from their deranged monarch as their rank and nerve dictated. As the king remained quiescent, the crowd near him grew. Daniel watched everything in the room, particularly the small man who was deep in conversation with Remeger in a corner. Daniel thought it odd, but he couldn’t really focus on the fellow well enough to get a look at his face. The face of the wizard, on the other hand, was plainly visible beneath his monumental hat, and it was the face of a badly frightened man.

“Gentlemen,” called the duke, “please be calm. We must not allow this momentary … indisposition to deflect us.”

“It is a spell!” said Remeger portentously, joining the crowd.

Femigris looked up. “Oh, I wondered where you were,” he said, using the diplomat’s gift of mixing sweet courtesy and naked contempt in his voice. “Well, spell or not, and that’s your department anyway, the duke and I have thought of a strategy to deal with this little …” He trailed off.

“In any event,” he continued brightly, “this is not a kingdom where learning is unknown.” He produced a pen and paper and placed them in the hands of the king.

“Please resume your customary places, nobles, and the king will make his will known despite this trickery or whatever it is, which,” he continued with a hard look at Remeger, “we will soon be masters of. Please write your wishes down, Your Most Gracious Majesty.”

The king, though still bleeding from his cheek, gave some appearance of being in command of himself. He did not try to speak, but scribbled away with the look of intense concentration. When he had completed his message, he handed it with laudable calm to his adviser.

Femigris struck a pose before the throne and raised the paper with a flourish, casting a stern eye on Daniel before beginning to read.

“The ducks,” he said with an air of triumph followed quickly by a close squint at the document. The king smiled and waved at him to continue. Femigris cleared his throat. “… are watching in the porticoes of the …” He was interrupted by laughter. He quickly raised his eyes to Daniel, whose face presented a picture of perfect sober calm. The king leapt to his feet. The duke once again came forward.

“Nay, nay, Royal cousin, it is more trickery.” The king sat down slowly. The duke approached the throne. “You understand, Your Majesty?” The king nodded.

“Aha!” cried the duke. “Now we shall see how far these tricks will get the tricksters.” He bowed in the general direction of the king. “I believe I know Your Majesty’s intentions concerning this matter.” The duke snapped his fingers at the guards to get their attention. “Will Your Majesty permit me to speak for him in this matter? If I speak Your Majesty’s mind, you may approve my words with a nod.” The king nodded eagerly.

With a condescending smile at Femigris, the duke replaced him beside the king. He straightened up to his full height and beamed at his audience.

“I am a relative of our king, and though some”—he emphasized the word—“may be unaware of it, we speak sometimes of matters of state. It is not only in the halls of power that consultations are …”

His preface was interrupted by the king, who began kicking the base of the throne with his heel and gesturing for his noble relative to get on with it.

“To the matter at hand, then.” He smiled at the monarch, avoiding the complacent look of the adviser. He extended an accusing arm in Daniel’s direction.

“Speaking for His Majesty, most puissant lord of Ascroval, protector …” At the sound of the royal heel, he stopped in midsentence as though he had planned to all along. He cleared his throat. His arm still was aimed at Daniel.

“Subject to his approval I speak thus for the king: First, you are not a fishwife, nor a skillet either, and so the ducks”—he paused as though for effect—“may not crow in chorus for your bootlace.” The duke turned to the king and was gratified to see him nodding enthusiastically. He shifted his complacent gaze to Femigris, but the little smile that sat upon the lips of the adviser told him that all was not well. He reviewed in his mind the words he had just spoken. His face fell.

“I didn’t mean the ducks,” he said hurriedly, appealing to his audience. “It was the bootlace that the fishwives, you see, were …”

Femigris stepped in front of him and faced the aristocrats.

“Anyone else?” he said with a smirk.

The silence that followed the invitation was broken, finally, by Remeger.

“This is the work of a mage too powerful to be challenged,” he said.

The adviser whirled to face him. “Where is your counterspell? You call yourself a wizard. It is time you earned your keep.”

Remeger removed his hat. He held it at his side for a moment, then let it drop to the floor.

“I am undone,” he said. “My powers, what powers I have been permitted to keep, are inadequate to any such battle. It would be like a lapdog fighting a mastiff. From now on, my magic will be performed at fairs and markets.” He slipped out of his heavy robe. It fell to the floor by his hat. “My last duty is to give you the terms dictated to me.”

“Dictated by whom, and when?” said the adviser furiously. “I see no mage.”

Remeger straightened up and pointed a trembling finger at Femigris.

“Fool!” he cried. “While the duke stood and prattled like an idiot about ducks and bootlaces, the mage was here, in this room among us, speaking to me. You may do battle with him if you like. Defy him, if you wish. In a week, the court may all converse together of ducks and fishwives.” He strode to the door in his undergarments. No one attempted to stop him. Before leaving, he addressed them.

“These are the terms: This prisoner is to be freed at once, set at liberty outside the keep. The two maidens in the tower are to be escorted, with all the courtesies due to royalty, to Ambermere, where you are free to employ any lies or other tools of diplomacy you may care to. For every day they remain captive, the king will be a week in his present condition. And hear this: If any prisoner comes to harm, there will be a daily funeral at this court until the last survivor must dig a hole for himself to fall into. So I was told by the mage. Tempt him if you like.” He turned and left.

The discussion was brief. Daniel and the guards waited in the hall. When Femigris emerged, he did not look at Daniel. He addressed the guards. “Escort him from the castle. Do not allow him to come to any harm, and under no circumstances allow him back inside.”

In a matter of minutes, Daniel was alone in the street before the gate. The guards had told him that this was where the ladies would emerge, but not before a proper escort could be assembled.

Daniel hurried to the inn to settle the bill and gather his belongings. His plan was to be absent from the gate for no more than five minutes. During the period of his captivity, he had thought of little else besides Modesty. He now knew what it was to ache for the sight of someone.

When his door opened, he thought for a moment that somehow she had been freed already and come to find him. His visitor, though, was a small sandy-haired fellow that he thought looked familiar. It wasn’t the face, but the size of the man and the way he dressed that Daniel recognized. It was not until he began to lose consciousness that it came to him that this must be the mage.

He had an interminable dream in which he and the mage walked in a shadowy landscape where everything was distorted in the way objects are when viewed under water. They were surrounded by a palpable, muffling silence in which no thing was audible, not breath or footfall or sigh of wind. Sights of the everyday world—trees, hills, villages—appeared and disappeared in the aqueous atmosphere, passing with a noiseless haste suggestive of flight. After hours of tiresome travel, Daniel realized they were in Ambermere, or some city so like it as to be a twin. The tile roofs, stone lintels, and brightly painted doors were as he remembered them from his single day in the city. They entered a tavern, still enveloped in the silence of the dream, and passed through a door in the back to a room almost completely dark. Leaving that room, they were again in a tavern, but a different one. It was there that they were joined by others, and there that his dream became sleep.

When Daniel awoke to the sound of jackhammers and traffic, his first thought was of his sanity. The ceiling he stared at was without question the one in his apartment bedroom. The sounds he heard from outside were without question not the sounds of Ascroval or Ambermere. With a paroxysmic effort of will he forced himself to remain in the bed. He would not yield to the impulse to run wildly around the apartment confirming the evidence of his senses. Nor would he admit, yet, the despairing thoughts of Modesty that clamored to take him over.

He reviewed last night’s dream in his mind. It seemed that rather than an imaginary magical journey from Ascroval to Ambermere, it had been an actual journey, though equally magical. He was determined to think about his situation in a coldly logical way, regardless of how idiotic it might appear to be on the surface. It was like betting one hundred dollars for a chance to win a two-thousand-dollar pot when the odds were nineteen to one against you. The fact that something seemed crazy didn’t mean it was.

Rogan the Obscure, in whose existence he was not prepared to disbelieve, must have found a way to get him back home. Daniel closed his eyes. He reviewed the events since his encounter with the demon. He counted the number of days he had been “away.” He knew, was utterly certain, that those days had actually elapsed, and that the events that he recalled had actually occurred. Either that or he was as insane as any inhabitant of any asylum in the history of lunacy.

He got up and looked around his familiar bedroom. He was dressed as he had been for his journey to Rogan’s apartments, wearing his father’s old Saint Christopher medal and nothing else. He saw no sign of the clothing he had been wearing in Ascroval. From the window he could see the crowded street below, with its impatient traffic and inevitable contingent of the city’s corps of jackhammers. He wandered to the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator released the smell of soured milk. In the living room he turned his television on and tuned it to the weather channel to see the continuously displayed date and time in a box at the top of the screen.

He had been gone ten days. He slumped wearily to the couch and rested his head in his hands. Of all this—the magic, the supernatural beings, the other world—only one thing seemed to him to be of the slightest importance. Dozens of images of Modesty crowded into his mind.

After thirty seconds had passed, he got up and turned off the droning television. He strode back to the bedroom and began to dress. A climber in trouble dare not hang on a rock thinking about his predicament and hoping help will come, for while he hopes and worries, his strength ebbs away and he loses the ability to help himself. It did not seem to Daniel that he was in any position to wait for help to arrive.

His only connection with Modesty’s world was through the demon. Rogan, or someone, had found a way to return Daniel. If they had not already dealt with the demon, they would certainly be working on it. If the demon was not already back in the Lower Regions, he might well be catching the next bus.

Daniel did not check his mail on the way out. He hit the sidewalk at something approaching a run, looking for cabs as he turned his steps in the direction of the harbor.

A large black car with heavily tinted windows rolled slowly to the curb next to him. The back door opened. Daniel did not recognize the man that beckoned to him.

“Okay, Danny boy, get into the car,” he said with a smile that was not meant to cheer.

Daniel had to forcibly remove his mind from his lover, the demon, magic, and the practitioners of magic. He stopped and looked into the car stupidly.

“Come on, kid. Hurry it up.”

When Daniel remembered his trouble with Charlie, it was as though he were recalling something from years ago.

“No time,” he said, starting to walk again. “Tell Charlie I’ll call him.”

The car followed him along the curb.

“I said get in!” The man sounded like someone who was about to lose his temper.

Daniel was not in a charitable or kindly frame of mind and he did not have time to waste with Charlie and his … employees. He vowed to himself that if the guy came after him, he was going to hit him as he was getting out of the car, and with as murderous a blow as he could manage. It only made sense to treat this as a threat to his life, especially considering that it might actually be one. In any event, he was not going to allow anyone to keep him from trying to get to Modesty. Probably for the first time in his life he was prepared to make an honest effort to hurt someone. He faced the car.

The man was pointing a snub-nosed pistol at him. Daniel found he didn’t much care. His mind was entirely focused on finding the demon without being ripped apart like a kitten in a kennel. Guns just made little holes in you.

“See this, Danny? This is a thirty-eight. A chopper. Now get in!”

Daniel approached the car. The man smiled and made room for him on the seat. Daniel grasped the door. He nodded toward the gun.

“Shove it,” he said without much feeling, and then slammed the car door and strode off. A moment later the car roared past him, cutting across traffic to glide down a one-way street the wrong way.

But confident as Daniel had been that Charlie had no immediate intention of having him gunned down on the street, he knew the next car that came for him would get him. It was just a matter of sending a couple of extra men.

When his cab dropped him off on the block where he had first seen the demon, he called Charlie from the first pay phone he saw.

“You got a lot of nerve, kid.” The way Charlie said it didn’t make it sound like a compliment.

“That’s because I’m desperate.”

“Who cares? What I want to know is where’s my daughter?”

“Roxy?”

“You gonna play dumb with me?”

“Charlie, listen to me. I’ve been away for over a week. The last time I saw Roxy—”

“Kid, if you’re not at my place in a half an hour, I’m gonna send some people after you which you’ll be sorry you met them.”

Charlie hung up without waiting for a reply.

Daniel was convinced that he was in a race against time. If someone thought it was worth the trouble to put him back where he belonged, they would certainly be concerned about removing the demon. He couldn’t know when, or how, he was returned to his apartment, but it was sometime during the last eight hours.

The demon, in the form of the oversize guy with the leather vest, was not difficult to describe. Daniel learned immediately that his name was Ferris. Keeping an eye out for big black cars with opaque windows, he hurried through the neighborhood asking everyone when they had seen him last. “You a cop?” was the most common response, but he did learn that Ferris had not been seen since someone named Marsh had been killed, more than likely by Ferris, according to most people on the street who had any opinion at all, which was not many.

Daniel was attempting to talk to a woman who might have been anywhere between the ages of thirty-five and eighty, and who muttered to herself while he spoke, then surprised him by answering intelligibly.

“Probably dead,” she said. “That would be my guess.”

He gave her a couple of dollars and was walking away when a man with his right hand wrapped in a cast hurried up to him.

“You looking for Ferris?” he said. Daniel told him he was.

“I got hurt on the job,” the man said. “Now I can’t work.”

Daniel didn’t care; he had lost all interest in other people’s troubles. It occurred to him to wonder where Roxy might be. If he wanted to think about anyone else, at least it would be someone he knew. He had a sudden, unbidden image of Roxy slouching on a couch watching television, growing fainter as the hours devoted to vapidity passed, and finally fading to complete invisibility.

“That’s too bad,” he said finally.

“Yeah, some woman … some bitch just … just …” The man trailed off. “Then she comes down here again,” he continued, “and just looks right at me like I’m nothing!”

“What about Ferris?” asked Daniel. He didn’t feel he had time to watch this guy work himself into a frenzy.

“That’s what she was down here asking about” The man was practically shouting. “Do you know her? Do you know her?” he demanded.

Daniel’s sense of urgent excitement was greatly tempered by fear. He was going on the assumption that there was a good chance that anyone looking for Ferris was a magician or wizard or something like that. But had they already found him? Had the race ended before he had had a chance to enter?

“Someone was looking for Ferris? When?”

“Right the day after she messed my hand up. She looked right at me. Just like I’m just nothing.”

“So when was that?” said Daniel, forcing himself to keep from sounding anxious.

“Do you know her?”

Daniel got out his wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill.

“I don’t know her,” he said, holding the money in front of him, “and I don’t know Ferris. When did she come here?”

The man looked confused. “I already told you,” he said. “Today. A few hours ago. It was just last night I got hurt. Last night.” He reached for the twenty. “My hand hurts bad,” he said wearily.

Daniel felt a great sense of relief. He couldn’t have hoped for more. A few hours ago. He pulled the bill back.

“What about Ferris?” he said.

The man looked at him suspiciously. “You going to give me the money? I’m losing a lot of work on account of your friend. She owes me a lot.”

“What about Ferris?”

“I saw him last night. This morning, really. He didn’t even look at me, and he was right across the street.”

Daniel gave the man the money. “There?” he said, pointing across the street to a strip joint.

“No. It was a couple of blocks from here, where I have a room.” He told Daniel the address. “You see him, you tell him Jaybee saw him. Tell him I got hurt. He didn’t even look at me.”

“So how did you get hurt?”

The man looked at the sidewalk. “I don’t want to talk about it. That stupid bitch!” He put his good hand on the cast as though to protect it. “She took things out of my pocket when I was laying there in the alley. She didn’t even care that I was hurt. You know how many bones I broke in my hand?” He saw that Daniel was holding another bill, a ten.

“Okay,” he said. He took the money between his thumb and forefinger. Daniel held on to his end.

The man sighed. “I was just going to hit her … slap her, like. She was giving me a hard time.” He looked at Daniel as though he wanted to make sure he understood. “She screamed at me. But it was so loud, it hurt my ears. You know, she could damage someone’s hearing,” he said piously, as though he were in the habit of concerning himself with the general welfare. He sounded like a grade-school teacher warning of the terrible dangers of pencil throwing.

“I used to box,” he said, “you know, in a gym, for a little money. Help out, like. I know how to punch, and I know how people move. This bitch, it wasn’t natural. She should have been nailed, and then she wasn’t there.” His voice was that of a man describing a tragic accident “I hit a brick wall with my fist,” he said with great feeling.

Daniel let go of the ten.

“So what did the doctor say? How long before you can get back to punching women in alleys?”

He noted, as he walked away, that the guy looked positively hurt.

Daniel spent a little more time trying to find out something about the woman who was looking for Ferris. She, not the demon, was the one he needed most to find.

A teenage prostitute in clothes so tight they distorted her figure told him as much as anyone, which was nearly nothing. When he left in a cab, he knew that a skinny woman who looked like a schoolteacher had been asking about Ferris a few hours before.

He had the driver drop him near a downtown car rental agency. In a few minutes he was driving to the place where Jaybee had seen Ferris.

After cruising the city streets for hours, Daniel napped through rush hour at a comfortable hotel that was not downtown and not fashionable. He didn’t want to meet anyone who might be looking for him. He had supper sent to his room. By early evening he was back in the car, with a full tank of gas and the night ahead of him.

Chapter 13

The first thing Daniel did was to make a complete circuit of the places most likely to harbor the demon. The young prostitute he had talked to before was still at the same corner. When he stopped and rolled down the window, she came and leaned in. Daniel had the distinct impression that she didn’t recognize him.

“Looking for something?” she asked with a pout that made her look like a caricature of a harlot. To Daniel’s eye, she seemed more like a ninth-grader dressed up in someone else’s clothes.

“I’m still looking for Ferris and the lady that was asking about him.”

Her expression changed as though she had just that moment managed to focus her eyes on him.

“Oh, yeah,” she said without discernible enthusiasm. She eyed Daniel up and down.

“Don’t you want me to get in?” she asked.

Daniel ignored the question.

“Have you seen them?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Ferris, or the woman that looks like a schoolteacher?”

“Oh. No.” She started to leave.

“Wait a minute,” said Daniel.

She paused and looked at him, adjusting her pout to maximum power.

“Get in,” he said.

She was more expensive than he would have imagined, but he had withdrawn plenty of cash from an automatic teller at the hotel, and was not in a mood to haggle. She rode with him while he combed the streets and alleys. He would have no trouble recognizing Ferris, but he had never seen the woman. And the woman was the one he was most interested in finding, since she was clearly some sort of magician, presumably from the other world.

If he found the demon, after all, he could scarcely just walk up to him and ask for his help. He had an admittedly vague plan of finding him and then keeping him in sight until something developed. Besides locating the pursuers, that was the best idea he had been able to come up with.

If it came to it, he thought he might approach Ferris if it were in some public place. He knew the demon talked; maybe he would tell him something. Daniel, after all, had diverted the spell from him. There was clearly a way, or ways, to get to Ambermere from here, but once the demon and his presumed pursuers were gone from the city, Daniel would never find those ways.

From time to time as they drove, the girl, Brenda-Lee she called herself, spelling it for him, would reach over and put her hand on his arm or his thigh and suggest that since he had paid, they should do more than ride around in a car.

When he replied, finally, that she was too young for him, she asked the perennial question of those still young enough to wish themselves older.

“How old do you think I am?”

“I’m afraid to guess,” he had said. “Keep looking for the schoolteacher.”

Marcia was getting very tired. She had spent hours in taxicabs during the afternoon before deciding that anything, including walking, would be an improvement. It was extremely tedious to sit in the backseats of dirty cars and ride up and down the noisy, congested streets of the city. The drivers could not contain their curiosity, and insisted, when she would say no more than that she was looking for someone, upon making guesses concerning her errand. That had finally convinced her that, lacking a driver’s license, she must resort to walking.

Her last driver had held his peace for so long that she had begun to feel positively grateful. Then, at a red light he had turned in his seat and looked at her with great compassion.

“It’s your husband, right? How long has he been gone?”

His eyes were sad, as though he could not help sharing the hurt he was convinced she was suffering. Marcia looked at his large wrinkled face; his rather clownlike, bulbous nose. It was not difficult to imagine that his sympathy was entirely genuine, but answering him, she found, was simply too much trouble.

“I’ll just get out here,” she had said, unable to suppress the feeling that she was guilty of shocking rudeness.

When night had fallen, she had stopped at a modest restaurant despite her lack of appetite. She relished the rest, if not the food. She had lingered, trying to talk herself into going home. But a strange will to persist asserted itself, convincing her to look around just a little more. It was as though she were forcing herself not to shrink from continuing her search in the dark. Since her experience with the mugger, she had stopped giving any thought to that sort of danger. Not that she felt herself to be immune, but the normal hazards of the city seemed to have become irrelevant.

Now she was feeling numb. She walked the dark streets of a section of deteriorated houses and small apartment buildings. She would go, she decided, back to the street where so many things had happened—where she had first seen the demon, where the man had tried to rob her, where she had started the day’s search. Then she would allow herself to go home, where she would sleep and sleep and sleep.

She turned at the next corner in the direction of the avenue one long block away. From an alley two and a half blocks behind her, a big man in a leather vest and T-shirt shambled out of the shadows and stared after her with hungry yellow eyes.

Daniel turned off the avenue onto the sleazy street where Brenda-Lee’s corner was. He dropped her off and watched as she wiggled her immature body back to her spot. She turned and waved, shooting him a parting pout and lowering her eyelids as though trying for a part in a kiddie-porn movie. Daniel waved and made a U-turn, ready to continue looking.

Up the street he saw a woman hailing a cab. She was skinny, looked to be over thirty-five, and by the standards of the street was definitely dressed like a schoolteacher.

Daniel blew the horn and cranked the window down. When Brenda-Lee sent a languid glance in his direction, he stabbed his pointing finger toward the woman. Brenda-Lee looked up the street, holding on to a parking meter and stretching her neck. She nodded vigorously and then sent him an unpremeditated little-girl smile. Daniel vowed to come back and see if he could find a way to get her off the street.

When he looked back, the woman was getting into a cab. The driver pulled away and before Daniel could reach them had gone through a yellow light and turned the corner. Daniel roared to the intersection. Without hesitating, he went around the left side of the car ahead of him, nudged between the pedestrians crossing with the light, and inserted his rented car into an angry chorus of horns and shouted curses. He passed half a dozen cars on the avenue, using his horn more than his brake to avoid collisions.

By the time he had caught up with the cab, the blinking lights of a police car were in his mirror. Daniel blew his horn at the cabby and gestured for him to stop. In the rear window he could see the blurred features of the woman turned to face him. The cab picked up speed. Daniel stayed with it. The policeman was directly behind him now and had begun flashing his lights. The siren gave little grunts to catch his attention.

Daniel didn’t bother to look back. He focused all his attention on the taxi. Although the street was open in front of him, the driver had slowed down to a speed well under the legal limit. The woman’s face was in the window again. Daniel mouthed the words stop and demon a number of times before remembering to turn on the lights inside the car so she could see him. He couldn’t see her well enough to read her expression. The cab suddenly sped up, pulling away from him.

Before he had time to react, the police car gave a sudden surge and smoothly pulled out beside and slightly ahead of Daniel’s small, underpowered car. As though he had done it a hundred times before, the officer maneuvered the big cruiser in a way that forced Daniel to pull over.

The policeman checked Daniel’s license.

Daniel wondered if the woman in the cab understood, or cared, that he was involved with the demon.

“All right,” said the officer with a friendly smile. “Please don’t leave your car.” He made a call on his radio, then stood leaning against the cruiser, beaming at his prisoner.

“Aren’t you going to give me a speeding ticket?”

“Not today.” He kept smiling. “Must be your lucky day.” He walked around the front of his car to the driver’s side.

“You just sit there a minute,” he called to Daniel before sliding behind the wheel.

Daniel couldn’t believe it. Only a few minutes had passed. There was still a remote possibility that he could catch the taxi, although it would entail speeding again. Still, as the officer had said, it seemed to be his lucky day. The cruiser was still blocking him. The policeman was sitting behind the wheel looking into the rearview mirror. After another minute, he put the car into gear and made a wide U-turn. He waved to Daniel as he drove up the street.

Daniel started his car, turned on the lights, and then watched as a long black car pulled into the spot just vacated by the police cruiser. Before he had time to swear properly, let alone do anything constructive, two large, mean-looking men were opening his door. As he got into the backseat of Charlie’s car, he caught a glimpse of a cab at a curb a block or so up the avenue. For all he knew, it was the one he had chased, back from dropping off the woman he might now never find.

The cabby talked into the rearview mirror as he and Marcia watched Daniel get into the black car.

“Of course he’s in trouble. Who do you think drives around in big black cars like that with the Frankenstein twins in the backseat? That’s not the Salvation Army, lady. These guys even got the cops working for them.”

Marcia watched the car make the same U-turn the police car had.

“Follow them,” she said.

“Hey, this isn’t a movie. I don’t follow gangsters. You give me a destination, I’ll drive you there. That’s all.”

The big car was on its way down the street. In a moment it would be lost, and with it the handsome young man who had some connection to the demon. Marcia felt a cold sensation akin to the icy anger she had felt toward the mugger last night. She clenched the hand that wore the ring. When she spoke it was in the voice of a stranger.

“I tell you, follow that car. Now.”

The cab pulled away from the curb at once. “You want me to stay back?” There was a quaver in the driver’s voice.

“Just don’t lose them.” Marcia exhaled as though she had been holding her breath. She opened her clenched hand slowly. She stared at the taillights of the car a third of a block ahead, and wished she were in her apartment.

In a few minutes they were back on the street where she had caught the cab. The big car turned down an alley in the middle of the block.

“That’s a dead end. Blocked by construction,” the driver said timidly.

“You’re sure?”

“A hundred percent.”

“Then I’ll get out here.”

She paid the fare, then walked to the alley in time to see the men escort Daniel through a door near the back of the strip joint on the corner. The car sat empty in the shadows next to the building. She waited to see if anyone came back out, then walked into the alley. Farther along she could see the dark outlines of construction equipment and piles of debris.

She reached the door, a metal one covered with a mixture of rust and flaking paint. The ring, it was becoming evident, had power. But though she had recognized it after escaping from the mugger, her sudden ability to dominate the cab driver had been completely unexpected. She wished she knew the extent of the powers she could call upon, and how reliable they were. Elise had said only that the ring would help protect her from the demon, and had mentioned no powers or virtues beyond that. For the hundredth time, Marcia wished that Hannah were with her. Having no idea what she would or could do if it opened, she tried the door. It was locked. She looked up. Above, on the second floor, a window that had been dark a moment before showed a faint light.

Back on the street, she stood in front of the neon-encrusted strip joint. She took a deep breath and entered. Out in the alley, the unmistakable shadow of Ferris emerged from the construction site.

Inside the bar, a few boys of college age ignored their beers to watch raptly as a pretty girl on a platform behind the bar performed an obscene dance. Marcia had expected to find an artful, if lamentable, striptease in progress. One that tantalized the onlookers with delights gradually and perhaps never fully revealed, teasing their imaginations with what they might hope to see.

This dancer, however, was naked, and was engaged in a frank effort to see how utterly and completely she could expose her nakedness. She shuffled in time with the monotonous recorded music, turning herself like a steak on a grill so that the shifting, jiggling flesh of her front and her back sides were equally exposed to the hot attention of the spectators. As a finale, she bent her knees and slowly lowered herself backward until she lay writhing on the bare wooden stage with her legs spread as wide apart as she could get them. Marcia was impressed with this display of athleticism, but found that she couldn’t keep herself from worrying on the girl’s behalf about the danger of splinters.

Behind the bar was a generously proportioned middle-aged man who showed no interest in the dancer. Instead, he was giving his attention to Marcia, favoring her with a very fishy look. She took a seat at the bar.

“If you came here for trouble, you can just turn right around,” he said without any particular malice. “All these girls are past the age of consent. Now which one are you looking for? And please don’t tell me what a good girl she’s always been.”

“White wine, please,” she said.

The bartender raised his eyebrows. He poured from a very large bottle into a very small glass.

“That’ll be four dollars.”

“Montrachet?” she asked, handing him a five.

“Huh?”

“I said, where is the ladies’ room?”

He pointed to the back.

At the far end of the room, next to the rest rooms, was an unmarked door. Marcia fumbled with her handbag and looked back at the bar. The bartender was facing the front. She tried the door. The knob turned. As she opened it she glanced over her shoulder, then stepped quickly through.

The hallway was lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The outside wall was bare brick, decorated with clots of dried putty and scraps of wood and plaster. Opposite were four or five doors, each separated from the next by only a few feet of wall covered with cheap paneling that was dirty and scarred. A glance past a partly open door showed a tiny cubicle with an unmade cot and a folding chair. From behind another door came the noise of creaking springs and other sounds that Marcia would have preferred not to hear.

Across from the door to the alley was a narrow staircase. Marcia was on the third step when she heard a telephone ringing somewhere upstairs. Boards creaked under a heavy step. She heard muffled voices, then loud laughter and chairs scraping on a bare floor. She retreated to the hallway. From upstairs came the sound of a door opening, and then the noise of many feet on the steps.

Behind her, the door from the bar opened. The girl who had been dancing entered, followed by two of the college boys. She looked calmly at Marcia, as though fully clothed women who were skinny and wore no makeup were a common sight in that hallway. She draped her naked arms over the shoulders of her escorts. The short robe she was wearing fell open, exposing the voluptuous curves of her breasts as well as the rest of the intimate folds and dimples of her nakedness.

“Sorry, honey,” she said in a low-pitched, husky voice, “but these two are both for me.” The young men laughed more loudly than the circumstances warranted. Their faces were flushed, whether with excitement, drink, or embarrassment Marcia could not judge. They were still laughing nervously when the dancer shepherded them into one of the cubicles and closed the door behind her. The last Marcia saw of her was the unexpected, almost sisterly wink of a heavily mascaraed eye and the smooth round flesh of her inadequately covered bottom.

The men the cab driver had referred to as the Frankenstein twins were the first down the stairs, a pair of fairy-tale giants dressed in business suits. They both looked at Marcia briefly but rudely, as though she were a painting they weren’t interested in. The next man down the stairs was talking to Daniel.

“So we’re gonna take you elsewheres, like. You know what I mean?” He looked at Marcia. “Take a hike, sister. You know what I mean?” He looked at his watch. “Wait a minute. I gotta make a call. Just put him in the car, Mikey. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” He was up the stairs before Marcia could say a word.

She addressed the man called Mikey.

“Excuse me, but I have to talk to this man,” she said, nodding to Daniel. Daniel shook his head at her almost imperceptibly. Mikey was less subtle.

“Excuse me, but no you don’t. Beat it, lady.” Mikey and the other man took Daniel’s arms and hustled him through the door.

It slammed behind them. Marcia clenched her ring hand, looking for the feeling of power that she had felt before. She felt nothing. She waited a moment, then opened the door and stepped into the alley.

She saw Daniel pushed into the backseat of the big car. Mikey was about to get in after him when the other man called him.

“Hey, Mikey. Get a load of this punk.”

Mikey walked around the front of the car. Marcia was looking to see if Daniel was going to take the chance to try to escape. Instead, he was gesturing to her through the window. She looked past the men in front of the car. There, standing twenty or thirty feet away, was the demon. He was ignoring the men. His yellow eye was on her.

Mikey looked over his shoulder to check on Daniel, then turned to the other man.

“Billy,” he said, “you think this punk was messing with the car?”

Billy grinned. “Hey, scum,” he called to Ferris. “Get over here. Now.”

“No!” Marcia almost screamed the word. “You don’t understand. Keep away from him!”

Mikey turned to her. “Are you still here? How’d you like to be stuffed headfirst into one of them garbage cans?”

Billy began to look angry. “Do I have to come and get you?” he shouted to Ferris. The demon began walking slowly in their direction.

Billy slammed his fist into his palm. “I said now!” He strode toward Ferris. “I’m going to drag you by your greasy hair.” He stopped in front of him. He was as tall as Ferris, and almost as heavy. “In fact, I might just take you out to the street and drag you around on your fat ass, so everyone can see what a tough guy you are.”

He reached for Ferris’s hair. The demon casually batted his arm away without taking his eyes from Marcia.

Billy threw himself on Ferris with an enraged snarl. Ferris remained completely immobile. Billy looked like a man trying to attack a telephone pole. Mikey started toward them. Marcia saw Daniel slip from the car.

As Mikey ran up to him, the demon seemed to notice his attacker. With one hand he seized Billy and threw him into Mikey. Their foreheads rapped together sharply and they slumped unconscious to the ground in a heap.

He raised his eyes to Marcia.

“Wicca!” he growled. “Witch! Why do you stand here? Others of your kind would know to avoid me. Do you know what your powers are to mine? As loose ash to wind.”

His sneer sat on his face like a scar.

“But it is the man I want. You I will allow to run away.” He took two or three quick steps forward, then slowed his advance. “Run, little witch. You are no match for me. Run or I will crush you like a bug.”

As Daniel watched, Marcia took a single step toward the demon. He put his hand on her shoulder. She pushed it off without turning. “Stay where you are,” she said. “Keep behind me.” She took two more steps and stopped.

Ferris continued toward them.

Marcia raised her ring hand to her chest.

The demon stopped. His eyes dropped to her clenched fist.

“What is this?” he said. “Something of power.” He bared his teeth. “How surprised you are going to be. How you will squeal when I rip your finger from your hand and throw it away with the ring still on it. Then you will know how profound an error you have made.” He slopped. “Still time to run,” he said. Marcia did not move. The demon looked at Daniel.

“I am going to open you like a package. Tonight you will find out what you missed before.” He returned his yellow eyes to Marcia. When he was four or five paces from her, he stopped.

“Get out of my way,” he said in a low growl.

“You may not pass,” she said.

The demon loomed over her. He moved one more step forward.

“Tell me, then, whose ring you wear. If it is your own I will not take it from you.” He glared down on Marcia like some huge beast on a trapped fawn. “But if you say it is another’s I will tear it from your hand.” He reached toward her. Daniel braced himself.

Marcia had to tilt her head back to meet the demon’s eyes. It seemed to Daniel that she was not able to speak. He expected to see her fall to the ground from sheer terror. He himself had given up any thought of reasoning with the creature that confronted them. It would be like trying to explain something to a polar bear. Marcia moved her other hand to support her arm at her chest. She seemed to waver. Daniel started to help her, then saw her take another step toward the demon.

“This is Elyssa’s ring,” she said in a low-pitched, quiet voice.

Daniel felt as though he had become permanently attached to the spot of cracked pavement he stood on. He stared fixedly at the demon’s reaching hand. In the dim light it looked like a claw. For a moment it was still, as though Daniel’s gaze and rooted immobility had trapped it in an endless instant.

When the hand moved, it traveled almost too quickly to be seen. But instead of Marcia’s ring, it was her face that it sought, and where it brushed her cheekbone, it left a thin trail of blood.

Daniel watched Marcia sway like a boxer who has just walked into a punch. She remained silent, but Ferris drew his hand away with a cry of surprise. He looked at his hand, back at Marcia, and then, suddenly, beyond her, with a fixed stare.

“No!” he shouted. “You have come to cheat me!”

Daniel began to follow the demon’s eyes, then jumped, startled. A few feet to his left stood a young woman. He was quite certain she had not been there a moment before.

“You have touched her,” said the woman in a level voice. Daniel thought it was the most chilling sound he had ever heard.

“I will not be interfered with! I am a king! You have no right—”

“The passage of these ages has become wearisome to you, then,” she said, interrupting quietly, “and you tire of existence.”

Although her eyes were fixed on the demon, Daniel found he could not look at them, and could not imagine meeting that deadly gaze, were it to be turned on him. Being careful to make no movement that might attract attention, he shifted his eyes back to Ferris and Marcia. Before the arrival of the young woman, Daniel had had every reason to believe his life was over, yet it was in her presence that he felt the greatest sense of danger.

She began to walk slowly toward the others. The demon took a step backward. The woman raised a hand.

“You will stand where you are.”

Marcia faced the demon still; she had not moved. Now she turned toward the voice.

“Elise,” she began.

“No,” said the woman, “not Elise. Now you may call me Elyssa.” She reached Marcia and stopped. “You have done what I asked you to, and you have done it well.”

Marcia’s eyes dropped. “Your ring,” she said, beginning to remove it from her finger. Elise touched her lightly on the arm.

“Would you keep the ring, for a time, if I offered it?”

For a moment Marcia was silent, then she nodded. “Yes,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I would.”

“Good. You seem”—Elyssa paused, looking at the ring on Marcia’s finger—“suited to it.”

Marcia’s eyes followed Elyssa’s to her hand. “But what …,” she began.

“No questions,” said Elyssa. “We must leave at once—you to go to your home, I with this king to … another place.”

Daniel heard a soft noise and turned to see the third gangster slipping back into the building. When he looked around again, he saw, or thought he saw, the three figures standing together, their hands joined like children starting some game. Then, at the same instant, he was alone in the alley except for the sleeping thugs.

One of them—in the tangle of suits and haircuts, Daniel couldn’t tell which—groaned and began to stir. Daniel looked once more for the women and Ferris, then sprinted to the corner and down the sidewalk. He wanted nothing more to do with Charlie’s pals. He flagged a cab. He decided he could take a chance on retrieving his rented car; he was sure the thugs would be busy swearing and lying to each other for a while.

He drove immediately to his hotel. In his room, he forced himself not to pace. When room service brought his scotch, he settled into the old-fashioned comfortable chair next to the phone and cleared his mind of the fears and worries that wanted to clutter it. As was frequently the case, his poker-table discipline was useful with problems that had nothing to do with chips and cards.

He picked up the phone and got an outside line. “One thing at a time,” he said.

Charlie answered his phone on the first ring.

“Kid. Is that you? Where are you? Are you okay?”

“What?”

“Willie thought the bikers might have got you.”

“The bikers?”

“The gang. How did you get away?”

“I ran. Listen, why are you so worried about my health?”

“Oh. That’s right. You don’t know. Roxy called. She eloped.”

Daniel’s instincts told him that laughter would be offensive and rude. He took a very deep breath.

“Where is she?” he asked, trying to sound like an interested cousin.

“California. She just called tonight, all upset. You know what? She didn’t realize her credit cards had spending limits. You tell me, do you believe that?” Daniel could hear very clearly the pride in Charlie’s voice. His daughter was a princess.

“That’s really something, Charlie,” he said. “Tell Roxy I wish her the best, okay.”

“Okay. That’s nice, kid. Listen, I gotta call some relatives. I’ll see you at the game Friday night, okay?”

“Right, Charlie. See you.”

“You’re a nice kid.”

Daniel put down the phone. “This is a crazy world,” he said. Five minutes later, he was on his way back downtown.

Chapter 14

The escort of soldiers crowded the gaming tables at the inn. They were in no hurry to retire to tents or to piles of straw in the stables. Their officers and the diplomats that rode with them had found their beds already, feeling the need to rest for the political ordeals of the morrow. But at the top of the house, in the best room, the candles burned late.

“Iris, please don’t look so terribly shocked. You’re making me feel like a harlot. How could I fall in love instantaneously?”

“Daniel did.”

Modesty felt her cheeks go warm. “You should have heard the things he said.”

“And have I not? More than a hundred times?’ She smiled softly and lay her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Not that I mind. You tell the most interesting stories since your adventure.”

Modesty’s eyes filled with tears.

“But where could he be? What has happened to him?”

“More tears? Modesty, you never cry. I cry, then you comfort me. And insult courtiers.”

“It’s true I did not tell him I loved him, but I told him I liked him. And I showed him. I treated him like a brother. Well, I mean …” She began to laugh, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “I mean we were friendly. We talked. We plotted, but we talked, too.” She wiped her wet checks and smiled. “He was very impressed when I managed to talk to you. He was generous, and he was considerate ….”

Iris put her arms around Modesty.

“I don’t know what has happened,” she said, “but we must hope that he will come to Ambermere. The soldiers said he was released before us. The innkeeper said he had come to pay for … your room.” The princess blushed. “We don’t even know how it is that we came to be released. My odious cousin watched from a window with not so much as a word. Perhaps it was somehow Daniel’s doing, and it entailed some further errand before he was free to come to you.”

Modesty sat up and made a visible effort to compose herself.

“I am being foolish,” she said. “I am only worried about his safety anyway.”

“It has only been one day,” said the princess.

“A day and a half.”

“Tomorrow we will be home. They sent him. Rand will know where he is, and why.”

“You’re right,” said Modesty. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.” She hugged Iris.

“Dear Modesty, my formerly sensible friend, I have been pointing that out to you since yesterday afternoon.”

“Oh.”

By noon the next day, they were on the outskirts of Ambermere. When they reached the little shrine, the princess asked the captain to stop while she and Modesty paid a call.

They looked first in the shrine, then walked through the garden to the back of the house. They found Renzel in the kitchen at the stove.

When she saw her niece, she gave a shriek and ran to her. She caught her in a tight embrace, squeezing her and laughing. She nearly did the same to Iris, but remembered herself in time, and curtseyed instead.

If for a moment the princess looked like a disappointed little girl dressed in very fancy clothing, Renzel did not notice, so delighted was she to see them.

“I couldn’t think what had happened to you. And that man at the castle—a person can’t tell if he’s telling the truth or lying, because he always sounds like he’s lying.”

“We have been away. Aunt.”

Renzel looked her niece up and down. “Is that a fact?” she said tartly. “That’s what the man at the castle has been saying.”

She looked at Modesty closely. “Are you sick?” she asked.

Modesty gave a wan smile. “Just tired,” she said. “We’ve come all the way from Ascroval.”

Renzel looked shocked. “And not been to the palace yet?”

“We wouldn’t pass your shrine without stopping, Mistress,” said the princess. Renzel looked pleased.

“But you must go on now, Your Highness. Your poor father, that is, His Majesty, will be waiting.”

“No,” said Iris, “I don’t believe he knows we’re coming today.”

“Well, then, the king is as much in the dark as I was. I must say it seems only right.”

From an upstairs window, the priestess happened to look out at the moment Renzel and two fine ladies were walking through the garden. She got up to get a better look. Odd, she thought. One girl looked almost like the royal daughter that was soon to be married. She knew that Renzel had a niece somewhere in the city, but these were persons of rank. It was with considerable surprise that she watched Renzel begin an awkward curtsey. But the young woman came to her and hugged her, planting a kiss on her cheek. When Iris turned from Renzel, she happened to glance toward the window. Catching sight of the priestess, the princess nodded, then turned without witnessing the spectacle of a woman curtseying foolishly to a window.

As it happened, the princess and her escort arrived at the castle at a moment when her father was staring from a window overlooking the main gate. He had been composing, or rather engaged in an ongoing failure to compose, a letter to Finster the Munificent that would succeed in couching a series of transparent falsehoods in language that would somehow make them believable. The fact that Rand, who as a seasoned diplomat had broad experience in saying and writing things that were, as he liked to put it, “not strictly true,” had failed in the same enterprise had not initially dampened the monarch’s optimism.

“You know, Rand,” he had said only two days before, “I have something of a gift for language. I’m sure that if I devote an hour or so to the problem, I shall be able to find an acceptable excuse for postponing the wedding.” The king waved a negligent hand in the air before him, as if to demonstrate how easily minor problems could be dismissed. “You see,” he said, “it’s primarily a problem not of what we say, but how we say it. A simple matter of … Oh …”

“Semantics.”

“Indeed. Just so. Have the courier ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

Since then, the courier had slept two nights in his own bed, partaken of six meals and numerous snacks, and had been responsible for the substantial depletion of a freshly broached cask of ale.

When the first mounted troops came into view, Asbrak formed the panic-stricken conclusion that their presence heralded a surprise visit from King Finster. This idea immediately became lodged in his mind, so that when he saw his daughter pass through the gate, his only thought was to wonder what on earth she could be doing in the company of her future father-in-law.

“Rand,” he shouted, except his shout came out a dry whisper that could not have been heard ten paces away.

The king turned from the window, and then back to it, twice in rapid succession. Had anyone at that moment been looking in from outside, they would have concluded that His Highness had engaged the services of a dancing master, and was taking instruction.

“Rand!” The king tugged at a bell pull that rang in his adviser’s official chambers. He peered anxiously at the scene outside. Finster the Munificent was not yet in view.

A door opened, and Rand strolled casually into the room. He made a slight bow to the king’s back.

“Your Majesty?’

“Rand, quick! Finster’s here. Think of something.”

Rand stepped briskly to the window.

“King Finster? Surely not,” he said, looking out.

If Rand was rarely surprised, it was even more rarely that he let it show. On this occasion, he did.

“But, Highness … the princess, she’s …”

“Yes, yes. I see her,” said Asbrak with an impatient gesture. “Her companion, Mystery, too. But what are we going to say to Finster?”

Rand forced his eyes from the royal hostage and allowed them to roam the yard.

“I see no evidence of King Finster, my liege.”

“But he’s following.” The king looked at his adviser. “Isn’t he?”

“As those officers are wearing the colors of Ascroval, I should venture he is not, Your Highness.”

“Ascroval?”

“And there, Majesty, is that weasel, Femigris, looking very ill at ease.”

The king was lost in confusion.

“Is this diplomacy?”

Rand smiled a thin, mean smile.

“Not yet, Your Highness, but evidently it is about to assume that character.”

He left the window. “Come, Majesty. We must welcome the princess. And our guests.”

Daniel awoke late the next morning. He had spent a restless night in his own bed, after hours of aimless driving downtown hoping to see the woman with the ring; the witch, as the demon had called her. Even Brenda-Lee had seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth last night. Her corner had been drab and sexless without her painted face and tight, bright, and shiny working-girl outfit.

By the time he had been up for half an hour, he was fighting the midmorning traffic. He had coffee downtown, half a block from Brenda-Lee’s corner. He sat by a window and watched the street as he sipped from the chipped mug. He was no longer able to keep thoughts and images of Modesty from his mind. Nor could he deny or banish the fear that memories of his lover might be all he was ever to have—those few hours, those whispered conversations. His mental images of her were clear and sharp. Her fearless eyes as she confronted him in the tower, her outlandish disguise and hoarse voice as his serving boy; her soft lover’s smiles as she lay beside him in the beds they had shared. He wondered if these pictures would become, in time, ambiguous and cloudy. Perhaps he would begin to doubt that any of it had really happened.

He pulled himself away from his memories. If he could not succeed in returning to Modesty, he would have endless time to regret her loss. Meanwhile, he was determined to spend his energies on logic, not regrets.

He could hope that he might, by combing the streets of the city, find the schoolteacher. But he did not want to miss other possibilities. The other woman he would recognize as well, but he doubted, from the things she had done and said, that he would find her on the city streets. The schoolteacher had seemed to have no great powers of her own. She certainly had not been able to control Charlie’s thugs. But the younger woman had controlled the demon without noticeable effort, and had then arranged for the three of them to disappear while Daniel had looked away for a second.

The only other connection to the other world that Daniel could even hope to find in this one was the mage, as Remeger had called him, who had brought him back. Daniel ordered another cup of the surprisingly good coffee, and began to make a concentrated effort to recall everything about his magical journey.

The journey itself: They had covered, the landscape between Ascroval and Ambermere in a matter of hours—a trip that had taken him four days of efficient walking. Daniel was sure it would be pointless for him to waste time with speculations about the nature of the trip. It had been magical; whether by expanding time or compressing distance was unimportant. What was important, he realized, was that there had been any need to make it at all. Clearly the purpose had been to return him to his own world.

“No,” he said aloud, drawing a glance from a ragged old man in the next booth.

He had been returned to exactly where he had come from.

His city. His apartment. His bedroom. To accomplish this, the mage had first had to bring him to Ambermere. The transfer could not be accomplished from Ascroval.

A feeling of optimism, even euphoria, began to rise in Daniel. He suppressed it with a practiced ease that anyone capable of making a living at poker could have duplicated. He was concentrating on a problem, not daydreaming about a result.

When Rogan’s spell had called him, he had traveled through a featureless mist, and he had arrived in Rogan’s tower. With the mage, on the other hand, he had traveled through a recognizable landscape, and at the end of the journey they had even opened and closed doors while passing through the tavern.

Daniel turned his memory back. He needed only to recall the day before yesterday. He plumbed his mind for pictures of the tavern at Ambermere. It had been on a narrow street only one block in length. They had passed through the common room and opened a door at the back. From there they had passed through a storeroom, climbed a few stairs, and opened a door at the top.

They were in a bar. Daniel strained to see the wood of the countertop, the arrangement of the tables. The floor was bare and dark, old-fashioned wide planks of odd lengths. There were a few people seated by a window. Daniel had a clear image of only one, a young man straddling a chair and watching them as they approached. He couldn’t remember, but he thought he had spoken to someone there. His next memory was of awakening the next morning in his bed.

He opened his eyes and checked Brenda-Lee’s corner. It was empty, as he expected it to be at that time of day. He ordered a third cup of coffee to stare at as he pondered his recollections.

He reviewed his passage from the tavern to the bar. Why, he wondered, did he always think of the place in Ambermere as a tavern and the other one as a bar? He pictured the man straddling the chair, the vague forms seated by the window.

By the window.

Neon. The window said BAR. Backward. In neon. An old, dead neon sign.

That there were no signs made of neon in Ambermere was not a matter of controversy. Given the unknowable workings of magic, the bar with the neon sign could be anywhere, he supposed, but the only hypothesis of use to him put it somewhere in this city. He and the mage had walked from Ambermere to his world in well under one hundred steps. And, of much more practical interest, they had arrived at a place he could hope to recognize from the street.

Daniel bought a city map at a newsstand. He knew if he didn’t approach this in a methodical way, he would end up searching some streets three times and others never. He marked off a small area near the block of strip joints. He intended to begin in downtown neighborhoods where he was most likely to find low-rent bars with broken neon signs. As he started down the first street, he pondered the fact that by some legitimate, if unknown, schemes of measurement, Rogan the Obscure lived closer to his apartment building than his brother and sister-in-law did. That suited Daniel. He sort of liked Rogan.

Ten minutes later, he found he had a problem. He had been prepared to spend hours cruising up and down every street and alley in the city. He had been prepared to face the disappointment of not finding the place at all. He had not, however, been prepared to find a candidate on the second street he drove down.

He was parked almost directly across from the place. He stared at the BAR sign in the window. He tried to picture it from the other side. It looked like the sign he remembered. He wondered how many thousands of them had been put up over the last forty or fifty years.

“Now what?” he said. To go into the bar would be to declare himself, to remove any possible advantage that secrecy might confer. By habit, by experience, and he supposed by nature, Daniel was disinclined to lightly give up an advantage. It was true, he was not prepared to specify what advantage he was protecting. He did not think for a minute that he could break into the place in the middle of the night, go through the door in the back, and then break out of the tavern. The magicians, mages, whatever, would scarcely leave their retreat unguarded.

That, of course, assumed that it was the place, and not just a dingy little bar that resembled it. Daniel got out of the car, crossed the street, and walked past the window. He could see nothing. The glass was dirty, for one thing, and seemed to be tinted. In any event, it showed him nothing more than a dull reflection of his own face. He thought that if he pressed his nose against the glass and stared, he might see something of the inside, but that would be worse than simply going in to have a quick look.

He got back in his car and drove around the block. When he got hack to the street, he parked farther away from the bar, in a spot where he could watch the door without being seen from the window.

In a few minutes, Daniel knew, logic was going to force him to go into the bar to see if it was the right place. There seemed to be no other answer. He could continue to look for neon signs, marking any he found on the map. But how stupid that would be if this was the place.

Which, evidently, it was. He sat up behind the wheel. Coming down the street from the far corner was the young man he had seen straddling the chair. Had he walked past the bar and continued up the street, Daniel would have been left in doubt. But he did not. The door to the bar closed behind him. Daniel felt his heart pounding.

He looked at the small slice of the city he could see from where he sat. The buildings, the cars, the stripe of cloudy sky above. He listened to the traffic noise from the avenue, and from the downtown spur of the interstate highway a few blocks away. Yet somehow, a hundred steps from where he sat, people were walking on the quiet streets of Ambermere, far from any thought of engines more complicated than the winch at a deep well or the gears that drove the miller’s wheels.

Now that he knew he was in the right place, Daniel was willing to wait and let things develop. At the least, he would be so cautious as to watch the place for a while before going in.

Ten minutes later a person emerged from the bar who was of great interest to Daniel. It was a woman, old and with the posture if not the height of a drum major, who was dressed in the long dark skirt he had seen worn by so many matrons on the streets of Ambermere. In addition, she sported a hat that could only have been homemade. Daniel was pretty sure that no matter how many worlds, or Regions, or places of any kind existed, this hat was in style in none of them. The woman walked at a brisk pace. She was nearly around the corner before he decided to follow her.

Five or six blocks later she entered a small park. Daniel stayed across the street, watching her make her way down the winding walk. Only when it appeared she was going to be lost from view did he dart across the street and begin to stroll along in her wake. He needn’t have bothered. She took a seat on a bench. Daniel leaned against a tree. The woman sat with her hands folded on her lap and looked straight ahead. She did not move. Her posture as she sat was a reproach to anyone who had ever slouched in a chair. Daniel thought she looked rather like a turn-of-the-century photograph that had been enlarged to life size and taped to the bench. Surely, he thought, she hasn’t come from Ambermere to sit in a park, listen to traffic noise, and inhale exhaust fumes. A noisy truck rumbled past, emitting a powerful diesel stench.

“To wit,” said Daniel.

Besides the truck, the air smelted of rain. Daniel looked up to check the sky. When he sent what he hoped was a casual glance at the bench, he saw another woman seating herself next to the matron. He stared with no attempt at subtlety. It was the schoolteacher-witch. She was not looking in his direction. He forced his eyes back to the clouds above, then studied his cuffs and shoes. He gradually allowed his gaze to drift back to the bench. Both women were looking directly at him. The lady in the hat raised her hand slowly and beckoned.

“I would think you would be just a bit tired of adventures, young man. Not to mention spells and demons,” she said as he walked up. “In the wizards’ bar I hear of you rescuing maidens from towers. Now Marcia tells me you stood with her before the demon. Apparently you are resourceful and courageous, but surely you can’t be enjoying all these trials. Your aura shows no great love of risk. I don’t know why you were spying at the bar, but I must tell you, the people there are more dangerous than they may appear to your innocent eye.”

Daniel took a seat on the bench next to Marcia.

“I believe you, but I am desperate. I have to get back to Ambermere.”

“Why? This is your world. I can imagine you might like the peace and quiet of Ambermere. I certainly do. But there are places here that you can go to. Things in your world are not yet so bad that you need magic to find a place of repose. One or another of these vehicles you people are so fond of can take you anywhere, given a little luck.”

“But not to Ambermere,” said Daniel. “Even though it seems to be just out the back door of the bar.”

Marcia gave an impatient gesture. “Wait a minute,” she said. “What are you two talking about?”

Hannah looked surprised. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know. That’s what I was going to explain to you today.” She looked at the younger woman affectionately.

“In the weeks you’ve known me, you have never asked me where I live. That’s just as well, because I don’t live in this world at all.”

“Are you saying you live on an another planet?”

“Gracious, no. At least, not in the way you mean.” The witch looked perplexed. “You know, I don’t believe I can explain it at all. You must ask the wizards; they love to explain things. I’m just an old witch; we’re much better at doing things than talking about them.”

Marcia dropped her hands to her sides in a gesture of resignation. “The wizards?”

Hannah sent a look of displeasure at Daniel. “Young man, I must say, I wish you had picked another day to follow me.” She put a wrinkled hand on Marcia’s shoulder. “It will all be clear soon enough, child. Don’t worry about it.”

“But what about Elise? Elyssa? Last night, I don’t know what happened. One minute we were standing in the alley, then I was alone in front of my apartment building. Is she a wizard?”

Hannah laughed quietly. “No. Not a wizard,” she said, continuing to laugh. “Forgive me, my dear, but when you meet the wizards, you will see how funny that is. Anyway, wizards are always men. Always.” The witch turned her attention back to Daniel.

“You say you want to go back? Do you mean you want to stay there?”

“Yes, I do. I found … I made a friend there. We were separated. I want to return to …”

Hannah interrupted him. “When you say ‘a friend,’ you are not talking about a pal or a chum, I suppose?”

“A woman. A lover,” said Daniel. “I don’t want to lose her.”

“Young man, you’re very handsome. Isn’t he, Marcia?”

Marcia stuttered inconclusively.

“Oh, never mind,” said Hannah. “Anyway, I must say I still don’t see how you managed to acquire a lover in the short time you were there.”

Daniel started to say something, but was interrupted by the witch.

“Please do not explain. I wasn’t asking for details, believe me.” Hannah noticed Marcia glancing at her wristwatch.

“Are you still wearing that thing? I thought we took care of all that weeks ago.” She shook her head disapprovingly.

“Well, Daniel,” she went on, “have you thought that if you were able to return, you would be leaving everything that is familiar to you? Have you really thought of what you would be leaving behind?”

“Yes, I have,” said Daniel without hesitation.

“You are sure you have weighed your choices carefully?”

Daniel smiled. “I’m a gambler by trade,” he said.

“Of course,” said the witch, nodding. “That should have been obvious; I’m being careless. And tell me, are you certain your lover would welcome your return?”

“Certain? No. Of course not.”

Hannah shifted her position on the bench, moving closer to Daniel, as though to see him better.

“You gamble for a living. Have you ever lost everything you owned on the turn of a card?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have never bet everything I owned on the turn of a card.”

“Then why are you willing to do it now?”

“Pot odds.”

“What?”

“The prize is worth more than the risk.”

Hannah sat back with a smile. “Take this opportunity to study his aura, dear,” she said to Marcia.

To Daniel she said, “And what is the name of this lover? This prize?”

“Modesty.”

The witch looked at him sharply. “The companion to the princess?”

Daniel sat up with excitement. “You know her? Have you seen her? Are they back in Ambermere? Is she all right?”

“Yes, yes, yes, and yes,” said Hannah. “I know her only slightly, but I have seen her. I admit, I had thought she would never suffer a man …. Well”—she turned to Marcia—“so much for telling detailed fortunes from auras. Waste of time, usually.” She frowned at Daniel.

“I can save you the trouble of going to the wizards for help. They will never let you pass by their doorway. As far as they are concerned, you are already where you belong. In fact, for once I agree with them. You should never have gone to Ambermere in the first place. Imagine that trifler, Rogan, trying to summon a demon,” she said indignantly. “Magicians are idiots.”

Daniel said nothing.

“You seem calm in the face of my discouraging talk.”

“I am waiting to hear all you have to say,” said Daniel quietly.

Hannah gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I believe you when you say you earn your living at the gaming table, but I would guess that you gamble very little.”

A trio of huge motorcycles thundered past. Hannah glared at them as though she were thinking of turning the bikers into toads. She waited for relative quiet to return.

“I am willing to do this much for you. I will ask an authority beyond the wizards, and if permission is granted, I will take you to Ambermere. I use the wizard’s doorway because it is convenient, but I can travel by my own paths if I choose. You think carefully about what you are doing, and then if you still want to, come to this place tonight at precisely midnight, prepared to leave, and I will have an answer for you.”

Daniel began to speak, but was interrupted.

“See that you are sure, because this will be your only chance. I am not coming to this place again ….”

Marcia started. “You are not coming back?” she said. “But you are to teach me, I mean, you told me …, You told me I am your adept.”

“No more,” said Hannah. “Now you wear that ring. Have you looked at your aura, my dear? You are no longer an adept of mine.”

“But what am I to do? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, no, my girl. Don’t worry. You are not being abandoned. Someone will come to you. Probably soon. Do not remove the ring, and do not despair. And you will see me again, if that matters. But it will not be here.” She patted Marcia’s hand maternally. “Now let me finish with Daniel, then we can talk.”

Her eyes locked on Daniel’s. “At midnight, then. But be sure. And be prepared to leave if permission is granted.”

“I am sure, and I will be ready.”

“Then I will see you here tonight. Remember, precisely at midnight. No later. I will not wait. Now go settle your affairs, and leave me to settle mine.”

Chapter 15

Daniel spent the afternoon in his apartment It was clear that he had to proceed as though sure of leaving tonight. If Hannah brought disappointing news, that would be soon enough to worry about it. Until then he tried to banish thoughts of failure from his mind.

It didn’t seem to him that there was much to be done. No suits to pack, no socks to fold. He wrote a letter to his brother in which he spoke vaguely about a last-minute chance to take a lengthy trip, and expressed regret that he might not be back in time for the holidays. He paid his rent for the next month, which seemed only fair, somehow. If all went well, in a few hours the currency of the United States would have no value for him anyway. He went to his bank and made a large withdrawal of cash that he planned to use before he left.

His only other chore was to make an alternative arrangement in case his first plan for the cash went awry. A quick phone call to Charlie was all that was required. The underworld, at least, was still working smoothly.

He had kept the rental car, paying for it, and bribing an employee to retrieve it in the morning. He didn’t want to be at the mercy of taxicabs on a day when his schedule meant everything. By late afternoon he had nothing left to do but worry.

It surprised him, but he felt uneasy. As the witch had said, he was abandoning everything familiar. He found that he was vulnerable to doubts about his prospects and his life in Ambermere. The woman he was so desperately in love with had admitted to no more than affection for him, though her manner and her actions had been much more than merely affectionate. Of the world, he did not know enough to judge accurately. He suspected that he was being too glib, but he told himself that it could not be any worse than this one.

His doubts didn’t really matter, though. He was going, not for the peace and quiet, not for the quaint tile roofs, not for the appealing simplicity of the life. He was going for Modesty, and it was unthinkable not to.

He tried to read and found it impossible. Finally he drove downtown and went to a movie. He watched the tedious succession of car chases, fistfights, and gunplay with a sense of gratitude. This, after all, was the culture he was preparing to abandon. He wondered if Hannah had ever seen a movie.

He forced himself to stay to the end. He occupied his mind with the question of how it had come to pass that movies were accompanied by music. It was such a strange idea that lovers, for instance, could not manage to get themselves into bed, or even participate in a soulful exchange of meaningful glances, without the accompaniment of masses of violins and other musical gadgets.

When the final cathartic hullabaloo had subsided, and all the sidearms had been fired, and all the cars wrecked, and the handsome hero had displayed his profile one last time, Daniel left the theater feeling quite contented, for he had seen his last high-budget, low-brow movie.

He went to the best restaurant downtown and lingered over a light but elegant and very expensive meal. He sampled, with careful moderation, two of the best wines on the list. After dessert and coffee, he moved his party of one to a paneled room, where he smoked a seven-dollar cigar and sipped fifty-year-old brandy.

It was almost eleven o’clock when he got back to the strip. When he was over a block away, he could see Brenda-Lee on her corner, dressed in clothes that looked like they would glow in the dark. When he drove up, she wobbled toward the car.

“Hop in,” he said.

“I don’t know. What for? My boyfriend got mad before. He said we were gone too long.”

“This time I just want to talk to you for ten minutes. Would you just get in the car, please?”

She opened the door. “Okay, but you have to pay me. I might miss a … an appointment while I’m with you.”

“Fine. Get in.” He watched her bend her way into the front seat. He wondered what her clothes were made of.

“Seat belt?” he said. They had gone through this routine yesterday.

“Seat belt!” She glared at him like a rebellious eighth-grader. “Don’t worry about me; I’m not your grandmother. Anyway, my boyfriend says seat belts aren’t safe. He says if you’re in a wreck, the best thing is to be thrown clear of the car.”

“Your boyfriend is a moron. Put the seat belt on.”

“Are you paying for this?”

Daniel sighed and put the car in park.

“Brenda-Lee, I want to give you some money.”

“Sure.”

“No. I mean a lot of money.”

She looked apprehensive. “What do you want me to do for it?”

“I want you to go out of business. I’m going to give you enough that you can go somewhere else, get a place to live, and go to school or get a job or something.”

“What are you trying to do? What kind of trick is this?” Her voice had a panicky sound, as though he had threatened her. She put her hand on the door. “Pay me or I’m getting out.”

Daniel fished a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet.

“Here.” He handed her the money with a flourish. “Now will you sit still, preferably with your seat belt on?”

A roughly dressed man who had been standing near the curb walked around the car to the driver’s side. He thrust a badge at Daniel. “Turn the car off, pal; fun’s over for the night.”

Daniel looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was five past eleven. A police car pulled up beside them.

Daniel tried to explain, with predictable results. By eleven-twenty-five he was at the station house. He made a desperate phone call to Charlie who, despite the highly suspicious fact that Daniel had nearly fifteen thousand dollars in cash on his person, was able to get him out by quarter of one. The park was empty.

Renzel had finished moving her few belongings back to the cottage. The priestess had completely changed her attitude on the subject, insisting that she had never meant to displace Renzel, except for the temporary accommodation of her guests. She had now decided that they would have to make do with the space she could offer them in the house. Renzel, it turned out, was being “too generous” and the priestess had decided she couldn’t permit it.

If Renzel had been of a speculative turn of mind, she would have been completely mystified. But her life had taught her that doing the work and solving the problems that each day supplied was complicated enough already. Making guesses about the motives of her priestess held no interest for her.

In a way, she regretted leaving the house. It was ancient, and had housed the priestesses of the shrine for years past the reach of memory. Despite its new tenant, Renzel associated the place with the old priestess, who had lived her simple quiet life there for over sixty years, moving from room to room like a living ghost. Renzel often imagined her still inhabiting the house and grounds that she had presided over for so much of her life.

The figure silhouetted in her open doorway startled her, but it was her entirely corporeal niece who stood there.

“What’s the matter with Eldyna?” she said, entering the cottage. “She practically bowed when I passed her in the garden.”

“Modesty, please; you mustn’t refer to the priestess with such informality.”

“Sorry,” said Modesty, without detectable contrition.

“My dear, you don’t look well. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Modesty, as her eyes filled with tears.

When Modesty got to the part of her story that required a description of her lover, her aunt listened, then interrupted her.

“But, my dear, I have seen him. Twice, in the shrine.”

The girl leapt to her feet. “When?” she cried.

Renzel stood up, shaking her head sadly. “A fortnight ago, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Modesty. But why … ?”

Modesty smiled gently at her aunt. “The story doesn’t end with the rescue. Aunt Renzel.”

“I see,” said the older woman, sitting down again.

Later, they walked in the garden. Renzel sent worried glances in the direction of her niece. She had often known Modesty to be quiet; the girl had always shared her aunt’s dislike of speech for its own sake. But this silence was troubling to her.

Modesty stopped at the end of a gravel path.

“I must leave. Iris has to be protected from the dressmaker and from every merchant in the city.”

Renzel smiled at her niece. It was as though she could see the resilience in her. She thought of Modesty’s parents and wondered where it could have come from.

“Work is better than worry, my dear.”

Modesty kissed her aunt on the cheek and gave her a lingering hug.

“I wish I were ten years old,” she said, and left.

The king twisted in his chair to follow the movements of his pacing adviser.

“Rand, what can you possibly find to frown about? The princess is upstairs with the dressmaker, the merchants are lined up in the hallways, the wedding is but ten days away, Hilbert has not been stolen by pirates or eaten by trolls; everything is exactly as it should be. My despicable cousin has been undone. Femigris has been groveling to you since his ignominious arrival.”

“Forgive me, Your Highness. My only concern is that we have no idea how all of this has been accomplished.”

Asbrak looked surprised. “But you told Femigris …,” he began, then trailed off. “Of course, that wasn’t true,” he continued, as though reminding himself of a forgotten bit of information.

“Not strictly according to the actual facts,” amended Rand, through force of habit. “Your Majesty is quite correct.”

“Still, Rogan has accomplished a marvel,” said the king.

“Of which, if I may remind Your Highness, he is unable to give a coherent account.”

“But he sent the young man, who carried Modesty—by the way, Rand, I do wish you would stop referring to her as Mystery. I find it confusing. Yesterday I actually called her by the wrong name. Most embarrassing.”

“My humble apologies, Your Highness. I will try to remember.”

“Anyway, he carried her from the tower, and then they were caught trying to rescue the princess.” The king stopped as though struck by a sudden thought. “What a remarkable girl she must be. Of course, I’ve always recognized her qualities.” He tugged at his beard judiciously.

“And now the young man is missing,” Asbrak continued. “We must reward him, Rand.”

“As Your Majesty has just said, he is missing.”

“But he will turn up, surely. What does Rogan say?”

“The royal magician seems to know nothing of his whereabouts, Your Highness. The maiden. Modesty, questioned him most tenaciously in my presence. Ran him quite out of wine, she did.” The adviser smiled to himself. “I believe I will ask her to interview Femigris.”

In the morning, Daniel had returned his rental car, and then walked to the bar, which was locked and dark. He paced up and down the street for a while, then walked back to the strip to see if Brenda-Lee was around. He drank coffee, watching her corner, then took a long walk by the waterfront.

Next, he took care of Brenda-Lee’s money. He had arranged for Charlie to hold the cash for a few days, then get it to the girl if Daniel hadn’t reclaimed it. The address Charlie had given him turned out to be the strip joint that the thugs had brought him to the night before last. The bartender took the envelope without comment and tossed it in a drawer next to the cash register. On the stage behind the bar a spectacularly built girl was performing a dance that was meant to be erotic but was merely anatomical. Daniel was not tempted to linger.

It was late in the morning by the time he got back to the bar. From what Hannah had said, it was clear that the place was a gathering place for wizards. Having seen a wizard in action at Ascroval, Daniel no longer cherished any illusions about his ability to gain some advantage over the caretakers of the doorway. He simply opened the street door and walked in.

A few men sat around a table by the window. Daniel looked at the neon sign. The sensations of three days ago returned to him. He could almost see himself coming through the door at the back of the room, his mind cloudy with whatever sorcery his companion had worked.

He looked at the doorway now and saw that it matched the one at the back of the tavern in Ambermere. The door looked heavy. It was of dark wood, and rather wide.

Daniel recognized no one in the room. Neither the wizard from the trial at Ascroval nor the young man he had seen on the street yesterday were in the room. The bartender was a young man, short and somewhat stout.

“Yes, sir,” he said when Daniel approached.

“Who is in charge here?” said Daniel.

“Me,” said the bartender. “Name’s Jackie. What can I do for you?”

“I have to get to Ambermere.”

Jackie thought for a moment “Nope,” he said. “You got me beat.” He called to the men at the table.

“Any of you gents know where Ambermere Street is?”

No one did.

Daniel sat down and put his elbows on the bar.

“I know what this place is,” he said calmly. “I was brought here from Ambermere.”

The bartender looked him in the eye.

“What do you want?”

“I want to walk through that doorway,” said Daniel, pointing to the back of the room.

“That’s not an exit, it’s a storeroom.”

“Oh. All right,” said Daniel in a light tone. “I must have this confused with another bar. Just let me have a draft beer.”

As soon as Jackie turned, Daniel slid quietly from the stool and hurried to the doorway. It was not locked. He was through before anyone noticed.

The storeroom seemed smaller than he had remembered it, and not so dark, but the door on the other wall looked right. He ran across the room. With any luck he would make it. Incredibly, the door was unlocked. As he opened it he resolved to get through the tavern at a dead run. Once he was on the street in Ambermere, they would have to catch him. He opened the door and burst through.

He was in an alley. The first thing he saw was an abandoned car from which everything useful had been stripped. He turned to go back into the storeroom. The door had closed behind him and was locked.

He walked the length of the alley and around the block to the bar. He shook his head in disgust. For a few moments, he had dared to think that audacity and fleetness of foot were going to be all that he needed to outsmart the wizards.

He reached the bar just behind three businessmen full of office talk and cheerful banter. To his astonishment, they entered. Daniel was not confused, but he was perplexed. He would have bet a very great deal indeed against the proposition that these men were anything other than what they appeared to be. He decided to return later.

“It’s very simple, Mistress. Yesterday I was able to give you an answer; today the cards say nothing.” The boy gathered the array of cards into a neat stack with a few economical motions of fingers and wrists. Through long black eyelashes he gazed across the cluttered little room to where the witch sat in a straight-backed wooden chair.

“All right,” said Hannah, “I’m satisfied. You tried.” She popped up briskly from her seat. “Tea?” she asked as she passed through a doorway almost too low for even one of her stature.

The boy curled his lip and turned his head till his chin rested on his shoulder. He sent a look after her as though she had offered to shave his head.

“Not just now, thanks,” he said. He brought his slippered feet up to the cushion he sat on and tucked his heels against his thighs. For a few moments he stared through the window at the afternoon light in the garden. From the kitchen came the muffled clatter of kettle and teapot. He crossed his hands on his lap and closed his eyes.

When Hannah had finished her tea and tidied up, she came back to her living room.

“I know you’ll do as you please,” she said to the boy, ignoring the fact that he appeared to be asleep, “so I’ll just tell you that after I go to the potter’s with something for the little girl’s cough, I’m going on to the shrine.” She draped a light shawl over her shoulders. “No telling when I’ll be back.” When she put her hand on the latch of the front door, the boy opened his eyes.

“I would think you had had quite enough of that son of thing for a while.” He stretched, then rolled to his feet in an easy, fluid motion that looked as though it cost him no effort whatever. He was a little more than Hannah’s height, and stood as straight as she, but with no hint of rigidity or discipline in the easy grace of his posture. He stretched again, a quiet wave that seemed to flow from the balls of his feet to the black hair that curled over his ears.

“I am looking for no one at the shrine but Renzel, little Egri. No one else at all. But if I cannot get an answer to my question from divination at home, then I must seek help abroad. And besides, this question affects Renzel. If all else fails, I will simply ask her opinion.”

“Which you could have done yesterday as well, leaving me to my own pursuits.”

“Pursuits, indeed. Naps in the sun.”

Egri smiled and paced to the window. He lowered himself onto the deep wooden sill.

“Anyway,” he said, “these matters come under Renzel’s authority as much as anyone’s.”

“Of course; when she gets the authority. But the high priestesses have not yet arrived. Until then foolish and annoying Eldyna is still the priestess, and Renzel is merely the woman who looks after the shrine.”

“And she has no inkling?”

The witch adjusted her shawl. “Oh, she knows; I’m sure of it. She just does not know that she knows. But she sensed something—found the encounters troubling. She will work it out. If not before, then when those from the Outer Kingdoms—the High Servants of the Ladies—come to her and install her as priestess.”

In her garden, Hannah spent a few minutes freshening the flowers, leaves, and tiny berries that sprouted all over her unusual hat. Before passing through the gate to the lane, she turned and waved. Peering through the window from where it was perched comfortably on the sill was a small black cat.

Daniel watched the bar from across the street. Two hours before, in the late afternoon, he had come back, determined to at least discuss his situation with someone. But when he strode up to the bar and reached for the door, he found himself groping at the brick wall a few yards down the street. On his next try he ended up at a window of the building next door. Daniel tested the spell, for he had no doubt of the origin of his difficulty, several times more, ending up at trees, parked cars, a telephone pole; everywhere but the door. At one point he had begun to laugh at the thought of what he would look like to anyone watching. A man striding purposefully up to lampposts and other unlikely objects and trying to shake hands with them.

In the two hours since, no one had entered or left the bar. He waited, not knowing what else to do. His only other connection, however tenuous, with Ambermere was the woman, Marcia. He was determined to find her, whatever it took. He had pretty well figured out the wording of a newspaper ad that would catch her attention. How handy, he thought, that in a time of disbelief like the one he lived in, he could openly mention demons and witches with no fear that anyone would imagine that he was actually speaking of demons and witches. In fact, his only problem was how to avoid a flood of calls from cultists and other fringies.

He had learned the word from Brenda-Lee two days before when she had used it to refer to a rather normal-looking man who had been standing on a curb shouting to passing cars that “the end” was at hand.

“Don’t run over the fringie,” she had said.

“The what?” he had shouted, looking around wildly to see if something was in his way.

“The fringie. You know, like fringe element, or like the lunatic fringe.”

When Daniel, annoyed, had suggested that most people considered prostitutes to be on the fringes, Brenda-Lee had sulked for half an hour.

A pair of white-bearded men were strolling up the opposite sidewalk in the direction of the bar. Daniel did not recognize them from earlier that afternoon, but he was not surprised when they went into the bar.

He immediately went across the street. He kept his eye on the entrance to the bar without so much as blinking. As he approached, he saw no hint of funhouse-mirror trickery. Nonetheless, when he came to the door, it was a parking meter.

Daniel realized he was hungry. If he hurried, he could beat the Friday-night crowds to the pizza place, and be in and out in no time.

Brenda-Lee was still not at her corner. Tomorrow, he decided, he could check to see if she could possibly be in jail, though he doubted she was. He comforted himself with the thought that wherever she was, Charlie could find her.

He looked for her again after dinner, swinging by in a cab. Her corner was empty. Up the street he saw the man with the bandaged hand. He thought of Marcia and wondered how she had managed to deal with him and what, precisely, she had done. She had certainly not been particularly resourceful with Charlie’s goons.

Back at the bar, one try for the door confirmed that the spell was still in effect, Daniel concluded that his only hope was to try talking to the next person to come out of the place. Unfortunately, no one did. A little after eleven o’clock the window went dark. Daniel waited for another half hour, then left, planning to be back in the morning.

He was looking for a cab when he realized that in ten minutes it would be exactly twenty-four hours since he was to have met Hannah at the park. A cab slowed on the empty street. He waved it on and set out for the park. It was not impossible, he suddenly realized, that Marcia might come there. He quickened his pace. Why, he wondered, had it not occurred to him to check there from time to time during the day?

He entered the park nearly at a run, then slowed abruptly when he saw that the bench was not empty. His breath caught in his throat. He drew closer, trying to prepare himself for the sight of a bag lady or a wino slumped and snoring.

The bench was near a streetlight, but in the shadow of a tree. The outline was indistinct. Daniel stared ahead anxiously. He dared not let himself believe that what he saw was Hannah’s hat. Without consciously willing it, he walked more and more slowly, delaying the moment of disappointment as he lengthened the interval of hope.

When he saw it was really the witch seated on the bench, he approached very slowly and quietly, as though he feared she would vanish if he made a sudden movement. She watched him come up the path. When he reached her she stood up.

“About time,” she said. “Are you ready to go?”

There were a dozen questions in Daniel’s mind.

“Yes,” he said, and silently fell into step beside her as she started down the dark, tree-lined path.

They left the park and walked one block before Hannah stopped at a corner.

“If you have anything to say, say it now. We have a long walk ahead of us and I’m going to be too busy finding my way to chat.”

Daniel looked down at the little woman in the bizarre hat. His sense of relief and of gratitude was so intense that he wasn’t sure he could rely on his voice. He cleared his throat.

“Thank you for coming back for me.”

Forty-five minutes later they were still walking the streets of the city. They would go for a block, or a few blocks, then Hannah would stop, look around, sometimes with her eyes closed, before setting off again, more than once turning around and going back over ground they had just covered.

It did not take much of this before it occurred to Daniel that he did not, of his own knowledge, know that Hannah had anything to do with the other world. He might be trudging around the city with an old lunatic who had been wandering these streets for forty years. He comforted himself with the knowledge that Marcia had treated the witch as legitimate. On the other hand, Marcia had been completely unaware of the existence of the other world. But she had known about the demon, and had some connection with the woman who had spoken confidently of returning the demon to the Lower Regions. Besides, he remembered, feeling stupid, he himself had seen Hannah come out of the wizard’s bar.

The witch had said nothing since they had set out, and Daniel had not dared to trouble her. She had led them, most circuitously, to a particularly seedy part of the waterfront. Not an area that the Chamber of Commerce would have recommended for a midnight stroll. Daniel had nothing else to occupy his attention, so he kept a careful watch for unfriendly natives.

In the distance, the sound of a bell could be heard. It struck one time. Daniel tried to place it as he stepped around a discarded truck tire that was blocking the sidewalk. They passed into the shadow of an abandoned warehouse. The last echo of the low-pitched bell faded to inaudibility.

Hannah stopped, then turned down a narrow alley between two buildings. In a moment, they came to a blank wall. Daniel started to turn around. The witch prevented him with a hand at his elbow. They stood facing the blank wall for what seemed like a long time. Then Hannah turned and led them back toward the street.

Daniel’s heart rate increased. They were going to emerge from the alley onto a street in Ambermere, he was sure of it. Images of Modesty tumbled into his head, only to be displaced by the uncompromising reality of a passing car. Two blocks later they went around the same block twice. Daniel wondered how long this little old lady could continue to walk. As they approached the waterfront again, he watched her for signs of fatigue. At that moment she stopped.

“You see why I use the wizard’s doorway,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Of course, it’s much easier when I’m by myself.”

Daniel supposed it was all right for him to talk.

“When will we get there?” he asked, attempting to sound unconcerned.

The little witch stared up at him without answering and with an unreadable expression on her face.

Daniel kept his eyes on her. He was afraid to let them move.

He listened for the noises of the city. The night was silent. He closed his eyes. He heard no siren, no traffic, no mechanical hum from a chorus of compressors and air conditioners.

“I wish you’d get on with it,” said the witch.

Daniel opened his eyes. They were on the waterfront. Farther down the street he could see a few flickering lights from buildings that faced high-masted sailing ships moored not far from their doorsteps. A misty rain began to fall. Somewhere, out of sight but not far away, a man was singing in a clumsy baritone.

“You look awful,” said Hannah without a trace of sympathy in her voice. She rummaged in the folds of her skirts and handed him some coins. “Get yourself a room at one of these inns. You can make your own way to the castle in the morning.” She looked sharply at Daniel. “You’re not going to get lost again, are you?”

“We’re here,” he said.

“So we are.”

Daniel looked behind him apprehensively.

The witch shook her head. “The other world isn’t there. Don’t worry; you won’t walk around the wrong block and cross over again.” She did not bother to explain that in fact it was possible, and actually happened once every thirty or forty years.

“Which way is the castle?”

Hannah pointed. “Listen to me,” she said. “Do not go stand outside the castle all night. Get into a comfortable bed. In the morning get something to eat.” She looked at Daniel to make sure he was following what she said.

“When you get to the castle, do not present yourself to Modesty, not to mention the princess, in your strange clothing. Go to Rogan and have him make you presentable. Then will be time enough to go to your lady. You are going to surprise her. See that you make the surprise a pleasant one.”

The witch took off her hat. Daniel, having come to regard it as part of her anatomy, was shocked at the action. From a tired-looking stalk that seemed almost to grow from the band, Hannah pinched off a tiny leaf, holding it carefully by the slender green filament that served as its stem.

“Take a glass of sweet red wine to your room,” she said. “Bruise this leaf lightly between your fingers and float it on the surface of the wine. Then make yourself ready for bed before you drink.” She placed the leaf in his hand. She caught his eye. “Remove the leaf before you drink, unless you want to sleep for two or three days. If you do as I have told you, you will have a peaceful night untroubled by dreams and you will awaken in a much better state than you are in now.”

Hannah guided Daniel to a place that offered respectable lodging and saw him through the door. For a moment she stood in the empty street, enjoying the cool rain and listening to the creak of heavy ropes on wood. Then she set off down a cobbled lane and was soon out of sight.

Chapter 16

When Daniel awoke the sun was already well above the horizon. As Hannah had promised, he was rested and refreshed. He had taken her advice about the sleeping potion, but not about breakfast. He couldn’t even think of food, let alone eat any. He hurried through the lanes and streets, asking directions occasionally to make sure he wasn’t wandering from his course. His clothing attracted a few glances, but in a city used to visitors from exotic ports, unusual fashions in clothing were almost commonplace. Before long he could see the towers and spires of the castle rising above the tile roofs of the town.

He stopped outside the main gate of the castle. It was open for anyone who wished to enter; Daniel merely wanted to see if his pulse would stop racing if he took a few deep breaths. He had the feeling that if he were at that moment to speak, his words would come out in a rapid soprano.

He had expected to be challenged at the entrance to the castle itself, but the guard was satisfied when he told him he was visiting the royal magician. Daniel made his way through the hallways and staircases until he stood at the foot of Rogan’s stairs, in front of the room he had occupied only a week and a half ago, though it seemed much longer. Daniel felt very much disconnected from reality of time and distance. For one panicky moment, the thought that he might at that moment be dreaming stabbed at him, draining his euphoric sense of homecoming. He smiled and touched the cold stone of the wall.

“I refute it thus,” he said quietly.

The door to “his” room was partly open. Daniel knocked and then entered. Laid out on the bed was an outfit much like the one he had worn before. Feeling very much an old hand at accepting the unexpected, Daniel changed quickly, trading everything he wore for the local replacements that had been provided.

Once outfitted, his impulse was to rush to find Modesty. Again the realization that she was so near gave him the pulse rate of a chipmunk. He sat on the edge of the bed, reasoning with himself. He did not know how to find Modesty. He could very well wander the halls of the castle all day and never find her.

He took the stairs to Rogan’s rooms two at a time. As he raised his hand to knock, the magician’s voice came through the door.

“Come in. I know you’re here.”

Daniel stepped into the room. Rogan was seated in his chair by the window. He raised his glass in salute.

“I know,” he said. “You’re probably looking for a meal.”

Daniel flopped into a chair. He felt as though he had never left. He half expected the magician to begin outlining some insane project. He reached for a goblet.

“Actually,” he said, “I believe I’ll have a little wine.” He poured a third of a glass, hoping that it would help to calm him down. He had been less excited the first morning he had sat here, when he had had much more cause to be in a state of agitation.

“You seem to have been expecting me.”

“I was. Your friend the witch saw to that. She was here at dawn. Don’t those people sleep?”

“I couldn’t say. You’re the magician.”

“Please,” said Rogan. “I don’t want to talk about magic. I’m thinking of becoming a cobbler.” He put down his glass.

“I must say, you did very well, despite rescuing the wrong maiden. The witch told me the rest this morning. My explanations to the king are going to sound much more plausible now that I have some idea of what happened.” Rogan stood up and looked out the window.

“You will be with me of course. I want to give you great credit, my boy, and yet somehow leave the impression that I was the mastermind behind this success. In control every step of the way. That sort of thing.” At the sight of Daniel’s good-natured grin, Rogan looked relieved.

“Any suggestions?” he asked.

“Don’t tell the truth.”

Rogan looked shocked.

“Of course not! Do you think I’m an idiot? What I meant was, do you have any useful suggestions? The problem is, the king will believe anything and his adviser will believe nothing.”

Daniel stood up.

“To tell you the truth, Rogan, I’m not going to be any help at all until I can see Modesty.”

“Fine. Just don’t bring her here, please. I thought she was never going to stop asking me questions.”

“Modesty? Questions about what?”

“Questions about you, of course. What else? And every time I’d give her what I thought sounded like a pretty plausible answer, considering that I didn’t know anything at the time, she would ask ten more questions. She’s worse than Rand, and she gets a look in her eye that could fry an egg.”

Daniel felt like a high-school boy talking about a girl he had a crush on.

“What did she ask? What did she say about me?”

Rogan looked at him unenthusiastically.

“She said she was concerned about your safety.” He picked his glass up and raised it to his lips. “No, wait. She said she was only concerned about your safety.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not that I recall.”

Daniel reached for the wine, then put his glass down instead.

“How do I find her?”

Rogan gave him directions.

“But then come back, my boy. And before too long. I must make you known to the king. I just need a little time to prepare a palatable story. One that does not mention demons.”

In five minutes Daniel was lost. He wondered how Rogan ever managed to make his way around the castle. His sense of direction seemed to be limited to an infallible knowledge of up and down, that is, an ability to detect the urgings of gravity, unaugmented by any real feeling for the horizontal. Daniel quickly discovered that no one lacking the ability to pass through stone walls could hope to follow the magician’s instructions.

He wandered into a long hallway that must have run the length of the building, disappearing into a cloud of distant shadows. It was an inner corridor. No windows illuminated its reaches—only lamps spaced far apart and high on the walls of gray stone. The first branching hallway led to a descending stair of hewn stone that, like the long corridor he had just left, could not be seen to its end, but faded into heavy shadow.

Daniel had not seen a soul since leaving Rogan. Hoping to find some signs of life, he started down the stairs. The sound of his boots echoed in the empty spaces. By the time he had passed the second lamp, he was beginning to have doubts. The bare stone of the stairs had become damp, suggesting that he was entering a region of cellars. Thoughts of dungeons came to him. He knew nothing, really, of this kingdom, of this world. Perhaps he would begin hearing cries and moans from those whom this kingdom chose to imprison, to torture.

He had almost decided turn back when he saw the archway at the bottom of the stairs. Certainly there would be no harm in having a look, he thought. And it was still possible that this led to some main hallway, or at least an inhabited part of the castle.

He passed through the arch into a cavernous room. The ceiling was hidden in darkness. The only light came form a distant doorway, where the glow of a lamp spilled a few feet into the gloom. There was an odd mixture of smells, mostly sour, in the damp air that seemed familiar, yet unidentifiable.

Daniel walked toward the light, picking his way among a maze of indistinct obstacles, some of which towered over him. He was not far from the doorway when it was filled with first the shadow, then the form of a huge man, great in both height and girth, who was bent forward and carried one shoulder higher than the other. Daniel could see that his arms hung in front of his body as he lumbered through the doorway and into the room.

He could not help thinking of trolls and giants and other fairy-tale horrors as the shadowy figure approached him. If Daniel had been a schoolboy he would have turned and sprinted for the arch without hesitation. A few more ponderous steps and the giant would reach him. Daniel stepped forward.

“Uh, pardon me,” he said, attempting to sound like a rational adult.

“Oooooooooahhhhhhhh!!” replied the giant in a deafening bellow that threatened to echo perpetually from the invisible ceiling. The huge form scrambled halfway back to the lighted doorway, then froze in a tense crouch.

“Who … who … who’s there?” said the impossibly deep voice.

“I’m looking for the princess,” said Daniel from the darkness.

The man straightened up to his full height, something over seven feet to Daniel’s eye.

“The princess? Fairest flower? Shames something or other? Envy of whatever it is?”

“Yes.”

“And what dull-witted jackass was it sent you to look for her in the wine cellar?”

“Well, Rogan was …”

“Say no more. By the gods!” The man turned and started back to the doorway.

“Come in here,” he called. “I want to sit down until I know if my heart is going to start beating again. Be a shame to fall and get all bruised up for my funeral.”

Daniel followed the hulking troll-form into a room well lit with candles and a large lamp. In the light the man was still extremely big, but not so big as he had seemed to be in the gloomy cellar. He was perhaps something under seven feet, and more broad than fat. He slumped into an oversize chair and gestured for Daniel to take a seat.

“Wines and cheeses,” he boomed. “That’s all I have down here. Well, hams and meat pies and that,” he added. “But no princesses. No women at all, in fact.” He looked around the room as though checking for women. “Nope,” he said. “See?”

Daniel agreed there were no women.

“Breksin, that’s me. Breksin the cellar master.”

“Daniel,” said Daniel. Breksin seemed to be waiting for him to say more.

“The gambler,” Daniel added.

The giant sat up in his chair.

“Cards?” he said. He had raised his voice to a shout that would have carried across a small lake. Daniel supposed he must be hard of hearing.

Daniel nodded.

“We must have a game,” he boomed eagerly. He was half out of his chair before Daniel could protest,

“No. Not now. I must find the princess,” he said in a loud voice.

Breksin dropped back into his chair.

“You don’t have to shout,” he said. “I can hear you.”

“I have to find the princess, and her companion.”

“Modesty?” The big man broke into a smile.

“Yes.”

“She plays cards with me sometimes. I haven’t seen her for a while.”

“She and the princess were away.”

“What?”

Daniel leaned forward in his chair.

“I said, she was away with the princess. They were visiting in Ascroval.”

“Well, tell her Breksin—say her friend, Breksin—has saved a pretty little pork pie for her to take to her aunt at the shrine.” He rose like a derrick from his chair. Daniel felt like a leprechaun.

“Come,” said the cellar master. “I will tell you the way. The right way. But you must come back and play cards one day.”

The Princess Iris was distraught.

“But, Modesty, how can you talk of leaving?”

“How can I not?” was the reply.

“But we can send someone to look for him. Someone we trust. A knight.”

“I trust me,” said Modesty quietly. “Let us leave the cavaliers to their intrigues and their dice.”

“But he may arrive here.”

“That is why I am waiting for one day more. But if he does not come today, I am going to disguise myself as a page or a squire, borrow your fastest pony, and set off for Ascroval in the morning.”

Iris went and sat beside her friend on the chaise.

“I think I almost preferred it when you were weeping.” She put her arm around Modesty. “Modesty,” she said in a gentle voice, “have you thought that he—”

“I have thought of everything,” said Modesty with a sad smile. “But I’m not going in search of my lover, Iris; I am going to try to find the brave man who took such risks to help us.”

The princess looked into her friend’s dark eyes.

“Modesty,” she whispered, “I don’t believe you.”

Modesty lowered her eyes shyly.

“Iris, I don’t blame you; I don’t, either. But it is true that he might be lost or hurt or ill. And anyway, I cannot rest until I know something.” She got up and began to pace the sitting room. “I wish I had left already. I wish I were in the saddle with my breasts bound under my squire’s jacket and my hair hidden under my turban.”

“But squires don’t wear turbans.”

The smile that Modesty flashed at the princess was almost cheerful.

“Well the squire I impersonate is going to, because I know that if I chop off my hair ten days before your wedding you will have me beheaded, so I must hide it instead.”

“Very well, I know you will do as you wish. I suppose I should be grateful that you do not intend to strap on armor and depart on a warhorse.” The princess got up. “But meanwhile, please stop pacing, my dearest friend. You promised you would try to rest.” She took Modesty by the elbow and guided her to the chaise. She pushed her gently onto it.

“I want you to have peace today,” said Iris. “I am going to go to the dressmaker before she comes here with her six assistants. When I return I expect to see you lying there, exactly where I have left you.”

The princess closed the outer door behind her quietly. As she passed the main corridor something caught her attention. At the far end, she could see a man walking in her direction. She crossed and went a dozen paces, then stopped. She returned to the intersection and gazed down the corridor. The man passed under a lamp. He was walking quickly, not lounging along like a functionary on an errand.

Iris felt a thrill of hope, followed instantly by an anticipatory twinge of the anguished disappointment she expected to feel in a moment when the man striding in her direction turned out to be a courtier.

He drew closer. When he passed under the next lamp, Iris could tell he was a stranger. She began to fell warm, her skin tingling just as it frequently did during exciting scenes at the theater.

He passed the next lamp. Iris recalled the moment that Daniel had come through the window at Ascroval. She strained her eyes to penetrate the distance that still separated them. She began to walk in his direction. She saw him break stride at the sight of her, then continue forward. Now only three lamps burned between them.

She stopped, raising her hands to her mouth. The suspense, the threat of ruined hopes, seemed intolerable. The less impossible the hope, the more wrenching became the wait. The man slowed his pace. The princess sighed miserably.

Finally he stood before her.

“Your Highness?” he said, bowing uncertainly.

Iris nodded. Her eyes were filled with tears, but she could see him well enough to know him.

“Daniel,” she said. She straightened her back; blinked away her tears.

“Every time you see me I am weeping,” she said. She looked at him closely. There was no doubt.

“I am so …,” she began, then stopped. She thought of Modesty in the room nearby. “Where have you been?” she said. “Why did you not come here before?”

“A magician prevented me. Your Highness.”

Iris found that her emotions had deserted her. Her thoughts were all focused on Modesty.

“And now that you are here, what do you mean to do?”

“I want to find Modesty.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Well, I mean, I’m …”

Iris cut off his stammering preface. She was not prepared to listen to any long-winded circumlocutions.

“Are you in love with Modesty?”

Daniel’s answer was prompt.

“Yes, I am.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

The eyes of the princess were once again filled with tears. She threw her arms around the astonished Daniel.

“Then you are my brother,” she whispered, and kissed him on the cheek.

The princess entered the sitting room quietly. Modesty still sat on the chaise.

“You see. Your Highness,” she said, “I am an obedient subject.” She looked at Iris. “What’s wrong? Have you been crying?” She got up and went to the princess. “What is it, Iris?”

Iris embraced her. “Modesty. Sister.” She stepped back from Modesty. Her eyes filled.

“I have just kissed a man,” she said.

Modesty said nothing.

“An extremely handsome man,” added the princess.

Modesty stared at her friend. She raised one hand to her heart.

“He says he loves my sister.”

A cry broke from Modesty’s lips. Iris opened the door and went into the hall. Modesty did not move. When Iris returned, Daniel was with her. She walked with him to Modesty and stood between the lovers. She silenced Daniel with a gesture.

“I am leaving for the dressmaker, Modesty,” she said, “as soon as I hear you say it.”

Modesty smiled at Iris. She looked into Daniel’s eyes.

“I feared I was never to see you again.” She paused. “Never to be happy again. Never to tell you that I love you.”

Iris left, closing the door softly behind her. Daniel and Modesty did not notice her departure.

The wedding of Iris and Hilbert was a stunning public spectacle, surrounded by days of celebration that threatened the extinction of all known supplies of ales, wines, smoked meats, and sausages. Even Finster the Munificent was impressed by the radiant beauty of his new daughter-in-law as she knelt in public to be joined to his blood and to his kingdom. The royalty of all the known world had come to witness the event. King Razenor, so recently out of his subjects’ sight with a mysterious illness, led the delegation from Ascroval, professing himself overwhelmed with emotion at the joyful event.

Not only merchants, but players, musicians, jugglers, magicians, and the like prospered at every square and marketplace. Dibrick the Roaster of Meats was kept so busy that for a period of almost a fortnight he scarcely saw the inside of his ale mug. An out-of-town magician, Remeger by name, played tirelessly at shells and peas for pennies on the street and made a season’s income in eight days.

Modesty and Daniel carried the last pork pie in the city to the new priestess of the shrine of Elyssana, the Reverend Mother Renzel, and she in turn did them the favor of marrying them three days later in a quiet ceremony attended only by Prince Hilbert and his royal bride, Iris; Rogan the Obscure, magician to his majesty; and the royal cellar master Breksin, who arrived with a small barrel of His Majesty’s rarest wine cradled lightly in one massive arm. Mistress Hannah was on a journey and could not attend, but sent a parcel to Modesty with a note instructing her to open it in private.

Asbrak the Fat settled on Daniel and his bride, with no public ceremony whatever, substantial gifts of land and income in payment to them both for services unnamed.

Modesty made it plain to Daniel, though for form’s sake she asked him, that they must move with Iris to Felshalfen. Daniel made it plain to Modesty that where he lived was a matter of complete indifference to him as long as she lived there too.

On the last night of the official celebrations, Rogan the Obscure mounted a display of fireworks that all agreed would be remembered for a hundred years.

A stinging sleet fell, invisible in the darkness. Marcia walked carefully on the slippery pavement, staying as close as possible to the buildings. She pulled her arms close to her body and flipped her wet collar up against the biting wind. She had lost track of what block she was in. There seemed to be no restaurant or even drugstore where she could take refuge. The storm had been sudden and unexpected, and rush-hour traffic was in a hopeless snarl. Getting a cab or a bus, even had it been possible, would have offered only a continuation of the frustration she felt already with the additional possibility of being in a wreck. Her decision to walk home from work had been sound, except for being impossible. The wind began to blow harder. Marcia took shelter in the doorway of a bank that had been closed for hours.

The nearly motionless traffic seemed tired and dispirited. Hardly a horn sounded. Those that did were choked off and muffled by the furious weather. Marcia decided that if she ever did get home tonight, she would stay in bed all day tomorrow. Mr. Figge’s pet schedule for the current project would suffer, but it seemed unimportant at the moment. Too bad, she thought, that Colette had resigned back in the summer. She would have considered Mr. Figge’s schedule as important as he did. Mr. Figge needed a Colette to stand by him in time of need.

A woman stepped into the doorway. Marcia nodded. The woman smiled as though they were old friends and looked her in the eye. Marcia blinked and glanced away uncomfortably.

“Marcia.” The woman’s voice was barely audible in the wind.

Marcia looked back at her. Her eye was drawn to the thin golden ring on the woman’s hand.

“You are exactly as you were described to me,” the woman continued, as though the two had just met at an office party. “I’m sure the clothes I got for you will fit perfectly.”

“Clothes?”

“Yes, it’s summertime where we’re going, and I knew we wouldn’t have time later to collect a wardrobe. The task we have been assigned must be seen to without delay.”

Marcia felt that her brain must have quit working. She wished she could get in out of the cold. “I’m, I mean, what …?” she stammered.

The woman laughed. “I don’t blame you,” she said. She gestured at the street. “This is just awful. You’ll feel better when we get home. I have your things all ready.”

Marcia stared, shivering in the wind. “Get home?” she said.

“Marcia. Sister. It is time for you to join us. The ring you wear is one of ours—from Elyssana.”

“Elyssana?”

“That’s a formal name. You may know her as Elise, or some other name. But you must call her Elyssa now. It is an intimate name from far back, and it’s the one the Sisterhood uses.” The woman looked at the street again. “I’d really rather explain this when we’re both warm and dry.” She extended her hand. “If you are ready, we can leave this place.”

Marcia remembered, months before, taking Elyssa’s hand and traveling miles in the blink of an eye. She looked at the traffic and the sleet, felt the wind and the cold. She looked at the stranger who had called her sister. The woman smiled, waiting patiently, arm extended. Marcia reached out and took her hand.

The Sorceress Of Ambermere

Ambermere, Book 2

J. Calvin Pierce

1993

ISBN: 0-441-33741-4

Face to face …

“Put him down!” Marcia barked in the sledgehammer soprano of a lady drill sergeant.

The heads of both creatures turned to face her in astonishment.

“Eeewwwww,” said the big one with a delighted grin. “More food. Bigger, too.” The thing glanced up at its captive briefly, then dropped it and turned toward Marcia. The little one fell with a startled shout and danced back out of the way.

The demon looked like something constructed of gigantic orange pipe cleaners. Its limbs were long and spidery, and it stood in a crouch. Its hands and feet were clawed, its grin filled with long, sharp teeth.

“Don’t you want to run?” it asked in a wheedling voice.

Marcia realized she should be afraid. This thing was bigger than she, had a head like a leopard, and teeth like a shark. All she felt was anger and contempt.

“Last chance,” it said ….

For Diane

Chapter 1

It was the hat that caught the eye. Not that it was flamboyant, or that it was worn in a manner calculated to attract attention. On the contrary, it was modestly compact, and colorful only where an enamel-red berry or a tiny yellow petal stood out against the background of woven ferns and herbs. The hat was not worn at a rakish tilt, nor yet pulled down military fashion to tickle the bridge of the nose, in fact, it gave every appearance of having been squared with mathematical precision on the head of the gray-haired lady who wore it. Still, a hat thatched with stems, leaves, berries, and blossoms will get its share of attention.

The lady herself was rather short. It was only when measured with the hat that her height exceeded five feet, but she carried herself with such uncompromising erectness and moved with such evident firmness of purpose that her stature was always the last thing to be noticed by anyone who saw her.

The hat and the posture had been sufficient to keep Marcia from noticing the lady’s aura, unusual though it was, until Hannah had sat down next to her and introduced herself. But this time Hannah did not stop and sit down. That was the way it was supposed to happen, but instead she walked past without a glance. Other things were wrong as well. Marcia was seated, not on a bench in the park as she should have been, but at her desk at work, except that there were trees and gravel paths and benches all around her. That in itself was curious, but not so curious as the fact that as Hannah passed from her field of vision on the left, she entered it again on the right.

While she watched Hannah repeatedly passing by her, Marcia tried to reconcile the puzzling relocation of her desk into the park. Her office, she was certain, was in a building, her desk and appurtenances in a drab little cubicle. Then she remembered: She had put a spell on Mr. Figge—employed a magical powder to make him give her a promotion. That was when her desk and her computer had been moved to the spot under the trees, near the bench where she ate her lunch on days when the weather was nice.

Marcia could picture the crowded freight elevator—all her things jumbled together, falling off her desk. She was worried about her papers, the spreadsheet printouts that had taken her so much time. She could see that they were getting wrinkled and dirty. She would have to do the whole job over again. It was going to be such a bother, and the printer wouldn’t plug into the tree properly ….

Marcia turned her head on her pillow and opened her eyes. Every night of her life, Marcia awoke at midnight. Not the midnight of the clock, but true midnight, the high noon of the night, the moment when the night was at its depth. As a child she had found it disturbing to waken so, but for most of her life she had just noted the passing of the moment and then gone back to sleep. She considered it nothing more than a private peculiarity, like her ability to see auras. She had never given it much thought until the strange woman she had met last summer mentioned it.

She tried to cling to the fading shreds of the dream, but knew only that once again it had been about Hannah and about the strange events of six months ago. She had the sense that the dream had concerned either place or time. Hannah had been very particular about time, in an odd sort of way.

She had, for instance, thought it outrageous that someone she considered her protégée wore a wristwatch—consulted a device, as she called it in a scandalized tone, to regulate her comings and goings.

“Time is perfectly capable of operating without the help of springs and gears,” Hannah had said, pointing to Marcia’s watch. “Wearing that thing only promotes an unwholesome preoccupation with your own mortality.” When she noticed the second hand racing in its eternal circle, she shook her head in disapproving wonder.

“Madness,” she said. “You are trying to batter time into a powder. No wonder it’s so frantic and noisy in this world.” She looked up at the sky. “Dawn … noon … sunset. These things can be seen plainly, and divide the day sufficiently for any sensible purpose.”

Marcia tried to think of something relevant or at least cheerful to say, and ended up saying nothing. After a moment, Hannah continued.

“The fourth division—midnight—is hidden. It is recognized only by a few; by those who need to know the center of the night.”

Marcia wondered who on earth would have such an ominous-sounding need. To “know the center of the night,” she thought skeptically, then realized with a start that she knew, and always had known, when the deepest hour of the night fell. It was this that woke her every night. She had never thought about it, but she knew at once that it was true.

It was bits of revelation like this one, as much as Hannah’s highly unusual aura, not to mention Marcia’s overdeveloped sense of tact and courtesy, that had prompted her to continue meeting with the lady who called herself a witch. And it was continuing to meet with her that, finally, had made last summer such an eventful one.

Eventful would not have been a word to describe Marcia’s life up to that point. She lived alone, and had worked in the same office for fifteen years, putting up with the petty tyrannies of her boss until they had come to seem almost reasonable. She took carefully planned vacations and was often relieved when they were over. She played bridge without great enthusiasm. She read a lot of library books.

Then one lunchtime the short lady with the exemplary posture, unusual hat, and peculiar aura had sat down next to her on a park bench and started talking about witchcraft. Despite, or perhaps because of, her ability to see auras, Marcia was a confirmed skeptic on matters that had any connection with the occult. The existence of auras she was obliged to concede, but she had never harbored any belief in astrology, palm reading, tarot, or astral projection, let alone anything so eccentric as witchcraft.

In what Marcia soon came to recognize as her characteristic manner, Hannah did not waste time soliciting Marcia’s opinion on witchcraft, nor did she ask whether she had any interest in learning to practice it. She had simply informed her that she, Marcia, was now her, Hannah’s, “adept,” and that it would be necessary for her to pay careful attention to everything her teacher said.

As it turned out, being the apprentice of a witch was the tame part of her unusual experiences. Even when she employed, reluctantly and fearfully, the little box of powder and its accompanying spell on Mr. Figge in the sanctity of his own office—this when Hannah had become impatient with Marcia’s rigid work schedule and insisted she arrange to set her own hours; even when she acquired harrowing firsthand knowledge that a mugger armed with a knife was no more than a minor annoyance to the witch; these things, considered in light of the events that followed, were insignificant, about on a par with an afternoon at the zoo.

Marcia tossed the covers back. She reached up and touched her cheekbone. Next to her eye she wore a scar, put there by a demon. On her hand she wore a thin gold ring, put there by a woman, Elise—Elyssa, whose aura was the polar opposite of the horrific emanation that surrounded the demon, and so dazzling that Marcia had found it hard to believe it could be invisible to anyone. And this woman, little more than a girl in her outward appearance, had dealt with the demon as handily as Hannah had dealt with the mugger.

Marcia got out of bed and walked to the window. She pulled back the drapes and gazed down to the avenue below. She remembered waking up at midnight on the day she had first seen the demon. She had been convinced that he was outside, waiting for her. But then, as now, the sidewalk was deserted. It was another, different sort of memory that was connected with the apartment building.

Marcia was able to pick out the precise spot where Elyssa had left her on that last night. She remembered standing alone outside the building in the muggy night, confused and disoriented. Her cheek had still been oozing blood, and burned with a hot sting that had not completely gone away for weeks. But at that moment she didn’t even notice the pain; she was too busy trying to figure out what had happened. She had taken Elyssa’s hand in an alley miles from her apartment and then, with no intervening sensation of motion or elapsing time, had found herself alone on the spot she peered down at now.

She let the drape fall back across the window. All those things had happened last summer, six months ago. The last time she had met with Hannah, the older woman had told her that wearing Elyssa’s ring, facing the demon—these experiences had carried her beyond the possibility of apprenticing with a witch, but that she was certain they would meet again.

They had not. There had been no more demons, witches, or enchantresses in Marcia’s life. She sighed and looked at the ring. Elyssa had asked her to continue to wear it—had said she seemed “suited to it.” She had said nothing more, but Marcia had assumed … something, she wasn’t sure what.

A draft from the window washed across her bare ankles like ice water. Marcia crossed the room and got back into bed.

When she dreamed again, it was of waking up in the morning without Elyssa’s ring, or even a mark on her finger to show that she had ever worn it. She dressed quickly in the clothes she had been wearing on the night she defied the power of the demon, and went to see Hannah, who lived, not in some parallel world in a cottage outside a city by the name of Ambermere, but in an efficiency apartment on the fifth floor of Marcia’s building.

“No, no, those things never happened, my dear,” said Hannah, then pointed out to Marcia that the clothes she had on proved that she was imagining all of it. Marcia felt stupid. How could she have missed something so obvious? Of course she would never wear high heels with slacks. She wondered if she could be losing her mind.

“But what about my job?” she said, gesturing to her office cubicle, which was next to Hannah’s kitchen. “I set my own hours,” she added in an insistent whine that echoed in her ears and embarrassed her. She looked around at Hannah’s collection of clocks, watches, and antique electric shavers. Marcia stared, letting her eyes wander over the jumble of brass and glass and polished steel. She realized suddenly that she was trapped by time—that there was no such thing as setting your own hours. Your hours set you.

She raised her fingers to her cheek. This was all too silly. She would show this old woman that she was not crazy. On that night last summer she had conquered her terror and stood alone in the shadow of a demon. She had the evidence of her scar.

Except that she couldn’t find it. Her skin felt like porcelain. Marcia got a startled glimpse of herself through Hannah’s eyes. She looked like a nineteen-year-old cosmetics model. Her tight, poreless skin gleamed under the muted colors of her makeup. Her hair, which had become jet black, was pulled back into a severe bun.

Somewhere, someone was laughing at her.

She awoke with only a vague memory of the first dream, and none at all of the second. The weather was warm for the third week in January. Marcia waited until the worst part of rush hour was over, then walked to work, as she did whenever she had the chance. She rarely walked home; an hour of bad air and noise after a day filled with deadening trivia was more than she cared to face. For years she had taken the bus in the evenings. Since her promotion last summer, she nearly always rode home in a taxi.

Late in the afternoon, the weather, which had been predicted to remain springlike until the weekend, fumed suddenly nasty. The sky darkened, and the temperature dropped more than twenty degrees in two hours. When the sleet began, everyone else in the office gathered at the windows to watch, and to discuss the reliability of meteorologists. Marcia checked to make sure she had an umbrella, then went doggedly on with the project she was determined to finish.

She stayed on after everyone else had gone home. She knew there was nothing pressing about getting the spreadsheet printouts out of the way, but the thought of them had been pursuing her with a nagging worry since before her first cup of coffee that morning. She worked until the power went out, then made her way down the stairs in the glare of the emergency lights.

The sleet that stung her was invisible in the darkness. Marcia walked carefully on the slippery pavement, staying close to the buildings. She flipped her wet collar up against the biting wind. Her collapsible umbrella had collapsed inside out and forever when the first stiff gust had ripped at it many blocks back.

She had lost track of just how far she had walked. She was trying to remember the location of the nearest hotel or restaurant—or drugstore, for that matter. Traffic was stopped. There was no hope of getting a cab or a bus, nor any reason to. Trying to walk home had been a sound idea, but was beginning to seem impossible. The wind began to blow harder. Marcia took shelter in the doorway of a bank that had been closed for hours.

The traffic seemed tired and dispirited. Hardly a horn sounded. Those that did were muffled by the furious weather. Marcia decided that if she ever did get home tonight, she would stay in bed all day tomorrow.

A woman stepped into the doorway. Marcia nodded. The woman smiled as though they were old friends and looked her in the eye. Marcia blinked and glanced away uncomfortably.

“Marcia.” The voice was barely audible in the wind.

Marcia looked back at her. The woman held out her hand. She was wearing a thin golden ring. “You are exactly as you were described to me.” she continued, as though the two had just met at an office party. “I’m sure the clothes I got for you will fit perfectly.”

“Clothes?”

“Yes, it’s summertime where we’re going, and I knew we wouldn’t have time later to collect a wardrobe.”

Marcia felt that her brain must have quit working. She wished she could get in out of the cold. “I’m, I mean, what … ?” she stammered.

The woman laughed. “I don’t blame you,” she said. She gestured at the street. “This is just awful. You’ll feel better when we get home. I have your things all ready.”

Marcia stared, shivering in the wind. “Get home?” she said. She looked again at the ring the woman wore. The meaning of what she had said sank in. Marcia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Months ago, in the alley outside the strip joint, she had taken Elyssa’s hand. A moment later she had stood miles uptown, dazed and shaken, on the deserted sidewalk outside her apartment building. She opened her eyes and reached out.

They walked with their heads bent into the wind. Marcia’s shoes had been saturated already, and yet were somehow getting wetter. Her red fingers were caught in the numbing grip of her companion’s icy hand.

The woman had said they would be warm and dry when they “got home.” Instead, Marcia was colder and wetter than she could ever remember being. At least in the doorway she had been out of the wet, and the worst of the wind. At the corner the woman did not hesitate at the curb, but stepped into the snarl of traffic. The rumble of the engines, the swipe and slap of hundreds of windshield wipers, all were muted beneath the furious wind and the rain and sleet it drove. It was a ghostly scene, and behind the fogged glass were the ghostly forms of men and women trapped in a metropolitan purgatory.

Marcia was matching the purposeful stride of her companion, walking abreast of her, and yet felt as though she were being dragged along. When her right foot plunged into a puddle nearly to her ankle, the shock of the engulfing raw icy water made her stumble. The woman glanced at her, but seemed intent on the motionless cars around them. She pulled Marcia’s hand close to her side and piloted them to the far sidewalk.

Once safely off the street the woman stopped. The wind was spitting ice water at them; conversation was nearly impossible. The woman clasped Marcia’s shoulders and leaned close.

“I’m sorry,” she said, almost shouting to be heard before her words were blown away, “it’s really not far. Please don’t be angry—”

Marcia realized that anger had been building in her. She had been near to getting “in a temper,” as her mother had always called her tiny explosions of wrath. But allowing herself a temper was something Marcia had outgrown early. By the time she entered grade school, she was shy and quiet. She kept her anger for her private moments. At least until the unusual events of last summer, and a few times since.

The woman grinned. Although she was probably only slightly younger than Marcia, at that moment she looked girlish with her hair soaked flat and streams of rain running down her face.

“Honest,” she yelled. “This is not the way we usually operate. Fortunately.” She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. The effect was temporary. “By the way, my name is Annie.”

Marcia held out her hand. “I’m …” she began.

Annie laughed into the wind. “I know, Marcia,” she said. “I’ve known about you for months.” She hunched up her shoulders and shivered. “Now, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to get home. We’re not going to have much time to rest.”

Marcia lost count, but in four or five or maybe six blocks they came to a street of large, tired-looking brownstone town houses. As they turned the corner, the wind abated. For a second, Marcia felt almost warm. She was about to say something to Annie when a sustained gust began to fling splinters of rain and sleet into their faces. Annie picked up her pace, hurrying to an entrance a few doors down the street. As she rushed to keep up, Marcia noticed a man approaching. He wore no coat—only a hooded sweatshirt that hung on him in wet folds. He quickened his pace. He seemed to be staring at them intently. Marcia could see nothing of his aura, only his pale face inside the hood, and night shadows and rain. Annie had her head bent away from the wind. She seemed not to see the man.

He reached the house just after they did. As Marcia and Annie began to make their cautious way up the ice-glazed concrete steps, he fell in behind. Marcia glanced over her shoulder. The man was right behind them. With one hand he steadied himself on the railing, with the other he was reaching toward her.

Marcia pulled from Annie’s grasp and turned as fast as she could without slipping. She clenched her ring hand into a tight frozen fist. She raised her other hand to point at the man, as though with that gesture she could command him to keep away. She felt her alarm, her fear, change to a sudden unexpected surge of anger.

The man leapt back. He lost his footing on the icy steps and saved himself from a fall by an awkward lunge to the railing, where he hung on with both hands as he scrambled to get his feet under him. In the same instant, Marcia heard a shout from behind her and felt a firm hand seize her forearm.

“No! Don’t!” Annie’s voice had more of an edge than the bitter wind.

Marcia was confused. She blinked. The rain was pouring down her face, and now down the back of her neck as well. Don’t what? she thought. Annie released her arm and went to the man. She helped him stand up. His hood had fallen back. His hair was plastered to his head with rain. He looked as much like a drowned cat as Annie did. As though to answer Marcia’s silent question, he smiled at her uncertainly and said, “Yeah, please don’t fry the help,” which, in the noise of the wind and the confusion of the situation sounded to Marcia like “please don’t try the kelp.” Annie was watching her carefully. Marcia nodded uncertainly. She couldn’t, at that moment, remember whether kelp was a kind of seaweed or a variety of fish.

The man, introduced simply as Dennis, produced a key from the pocket of his jeans and opened the front door onto an unlighted vestibule. He stood back so that the two women could enter, then followed, leaving the street door open behind them. Water poured from their garments onto the floor of dirty cracked tiles. Shivering and smelling of wet cloth, they rearranged themselves in the cramped space to allow Dennis to get to the inner door. It had a window of stained glass that looked as though it had once been less opaque than it now was. Behind it could be seen the faintest of lights. After some difficulty, during which Marcia had leisure to wonder if she would ever be able to stop shivering, Dennis found the right key. He inserted it, but before turning the bolt, pulled the outer door closed behind them.

As a girl, Marcia had lived in an apartment building in which the odors of boiling cabbage and cheap cigars competed for predominance. It had been one of the modest pleasures of her adulthood to be able to live away from such smells. Now, for the first time in years, they were in her nose again. She winced, not so much at the odors as at the vivid memories they recalled. This could be a nasty winter day of thirty years ago, and she a fifth-grader fleeing the cold for the comforts of a hissing radiator and supper in the kitchen.

Inside the inner door the hallway presented a scene of moldering elegance. An ancient rag that had probably been an opulent product of the looms of Antwerp battled to cover the narrow floorboards. Halfway back the long corridor a staircase rose in dusty magnificence to a broad landing cluttered with trash bags and an object that looked as though it had once had wheels.

Dennis locked the door behind him. “Sorry about the keys,” he said, addressing both of them. He smiled at Marcia. “I generally come in the back way,” he explained, “and the girls almost never use the street door.”

Marcia nodded and smiled politely at Dennis while trying to think of some way to make up for nearly causing him to break his neck on the steps. Nothing sprang to mind, partly because she was at the same time trying to figure out what possible connection this tenement could have with Elise, the ring, and the events of last summer. She had thought, through the fall and winter, that she was meant never to hear more of whatever she had been in touch with for those weeks. Hannah had said they would meet again, but then Hannah had disappeared, apparently forever. And the young man, Daniel; she had harbored hopes of seeing him in the city. For those first weeks she had haunted the little park, hoping he might show up there. True, he had been full of questions, but even he had seemed to know more than she did.

Dennis turned back to Annie. “Listen, you’re in charge of the house, right?”

“No, I am not. You are in charge. Completely. I happen to be the one who hands out the money.” She paused for a moment, as though she had just thought of something. A sudden burst of laughter escaped her lips. “The girls,” she said. “Really!”

Dennis grinned and started to say something. Annie interrupted him.

“Never mind,” she laughed. “Anyway, I’m going to be away for a while, so don’t forget to come and get some cash and checks later.”

“Okay,” he said. “But just give me a minute before you disappear. Archibald is upset about something and he is sure you’re the only one to talk to.”

“But what can—oh, never mind.” Annie turned to Marcia. She looked apologetic. “You’ll see. None of this is normal.” She gestured to a splintering wooden bench built into an elaborate coat rack that with its mahogany columns and finials might, on a larger scale, have served as the facade of a public monument. “Just rest here while I go downstairs. Unless you want to come along.” Marcia shook her head. Annie smiled as if being wet and chilled were far from her thoughts. “It should only take a minute,” she said. She and Dennis walked past the staircase and disappeared through a doorway.

Marcia sank onto the bench. She unbuttoned her coat wearily and let it fall from her shoulders. She was wet and cold, and probably the most sensible thing anyone had said to her since she left the office was to please not try the shad. She turned her eyes toward the ceiling and cupped her chin in her hand. Was it shad? “Kelp,” she said aloud.

“What?”

Despite her exhausted state, Marcia jumped. She looked around. There was no one in the hallway. She took a deep breath and comforted herself with the thought that disembodied voices were more in the line of what she would expect from a place connected with Elise and Hannah, not to mention the wizards, whoever they were.

“What you want?”

Marcia caught a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked up the dim staircase. On the landing was a very small and very old black lady dressed in a lace nightie and wearing a bonnet that nearly engulfed her head. Marcia stared.

“You say help?” the lady asked.

Marcia shook her head. “No. Uh, sorry. Kelp.” She pronounced the word with great care, putting emphasis on the consonants, as though it would make everything clear. “I was just thinking aloud,” she added lamely. It came to her suddenly that kelp was a sort of mackerel. She could picture them, vaguely, spotted and slim, drifting in three-dimensional squadrons through heavy green shadows.

The old lady chuckled. “Oh, never mind,” she sang out. “You’re one of the ladies. I know,” she said, nodding inside her bonnet. “Never mind.” She gave another chuckle, then began ascending the stairs. In a moment she was out of sight, though Marcia thought she heard her say “I know” and “never mind” once more before the hallway was silent again.

Marcia leaned back against the lumpy carved back of the seat. The hallway was not overheated, but seemed for the moment almost tropical compared with the street outside. As the chill left her cheeks she could feel a stinging beside her left eye. She raised her hand and touched the place lightly. It was the first time in months that the scar had given her pain. It had faded with the summer, leaving only a faint line where the flesh had oozed thick blood that hot night in the alley. And the pain had faded with the scar, though Marcia was always conscious of a sensation, not pain, inhabiting the place where the demon had cut her. The precise path of the scar, the curve that it followed, were resident as a visual image in a corner of her consciousness. The line on her skin that she saw in the mirror had seemed from the first morning as familiar as the contour of her chin or the shape of her eyebrows, as though she had worn it always.

She rose and turned to the mirror, leaning toward the ancient glass. It was pocked and pitted. A thousand thin lines lay behind the glass, as though it were a window looking into the habitation of a colony of insanely industrious spiders. Marcia turned her head to catch the light. Her scar looked as it had that morning, a line too small and too faint to disfigure. She had begun to think of it, in fact, as a feature that improved her appearance. It disrupted the dull symmetry of her face and supplied at least one single mark of interest on a physiognomy otherwise unmemorable.

But she wished it would not burn. She supposed it was the exposure to the bitter wind and lashing rain that caused it. And what had Annie said? It was summer where they were going. Marcia laughed and rolled her eyes. She looked around the hallway, up the stairs to the landing. What on earth was she doing here? She paced to the door, leaving wet footprints on the faded carpet. She felt a frigid draft on her ankles from the black vestibule. She stepped back from the door and worked her feet out of her soaking shoes, kicking them in the direction of the painted woodwork. Her feet were numb and stiff. She wiggled her toes. She stepped to a dry patch of carpet, stood there for a moment, then moved to another. The wet hosiery stuck to her calves felt like ice. Marcia regretted the impossibility of removing panty hose without seriously compromising both dignity and modesty. If the old lady on the landing had caught her with her skirt up around her waist and knots of taupe nylon tangling at her knees she wouldn’t have taken her for “one of the ladies.”

Which again raised the question of what she, Marcia, was doing there. She used her hands to try to squeegee some of the ice water from her hair. She had just made a desperate dash with a complete stranger through weather that would daunt an Eskimo on the strength of a few hints about things that she had virtually no knowledge of beyond what she had been able to guess after her small and isolated part in a series of highly ambiguous events that had occurred six months before.

Yet those events had been unambiguous enough for her to imagine—hope—that by taking the hand of her “sister” she would be instantly transported to … “Oz,” she said aloud, with a glance at the landing. So she and Annie had followed the yellow brick road to the brownstone over the rainbow. And now here she was, shivering in a deserted hallway, waiting to join a sorority of witches, or whatever, that apparently had made an investment in a piece of questionable downtown real estate. Marcia could not help picturing her apartment. Warm, dry. Clean. She shifted to a fresh spot on the carpet.

The stained-glass window in the door rattled violently, as though someone were attempting to break in. Marcia tensed and whirled. A sudden cold draft washed across her feet. For a moment there was silence, then she heard the sound of a key in the lock. She sent a despairing glance toward her shoes by the wall. She felt undressed. As the door opened, she stepped back quickly and sat on the bench, pulling her feet back to the ragged edge of the rug.

A fat wet blond wearing a lot of waterproof makeup clattered into the hallway. She was followed by a slender unshaven man who closed the door quietly behind them. The blond had her eyes squeezed shut. She was shaking herself and flailing her arms. She looked like a person being attacked by hornets.

“My hair’s ruined,” she squealed in a high-decibel falsetto. Marcia fought the impulse to put her hands over her ears. The man knocked his cap against his thigh. He appeared to have kept remarkably dry. He was no wetter than one might get sprinting across a patio in a summer shower. He nodded at Marcia,

The woman carefully brushed at her eyes with her forefingers, then blinked. When she saw Marcia, she jumped. She emitted a single “Oh!” at a pitch high enough to shatter crystal. Her frank stare lingered on Marcia’s soaked stringy hair, then traveled unerringly to where her bare feet were tucked against the base of the bench.

“Good evening,” the woman said finally in a tone of voice that obviously was looking for dignity, but in an octave where it couldn’t be found. She seemed to be able to speak only in a sort of muted shriek. “Come, Mr. Smith,” she piped. She began to make her way up the stairs. The man followed lightly in her wake. Marcia could hear the woman’s heavy step long after she was out of sight.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” whispered Marcia. She sat motionless and silent for a minute, then rose and gathered up her shoes. Putting them on was unpleasant, but so was leaving them off, and so, anyway, was every alternative to a hot bath that she could think of. She started to pull her coat over her shoulders, but it was so wet and cold she decided to put it off until it couldn’t be avoided. She got up and stood listening at the foot of the stairs. All was silent but for the intermittent pulse of faint music. Marcia spent a moment picturing the blond and Mr. Smith dancing under a plastic chandelier fitted with colored bulbs, then walked quickly to the door. After listening again for a moment, she opened it and stepped through.

The vestibule was freezing. Through the outer door she could hear the wind, still pushing its way between the buildings. She braced herself and opened the front door. Maybe traffic had calmed down. Maybe there would be cabs cruising. She imagined a quick drive uptown, a luxurious soak in the tub, an unaccustomed drink before dinner, a nice hot meal with a glass of wine, and then a cozy bed full of quilts and pillows.

As before, the only cars on this side street were parked. She stuck her head out into the wind to look down to the corner. The rain was as heavy as it had been. Leaving was out of the question. As she retreated behind the door, she caught sight of a solitary figure in the shadows across the street. A tall person—man or woman, she couldn’t tell—wearing a long hooded cloak, stood as if halted in mid-stride and gazed at her as she closed the door. She pushed the inner door open. Watching her from where she stood beside the stairs was Annie. Her apologetic smile was gone, replaced by an unreadable expression. Marcia’s eyes moved to the space that should have been occupied by Annie’s aura.

She was conscious again of the burning by her eye. She blinked, staring at the person who faced her. She fought the panicky impulse to retreat to the vestibule. Outside was the impossible weather, to say nothing of the person—a guard?—across the street. Down the hall behind Annie, a door opened. Dennis appeared and started toward them, followed by another person that Marcia couldn’t see. The two advanced only a few steps, then stopped. Marcia forced herself to step forward, peering at her “sister” as though a dense fog separated them. She was not mistaken. No colors, no form, no divisions outlined the person staring back at her. This was not a matter of subtlety, of poor light. Annie’s aura was not muted or lost in shadow, it was absent.

Chapter 2

Even asleep, the old man was hungry. He had come down out of the mountains days ago. He had been hungry then and had stolen a goose. He couldn’t remember anything about the mountains or how long he had been there or what he had eaten, but now he was hungry again. He was looking for a piglet.

The first fat drops of a cold rain struck his cheekbone, his eyelid. Eyes still closed, brain still thick with dreams and sleep, he groped at the dirt of the ditch he lay in. He had dreamed of roasting pork so vividly that the aroma lingered in his nostrils as he sat up and brushed the cold mud from his cheek.

Sometime yesterday he had wandered from the road. Since then he had seen no towns or villages, no farms. He might have been traveling in an uninhabited country, an endless empty meadow. More than once he had tried eating dried flowers but couldn’t. Berries, too. Several varieties, but all small and hard, and all bitter with a lingering sharpness that stayed in the throat.

His clothing was ragged and damp. The rain came just often enough to prevent him from ever drying out completely and getting warm. In the mountains he had been warm, he was sure of it, yet now he had to keep pushing the cold from him. Shaking it off. And always it came back to bite at him. But the mountains had been warm, and mists had wet the leaves in the mornings. He pulled at his memory. He remembered yesterday—the winter meadows, the groves of bare trees. He could remember those things but not the mountains, save the memory of warmth.

He could picture a bed. In fact an explicit image came and went like the mutterings that intruded on his silences. The bed was grand and draped in silks. It rested on a tile floor in a room so vast that the walls were indistinct and shadowy. Tapers burned, but only a few, casting so little light that the bare and dimpled serving maidens were clothed in modest shadows. This he could all picture, down to the cold glaze on the tiles and the graceful naked feet that fell on them without a sound.

But now he pictured a piglet. He rolled himself forward onto his knees and straightened his back. His head was level with the top of the shallow ditch that had served as his bed, as well as bedchamber, dressing room, foyer, closet, parlor—in fact, his mansion entire.

He had a perfect rat’s-eye view of the floor of the meadow. The rats themselves of course were all warm and dry, huddled together in safe holes, bellies full, little sleeping teeth set in smiles.

He pondered their happy situation. “But for the dogs of time,” he muttered hoarsely. He cleared his throat and spat.

He stood up on legs slightly bowed. He was thickset, especially at the waist. His shoulders were square, his arms bulky under his ragged tunic. A stout, solid man despite his thinning hair, the white of his beard.

He scanned the field, dull under a rainy dawn. The rain was getting heavier. He tilted his head back and searched the sky to the horizon. It would rain long, A cold wind would come at dusk. By morning the ground would be covered with snow. Thin ice would cap the puddles. But first a long rain. Today some rats would drown.

He clambered from the ditch. At the top he stood up and peered into the darkest distance, opposite the hidden sun and toward the weather. He stepped forward a few paces, leaning to one side as if to find a way to see through the falling rain. He turned like a man aligning himself with the aid of a compass, all the while gazing into the far distance.

“Something—something,” he muttered vaguely. “Clouds first, thunder after.” He scanned the horizon. “How it has been all threaded and knit, just so. All separated and combined. Water above and water beneath. And all with words. All with words.”

The wind pushed his wet clothes against his skin, as though to drive out any fugitive warmth. When he set out, it was at a quick short-legged stride over the uneven ground. Within minutes he was out of sight of the ditch where he had spent the night.

The fields he crossed were vast, but did not hold unchallenged possession of the land. There were woods, large and small, scattered on the wide landscape, remnants of the forest that had once ruled in unbroken dominion. The first wood he reached, he skirted. Later, at the second, he did the same. The third lay across his path and seemed to fill the world. As he stepped under the shelter of the outermost trees, he began to whistle the tune of some old song he had heard somewhere. “Whistle up a pig,” he suggested to himself. The idea struck him as so apt that it brought a wide smile to his face, and that brought an end to his whistling.

By then, he had walked all morning, and all morning the rain had washed his sodden clothing, his hair, his beard. Now, under the trees, the rain did not strike at him, but dripped from the bare branches. When he had penetrated deep into the tangle of roots and bushes, following as the random ways led him, he chose to rest beneath a great spreading tree, and soon he was asleep. He slept while the unseen sun made its way overhead. He slept and was entertained by dreams of luxury, by dreams of plump ripe women with eager eyes, and finally by dreams of roasting pork.

When he woke, it was again as at dawn, with the odor of singed pig palpable, almost visible before him. He kept his eyes shut tight. He sniffed. The air was heavy with mist, noisy with falling rain. He inhaled deeply. Still the aroma of his dream remained. He turned his head slowly, inhaled as though ambitious to breathe without causing any movement of air. He held his breath. He was completely motionless, sprawled on the forest floor like a fallen statue.

His eyelids rose like a mechanical doll’s. Still he did not stir. Moving only his eyes, he searched his surroundings. He sniffed at the wet air again, snatching at the scent like a dog. This pig, this spitted carcass, this smoking, dripping, hissing bundle of flesh and fat, this was not a mocking phantasm haunting the dreams of a hungry wanderer, this was an actual animal on an actual fire. He got his feet under him and stood up. It was far away, this waiting feast. He would be the rest of the day getting there. But the smell of the flesh shrinking from the coals was like a guiding hand. The odor that reached him was faint but clear, like the true sound of a distant winded horn.

“And this we humbly offer to the God, this flawless animal turning on the spit, this virgin cask of precious wine unbroached, these breads set to bake upon the hearth. While these good things are preparing, we will retire to our work and our prayers. At dusk we will return in solemn procession to offer this feast to the Beneficent Deity, and to share among ourselves and our noble guests the scraps from His table, the dregs from His cup.” The abbot, whose back was to the gathered monks, permitted himself a smile. The God was most generous to his earthly servants. By some religious happenstance these scraps and dregs were not distinguishable, except under a theological examination of the most enterprising nicety, from the plenty of a secular feast. “And most gratefully will we commit to His fire the choicest morsels moistened in the purest wine.” How lucky for them that the Deity had such a dainty appetite. He lowered his hands to his wide belly. A buxom young woman crossed the room silently. He stood in reverent silence watching the graceful motions of her swaying hips as she went to inspect the rising loaves. How many pairs of eyes did not follow her? Brother Ignis was blind. Brother Lebbik was over ninety. The others watched. Some doubtless more attentively than others. Brother Alwyn was smoldering as surely as the pig. Burn, Brother Alwyn, he thought. Your youth will burn in those fires. He smiled at the happy thought. What a treasure was a healthy woman widowed young. What a balm and comfort. He waited until Mora returned to her chair near the spit before dismissing the assembly. As the monks filed out, he stayed behind.

“Now, my girl,” he said when they were alone, “let no one in here until I return at the evening bells.” He stepped nearer the turning pig and drew a finger rapidly across the glistening flesh, then touched it to his tongue. “The feast must not be profaned.” He licked his lips. “More garlic,” he said. As she passed him he brushed his hand across her swaying backside as he had touched the pig: in confident anticipation of pleasure soon to be savored. “This is going to be a heavenly night,” he said, with a confusion of lust and gluttony filling his thoughts. “And you understand,” he called after her, “that I will require your attendance in my apartments later.”

She nodded without turning. “I know”—she made a face—“Your Worship.” She heard his heavy step receding, heard the latch turn in the chapel door. Now, if in these last hours of tending the spit and watching the loaves, with the real work already done, she could only find a way to lure Alwyn from his pious labors. What a figure of a youth just come to manhood. And how needing of some wholesome recreation. Come and prune my vines, she thought. Come bring your loaf to my oven. She drew her hands across her thighs, her stomach, and pressed them against her ribs beneath her bosom. Her lips parted. If only he would come to her. She caught his eye at every chance. He had blushed like a maiden that very morning when she passed him on the garden path. She was sure he burned as hot as she did. And today was the perfect day, this the perfect private place. Let him come today before the feast, and she would endure the fat priest willingly after it.

At the thought of the abbot, her head dropped. Desire drained from her. Still, she was well fed—better than most—and underworked. Such fires as still burned in the abbot were quickly quenched, and her other duties light. She might have worked at whoring and had more amusement, but she had no urge to sink so low. She laughed mockingly. Here she did respectable work.

She walked to the shelf and raised the cloth from the rising loaves. She touched them with a practiced hand. Coming nicely. Right on schedule. They would be still warm from the hearth when the first plates were passed.

At the sound of the latch, her blood was warm again. She did not turn. There was no one who had business here before tonight, so a visitor, being illicit anyway, might as well be the illicit visitor she wished for, and on the errand of her hopes. She pictured Alwyn’s full lips, his pale unlined skin. Footsteps approached. If this was someone else, some doddering monk with a message, she was going to throw herself into the fire. She took a deep breath. She closed her eyes and then turned and opened them.

Alwyn was some few paces away. As it had been on the path that morning, his customary pallor was overcome with rising blood. He began to say something. Mora raised a forestalling hand. “Brother,” she said in the tone of a schoolmistress, “pray do not weary yourself with speech.”

Much later, Mora checked the bread as she made adjustments to her clothing. Brother Alwyn had stumbled from the chapel some time ago, but she had been unable to find in herself an urgent interest in rising dough. Brother Alwyn, inexperienced though he was, had been able to put all her urgency to rest for the time. She was hungry, but only in a languid and comfortable way. She cast a glance at the turning roast. Perfect. The meat would be falling from the bone as the brothers and the guests arrived.

A bell sounded in the distance. It would soon be time to set the bread to baking. She poured some wine she had brought in a flask from the abbot’s pantry. Alwyn had benefited from it earlier, but she had taken none. Now it seemed just the thing for her mood. She drained the cup and poured another, sipping at it contentedly and wondering if it was possible that anyone else in the kingdom, however wealthy and pampered, could feel half as good as she did at this moment.

When she finished the second cup, she fed the fire and placed the bread carefully in the open oven. She surveyed the roast again, then drifted from the room to rest for a while on the rug she had shared with her eager blushing lover.

She awoke with a start to the smell of burning bread. As she leapt to her feet, she heard a pounding noise from the chapel. An intruder? Who would dare violate these precincts? The poor and hungry knew that they must steal from one another, never from the priests or nobles, for it was there that justice reached the limits of its indulgence. You might steal a goose from your neighbor and pay, if caught, in coin. Rob the rich and flesh would be the currency in which you paid your fine.

She crept to the doorway fearing what she would see. Had young Alwyn been driven mad by the abandon with which they had earlier indulged their passion? Had he been flooded with guilt and come unhinged when his cold reason recalled the excesses his hot blood had led him to? And, she thought contritely, his lover, for she had led him, played him like a fiddle, and taught him every tune she knew.

At the door, she held back. Maybe she had slept long—through the banquet. That must be it. The burning bread would be one of the scraps they grudgingly fed to the fire for the delectation of their god. For a rich man’s god he ate very poor. The noises would be but the dying embers of their holy revelry, a few drunken priests and lords solemnly agreeing that they were each and all most remarkable fellows, particularly deserving of every advantage they enjoyed. She stole a cautious glance into the room.

It was the blood that captured her attention. Pooled on the stones before the altar. Seeping from the cracked cask. She shuddered. No. She breathed again. Wine. Red wine from the new cask, virgin no more.

A few rags—clothing—lay in a heap on the floor. Water spread from them and mingled with the spilled wine. She blinked. She seemed to be able to see only one thing at a time. This was a dream, then. The old man. Standing naked like a baby in a village doorway. But a man. In one hand he held a jeweled goblet overflowing with the virgin wine. In the other was a wrenched-off hunk of steaming pork. He stood close by the fire, bathing in the heat. She looked to the spit. The clockwork mechanism had been kicked aside, the weights unbalanced. The prize porker now hung motionless, cooling on one side, charring on the other. Her loaves were strewn about the floor, except for one torn fragment on a table near the intruder. One loaf, as her nose had already informed her, was smoking in the fire itself.

The old man yanked at the pork with his teeth, tearing it from his own hand like an angry beast. Mora took one step into the room to better take in the wonder of the disarray. The old man set his goblet on the altar and poured from the leaking cask, then having filled the vessel, raised the cask and poured in the direction of his open mouth, but whether to drink the wine or bathe in it, Mora could not tell. He turned next to the meat, pulling from the carcass a portion that could have flavored cabbage enough to feed a tribe of Gypsies. He took one bite, then carelessly tossed the rest onto the coals.

“What a feast for Heaven today,” he cried, raising his goblet in a brief salute before drinking.

From where she stood, Mora could immediately smell the burning flesh and the acrid aroma peculiar to blackening garlic.

She watched indifferently as the old man stole another gigantic morsel. This scene was far too bizarre to provoke, or even permit, any rational reaction. She smiled. How could she ever describe this—this naked bull of an old man disposing of food meant for a roomful of his betters. She began to laugh, very softly, then a little louder when she remembered that the abbot had wanted more garlic. She watched the old man renew his attack on the roast. “More garlic,” she whispered, and covered her mouth with her hand to smother her laughter.

The old man stopped chewing and glanced up at her as though her presence was no surprise to him. He gestured to the torn and smoking roast. “I was looking for a piglet,” he said. He beckoned. “Come and have some. And some wine. It’s very good wine. Come honor the gods.” He beckoned again. There was something compelling in the casual gesture. Mora approached him, very much doubting the wisdom of it. “Help yourself, there’s plenty. I don’t mind sharing.” He chuckled. “Just a piglet is all I was looking for.”

He pulled the nearest goblet from the table and filled it from the cask, again spilling much precious wine on the floor. She laughed and skipped away from the sparkling droplets that splashed at her skirts.

“Here,” he said, reaching toward her, “you can’t eat in those clothes. They’ll be stained.” He looked down at himself. “I never wear clothes at a feast,” he explained. Mora stepped back from him, blushing. The wine, the nap, and Alwyn’s visit had put her in the oddest mood. At the thought of Alwyn, she felt an unexpected flush of pleasure, even a muted hint of desire. The old man looked perplexed. He dropped his head and stared at the floor.

“The king of the rats died today,” he said. “Drowned. Thrashing and jerking in a tunnel full of muddy water.” Mora stared at him. He smiled gently. “You know,” he said, raising his eyes to hers, “there are—wait a minute—yes, there are four fields, connected. And you can see them all, one here”—he pointed ahead, then to his sides—“one here, one here, and one”—he raised his elbow and tried to point behind himself, groping with a piece of the roast—“that way, but not … not here. Somewhere else.” He tossed the meat in the direction of the fire and stepped to Mora’s side. He was hardly taller than she. Her staring eyes looked directly into his. From outside came the faint sound of a bell.

It took him a few minutes to pull all her clothing from her. She felt the heat of the fire on her bare skin. His hand was soft and smooth as he caressed her. She closed her eyes.

“Perfect,” she heard him say. “Perfect.” She felt her cheeks grow warm. “But we must feast. Here.” She opened her eyes. He handed her the goblet he had filled. She watched him pick up his own and raise it. The old man’s eyes filled with sudden tears.

“To the king of the rats.”

Feeling all the while that she was doing something she shouldn’t, yet not quite able to put her finger on the particular offense, Mora joined the old man in a ravenous gluttonizing during which much succulent pork was eaten, more thrown into the fire. Following his example, she ignored the tables, trenchers, knives. They ate at the altar, using no implements but their hands, no vessels but the jeweled goblets that Mora had never before been permitted even to touch, let alone drink from. Generous dripping fat and juices fell on her breasts, belly, and thighs. Rivulets of blood-red wine coursed and dried on her milky skin, gathered in droplets on her nipples.

When their eating was reduced to the lazy plucking of succulent bits from the meat that lay around them, the old man helped her to her feet, and together, unsteadily with the wine in their heads and feet slipping on fat-smeared stones, they toppled the still-heavy spit into the fireplace. The remains of the pig hissed on the deep bed of coals. Steam and smoke rushed up the flue.

“Now, what an odor that will make in Heaven!” The old man’s eyes were bright. He seemed to grow taller in the gloom of smoke that was gathering under the beams. Mora held on to his broad shoulder to steady herself. She dropped a piece of meat from her other hand and ran her greasy palm over his chest, down across the curve of his stomach. She giggled and put her lips to his neck, then shrieked with alarm and laughter when he lifted her from the floor and set her down atop the altar.

Later, when all the contents of the ravished cask of virgin wine had been either drunk or spilled, Mora, feeling all the while that she was awake, was visited by an eerily explicit dream about a stallion and a mare. Finally it quit her, leaving her panting and exhausted and half conscious of the pool of wine and congealing fat she lay in. She felt an arm across her breasts, thighs intertwined with hers. The air she breathed was heavy with the smell of burned garlic. She laughed, or dreamed she did, and thinking about it, she slept.

Chapter 3

Annie did not move, not even to take a breath as far as Marcia could see. Her gaze was level and steady. She looked like an athlete, or a gladiator, concentrating completely on the present moment. She seemed alert, even tense, but showed no sign of nervousness. No nerves, no fear—no aura.

“Git out my way now, Dennis.” Down the hall a slender bald-headed black man with a thick fringe of snowy white hair pushed past Dennis’s outthrust arm. He marched up the hall like a man with a mission.

“Now I showed you, Miss Annie, I can see people’s feets.” He stopped next to Annie and waved toward Marcia. “Here’s a young woman right here,” he said, “that wouldn’t put up with it neither. No sir.” He left Annie and moved to Marcia’s side like a man seeking the support of an ally. Marcia watched Annie step back and sit lightly on the stairs. Her eyes were still on Marcia, but her air of alert tension was not so noticeable.

Archibald appealed to Marcia. “What would you think, honey, if you could see feets walking by all the time, and no bars on the windows”—the man pointed to nonexistent windows on the wall above his head—“and never knowing who might be bustin’ that glass and coming in? You can’t trust these young people today. I got stuff down there in my apartment. Good stuff that I can’t replace.” He sent a pointed look in Annie’s direction, then added emphatically, “No, sir. Not none of it.”

“Archibald!” Dennis called to the man from where he stood down the hall. He sounded uncomfortable.

Annie got up slowly from the steps. “It’s okay, Dennis,” she called. “Marcia and I are going out front for a minute to look at Archibald’s windows.”

Archibald set his lips and nodded his head as though he had been waiting a long time for someone to say something sensible. “Here, I’ll show her,” he said. “No sense you both getting all wet.”

Annie pointed out that they were already wet. “Anyway,” she said as she started toward the door, “I want to show Marcia something else, too.”

Annie was already halfway down the icy steps when Marcia came through the door. When Annie got to the sidewalk she turned, standing in her light dress in the pelting rain as though it was a summer shower on a warm night in August.

“Look,” she called to Marcia. “See?”

Marcia descended the stairs carefully. Across the street she could see the shadowy form of the person she had noticed a few minutes ago from the door. But now she felt no curiosity about the stranger. It was on Annie that all her attention was focused.

Seeing auras at night in a driving rain was not easy but it could be done. She stood on the bottom step and stared until she made out the colors that surrounded Annie’s dripping form. Marcia sighed with relief. Annie’s aura would have been just what Annie’s manner would have led her to expect: open, good-natured, generous, if it hadn’t been tinged by an unusual cast. But the fact that the underlying aura was afflicted by a thin opaque ribbon of iridescence was not troubling. On the contrary it was reassuring, as Marcia’s had begun to take on the same characteristic soon after Elise had given her the ring.

The wind was merciless. As though they had both just noticed the bitter cold, Marcia and Annie huddled together in a wet embrace on the sidewalk. They made their way back up the stairs arm in arm like schoolgirls. Dennis was waiting at the door, squinting at them through the weather. As they closed the door on the wind and rain, they could hear Archibald in the hallway behind him. He was saying something emphatic about young people and windows.

“Tomorrow, Archibald,” said Annie cheerfully as they entered the relative warmth of the house. “I promise Dennis will call someone tomorrow.” She gestured toward Marcia’s wet coat. “Just leave that,” she said to her. “I’ll send someone for it later.” She put an arm around Marcia’s waist. “Good night, Archibald,” she sang. “We’re too cold and wet to chat. See you, Dennis. Thanks for waiting.”

They walked down the hall past the rising banister. “You can’t see auras in this house,” Annie said as they turned into the shadows under the stairs. “Which,” she said, opening a door, “you would have been warned about if everything hadn’t gone wrong.” They walked down a short, narrow corridor. At the end, a door at the side opened onto a flight of bare wooden stairs. Although she had no sense of which direction they were going relative to the front of the building, Marcia couldn’t escape the eerie feeling that they were passing behind the walls of the brownstone. It seemed to her that if she stopped and listened, she would be able to hear people in their rooms or apartments: the blond and Mr. Smith dancing to an antique tango record. The old lady in the bonnet sitting happily alone, chuckling complacently and saying, “Never mind. I know.”

At the top of the stairs was a door. Annie opened it and reached inside to turn on the lights. Marcia had by now given up wondering where she was being taken or what she was going to find when she got there. Still, the cluttered office they entered was a disappointment. She stood and watched Annie fish around in a desk drawer and finally bring forth a checkbook. Marcia slumped into a chair that creaked and swayed under her slight weight. She took a deep, weary breath. The aroma of cabbage and cigars was still present. Come to Oz, she thought, and go directly behind the curtain.

“I’ll just leave some checks for Dennis,” said Annie briskly. “There’s no reason to sit here waiting for him.” She picked up a phone from under a pile of papers and dialed. Marcia had to fight off a fit of giggles. The Home of the Mysterious Sisterhood. If Annie was calling out for pizza, she was going to become hysterical. She remembered reading somewhere long ago that uncontrollable laughter could be fatal.

“Dennis. I’m leaving checks for you on the desk …. No, just come in and get them …. No. No one.” Annie glanced over her shoulder at Marcia. “Definitely not. She’ll be with me.” She leaned back in the chair.

“Everything’s fine. Stop worrying …. Good night, Dennis,” she said firmly. Marcia could hear a voice continuing to speak on the other end as Annie lowered the receiver and hung up.

Annie swiveled in the chair to face Marcia. “Well, a few hitches here and there, but we made it. Sorry for the delays.”

Marcia looked around the office with a puzzled expression. Annie laughed and stood up.

“C’mon,” she said, “let’s go home.”

As Marcia got up from the rickety chair she raised her hand to touch her scar. Annie leaned toward her.

“Is it painful?”

“It just stings a little. I guess from the wind.”

Annie shook her head. “It’s the house. There are some pretty potent charges attached to this place.” She grinned. “But Archibald is going to have bars on his windows. Yes sir.”

She led the way to the far corner of the office, skirting a clutter of chairs and boxes. Marcia looked past her. Annie was walking directly toward a spot where two blank walls met.

Except they didn’t—evidently. The corner was dark, so Marcia wasn’t clear on the details, but she felt Annie’s firm grip on her hand as she followed her, somehow, “around” the corner where the two walls met, as though she had been seeing it wrong—inside out?—through a trick of perspective, or perhaps a painter had created a masterful tromped’oeil. In any event, it was like taking a detour through an Escher drawing.

They proceeded down a dim corridor. It had the feel of an upstairs hallway in some immense old hotel, except the walls were not lined with doorways. Instead, at irregular intervals passages and stairways branched off to either side.

Marcia was tired. Her every stitch of clothing was wet, and every inch of skin. She thought again of her apartment. Before, she had daydreamed of drinks and dinner, then the cozy bed. Now she would settle for the bed. Then tomorrow, with the inevitable sniffles and chills, she could revel in the luxury of pampered suffering, propped up in bed with a steaming mug of tea and a pile of books, and listening to the background noise of sleet impotently throwing itself against the windowpanes.

A fugitive scent caught her attention. She inhaled. The aromas of cabbage and cigars were gone, replaced by a faint perfume of flowers carried on a draft of warm air.

The corridor terminated in a mist of hazy light. They were at the top of a spiral staircase made of polished wood. Its open design gave it the look of floating in empty space. It appeared most insubstantial, but Annie started down without hesitation. Marcia followed, clinging to the slender banister as though she were an unwilling passenger trapped in the basket of an ascending hot-air balloon.

The stair was not long. Marcia was puzzled by the fact that she could see no walls, not even in the direction of the hallway they had just left, but she didn’t have long to ponder it. At the bottom she was greeted with a greater puzzle. She stepped from the last riser onto a path of smooth pebbles that was being crowded on cither side by flowers and shrubbery. She took a luxurious breath. The air was moist and sweet with the muted scents of the garden. This must be a greenhouse built against the back of the building, she thought. She and Annie had only climbed one flight of stairs to the office, and had just come down one flight, so it couldn’t be on the roof. Anyway, the garden was too big. She tried to penetrate the cloudy atmosphere. All she could see were plants and mist and, at the limit of visibility, the dark bulk and height of trees. This greenhouse must cover a large backyard and rise to a height of at least two stories.

Annie turned to her and took her hands. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” she said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “No matter how many times I come here I am always excited. Look, I’m practically shaking, and I passed through here a couple of hours ago.” She looked around with a dreamy smile on her lips. “Listen.” She paused, closing her eyes. Marcia could hear nothing.

“It’s absolutely silent,” said Annie. “And even if a bird sings, or you hear a bell or a voice somewhere, in a way it’s still silent.” She gave Marcia’s hands a squeeze and released them. “I’m glad to be the one to bring you here,” she said, in a voice that was for that fleeting instant almost shy.

“Of course,” she said, “you don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, and you’re wet and cold and probably starved. I know I am.”

Wet and cold Marcia certainly was, although the air in the garden was warm. Her sodden clothing was a misery that renewed itself with every step she took. Her wet shoes expelled water under her weight and sucked at her feet as she raised them. She and Annie walked side by side in the pretty garden, but a stroll was not a pleasure Marcia was prepared to appreciate. At the moment, a hot bath and a soft thick towel represented the limit of her aspirations.

Where, she wondered, could they be going, and how big was this indoor garden anyway? She tried to guess the hour. She had stopped wearing her watch last summer when Hannah had made such a big deal out of it, with the result that she was always wondering what time it was.

They had been walking for perhaps two minutes, probably less, when the flowers gave way to weeds and drying grass. The path narrowed to a dirt track and brought them to a wall of hedges that towered over their heads. Annie stopped. A gust of wind rattled through the hedgerow and brought a bite of chill. Marcia shivered and clasped her arms in front of her. She turned to look back up the path. The haze of light lay behind them. They stood now in an area of shadow. Marcia felt an urge to run back up the path toward the warmth and light. She looked at Annie standing next to her in near darkness. Another chill breeze found them.

“Annie. Where are we?”

“Marcia, I’m sorry. I’m leaving a lot to your imagination, I know. This is never done this way. A few hours ago, I had no idea you were coming here today. I had heard of you, of course ….”

“Heard of me? Why?”

“Well, because you’re … No, let’s not get into that. I’ll explain later.” She moved a few feet farther up the path. “Come on, I’ll show you where we’re going. It’s real close now and the path goes right to it.”

Marcia followed a few feet behind Annie into a narrow opening between the hedges. As the limbs and prickly leaves closed around her, she felt the temperature drop abruptly. As the cold assaulted her, she felt a wave of relief. They were in a greenhouse after all, and Annie had just opened the door. She could hardly wait to see this place in the daylight. It must be truly huge. She recalled that Annie had said it was summer where they were going. She smiled in spite of her discomfort. Another mystery solved. Perhaps this was an elaborate scheme to kidnap slave labor for a large commercial plant grower. She pictured rows of gullible women chained to benches. They were potting plants and putting them on a conveyor belt.

As she pushed her way past the last clinging branches of the bush, she gasped, painfully gulping a mouthful of frigid air. The weather was as it had been—driving icy rain, bitter cold. That, she had expected. But the landscape was impossible. They were in a grove of trees. Or a forest, for all she knew. A park? But they couldn’t be more than a hundred yards from the house. She looked to the left and right. There was no greenhouse in view, only hedges. There was no point in trying to collect herself, gather her thoughts; she had no thoughts worth gathering.

Annie was staring at the rain and shaking her head. She turned to Marcia.

“It’s the same,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the wind and rain.

Marcia was left in doubt. “What is? The same as what?” she called.

“The weather. It’s the same as in the city.”

Marcia could tell she looked blank. She couldn’t help it.

Annie leaned toward her and put her hand on Marcia’s arm. She had the earnest look of a person preparing to explain something to a half-wit or an adolescent. “The same as outside the building. Where Dennis met us.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Marcia wondered if Annie came from a place where people thought it was perfectly normal to stand around and chat in the rain.

Annie looked around again. “Well, it’s strange.”

Marcia thought the weather was the only thing that wasn’t strange. She did think it was bad weather to be out in, especially without a coat.

Annie pointed through the trees. Marcia followed with her eyes. Ahead she could see a light. Annie smiled at her as though the rain and wind did not exist. “That’s it. When we get there, we’re done for the day.”

Marcia nodded wearily. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.

They walked more briskly through the rough weather than they had on the garden path. In a couple of minutes they arrived at a solitary cottage. There were lights at the windows and smoke rising from the chimney. Annie opened the door and stood back for Marcia to enter.

At first, the light and the enveloping warmth filled Marcia’s attention. She heard Annie close the door behind them. She had a vague impression of furniture, walls, colors.

“Bless their little hearts,” said Annie. “Look at this.”

Marcia felt a hand at her elbow. Annie led her to the fireplace and took two steaming mugs from the mantel. Marcia accepted one and held it in both hands in front of her. The warmth of the mug seemed to travel up her forearms. The vapor that rose from it smelled intoxicatingly of spices and strong spirits. She breathed deeply. She felt Annie’s mug tap against hers.

“To your first pleasant surprise of the evening,” Annie said. “And to a hot bath,” she added, “but not until you empty that cup.”

When she had, Annie led her to a bathroom where a tub of hot water had already been drawn.

“Towels are there,” she said, pointing. “The robe and slippers are for you. I think you’ll find everything you need.”

With the aid of the toddy, Marcia was beginning to come to herself. “Please,” she said, “you go ahead. I’m comfortable now. I can wait.”

“Thanks,” said Annie, “but this tub is for you. My bath is waiting. I’ll meet you by the fire when you’re done.” She pushed her wet hair back from her forehead. “I’ll be the warm dry person with the drink.”

For what seemed a long time, Marcia lay in the tub with hot water up to her chin and listened to the rain on the roof. The warmth of the drink inside and the bath out drove every trace of chill from her. She had entered the tub too cold and tired to think. She left it invigorated, full of questions, and ravenously hungry. When she had toweled herself to the color of a beet, she wrapped herself in the robe and put on the slippers.

The first thing she noticed when she entered the outer room was the smell of food.

“Oh, I should have helped,” she said when she saw the table laid and bowls of steaming soup waiting.

“Helped what?” said Annie from her seat in front of the fire. “You don’t think I did that, do you?” She joined Marcia at the table. “I don’t even have a kitchen,” she said, gesturing around the room. “Which is probably good from a public health standpoint.”

“But who …”

Annie interrupted her. “Marcia, listen. For tonight, just think of it as carry-out food, because I really can’t explain dinner, or anything else, in a way that will make any sense to you. And tomorrow we have to go away. Far away. I suggest you just relax while you can.”

Marcia was too hungry, and far too polite, to argue. The soup was rich with cream and melting lumps of butter, and seemed to have the power of driving away even the memory of the weather outside, despite the rattle of the rain at the window. A dish uncovered revealed fat filets of fish in a sauce pungent with lemon.

Marcia laughed out loud at the sight of it. “This isn’t shad, is it?” she said.

Annie poked at it with her fork. “I don’t know. It comes from a stream nearby. I always thought it was trout. Why?”

“Oh, just curious.”

After dinner they sat in front of the fire. Marcia guessed the time at somewhere between eight and nine. Outside, the wind was blowing harder than before. The rain had turned back to sleet and tapped urgently against the roof and windows. But curled up among cushions on a soft wide couch in the glow of the fire with a warming drink, Marcia found it hard to even imagine being cold. She saw a flash of brightness at the window.

“Was that lightning?”

Annie got up and walked to the window. “It sure was,” she said. “This is the strangest weather. It’s always very placid here. It rains; it even snows. But wind like this, and lightning in winter—we hardly get lightning in the summer, except away off in the distance, over the valley.”

“The valley?” Marcia was so warm and comfortable, and perhaps a little sedated from the glass of wine with dinner, and the spirits before and after, that she had half forgotten she had fifty or sixty urgent questions to ask her hostess/abductor. She sighed and let her head fall back against a cushion. She was sure she could sleep till noon at least.

“Yeah. We’re near the top of the mountain. If it clears up you can enjoy the view from your bedroom in the morning. Speaking of which, you don’t have to sleep on the couch.”

The room Annie showed her to did not have a fireplace, but was warm nonetheless. It was lit dimly by a few candles. Annie left, and then returned, knocking on the door before opening it. She stuck her head in.

“I forgot to tell you. You don’t have to bother with the candles. They’ll, uh, go out. And if you happen to hear any little noises anytime, even in the middle of the night, don’t worry, the … ,” Annie hesitated, “servants do things at odd hours.” For a moment Annie lingered silently in the doorway.

“Marcia?”

“Hmmm?” Marcia was sitting on the side of the bed with the covers pulled back, wondering if she could stay awake long enough to get her head to the pillow.

“What did you notice about her? Besides the aura.”

Marcia raised her feet to the bed and sat with her arms clasped around her knees. She didn’t have to ask who Annie was talking about. She thought back to the two times last summer she had been with Elise—Elyssa. She could picture her hazily in the park, sitting by her on the bench, but only the memory of the unearthly aura was distinct. Her mental image of Elise the second time she had seen her was much clearer. She, Marcia, was standing in the alley with blood rising from the cut on her cheek, the aura of the demon almost enveloping her, when Elise appeared at her side. She had spoken to Marcia with approval, had told her to keep the ring, but Marcia remembered most strongly the feeling, when she looked into the eyes of her rescuer, that of the two strange beings in whose presence she stood, Elise was far the more frightening.

Marcia lay back and pulled the covers up to her neck. “Her eyes,” she said in a voice heavy with sleep. “Her eyes are … wild.”

Marcia’s sleep was calm and restful, but she did wake up from time to time during the night. A clap of thunder brought her up from sleep and she lay for a few minutes listening to the fury of the wind-driven sleet and thinking how incomparably lovely was a warm bed under a tight roof. The candles were out, the room itself as dark as dreamless sleep.

The thunder had not startled her, but the noise that woke her later did, for it seemed to come from inside the room. She lay tense with her pulse hammering in her throat and listened to the sound of a furtive step, then another. The room was still dark, but when she finally raised herself onto one elbow, she thought she heard a door close quietly. It was only then she remembered Annie’s remarks about the servants. Still, it was too eccentric of them to prowl around in the deep of night. She went back to sleep with a frown of disapproval on her lips.

Chapter 4

That something was not as it should be was manifest to the abbot before the chapel was in view. The aroma that reached him was not that of well-roasted pork. The cold wind that with the coming of dusk had replaced the rain carried an odor of charred meat perfumed with the scaring acridity of blackened garlic. It was a smell that was familiar to him and to anyone who had attended a sacrificial feast, for when the tidbits sanctified to the use of the God were committed to the coals it was the smell that always filled the room. A useful tool, he had found in the past, for hastening the end of an overlong evening.

He snapped his fingers and beckoned to a serving man.

“Run take a peek in the chapel and see what’s amiss,” he said quietly. “And be brisk,” he whispered after the man, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the nearest noble guest. “None of your dawdling!” He smiled and nodded at the courtier.

“Indeed, Reverend Sir. Most assuredly,” the man asserted cheerfully. “But turning a bit chilly, perhaps.”

“To be sure,” replied the abbot, gazing after the servant disappearing into the shadows and wishing he had sent a younger man, one who ran more with his legs and less with his elbows.

The procession had covered more than half the distance remaining before the servant returned. As he approached, the abbot laid a cautioning finger across his lips. He needn’t have bothered, for the man merely worked his mouth and gesticulated. He appeared to have completely lost the power of speech. He finally did manage to say “I can’t …” and “it’s just …” a few times while shaking his head ruefully, but nothing more.

“Get away from me, you fool,” snarled the abbot out of the corner of his mouth. He straightened his back and fought the impulse to rush to the chapel. He felt confident that nothing could be so wrong that it couldn’t be put right. There were plenty of servants and strong young novices like Brother Alwyn. If it came to it, the entire feast could be moved to the main hall in short order. It was beneath his dignity to even notice, in public, the degree to which mundane matters were in or not in order. Dignity was everything. He elevated his chin and continued toward the chapel with a firm and measured step.

A short, balding monk with worried eyes and hands clasped at his chest in an attitude of prayer bustled up to him and fell into a skipping sidestep to position himself at his superior’s ear.

“I want,” he began, then grunted as he tripped on a stone by the path. He did an awkward dance to keep his feet. “That is,” he went on when he was able, “it should be brought to the attention of Your Reverence that, well, there seems to be a certain aroma …” He paused, having mouthed the climactic word in a portentous whisper certain to demonstrate to the abbot, and anyone else who happened to be watching, that he was a man who could be relied upon to be not only alert, but discreet.

“I have no need of a proxy nose, Brother Princus, thank you. My own is functioning.” Brother Princus was waved away. He bustled back to the end of the procession wearing the injured expression of the perpetually illused.

Back in line he began to detail the trouble he had gone to and the treatment with which he had, again, been repaid, to Brother Alwyn, who had proved a patient and sympathetic listener in the past. He had reached the part where he had narrowly escaped serious injury, possibly death by a broken neck, tripping on a stone. He stopped muttering into his clasped hands and glanced at his companion.

The expression of pain on Alwyn’s face was a source of deep satisfaction to Princus. Encouraged by this mark of concern, he began to elaborate on the number of dreadful things that can result from tripping on a rock, reciting a catalog of petty disasters with a triumphant little smile.

Alwyn felt that his life was drawing to a close. What devil, what demon had led him to the chapel in the afternoon? And now what had been the result of his sinful wickedness? The woman had evidently been driven beyond the confines of sanity. And little wonder. He raised a trembling hand to his forehead as though to shield his eyes from a troubling sight. What excesses they had committed, what prodigies of profanation performed in the shadow of the altar—and how eagerly. He groaned. Surely he was lost beyond redemption.

And what scene awaited him at the chapel? Had he killed her? Had she been driven to such a pitch of frenzy that her heart had stopped? He himself had trembled for the rest of the afternoon, and he was young. She was nearly twenty-seven.

And if she had survived, then in what condition? Clearly not one in which she could perform her duties. And was she lost to him? Just minutes ago, before he realized that something must be wrong at the chapel, he had been making plans for their next meeting, such was the abandoned wretch he had become so quickly. Now the enormity of his sin was to be brought home to him. Tears welled in his eyes.

He felt a gentle hand on his arm. Princus was looking at him with an expression that was positively beatific. Alwyn glanced ahead. The front of the procession had reached the chapel.

“And that’s not all,” Princus said, squeezing Alwyn’s forearm reassuringly, “last week when I offered to take a turn tending …”

The monks ahead of them stopped. Princus interrupted his recitation in midsentence, as though his mouth were connected to his feet. Alwyn’s gaze was drawn to the head of the column. A serving man scampered ahead of the abbot to open the chapel door for him. Alwyn pulled his arm from the little monk’s grasp and stepped out of the line. He hesitated for an instant, then moved briskly forward.

He had gone only a dozen steps when he was arrested by a firm grip on his elbow. A burly man was yanking him backwards. “Novices to the rear,” he announced authoritatively. “You can’t just—”

Alwyn planted the palm of his free hand over the mouth and nose of the lawgiver and pushed from his knees. The man said “woff” and went over backwards in a tangle of robes. Alwyn turned away without watching him land.

He reached the head of the column at a trot, the door of the chapel at a run. The ancient hinges clattered in protest at the unbridled haste of his entrance. The abbot, standing a few paces away, did not even turn. Alwyn heard the door reopen quietly behind him. Whispered sibilants echoed from the stone walls. The abbot turned and looked at him distractedly. He shook his head and made meaningless gestures with his hands.

“I can’t …” He dropped his hands. “It’s just …”

Alwyn looked past him. There was smoke under the rafters. He craned his neck to see the hearth. The spit was not in sight. As he stepped forward it slowly came into view. The charred remains of the pig were cockeyed on the coals, feeding a small unhurried licking flame. He stared. With each step more ruin was revealed. His eye was caught by the wreckage of the broken cask, by a goblet lying overturned in a lake of wasted wine.

He saw hunks of meat, globules of fat, a scattering of bread. A bare foot.

Brother Alwyn stopped. Behind him he could hear the shuffle of many hesitant steps, a growing din of whispers. He stepped forward. Another foot, this one wearing a sandal. Now a knee—another bare foot—a milky thigh—a hairy leg. Alwyn forced himself to move forward until he stood next to the abbot. Now the whole spectacle was spread before him.

Such a lot of grease and spilled wine. Such a lot of strewn crusts and scraps. Such a lot of naked skin.

Was she dead? Mora did not move. Neither did the old man. Alwyn might have thought him dead as well, but for knowing the dead do not snore.

He heard the rustle of robes as the rest of the procession approached. Successive whispers were translated to gasps as more disappointed diners crowded forward. A deep voice broke the astonished silence.

“Profanation!” it proclaimed. “Debauchery,” thundered another. Alwyn recognized Princus’s voice exerting itself to contribute to the chorus of outrage. “Heresy!” the little man piped in a high-pitched squeal. “And, and … impropriety!”

The abbot jerked his head around like a man who has been rudely snatched from reverie.

“Princus!” he bellowed, “pray hold …” He stopped in mid-reprimand and turned to follow the stares of the others. On the floor the old man was stirring, disentangling himself from the limp indifferent limbs of the slumbering woman. He raised himself from a puddle of wine and leaned on one elbow, gazing calmly, at the crowd. There was a moment of utter silence. He pushed himself forward into a sitting position and crossed his legs in front of him, a posture that had the effect of compounding the stark indecency of his nakedness.

“What is all this noise?” he asked mildly.

Alwyn noticed that the eyes of the religious and their aristocratic guests did not linger on the old man, despite his attempt at conversation, but returned to Mora, whose shapely nakedness was exposed to the assembly in unconscious abandon. His own eyes would scarcely obey him, but traced the hypnotic contours of her breasts and hips, her milky thighs, the descending curve of her belly. He had delighted in these same sights earlier in the day. How could it be, he wondered, that what had been nearly sufficient to induce a swoon then, seemed even more hypnotic now. It was as though she had become, impossibly, more beautiful.

He tore his gaze from her with a force of will and looked around the room for something to cover her with. He was appalled to realize that at the same time, he was enjoying a feeling of complacent pride and a sense of possession. This treasure belonged to him, who had a few hours ago shared with her the sweet transports of every fleshly excess their bodies and their lust led them to. He had heard her urgent whispers and her muted cries, had …

The cloth that had covered the loaves! He dashed across the slippery floor and snatched it from the kneading trough. He made his way through the riot of spillage and wasted food, passing behind the old man, and knelt by the fallen woman. Evidently she had been attacked by the aged marauder, stripped of the clothes that earlier she had so eagerly assisted Alwyn in removing, and forced to witness his desecration of the holy sacrifice. She did not, however, appear to have sustained any injury in the ordeal.

The bread-cloth was long but rather narrow. Alwyn found it difficult to arrange it in a way that would conceal all that propriety and his sense of ownership demanded. Being careful to keep his expression studiously pious, he gently lifted her head from the floor, hoping to place a fold of cloth beneath it.

When her eyes opened, her head was cradled in his arm, her face close to his. She rolled her body toward him, undoing his careful work with the cloth—Alwyn heard a collective sigh from the assembly—and spoke in a wine-honeyed voice that all could hear.

“Oh, later, my darling boy, not now.” She gave a throaty laugh that stirred Alwyn despite the circumstances, then uttered words that froze him. “That stallion wore me out.”

At this there was, predictably, an outcry. Alwyn could hear the voice of Princus as though at a great distance shouting imprecations in a wobbling soprano. The cries and exclamations of the faithful combined in a way that was, to Alwyn’s scrambled perceptions, strangely like the music of a choir. The crescendo of outrage and his own inability to pull his gaze from the face of his drunken lover made Alwyn wonder if he might faint. It would, he thought, be most convenient.

The old man chose that moment to address him.

“Heaven,” he said, startling Alwyn by placing a heavy hand on his shoulder, “has feasted very well today.” He raised himself unsteadily to his feet, putting most of his weight on the young monk. When he was sure of his footing on the slippery floor, he raised his arms and addressed the company of gawking witnesses.

“Blessings!” he bellowed, opening his wine-stained beard with a wide grin. “This sacrifice”—he swept one arm in an exuberant arc that took in the ruins around him and nearly carried him off his feet—“will be a long …” He trailed off and peered into the shadows of the ceiling. “Something—something,” he added, making motions with his hands as though trying to pull words from the air in front of him. Every pair of eyes in the room save those of blind Brother Ignis moved back and forth between the old man ranting and the unclothed woman asleep in Brother Alwyn’s lap.

The old man blinked at the men as though he had forgotten they were present. “Among the fields,” he said, “is a city, bigger than the world.” The murmurs from the crowd grew louder. He raised his hand imperiously. “The king of the rats,” he intoned solemnly, “swims tonight in celestial sewers.”

The abbot, silent until now, stepped forward as if propelled against his will. His face was scarlet. “Will you add blasphemy to your offenses, you miserable ruffian? You will taste the lash before ever your true punishment begins! Reflect that the theft of the things you have stolen would be a serious crime without the additional charges of sacrilege and desecration. You stand now in the power of the church and of the law. I am to be your judge. Look upon me and tremble!”

The old man turned and glowered at the abbot. He showed no signs of trembling. Instead, he raised a pointing finger and advanced on the angry man of faith. His bellow drowned all other noise in the room. “You will know the pangs of H—”

The rest of his statement was lost in a startled shout as his foot landed on a piece of cold pork and slipped from under him. He threw himself forward, and then sideways, flailing his arms as he performed a frantic backwards sprint that, on reliable ground, would have carried him many yards to the rear, but on the slippery floor moved him just far enough so that when he fell, his head made solid contact with the altar that had been profaned so many times that day.

Against all probability, he raised up for a moment to glare at the approaching crowd, then made an impatient gesture with one hand, snorted, and lay back unconscious in a viscous puddle of grease and wine.

In the forward surge of the crowd a number of men lost their feet on the treacherous floor, among them Brother Princus, who squealed that he had broken a leg, then scuttled off briskly on hands and knees when he decided he was in danger of being trampled.

The old man was carried unconscious to a storage room and locked in.

“See you cover him well,” said the abbot. “I don’t want him sick for his execution. It’s so much more entertaining, and instructive, for the peasants to see a healthy man suffer and die.”

He pushed his way among the crowd gathered around Mora. “Get back!” he cried. “Why hasn’t this female been covered?” He looked around. “Princus!” he called. “Remove your robes at once and bring them to”—the abbot found Alwyn and smiled at the stricken novice—“to Brother Alwyn. Brother Alwyn, I’m sure you will know how to dress her properly.” He smiled again and clasped his hands in front of him. “And when you have, you will lock her in her chamber and bring the key to me.” His smile disappeared. “I will be waiting for you.”

A short time later, Brother Alwyn carried the sleeping Mora up the path in the dark. The wind had stilled and a quiet snow filled the universe.

Chapter 5

To some insubstantial observer hovering in the cozy parlor of Hannah the witch, it doubtless would have appeared that enough exemplary posture to keep the entire population of Ambermere from the twin faults of slouching and lolling had been squandered on the two occupants of the room. Mistress Hannah was the very embodiment of inflexible rectitude, unmoving in her straight-backed chair and resting on the flowered upholstery with a lightness that suggested she might be suspended from the ceiling by invisible wires.

Little Egri presented a contrasting picture, for he sat with careless ease upon the cushions of a well-stuffed divan. But though the way he had arranged himself could not rival the geometry of Mistress Hannah’s rectilinearity, it bore nonetheless every evidence of complete and self-sufficient grace. His posture of curves was as far beyond fear of censure as the rigid angles of Hannah’s, and it looked more comfortable, if not more attainable.

Little Egri was in fact not particularly little, certainly not so little as his mistress, who was barely five feet tall, but Egri’s quiet, almost furtive grace, could make him appear smaller than he actually was, just as Hannah, in carrying herself like the Empress of the Nine Kingdoms, sometimes seemed to outgrow her own physique.

Hannah rose from her chair, smoothing her long skirt and making a microscopic adjustment to her hat.

“You will try again while I am gone?” she asked.

“If I must.”

“I refuse to believe you are indifferent to these signs.”

Egri stretched, then got to his feet in a way that made it look as though he had been lifted by unseen hands.

“It is the fuss that I am indifferent to—or would like to be,” he answered. “I think we should leave fussing and figuring to wizards, as they’re so good at it.” From a polished box on the mantel he took a silk-wrapped packet. “But I will pester the oracle again. I will lay out a spread of cards of such bewildering complexity that no mystery will be proof against my inquiry. What the wizards believe they can accomplish with words, if only there be enough of them spoken, I will accomplish with the tools of augury right here in this parlor.”

Hannah took a dark cloak from a hook by the door. “Very well,” she said, allowing Egri to help her on with the garment, and ignoring his sarcasm, “I shall be most grateful to come back from my errand and be greeted with the answer to this riddle.” She turned to face him and noticed he had returned the packet of cards to the box.

“I want to leave with you,” he explained in answer to her inquiring glance.

“You are going with me to the chapel?”

Egri’s look was eloquent without the help of words.

“Well,” said Hannah, breaking the silence, “I am going to be talking to Renzel about this very thing. You might well add something to the conversation, you know.”

“If you want conversation, why not visit the wizards? All they do is talk.” Egri stepped silently to the window and peered out onto the small garden in front of the cottage. “At least the wizards don’t keep ghosts in the tavern.”

“Ghosts?” said Hannah. She didn’t sound interested.

“The old priestess.”

Hannah nodded. “Oh, of course. Another puzzle.” She took her hat off and began inspecting the tangle of ferns, dried flowers, and tiny berries that were woven together to cover it. “And you are avoiding ghosts now?”

Egri turned from the garden and sat himself on the deep sill of the window. “It’s just annoying, that’s all. Distracting.”

Hannah did not reply. She plucked a bunch of leaves from her hat and dropped them onto the stacked logs in the fireplace. “I’m going to get some things from the garden,” she said, lifting the latch on the front door, “I’ll be ready to leave shortly.”

A few minutes later the witch left her garden with her hat firmly planted atop her head. At her heels followed a small black cat.

When she reached the Raven’s Peak road, Hannah stopped to gaze, not across the rooftops of the city to the harbor and the wide sea beyond, but back toward the hillside vineyards that lay above her. Now the vines were winter bare, but in their long season the grapes were daily bathed in the salt breezes that blew away the morning fogs. In the austerest wines, the pale ones of the highest slopes, it was said you could taste the wind, and those were the wines that were called for in every square and every tavern on sultry summer afternoons.

At this time of year the vintners were indoors with vats and barrels, nursing the wines that would be drunk in summers yet to come. Last season the grapes had clustered thick and sweet, drawing in ripeness from soil and sun. And all the children and all the dogs of all the vintners had been at war with all the birds in creation, striving to preserve the harvest from their raids. Now the last battles had been fought, the grapes trodden, the fairs and festivals of harvest done, the new wine blessed and sampled.

Hannah looked at the sun climbing up the pallid sky. Ambermere was envied for the mildness of its winters. She would undoubtedly return from her errand carrying the cloak that now she wore against the lingering chill of morning. But even on those many days when the breezes from the sea blew warm, it only took a quick glance heavenward to be reminded that the harvest had passed and spring had not yet arrived. In the summer the heavens looked as ripe as a planted field, as though the intensity of the colors below had been translated into the deep blue of the sky, the opaque whiteness of the clouds, and the saturate yellow of the summer sun. But now instead of a deep blue crowding down just above the clouds, the sun and sky seemed remote and cold.

“Now, as you can see, everything looks perfectly normal,” said Hannah. “No summer storms in winter, no clouds moving against the wind.” She shaded her eyes and scanned the distant horizon. “Of course, I know for you that means the problem has vanished. No signs, no riddle.” She lowered her hand, bringing her eyes to the bare vines and stubble of weeds in the nearest vineyard. “But you do understand I still want the reading from the cards?” She paused, then said, “Egri?”

In the silence that followed, Hannah heard the echo of a distant bell. She looked down at the ground by her feet, first to one side, then the other. She turned around, looking further and further down the hill. The cat was gone. She was alone. She shook her head in exasperation and set off down the road.

Before long she came to the rocky shelf that overlooked the harbor and the oldest section of the city. Here the way made a sharp turn and wandered gently downward to its intersection with the river road. Given the option of continuing straight ahead, a person might have strolled from the overlook to the waterfront in a matter of a few minutes, but the terrain had long since been deemed too intractable, and the descent too steep to promise success to any road-building project.

Instead, there was an elaborate contrivance of gears and cables in a housing of heavy beams, all dedicated to the important task of lowering barrels of wine to the streets below. This greatly increased the efficiency with which the produce of the hillside vineyards could be delivered, not only to the docks, but to the taverns and shops of the city, not to mention the royal residence of King Asbrak the Fat. Although the actual labor of erecting the derrick had fallen to carpenters and riggers from the wharves, it was well known that both the design and the idea had originated with Rogan the Obscure, and represented the unique occasion on which the royal magician had put his knowledge of winches and pulleys to any practical application beyond the preparation of fireworks and other spectacles.

Hannah wondered that there was no traffic from the vineyards this morning, for at that very moment a seagoing merchantman was tying up among the smaller local craft that crowded the busiest piers. It was a rare trader indeed that departed the port of Ambermere without a ballast of wine barrels. She peered back toward Raven’s Peak. From there, sharp-eyed boys and girls watched for the arrival of expected vessels. This one would have been seen before it even entered the harbor, let alone was moored. By now the first loaded wains should have been creeping through the streets below in ponderous haste.

Instead, the streets were quiet, as they always were at midmorning. Even the tardiest baker’s boy had by now made his deliveries, and Ambermere was in the grip of the morning lull, during which the attention of the inhabitants was turned to the vital matter of refreshment. By the door of every tavern could be seen tradesmen’s carts and porters’ bundles. No huckster was «o ambitious, no porter so industrious as to work through morning tea. Considering the numbers of whistling kettles, steeping leaves, and steaming cups, it was a great marvel, in Hannah’s view, that the aroma of brewing tea did not rise from the rooftops like the perfume of flowers from a summer meadow, and that her view of the harbor was not obscured by a cloud of fragrant vapor.

Only in the vicinity of the newly arrived ship was there any activity at all, and that ended when the dockmen secured the last line and disappeared into their shed, from the chimney of which arose a telltale wisp of smoke. It was odd, Hannah thought, that no gangplank had yet been run out. There were no passengers or merchants so fond of sea voyages that they failed to debark at the first possible moment. And the sailors, though rarely going farther than the nearest public house, were not known for lingering aboard a ship in port.

Hannah watched as a group of men formed themselves into ranks on the upper deck. At a distance of several blocks it was difficult to be certain, but they appeared to be wearing the uniform of Ambermere’s decorative but otherwise useless soldiery, well known as masters of the art of the parade, of idle oaths and boasting, and of drinking late in taverns.

She shook her head in disapproval. Ordinarily they were harmless enough, but drink and boredom could sometimes make them fractious. Late one night last spring four or five carousers had come upon Little Egri on a lonely street and decided to make rough sport of the “laddie out so late.” A very unsound idea, as a number of bruised and embarrassed bullies promptly learned.

Once the men were in formation, the gangplank was lowered for a group of six uniformed men. The soldiers on the deck held their position. The men who had come ashore set out at once up the nearly deserted avenue. Their pace suggested that they did not intend to stop for tea. The sailors who had lowered the gangplank had just begun to pull it back when a person not in uniform burst from somewhere behind the ranks of soldiers and hit the now unmoored gangplank at a run. It tipped and swayed dangerously, but the runner’s momentum carried him ahead. He leapt from the end and did not look back to see it slide into the harbor.

Hannah watched him for a moment until he dashed into a narrow lane and passed from her field of vision. Back on the ship the sailors were staring as though they expected the gangplank to rise from the water as suddenly as it had entered it. The troops had broken formation and rushed to the rail. Behind them an officer was waving his arms with great vigor. Viewed from Hannah’s vantage point, he appeared to be jumping up and down like a trained monkey at a fair.

A movement caught her eye and she turned in time to see the runner, momentarily in sight again, angle across the avenue two crossings ahead of the uniformed men that had left the ship ahead of him. Although no one pursued him, he continued to run like a sprinter competing for a prize. Hannah watched his progress up the middle of the quiet avenue until he passed behind a row of houses. She turned and continued her way down the hill. She had errands of her own, and puzzles too, if she cared to wrestle with them.

By the time she had reached the river road at the bottom of the hill, she had removed her cloak and carried it rolled in a bundle under her arm. Spring would come early this year, or so all the signs promised. Nor was a mild winter morning at all uncommon by the sea. It was not days like this that she and Renzel would discuss. But when the clouds defied the wind, a sober person could be forgiven an anxious glance. And when the setting sun hung motionless, or seemed to, at the horizon, this was a thing that shook the foundations.

It was one thing, and most disquieting, to spend time in the presence of a potent being like Elyssana, to have to stand before an altar in the company of the One to whom it was consecrated—to do, in short, any of a number of disagreeable things Hannah had been forced to put up with last summer. But let the sun keep to its schedule, let the clouds obey the wind, the tides keep to their laws, and Hannah would be content to take her chances, even with goddesses and demons.

What had become of Marcia, she wondered. It was now half a year since Hannah had said good-bye to her former apprentice. They had sat in a little park in Marcia’s world surrounded by the noise and fumes of city traffic. Hannah remembered the ring Marcia had worn, innocent and unknowing, and the changes that had even then begun to appear in her aura. Marcia had been touched by great powers, and yet had thought she could continue as the adept of Hannah the witch. She remembered the fresh raw scar by Marcia’s eye. She bore a demon’s mark but could become tongue-tied in the presence of the handsome Daniel.

How would Marcia be changed the next time she saw her? Had fate not intervened, Hannah would by now have taught her to control many of her innate powers. Her life, of course, would have been altered, but at a pace and in ways she was comfortable with. Except for the direction of her teacher, she would be independent. But now? If only Marcia had never chanced to see the demon her life would now be simpler. Instead, it was likely to have become more complicated. Much more.

Chance. Little Egri never tired of pointing out that chance is an illusion. “If it were not, these cards of ours would be able to speak only of the past.” This was not so clear to Hannah as to Egri, but it was not a subject upon which a fruitful discussion could be based. At least not with Egri. No witch thought it true; no familiar thought it false. To Hannah it seemed a matter of temperament. Egri disagreed. It was clearly a matter of penetration—or lack of it.

It was certainly true that the cards did not provide warnings, did not predict contingencies. If the cards spoke of the future, it was of events that were certain to occur, independent of any action that might be taken to prevent them. Besides raising a number of troubling conundrums, this aspect of predicting the future had the effect of discouraging such use of the cards. But for the past—including that most recent, immediate past commonly conceived in terms of the conventional fiction known as the present—the cards could provide information that seemed to be of use. Hannah knew that when she returned to her cottage Egri, who after all was bound to obey her, would have laid out the cards and would join her in trying to unlock their riddles.

Hannah was keeping a brisk pace and soon reached her destination, an out-of-the-way chapel dedicated to Elyssana, one of the Goddesses of the Elder Truths, or the Daughters, as they were commonly known. She could see her friend Renzel in the herb garden at the back of the residence. As Hannah passed through the gate, she glanced up. At a second-story window stood an old woman dressed in white. She gazed down at Hannah for a moment, and then was gone.

King Asbrak the Fat of Ambermere was under the impression that he ate very little. However lavish a dinner had been in actuality, in the king’s memory it nearly always shrank to the proportions of a pauper’s supper. On most mornings, he left his bed convinced that he had dined so lightly on the previous evening that it amounted to the moral equivalent of having skipped dinner entirely. This idea was reinforced by the fact that he never failed to become quite ravenous by the time his morning tea was served. And since his morning teas had to make up for chronically inadequate suppers, they were rather more sustaining than was the custom at most other tables. Cold cured meats and ripe cheeses constituted the bulk of these breakfasts, along with buttered rolls and any fruit that happened to be in season. No hot foods were served. “This is not a meal,” he would observe to Rand on those occasions when his chief adviser joined him. “It’s more of a camp breakfast. Something to keep my strength up.”

Asbrak was so abstemious as to deny himself hot tea with his breakfasts. Instead, he found a particular amber wine of the lower slopes, in modest quantities and suitably diluted with water, to be a bracing accompaniment.

“It’s a soldier’s ration,” he would say to Rand, whose devotion to a steaming cup he found luxurious. Rand, who looked as though he actually did skip meals, was fond, inordinately so in his monarch’s view, of pastries with his tea, sometimes going so far as to have more than one. Asbrak would wave a disdainful hand in the direction of the baker’s tray. “I’m surprised you indulge in those things, I really am.”

As a seasoned diplomat, Rand possessed a highly developed appreciation of ritual, and never varied his reply. “Ah, but they are magnificent pastries. Your Highness.”

“Oh? Well, perhaps I should try one. If they are really extraordinary, that is.”

“Most extraordinary, Your Majesty.”

“And it supports the baker, of course. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d bother. As you know, Rand, I am quite indifferent to food. I believe I am by temperament an ascetic.”

On this morning the king had taken his tea in solitude. He stood now at an open window enjoying a breeze that made the curtains billow. It might have been spring but for the lack of the scents of growing things that a springtime wind would have borne. Today the salt air, though warm, was empty of all scents save those of the sea.

Asbrak leaned forward to put his head out the window. Above and off to one side was the tower of his magician. It was a pity, he thought, that he could not have Rogan join him for morning tea from time to time, but the magician seemed to be afflicted with a delicate stomach and could not bear the sight or smell of food early in the day. Asbrak decided to send for him after lunch. Rogan was sure to have some thoughts on the signs and portents that had been so plentiful.

In fact, thought the king, drawing his head back into the room, he would visit the magician in his tower. That would be more diverting than summoning him. And up there among all the magical paraphernalia would be a much more appropriate place to discuss …

A flash of movement below caught his attention. A young man had entered through the open gate from the avenue and was running at top speed across the courtyard. Almost before Asbrak could register his presence, he had vanished into a doorway that led to the kitchens. It was with a frown of genuine worry that Asbrak wondered what could be wrong in the kitchens. He had recognized the runner, but could not place him. He could have nothing to do with the preparation of food, of that the king was quite certain. The cooks were all women, and their helpers were children. This person was young, perhaps even a boy by some definitions, but no child.

The king stuck his head back out the window and looked around carefully for other signs of disturbance. All was placid. Others no doubt, thought Asbrak with a keen sense of his own admirable restraint, were lingering over their tea and biscuits. He waited, listening at the window. Something was amiss, he was sure. He expected at any moment to hear an alarm being raised, perhaps to see the guard rushing from their quarters.

The yard below remained quiet. The king tried to imagine what might be wrong. If there had been trouble of any kind in the town or at the quay, there would be a commotion, and more than one person would have brought the news. The same was true of the farms and vineyards. And yet there must be some explanation.

As he turned from the window his eye fell on the large and colorful rendering of the city worked in tiny glazed tiles and set into the wall. As usual, he became ensnared in its intricacies. He gazed at the maze of lines and hues as though he might hope to find an answer there to the little puzzle that had arisen.

Asbrak’s eye was caught by the derrick, shown with barrels being lowered to the waiting wagons below. Not many days ago it had been similarly occupied, sending cargo to the ship that had taken his visiting daughter and her party back to her new home at Felshalfen.

At that moment, Asbrak remembered who the running boy was. He was the assistant to the cellarmaster. And there was something puzzling about that. It seemed to the king that there was some detail in connection with this particular functionary that he was forgetting. Asbrak put the question from him decisively. He must be logical if he was to penetrate the mystery. He would exercise his powers of deduction. Again his eye was drawn to the derrick. He stared at it for a time in a posture of rumination, hands clasped across his belly, eyes narrowed in thought, then crossed the room to pull at a cord by his chair. He was about to tug at it again when his adviser entered the room.

“Rand, I have reason to believe the derrick has collapsed,” announced the king before his adviser could bid him good morning.

“I see. That is most distressing,” Rand said with no outward sign of distress. He paused, joining his hands at the fingertips in a habitual gesture. “Reason to believe?” he added.

“Yes. A man from the cellars came running through the gate in a desperate hurry, and I have deduced that it must be trouble at the derrick. You must remember,” said the king complacently, “that my unusual powers of intuition do not diminish my capacity for drawing logical inferences.”

“Indeed, Your Highness, but the derrick has proved for many years to be a sound and reliable structure. Aside from the fact that Rogan was involved in its design, I can think of no reason why it should suddenly fail.”

“Ah, but the portents, you see.” The king seated himself in a chair by the window. The operation was more complicated than for a man of less bulk. Rand thought it resembled a mating dance of some exotic bird in its unchanging ritual of the cautious approach, the formal way in which the king turned his back on the waiting chair, the meticulous positioning of the organs of sitting, and then the sudden violence of the plunging body caught—received by the swelling cushions resting on the heavily reinforced frame.

“But, Your Highness,” said the adviser when the seating was consummated, “these portents that were made so much of by everyone, they were to announce a cataclysm. Surely the sun did not stand still in the heavens, as it was said to, merely to warn the inhabitants of Ambermere of an impending detour in the delivery route of wine to the taverns.”

“No,” said the king, “but great portents can be followed by disruptions, unrest. Strife.”

Rand smiled inwardly at the thought of what forms unrest and strife might take in Ambermere. In this land any sower of discord would find barren ground indeed. There was no disaffected peasantry, and virtually all the sots and bunglers who weren’t aristocrats had gravitated to their natural refuge in the parade-ground military or the ornamental Royal Guard. He was about to say something reassuring when he noticed that the king was staring intently at something outside.

“Rand. Look here. Isn’t that the cellarmaster, Brickman?” The king twisted in his oversize chair and peered through the window, pointing at an extremely large man lumbering toward the gate. “And what on earth is that thing hanging from his belt?”

Rand came and stood next to the king.

“It looks like a battle hammer, My Liege. I believe Breksin—”

“Breksin? Who’s Breksin?”

“He is Your Majesty’s cellarmaster.”

“You’re sure his name isn’t Brickman?”

“Positive, Your Majesty. In any event, I believe that Breksin grew up in the Far Mountains and was a warrior in his youth.”

“The Far Mountains? But they’re barbarians.”

“Barbarians?” Rand looked momentarily puzzled. “Ah, yes, Your Highness, it is true: their armies are unusually effective.”

As they watched, Breksin passed through the gate and onto the avenue. In a moment he was out of sight.

“You see, Rand,” said the king, “he is going in the direction of the derrick.”

“Undeniably, Your Highness.”

The king continued to look out the window as though he expected to see other activity. “Now that I think of it, much earlier this morning I had a feeling something was going to happen. The new astrologer told me only a few days ago that I possess an unusually keen sensitivity to future events. My premonitions, if I may say it, are usually borne out.” He turned to his counselor. “Why do you suppose Brickman has gone by himself?”

“I couldn’t say, Your Highness. Nor do I know where he has gone.”

“But, to the derrick, of course. Have I not just explained …” Asbrak interrupted himself in midsentence and pointed out the window. “There he goes!” Rand looked out the window just in time to catch a glimpse of a coattails and heels vanishing around the gate.

“You see,” said the king, “something is going on.” Getting no response, he turned to his adviser. Rand had not removed his eyes from the gate.

“Did Your Majesty happen to see who that was?” he asked in a somber voice.

“Yes,” said the king. “It was the boy, what’s-his-name, from the cellars. Brickman’s apprentice.”

“Not Jason, Your Highness?”

“Yes, that’s it. Very nice boy. Good runner. We must see that he participates in the spring races. Rand. Please make a note of it. I knew there was something I was—”

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” said Rand, interrupting. The king looked at him with an expression of astonishment.

“Rand,” he said sternly, “really, you must remember—”

The older man interrupted again. “Your Highness, a few days ago you and I watched this Jason waving from the departing ship that carries the princess back to Felshalfen. Breksin sent him to see to the handling of the wine—and because the boy plagued him so about wanting to ‘see the world,’ as he put it.”

To say that the king sprang from his chair would be to say too much, but he managed to get to his feet quite promptly considering his bulk. He leaned out the window again, as though hoping somehow to see the departed runner and identify him.

Rand watched the king staring at the empty courtyard. Asbrak pushed himself back from the windowsill and turned to face him. At just that moment Rand saw a contingent of uniformed officers enter through the gate. By not the slightest quiver of a facial muscle did the seasoned diplomat betray their approach. Instead, he turned and stepped away from the window before addressing the king.

“If the boy is here, the ship has returned,” he said in a level voice. “May I suggest Your Highness permit me to go and investigate?”

“Of course,” said Asbrak absently. Rand turned to leave. “But what,” continued the king, “could have happened?”

Rand paused at the door. “Your Majesty, I am sure we will know within a short time.” When he had gone, Asbrak returned to the window and looked out over the silent courtyard.

Hannah replaced her cup in its saucer with a motion precise and economical. From where she sat, she could look past her hostess and through the garden gate down a stretch of the road as it accompanied the river in the direction of the city. Just at the edge of her vision, where the road and the river curved out of sight, she could see a disturbance in the dappled shade of the bare trees and the sunlight reflected by the water. A rhythmic motion, like a cork bobbing in a cistern.

She managed to lean forward in her chair without introducing so much as a hint of a curved line in the geometry of her posture. Renzel, whose eyes were not as sharp as those of her older guest, could only look back and forth between the witch and undifferentiable distance.

“What is it?” she asked. “What do you see?”

Hannah squinted and leaned farther ahead, as though reducing the distance by a few inches would help her to see more clearly. For a few moments she said nothing as Renzel tried unsuccessfully to follow her gaze.

“It looks,” she said finally, “like someone running this way,”

As Hannah watched, the runner came close enough for her to recognize as the person she had seen from the hill. When he neared the gate, he slowed to a walk. Hannah could see a sack with drawstrings dangling from one hand.

Renzel peered toward the approaching figure. It wasn’t until he had entered the garden that she recognized him.

“Jason?” She stood up. “Why are you back? What’s wrong?”

The young man, scarcely more than a rather tall boy, hurried across the garden, only hesitating momentarily when he cast a sudden startled glance toward a second-story window. He half stumbled, then continued toward the ladies while looking back over his shoulder.

“I’m to tell you not to worry,” he announced in a breathless rush of words when he reached the tea table. He untangled the sack from his wrist and handed it to Renzel, who put it on the table without looking at it. She kept her eyes on him, not moving or saying a word. The boy reached for the sack and lifted from it a small, irregularly shaped bottle of dark glass.

“My master says I am to see that you have a drop of this right away,” he said. He twisted the cork stopper off with practiced ease, then looked helplessly at the cups and saucers on the table. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the bottle. When he extended it timidly toward Renzel, she waved his hand away. There was a moment of silence that seemed eternal.

“It was pirates,” the boy blurted out finally. “They took the prince and the princess to be hostages, and Lady Modesty and Daniel too.”

Renzel stared at Jason for a moment. She looked as though she had stopped breathing. Then she nodded once and sank quietly into her chair. Scarcely taking her eyes from Jason, she lifted her half-full teacup and flicked her wrist, tossing the contents onto the ground beside her chair. She leaned forward to reach the bottle and filled her cup from it. She took a delicate sip, then returned the cup to its saucer and brought her gaze back to Jason.

“Sit down, now, and tell us what happened.”

The young man dropped into a chair. “They came on us very sudden, from behind an island. Before the commander had time to form up the troops properly—that’s what he said afterward—they had grappled our ship and were all over the decks. I was up with the helmsman, so I could see everything. There weren’t really so many pirates—we outnumbered them—but they were everywhere you looked, and our soldiers were all standing in formation the way they do on the parade ground, you know, so they wouldn’t have had room to get their swords out even if they had wanted to.

“All the pirates had big curved swords in their hands, and a lot of them had a sword in one hand and a knife in the other. They sort of looked like giant bugs or lobsters or something crawling all over the deck. Our commander was standing in front of the troops with his hand on his sword, looking all around, but every place he looked, there was a pirate. He told us later that he was looking for a tactical advantage. In fact all the soldiers said that was the problem—they didn’t have a chance to get a tactical advantage.

“Anyway, then the pirate captain climbed over onto our ship. You could tell to look at him he was someone important. He was big and had gray wavy hair that went way down his back and he walked slow with his feet real far apart. When the commander saw him, he told him to take his men off our ship, that it was carrying private property.

“That’s when we found out who he was—Black Jack Flanders.” Jason looked impressed, and watched for a sign that Renzel and Hannah were. “He introduced himself—bowed like a gentleman and said ‘at your service’, then told the commander, ‘Well, General, I must tell you that we are pirates, and that’s the basic idea of piracy—private property.’

“But they didn’t really take any property except some wine. They knew the prince and princess were on the ship, and that’s what they were there for. And they took Modesty—Lady Modesty—and Daniel too.”

“And what happened to them then?” asked Renzel. “Did they lock them up?”

“I don’t know,” said Jason. “They cut themselves loose from our ship and pretty soon they just looked like a little toy boat in the distance.”

“And when did this take place?” said Hannah.

“Third day out,” said Jason promptly. “Three days ago. We just got back. Everyone was supposed to stay on the ship and keep quiet until the commander saw the king, but I got off, I’m not a soldier for them to give orders to, and I knew my master would want to know.”

“Yes,” said Hannah, “I saw you running down the gangplank.”

Jason stared at the witch in astonishment. “Did you use a crystal?” he asked reverently.

Hannah smiled. “No, no. I was on the road below Raven’s Peak—past the vineyards, just above the town.”

“So Breksin sent you to tell me,” said Renzel. “He is a good friend. Is he coming here now?”

“No, Reverend Mistress. He sent me with a message, and to tell you what had happened. He’s already gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“To Devlin.”

Renzel sat up in her chair. “The pirate city?”

“Yes. When I came to the cellars, my master was taking an inventory. I came in and told him what happened. He didn’t ask me any questions. As soon as I was done, he handed me the ledger and said I was in charge of the cellars. He went to a closet and put together a few things in a shoulder pack, and put some kind of hammer in a leather loop on his belt.” Jason paused for a moment. “I always wondered what that loop in his belt was for. Then he told me to bring the bottle to you and tell you the story.”

“And give me a message,” prompted Renzel.

“Yes. The message is that he is sure the ransom will be delivered and that soon Modesty and the princess and the men will be home, but that he was going to go to Devlin just in case he might be needed.

“And then he left. He just walked up the stairs and out the door.”

“But will he find a boat so easily?” asked Hannah.

“No, Mistress. My master is from the mountains. He always says boats are for optimists. He is going by land. The short way, he called it. He says he’ll be in Devlin before the diplomats can decide which waistcoats to pack.”

Jason did not linger. He took his leave and walked only to the edge of the garden. As soon as he was through the gate he fell into a run and was soon lost to sight. Hannah and Renzel talked about the unlikelihood of harm coming to the hostages. It was alive and well that they were of value.

“Yes,” said Renzel in a resigned tone, “they are probably safer right now than my old friend Breksin, traveling alone through foreign places.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “it’s true he’ll not use the coast road. That’s the easiest way, but longer. He’ll travel back through the hill country. Still, it’s hard to imagine anyone interfering with a person his size.”

“I know,” said Renzel. “But I have a bad feeling about it. He could just disappear and no one would ever know what had happened. And he has not gone out of loyalty to the royal family. I know he has gone because of Modesty—because she’s my niece, and because she has always been friendly toward him. But now he’s just one more person to worry about.” Renzel took a slow deep breath and let it out as a quiet sigh.

“Well,” said Hannah, “I do not know him well, this Breksin, and I can tell from his manner that the company of witches is not to his taste, but he has an unusually good aura, despite his daunting appearance.” Hannah got up. “Put your mind at rest, my dear. I know a way that I can help this old friend of yours.”

Renzel looked at Hannah quizzically. “Some spell, or amulet? But he’s already gone.”

“Amulets are nice,” said Hannah, “if you like that sort of thing. But their chief virtue is that they are so comforting. I have in mind something of more practical worth. I think that Breksin could do with a companion for this journey.” She picked up her folded cloak and put it over her arm. “And now I must go before he gets too far down the road.”

Renzel got up from her chair. “But surely,” she said, “you are not going to go to Devlin.”

Hannah laughed and shook her head. “No,” she said. “For one thing, that would be most unseemly. No, I am going to send someone else.” She started through the garden, glancing casually toward the upper windows. At the gate she turned and waved. Renzel watched her until she was lost in the haze of morning light, then walked slowly across the garden and entered the chapel.

The assembled officers in their brightly colored uniforms were clustered around a table with a pile of parchments on it. The king was pacing toward the far end of the chamber.

“And so, Your Royal Highness, the deployment was such, as you can see by my sketches, that the all-important element of—”

The king whirled to face the speaker.

“Commander, I forbid you to utter the words ‘tactical advantage’ again during this audience.”

“Yes, Your Highness, but—”

“You were on the deck of a ship at sea. What tactics are there to consider in such a situation?” The officer opened his mouth, but was silenced by a peremptory gesture from the monarch. “Never mind,” said the king. He glared at the soldiers for a long silent moment. Finally he turned to Rand, who was standing alone by the window.

“Perhaps, my Lord Rand, you have questions you wish to ask?”

Rand glanced toward the officers. “None, My Liege.”

“In that case, gentlemen, you may go,” said the king.

The men began to straighten up, pull on their lapels, and look around the room as though they had forgotten the location of the door. The chief officer addressed the king in a halting stammer.

“Shall, shall I leave the sketches … for Your Majesty’s perusal?

“No, please don’t,” replied the king. “Leave the ransom demand instead. That is the tactical situation now.”

The officers departed swiftly, in order of rank.

Rand watched the king pace back and forth. Finally Asbrak dropped unceremoniously into his chair.

“I knew it,” he said. “I told you something was wrong. But I was thinking, I admit, of something a little more manageable, like an avalanche or a flood.” The king stared at the wall. Suddenly he pulled himself forward on the deep cushions of his chair.

“How could they be outnumbered? There was a squadron aboard that vessel—I saw them myself. Do pirates travel in battalions and regiments? I thought they used small fast ships.”

Rand looked away from the window. “So they do, Your Royal Highness. Schooners and the like.”

“Well, then?”

“Then the commander was mistaken. My Liege.”

“Mistaken?”

“About being outnumbered, Your Highness.”

“But he’s a professional soldier.”

Rand joined his fingers and looked down through them to the ornate designs of the rug beneath his feet.

“I should say, Majesty, that in strict accuracy, he is more of a professional drillmaster. Unless he has happened to cut himself readying his equipment for parade, he has doubtless never bloodied his sword. He has, assuming he is conscientious, read about military confrontations, but never actually witnessed one, much less participated in anything so dangerous and disorderly.”

“But my great-grandsire had an army that was terrible.”

Rand smiled sadly. “Indeed, Your Highness, if your great-grandsire’s troops had been aboard our ship, they and the pirates would have hacked each other to bits with great efficiency and enthusiasm. The decks would have surely run with blood, as in their days they often did.”

Rand walked to the table and picked up the note from Black Jack Flanders. “How can this be?” said the diplomat, turning it over in his hands. “In the past Captain Flanders has shown himself to be a sensible man. What could prompt him to do something like this? The Devlin Cliffs are not so secure that the Nine Kingdoms cannot breach them if it becomes necessary. And yet he holds the heir to Felshalfen.”

“And Ambermere,” said Asbrak indignantly. “I will not have my daughter spend all her time as a prisoner. First my cousin Razenor, now this pirate. This Black Jack Flanders may have roused a sleeping bear! Has he not heard of what happened at Ascroval?”

“I sincerely hope not, Your Highness. The greatest triumph of that affair, aside from the rescue of the prisoners of course, was that it remained a secret.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. But still, we have powerful forces on our side.” Asbrak looked up toward the ceiling in the direction of the magician’s tower.

“Your Majesty …,” began Rand.

“You know,” said the king, “I was going to talk to Rogan the Obscure this very day. I was thinking about it this morning. I tell you, Rand,” said the king, struggling out of his chair with renewed vigor, “if only I could harness my intuition—discipline it somehow—we would probably never be surprised by anything again. I knew already this morning that something was amiss. I mentioned it to you before any of this came about. I must talk to Rogan, and the astrologer too. I am certain there is some course of study I can embark upon that will develop my powers.”

“Yes, Your Highness, that is just the sort of thing to talk to Rogan about, but may I most earnestly request that Your Majesty not permit that old maniac to involve himself in this affair?”

“Rand, you are uncharitable. Was it not Rogan who managed the rescue of the princess just this summer past?”

“I doubt it most sincerely. Your Highness. I will admit he finally settled on an explanation that matched many of the facts, but only after propounding a number of others that turned out to have no connection whatever with what actually occurred.”

“But magicians, my Lord Rand—must they not be allowed their secrets, their mysteries? That astrologer who has settled in the town—the one that wears those strange outfits … ?”

“Remeger, Your Highness.”

“Yes, that’s it. What would he be without the air of mystery that surrounds him?”

“A man who wears silly hats, My Liege.”

“I see, Rand, that you are obstinate in your skepticism.”

“Your Highness, I would be most impressed if an astrologer or other seer had come forward within the past few days to inform us of this act of piracy. As it happens, the only astrological forecast we have had the benefit of is the one by which the most propitious day for the departure of the princess was selected.”

A worried frown settled itself on the features of the king. He looked like a man who has just remembered an unpleasant detail.

“How are we to communicate this to Finster?” he asked his adviser.

“I have already arranged for a fast ship to be prepared,” said the adviser, “and a messenger of suitable rank is waiting.”

Asbrak looked at Rand uncomprehendingly.

“I sent word to the docks before I brought the officers to you, Majesty.”

“Ah, good idea. But what am I to say in my message? It was from our ship that Finster’s only heir was taken. I cannot but feel that I am responsible, and I’m certain Finster will agree.”

“King Finster knows that the pirates are kept in check by … agreements, Your Majesty. And I doubt he will be shocked by the deficiencies of our military.” Rand returned the pirate’s letter to the table. “Perhaps Your Highness will permit me to compose the letter for your signature. You have much to occupy your mind without bothering with such details.”

“Quite so,” said Asbrak. “Yes, by all means, go ahead.” As soon as his adviser had left the room, Asbrak rang for a page. A boy appeared at his door almost immediately.

“Make haste to the magician’s tower, lad, and tell Rogan the Obscure that the king wishes to see him at once.”

Chapter 6

Marcia slept late. When she awoke, the room was bright, as it might be on a summer morning filled with sunshine and singing birds. She padded to the window in her slippers and drew back the curtain.

She blinked in the brilliant light reflected from every surface. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the world was made of ice. Everything was glazed: the smooth curves of open ground, the humps and creases of shrubbery, the trees extending to webs of fragile crystal. Off to the left the woods thickened to an unbroken glistening of cold fire. To the right the ground fell away to reveal a universe of open sky ahead and blazing mist below.

Ten minutes later she was standing in front of the fireplace. There was no sign of Annie, but on the hearth was a pot of coffee, a pitcher of cream, a bowl of sugar, and a basket of rolls. Marcia waited politely for almost a full minute, then helped herself. She hadn’t known Annie long, but she already knew her well enough to predict her reaction to a guest whose scruples wouldn’t permit her to pour a cup of coffee until her hostess had arrived to preside.

Marcia still didn’t know what time it was, but judging from the sun, she was definitely late for work. She looked out a window at the end of the room. The reflection from the ice made everything that was not nearby look hazy, but still she could tell there was a lot of open country in the direction of “the valley,” which raised the question of just exactly where her office was. She remembered the handsome young man, Daniel, wanting to go someplace, and Hannah talking about the wizards’ passage. Going on the assumption that the brownstone where Dennis and Archibald and the others lived was the same sort of place, Mr. Figge and Marcia’s desk were much more than a cab ride away.

Marcia heard a door close. She looked up, expecting to see Annie enter the room from the hall. She heard no footsteps. “Annie?” she called. She got up and looked down the hall. It was empty. She turned away, then looked back again. She had left the door of her bedroom ajar. Now it was closed. She remembered the noises in the middle of the night. She put her coffee cup on the mantel and walked quietly to her door. For a moment she stood listening. She could hear nothing from within. She put her hand on the knob, then hesitated.

One of the primary obligations of a guest, she reminded herself, is to see that her bed is made. In her hurry to talk to Annie, she had neglected that duty. She pushed the door open resolutely and took a step back. There was no one in the room. She went in and looked around. Folded neatly and draped across the back of a chair was the coat, now dry, that she had abandoned last night in the front hallway of the brownstone. The towel she had used this morning had disappeared from the stand next to the basin, replaced with a fresh one. The bed was made, and on it were laid out slacks and a blouse, as well as undergarments and, on the floor, a pair of suede loafers.

She left the room, closing the door behind her, and returned to the living room. This called for a second cup of coffee. She looked on the mantel for her cup. It wasn’t there, but on the hearth were the cup she hadn’t used and, next to it, a clean one. She looked around the room, half expecting to see a butler in tails with a napkin draped over his wrist. She saw no one. She shrugged and poured herself a cup of coffee, noting without great surprise that the pot was full to the top.

She sat on the divan, determined to enjoy the calm and comfortable morning. She had many questions for Annie, but the solitude was welcome too. She had been breakfasting alone since leaving home more than twenty years ago, and had found it suited her. As far as the little mysteries of the bed, the coffee, and so on, they were nothing compared to the mystery of where on earth—she laughed—she was. If Annie had a neurotic poltergeist that was troubled with compulsive neatness, that was her good luck. Marcia was not going to start checking behind the chairs and jumping at every noise. She had outgrown that sort of thing, not without some difficulty, in her first year or so of living alone.

So if unseen, or even ghostly, hands wanted to wait on her—make her bed, serve her breakfast, return her library books, for that matter—she was not going to sit and brood about it. For one thing, she had more important things to brood about. Where she was, for instance.

Judging by the distance she and Annie had covered last night, Archibald’s windows should be no more than a block from where she was sitting. But that meant she should be looking out the window, not at a lonely woods, but at abandoned warehouses or rundown brownstones. Not that she was complaining. She stretched her feet toward the fire and laid her head back on the cushions.

She had accepted this invitation. Indeed she had been waiting for it, though with less and less hope. After the adventure of the summer she had canceled the vacation trip that she had planned for a year. She felt she had to be ready—available—for whatever was to come next. By autumn her growing doubt had hardened to disappointment. She had begun to feel like a little girl who had not been invited to a party. Still, Hannah had said they would meet again, and Marcia had seen enough of Hannah not to take her words lightly. Besides which, there was a ring on her finger that had been placed there by a woman with an aura more unearthly than the demon’s, and eyes more terrible. So she had not entirely lost hope even when winter had come, and it and life were grinding along in their familiar and ordinary styles.

And yesterday, probably not much more than twelve hours ago, she had again touched the other world. She was again among the forces that had ruled those unpredictable days last year when she had tasted the autonomy of not just facing a fear, but pursuing it.

Before Marcia had finished her second cup of coffee, Annie came in from outside, out of breath.

“That coffee smells great.” She kicked her shoes off and put on a pair of slippers. “Have you been outside?” She looked at Marcia’s slippers and robe. “Guess not,” she said, answering her own question. She poured herself some coffee and sat on —the couch. She gestured toward the windows. “It’s beautiful out there,” she said. “Everything is covered with ice. It’s like an enchanted woods.” Annie paused, looking bemusedly into her coffee cup. “Now, there was a silly remark,” she said.

“I’ll bet you have about a million questions,” she said after a moment.

“I have a few.”

“Okay, but let me make a point first. If I were visiting you from a primitive culture and asked you how the phone and the lights worked, and what plastic is, and how the water comes up the pipes, and oh, by the way, what is particle physics, your answers would probably be incomplete.” Annie made a flourishing gesture with her free hand. “Now, what would you like me to explain first?”

The analogy proved apt. During the next hour or so Marcia learned some things about Elyssa that confirmed guesses she had already made, listened to an extremely befuddling exposition on the subject of Regions, and found out, sort of, who made the beds and cooked the meals.

“So if I see one of them, I should try to pretend I didn’t?”

Annie nodded. “That’s the kindest thing to do. They’re very nervous about us.”

“And why is that again?”

“They’re afraid of us because we wear the rings.”

“But they have the power to appear and disappear, or pop in and out of this Region, or whatever you said. It sounds like we ought to be afraid of them.”

Annie shook her head. “You say that because you don’t yet understand the ring. The ring is a tiny circle of power itself, and it concentrates the power that you possess. Once you learn to control your own powers you can project them through the ring.”

Marcia looked down at the ring. Annie reached out and took her hand, bending over it with sudden interest.

“This must be ancient,” she said after a long look at the ring. “Who had this before you?”

“Sorry?”

“What’s the last name? The one before yours?”

Marcia was beginning to notice a pattern. Annie would make sense for a little while, then come up with something mystifying.

“I don’t suppose you could rephrase the question, could you?”

Annie started to say something, then paused. After a moment she went on. “What I’m talking about is the list that came with the ring. You’re supposed to have it memorized. She probably didn’t tell you. Anyway, the last name on the list is the Sister who wore the ring just before you did.” Annie smiled reassuringly. “The next name will be yours.”

“I don’t have a list.”

“There wasn’t a list in the bag?”

Marcia couldn’t decide whether to burst into tears or swear. “What bag?” she asked in a flat voice.

“The little bag of spun gold. With crimson drawstrings. With the ring inside. And the list.”

“She just gave me the ring.”

“She, Elyssa?”

Marcia nodded. She felt herself running out of patience.

Annie released her hand and looked her in the eye.

“And where did she get it?”

“She didn’t get it anywhere. She just took it off her finger and put it on mine.”

Annie’s jaw dropped. “She put it on you herself?”

Marcia nodded again.

“And it was the ring she was wearing?”

Yet another nod.

“You’ve never taken it off, have you?”

“No. Elise said not to.”

Annie’s eyes sought hers again.

“Listen, Marcia. Never remove it, and never let anyone else remove it. Only Elyssa or one of her … family should take that ring from your finger.

“Well,” continued Annie, “now I know why I was cautioned about you. I assumed it was because of the demon’s mark.” She raised her cup to her lips.

“My little scar?”

Annie laughed, choking on her coffee. When she recovered she said, “I’d like you to know that you’re famous for your little scar.”

Marcia looked skeptical.

“Everyone here knows the story of how you followed the demon and stood up to him. And everyone is impressed. Then there’s the matter of the forces involved.”

“Forces?”

“Sure. You can’t be touched by a demon, an immortal, and not be affected by it. When they told me to be careful with you, I thought it was because the connection with a powerful demon might have given you access to more force than you could control. That’s probably true, but this makes more sense.”

“What does?”

“The rings are handed down from one Sister to the next. They have pedigrees. Long ones. And each wearer adds something to the ring; the forces and powers are broadened, deepened. So the history of a ring is important. An old one like mine has as many names as a major demon—yours, for instance.”

“My ring?”

Annie laughed. “Your demon.”

Marcia made a face.

“That ring you are wearing is different. It’s one that Elyssa wore—maybe for a long time.” Annie held out her hand. “If you look, you can tell it’s not the same.”

Marcia held her hand next to Annie’s. Both rings were bands of pale gold. Marcia bent closer.

“Stare at mine, then at yours,” said Annie.

Marcia stared. “Your ring has something practically like an aura,” she said. “It looks like it’s moving, or like the gold is sort of melted.” She looked at her own ring. It looked opaque and hard. Its surface was innocent of any visible mark, bore no tiny scratches to diffuse the light that fell on it, yet it did not shine with reflected brilliance. It seemed rather to absorb light than mirror it.

The room became suddenly darker. For a moment it seemed to Marcia that it might have something to do with staring at her ring, but she followed Annie’s gaze. Outside, the sparkle and sheen of the ice had dulled so that the woods no longer looked enchanted, just cold. The two women got up from the couch and hurried to the window. Above, just at the tops of the trees, heavy black clouds were rolling like a turbulent river in flood. Indeed, Marcia had the feeling that there was a danger of being engulfed. The clouds looked as substantial as flowing water; as though if they dropped lower they would tear trees and buildings up and sweep the landscape like a raging torrent. Marcia stared up at the treetops.

“The trees aren’t moving,” she said. She went to the door and opened it, half expecting to feel a humid blast of warm air. She stepped outside. The air was colder than it had been last night, and it was dead still. There was not even a sound of wind. Looking through the icy branches at the racing clouds was like watching a gigantic moving picture projected against the sky. The sensation was disorienting. Marcia felt as though she were a victim of instant deafness. She clapped her hands together sharply, thinking what it would be like to do that and hear no sound. The report echoed in the dry air.

Annie joined her outside. “It’s just the way it was when I was out earlier, except for the sky,” she said. After a minute or two of staring at the curious weather, they went inside and stood in front of the fire which, Marcia did not fail to note, was burning up most cheerfully around a freshly laid log.

The clouds had vanished by lunchtime, leaving the weather as it had been before they came. After the two women had talked for a while, at Annie’s suggestion they indulged in the luxury of another steaming bath. Again Marcia’s had been drawn, just as though she had given instructions.

Marcia was toweling herself dry in the warm, steamy bathroom. As she tossed the towel onto the rack and reached for her robe, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. In the fogged glass she saw a vision of a slender naked girl. What a generous interpretation a foggy mirror could make, she thought, of a scrawny woman past forty. She was not used to admiring herself, but the mirror was making her look positively fetching. She turned and arched her back, looking over her shoulder. She never thought of herself as having a shape—at least not one composed of curves and long soft lines. Her image of herself, she suddenly realized, was of a stick figure topped by a mop of hair. In the flattering mirror that was not what she saw at all. Her hips did not possess the generous fleshiness of a centerfold exhibitionist, but they had a shape, a contour. She looked lithe. She offered a profile to the mirror, keeping her posture uncharacteristically erect and proud. She would have made a good flapper, she thought, looking at her thrifty bust. She had just been born thirty or forty years too late.

She turned herself slowly in the deluding glass, keeping her eye on the image of innocent girlish charm that looked back at her. She imagined a museum plaque on an ancient marble statue: The Shepherdess, Thracian, circa 540 B.C. She felt suddenly close to tears. Was this what she had in fact looked like twenty years ago? Should she have chosen to be something other than plain, colorless Marcia?

Despite the mist in the room and the condensation on the mirror, she could see her little scar where it was etched lightly next to her eye. It served as a reminder that she had things to do. What, she couldn’t imagine, but delay would not inform her. She stole a parting glance, then covered herself reluctantly with the robe and stepped into her slippers.

She was still puzzling over the riddle of her clothing when Annie knocked at her door.

“You’ve noticed, I see,” she said, standing next to her and looking down at the long dress on the bed.

“What happened to the clothes that were here before?” asked Marcia. “Do the sprites or whatever get bored and just change things for the fun of it?”

“Not usually. These things are for our trip, I’m sorry to say.”

Marcia gestured toward the dark garments on the bed. “They don’t look very summery.”

“No, they don’t. There’s been a change. We are going to a different place now. I’m not terribly happy about it. I’ve been there before. Anyway, as soon as you’re ready, we’re leaving. We were going to have lunch in the garden so you could meet a few of the Sisters who are here. Now we don’t have time.” Annie started to pull the door closed. “If you have anything you want Dennis to do—people to call, bills to pay—you can write it down before we leave. I’m not sure how long we’ll be gone, now that they’re sending us to the duchy.”

“The what?”

“The duchy of Arrleer. We’ll be guests at the duke’s palace, but don’t get excited, you’re not likely to have much fun unless you’re fond of creepy religions. It’s a fairly miserable place, and right now it’s winter there, so our luxury accommodations are going to be cold and drafty. By tonight you’ll be wishing for some sprites to make things comfy, believe me.” Annie pointed to a lacquered box on the dresser. “Put on plenty of jewelry; women at court are expected to be decorative. And find a place to carry a handful of those little silver coins you’ll find in the drawer. We have money there, of course, but you might want to hand out some change, or buy a muffin or something in the village.”

Despite the vision in the mirror, Marcia thought that her ability to be decorative was about equal to her ability to juggle, or sing Mozart. Nonetheless, she put on more jewelry than she thought strictly tasteful, then submitted when Annie returned to bedeck her with much more and to help her with her makeup.

When she was finished with her mischief, Annie insisted that they stand together in front of the bathroom mirror to admire her work.

“There,” she said with an air of triumph, “would you say we look like a couple of cheap whores?”

Marcia’s quick blush rose past her cheeks to her forehead, surrounding her darkened eyes and long black lashes.

“I don’t think I’d put it quite that way,” she stammered, then hesitated, studying their reflection with a serious gaze, “but yes.”

“Good, then we’re ready.”

Chapter 7

The loaf of bread that the abbot threw at Princus missed him widely but very nearly overturned a burning lamp. Always hoping to please, Princus hurried to steady the teetering oil pot, then pulled his hands away with a shriek when his fingers grazed the hot flue.

“What are you trying to do, you imbecile, burn my monastery down?” The abbot pointed to the corner. “Pick up that bread.”

In his rush to obey, Princus neglected to raise the skirts of his robe. He had taken no more than three or four quick steps before his feet got tangled in the hem, with the result that instead of retrieving the loaf, he fell on it. Brother Princus was so preoccupied with the narrowness with which he had missed smashing his nose against the woodwork that he hardly felt the crushed bread under his forearm, and momentarily forgot the presence of his superior.

“Princus!”

The little monk got his feet under him and stood up. In his hand he held the bread, now flat and broken. He looked at the loaf, then at the abbot, then back again at the loaf. He took a step in the direction of the abbot’s table, holding the bread in front of him. “It’s not …,” he began.

“What are you doing? I don’t want that. Get rid of it.”

Princus looked at the loaf, then looked around the room frantically, trying to move only his eyes. Finally he turned his back to the abbot, first making an abbreviated bow and then, suspecting he was making a muddle of things but feeling helpless to change the unalterable designs of fate, tossed the bread toward the place it had originally fallen. Though his throw was much less violent than the abbot’s, his aim was no better. The flattened loaf sailed in a long arc and landed on a chair upholstered with an ornate brocade worked in threads of scarlet and gold.

Brother Princus said, “Ohhhh,” and started toward the priceless piece of furniture. He was halted by a shout from the abbot.

“Princus! Leave it!”

Princus turned. “But … ,” he said, gesturing toward the chair.

“Pray do not touch the bread again, Brother. Come here.”

Princus shuffled forward unwillingly.

The abbot regarded him with an expression of, distaste. “Be so good as to repeat what you said, Brother Princus.”

Princus could feel his mind refusing to work. He allowed himself a quick glance over his shoulder. “About the bread, Your Worship?”

“No, Princus,” said the abbot in a surprisingly mild tone. “Forget the bread. I would like to talk about the prisoner now. We can talk about the bread another time, if you like,”

Princus glanced back at the bread again, then jerked his eyes forward. For a moment he was silent, thinking about the prisoner. Though he knew he had been in the abbot’s chamber for only a short while, it felt to him as though a very long time had passed since he had knocked at the door.

“Well?” said the abbot, still using a voice calm and quiet.

“Ah, yes … the prisoner,” said Princus, trying to sound businesslike. Princus had always considered a show of efficiency the best way to impress his superior. Efficiency, presence of mind, and a certain discretion: these were the qualities a person must exhibit if he hoped to rise in the Order. And, of course, the all-important refinement and elegance of expression that marked …

Brother Princus noticed that the abbot was staring at him. He straightened up and shuffled his feet beneath his robe.

“The prisoner,” he began, not knowing at that moment precisely what it was he had meant to say. Just as he felt he was about to be overtaken by panic, Brother Princus recalled the speech he had prepared as he had hastened up the snow-covered path to inform the abbot of his startling discovery, the shock of which had precipitated the unfortunate launching of the loaf of bread. He took a deep breath and began again.

“The heretical malefactor who desecrated our sacred altar and aroused Your Worship’s rightful wrath has evidently availed himself of the expedient of a pusillanimous absquatulation.” Brief and to the point, thought Princus with the sound of his voice still in his ears, and yet not without a certain distinction.

Again, as before, the abbot’s face darkened dangerously. It looked almost as though he were searching the table for something else to throw. He inhaled and exhaled as though by conscious effort and glared at Princus from beneath gathered brows.

“He is gone,” he said in a tight, flat voice.

“Completely,” intoned Princus gravely.

“Completely,” repeated the abbot after a thoughtful pause. “That’s best.”

“I beg Your Worship’s pardon?”

“Not partially.”

“Ah. I see,” said Princus, though he didn’t.

“And how did you learn this?”

“The storeroom was empty, Your Grace.”

The abbot rose from his chair. “You opened that door?”

Princus backed up a step. “No, Your Worship; it was standing open when we arrived.”

“Nothing broken? Hinges? Hasps?”

“Nothing,” said Princus.

The abbot turned and looked out the window. The snow had started last night and was falling still. Princus shifted nervously. He shot a quick glance at the bread on the chair. It looked distressingly out of place.

The abbot spoke with his back to Princus. “That is all, Brother Princus,” he said quietly.

When Princus had silently closed the door behind him the abbot returned to his breakfast. He picked up a strip of bacon and rolled it into a neat bundle which he inserted into his open mouth, pushing with his fingertips until he could close his lips around it. Then, because good manners were as important in private as at a banquet, he held his napkin to his mouth as he chewed his way through the mass of meat and fat, thereby at once satisfying the requirements of etiquette and keeping his vestments free of dripping juices.

Only when he had finished his meal in proper order, with no hint of unseemly haste, did he permit his thoughts to turn to the question of the fugitive. How unfortunate that Brother Alwyn should have to suffer. Even if he was actually guilty, it was still a waste of a likely, promising youth.

The abbot went to his desk and began to prepare his quills and blotters. And how quickly things were to change for young Alwyn. At this moment he was doubtless congratulating himself; he had survived the abbot’s suspicions about Mora—no doubt he thought he had acquitted himself well in the inquisition, held in this very room last night. Then to have capped his triumphs with the audacious rescue of the prisoner. But now, a few strokes of the pen, a few orders—what a rude shock it would be when the guards arrived to take him.

Could he have done it, if he did, merely to try further the pleasures of exercising his own will, of acting not so much in defiance of authority as in a giddy autonomy? Had it come to him suddenly that he was a free agent, at liberty to translate his whims to action? If so, he was not the first youth to be so seduced. Or had it been necessary to free the prisoner, perhaps because the old man had come upon Alwyn and Mora at an inopportune time and was a dangerous witness?

Not that it mattered. Perhaps the old man was a locksmith, or a magician, and had freed himself. That was not impossible. It was not even impossible that Alwyn was in fact innocent of any misdeeds, though it strained credulity. What was certain was that he would confess to everything he was accused of.

And if extracting the confession did not render him useless, the punishment certainly would.

A sorry affair. And Mora would have to go. The duke was certain to have the advantage of this transaction, for Mora’s rehabilitation would be in his hands. The abbot winced at the mental image of the rawboned country lass the duke would doubtless see fit to provide in return.

Curse that old man! He would of course be caught today. The abbot’s only apprehension in that regard was that he might come to some harm before he could be found. That would be the greatest pity, for his punishment would be both a public entertainment and a salutary example to the people of the power of the gods and the government.

He glanced over his shoulder in time to see a robed figure pass his window. The gait and posture of everyone in the small community was known to every member. To see a monk, even with his hood pulled up or his back to you, was to recognize him. And yet the abbot hadn’t recognized the one who had passed. He stared through the window at the empty garden for a moment, then returned his attention to his writing implements.

It wasn’t until he sat on it that the abbot remembered the bread. He bounced back up from the chair and snatched the flattened loaf from under him, staring at it with a furious scowl. He dropped it to the floor. In the spring, he decided, Brother Princus was going to be selected for the honor of making a long, hazardous, solitary pilgrimage to the Empty Oracle of Hildith.

He brushed the crumbs from the rich cloth and seated himself. Before beginning his letter to the duke on the subject of Brother Alwyn, he penned a few sentences on a single page, signed and blotted it, and sealed it with his ring. He filed it in the appropriate pigeonhole, first scratching hastily on the outside: PRINCUS—HILDITH.

He had scarcely begun his missive to the duke when his chamber door opened. The robed figure he had seen through the window entered the room and fastened the latch. Unaccountably—impossibly, it was the old man, no longer naked, but wearing a robe, doubtless one he had been covered with last night before being locked up. The abbot rose quickly from his chair. The old man glanced at him as though he were of no more importance than a coat rack.

“The birds are faster than the snow,” he remarked, then turned his back and looked around the room. The abbot sidled to the wall where his short stout whip hung. The fact that this criminal was a raving lunatic would not soften his punishment. He had promised him a taste of the lash. Now he would have the opportunity to administer it himself. The abbot was not a small man, nor was he a weakling. He lifted the whip from the hook and snapped it energetically as he started toward the intruder. He had long experience in the use of the whip. When he was done with his work, this old marauder would wish he had never left his cell.

Marcia left the window and stepped closer to the fire in an attempt to escape the chill of the bare stone walls. Annie remained and stared out at the falling snow. It was impossible to judge the time of day from the overcast sky. Somewhere behind the leaden clouds was the sun, but its position could not be guessed. Marcia thought it must be at least four P.M. She shivered and backed closer to the fire. What would the night be like, she wondered. She wished they were back at Annie’s cottage sipping cocoa in front of the fire.

“I’ve never ridden in a sleigh before,” she said. “I wouldn’t have guessed it would be so bumpy and uncomfortable. I thought sleigh rides were supposed to be fun.”

Annie looked at her from the window. “This is a great place for abandoning illusions,” she said. “The rides you’re thinking of take place in city parks, last about forty minutes, and are followed by hot rum and central heating.” She joined Marcia by the fire. “And the sleighs have springs,” she added.

“Now, do you have it straight, where you’re from, and all that?”

“I suppose so,” said Marcia. “But it doesn’t seem like much information. What if someone starts to get specific about my family or something?”

“Don’t worry. No one will. None of the women will have much to say to another woman, and the men always talk about themselves. You’ll see. Women are just at court to be decorative. Like potted plants.” She grinned at Marcia. “It’s like a preview of heaven for the men.”

“Heaven?” said Marcia.

“Yeah. This is a very religious place, you know. And their idea of heaven is a bunch of men sitting around on cushions being waited on by naked slave girls, overeating and drinking wine from cups that never get empty. And their conversation—you understand I’ve had all this explained to me as though there were not the slightest possibility of doubt about it—their conversation will consist of congratulating each other on how good they have it. I don’t know where the women are supposed to go when they die. I’ve never heard anyone mention it. Maybe they’re all transformed into beauties and then misplace their clothes.”

Marcia made a face. “What kind of religion is it?”

“A complicated one. I don’t know much about it. I’ve only been here twice before and anyway, women aren’t expected to know much about religion—or anything else, really.”

“No wonder,” said Marcia, “with a heaven like that.”

“Well,” said Annie, “to tell you the truth, I’ve never heard of an afterlife that sounded like much fun. The one they talked about in church when I was a kid sounded like a deadly bore. I would try to think of being in heaven with the people in our congregation. Praising God, right? But how, exactly? I mean, assuming no one got any smarter or anything. Would it be like:

‘Boy, that God, he’s really something, isn’t he?’

‘I’ll say. He’s just great.’

‘Well, I think so, too.’

‘Yeah, count me in. I go along with that, all right. God is tops in my book.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘I know, let’s sing another hymn.’

‘Okay. Anyone see where I put my harp?’

“Fortunately, I went to college and learned that God didn’t exist. That seemed satisfactory for quite a while. Then I got my present job ….” Annie trailed off and looked out the window at the snow.

Marcia waited expectantly. “Well,” she said finally, “aren’t you going to say anything else?”

“What? About gods—or God?” She shrugged. “Marcia, you know as much as I do. You saw Elyssa’s aura. Not only that, you’ve seen a demon. What do you want me to tell you?”

Marcia looked perplexed. “But if Elyssa, and others, you said, are goddesses, that means … Well, it must mean something. Doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Annie. “I don’t do theology. Elyssa and the others don’t go around saying they are goddesses. Maybe they’re angels. As far as I know, they don’t do theology either.”

Annie sighed. “As I keep saying, this is not the way we usually do things. Usually there would be a long preparation before anyone even talked about any of this openly.”

“You mean like with Hannah?” asked Marcia.

“No. From what you’ve told me, even that was a lot all at once. But that’s witch stuff. They have their own ways of doing things, apparently. I don’t know anything about that. Of course, with all that has happened to you, we wouldn’t have had to be terribly subtle, but still I was going to get to know you starting a few weeks from now, and then slowly get you used to the idea.

“Then yesterday I’m suddenly told to just go grab you, and that you’re supposed to go with me to some place I’ve never even been to myself, but where the weather’s nice. It sounded like a mountain resort.” Annie gestured toward the window. Outside it was growing darker and the snowfall seemed to be getting heavier. “And here we are,” she said with a flourish.

Annie got two cushions from a pile in the corner and put them in front of the fire. “So have a seat,” she said, “and let me try to tell you what we’re supposed to be doing here.”

Ten minutes later Marcia did not feel that she knew much more than she had before. “It sounds pretty vague,” she said.

“It is,” admitted Annie, “but that’s what she said—we’d know what we were looking for when we found it. In essence we have two tasks: first we find whatever it is, then we make sure it doesn’t get lost again. I got the distinct impression that the making sure is the important part. However,” she continued, “we won’t be able to do much looking if we’re snowed in, so whatever it is will have to come to us.”

“But it has something to do with the weather, you said?”

“No, not exactly. There has been some funny weather, like in the city yesterday, and at the grove, but that’s just one thing. Something has been going on for quite a while. That’s why Elyssa—Elise—was at that bar”—Annie shook her head wonderingly—“waiting on tables—I can’t believe it. I can’t even picture it. I know wizards can’t see auras, but they must all be blind.” She stopped talking for a moment. Marcia got the idea she was trying to picture Elyssa serving pitchers of beer.

“I assumed she was there because of the demon.”

Annie shook her head. “Nope. That was pure luck.” She put her hand to her lips as though she had uttered a naughty word. “Sorry. Chance is an illusion. I keep on forgetting.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what I’m told. Time too, by the way.”

“Time what?”

“Is an illusion.”

“Well,” said Marcia after a moment, “it’s a very powerful one.”

Annie laughed. “Good point. To tell you the truth, I don’t worry about it one way or the other. I think it’s like auras. You and I can see something that most other people can’t. So in a way we live in a different world than they do. Well, Elyssa and the others are like that compared to us, only more so. So much so that I think they exist partly in a different dimension, meaning that a lot of what they can see or understand is hidden from us.”

For a few minutes neither Annie nor Marcia said anything. From somewhere outside their room they could hear the faint sound of a musical instrument, thin and reedy, playing tentative snatches of a tune. It was a lonely sound—one that reminded Marcia how far from home she was.

“Annie.” Marcia was practically whispering. “What if we do get snowed in here?”

“I will be furious,” replied Annie.

“We couldn’t get back? Go some other way?”

Annie shook her head no. “Your pal Hannah could, I’m sure, but it would take her some time. And of course Elyssa could do it in an instant, or at least pretty quick. But you and I will have to wait until the road is passable and go back the way we came. Like walking to the house yesterday. You didn’t notice me using any magic, right?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s not because I like hiking in slush, believe me.”

“So, we’re on our own, then?”

Annie looked at her with a serious expression. “Marcia, you might as well start getting used to one thing: we are always on our own.” She got up and stepped into the center of the room. “Come here once; I want to show you something.” Marcia followed her. Annie put her hands on Marcia’s shoulders. “I’m going to give you a little shove, so brace yourself.” Marcia adjusted her feet and leaned forward slightly as Annie pushed against her.

“Okay, stay there,” said Annie, backing up until she was ten paces away. “Now, I’m going to push you again, so be ready.”

Marcia pictured Annie rushing toward her like a football player. Her mother’s expression, “horsing around,” came to her mind. “Okay,” she said, “but …” She stumbled slightly as the unexpected pressure hit her. Annie had not moved except to raise her ring hand a few inches. Marcia felt herself being pushed backwards, as though a large transparent cushion were pressing against her and moving slowly, even gently, but irresistibly in the direction of the fireplace.

“Annie?” she called. She could hear a quaver in her voice. It was as though she were listening to someone else. She was forced to take another step to the rear. A vision of Annie in the hallway of the house came back to her.

“Hey! Push back,” said Annie.

Marcia obediently leaned into the force and tried to step forward.

“Not like that,” ordered Annie. “Do what I’m doing.”

Marcia stared at her. Annie wasn’t doing anything. Marcia clenched her ring hand into a fist and began to raise it. She could feel nothing except the unnerving pressure pushing against her.

“Now, don’t take the wall out or anything, just push a little.”

Marcia could still feel nothing. She gritted her teeth and pushed her body against the movement.

Annie shook her head. “Stop pushing with your body,” she called. “Forget that. Just push. Straighten up, relax, and push.”

Marcia thought she felt the pressure against her diminish a little.

“Okay,” said Annie, “look at me.”

Marcia straightened her back and looked at Annie. She remembered Hannah in the alley last summer with the mugger, how straight she had stood—how calm she had been, even though she was angry. She stared across the room. Annie looked far away. When she spoke again, it was a shock to hear her voice so clear and close.

“Your eyes, your ring, and me—that’s all there is. Your eyes are on me. Now look at me with the ring, too.”

Marcia tried to think what Annie could mean. As she focused her attention on her, she felt the pressure against her weaken and then go away. She tried desperately to feel something from the ring, but it was too late; Annie had given up on her. She allowed her fist to relax. But still she hoped to feel something. She kept her eyes fixed on Annie. Surely she could manage this; she had felt things from the ring last summer a couple of times. But now she felt nothing, except perhaps a sensation of connectedness between her and the motionless woman across the room.

“I guess it’s no use. I’m sorry.”

“Just be careful,” said Annie. Marcia jumped. Annie’s voice sounded as though she were standing right next to her.

“Keep focused. We don’t want to do any permanent damage to the architecture.”

When Marcia felt it, it was so obvious, she wondered how she could have missed it. She could practically see the force between them. And part of it was hers.

“You’re pushing real hard now,” said Annie. “I want you to let off, but slowly. Just let it go. And feel it changing.” Annie smiled at her from across the distance. “Good,” she said, still sounding disconcertingly close, as though she were whispering in Marcia’s ear.

“Your voice sounded so strange,” said Marcia when they were seated again.

“Sure,” said Annie. “And the perspective was funny too, right?”

Marcia nodded.

“That’s because it’s not just force. It has an effect on space and time, too.”

Marcia thought of the man in the alley last summer who had tried to hit her, and how easily she had moved out of his way, then watched his slow-motion punch smash into the brick wall. She was going to mention it, but Annie got up abruptly and went to the window. Marcia followed her.

Outside it was almost dark. One story below was a garden, now completely covered with snow, paths and trimmed shrubbery showing only in soft contours and tufts. Beyond the garden the paths continued among well-spaced evergreens that looked like tall white pieces on a huge game board.

A man in a hooded robe passed just behind the nearest trees, stumbling in and out of sight in the ghostly whiteness. As they watched, he turned toward the garden and stopped. He seemed to sway on his feet as though he were ill or injured. He raised one hand slowly and pushed his hood back, letting it fall from his head. His hair was white and thin.

“Come on,” said Annie. Next to the window was a narrow door that opened onto a stone porch. A steep flight of stairs led to the garden below. In a moment they were walking through the snow. The man looked in their direction with a vacant stare. Only when they reached him did he appear to notice them at all, glancing at them with no sign of interest, his mouth hanging open stupidly.

Annie tried to talk to him but, getting no response, took him by the elbow and guided him across the garden toward their private staircase. Getting him up the stairs was something of a trick. There was only space for one to pass, and the old man acted as if he had never been confronted with stairs before. Finally they managed, Marcia leading and Annie behind coaxing and practically lifting the man to their balcony.

Inside, he allowed himself to be led to the fire, where Annie got him sealed on a cushion. He didn’t seem to have suffered from the cold; he showed no sign of noticing the comfort of the lire at his back. It had not seemed particularly cold outside. It was cold enough to snow but there was no wind; the air was crisp and bracing but not biting.

Both Annie and Marcia tried for several minutes to get the old man to talk, but he would say nothing, nor even give any indication that he understood their words. His stare was affable, but vacant. His mouth hung open in a way that made it seem he was going to say something, but the words never came.

“He must be from the monastery,” said Annie. “A bunch of them were up here feasting the first time I was here, and they all wore robes like this.”

“Is he a priest?”

“I doubt it. I think the monastery is more of a school. Of course everything here is religious, and some of the men there do perform religious chores, I suppose, but this one doesn’t look like he’s up to much of anything.” She sat down next to the man. “You’re not going to say much, are you?” She reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. Without losing his expression of placid imperturbability, the man flinched and pulled away. Annie got up and bent over him. “What’s the matter?” she said. “I touched you before; we practically carried you up the steps.” Moving slowly, she pulled the heavy cloth of his robe away from his shoulder. On the man’s upper back near his neck was a crisscross pattern of thin red lines.

Marcia peered across Annie’s hand. “What are those scratches?” she asked.

“They’re not scratches, they’re welts,” said Annie in a resigned voice. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“If someone whipped this old guy, that probably means he’s in some kind of trouble. So now if we call the servants, we’ll be turning him in. From what little I know about the ideas of punishment around here, these few stripes on his back wouldn’t count for more than a light warm-up. Look,” she said, lifting the robe further, “the skin isn’t even broken. That just doesn’t go along with the style of Arrleer. See, if you’re punishing someone in the name of your god, you have to do a really good job.” She went back to the window. “It’s not real bad out there,” she said, “but the night will be plenty cold enough. Too cold for him to wander around.”

“Too deep,” said the man.

Annie turned in surprise. She waited a minute to see if he would say more. His eyes were still unfocused, his mouth still slack.

Marcia leaned toward him, and spoke softly. “What, the snow?” She sounded as though she were talking to a toddler struggling with his first sentences. “Is the snow too deep?”

“Too black,” intoned the man. He began to rock back and forth with a motion so slight as to be nearly undetectable.

“Snow’s not black,” said Annie in a matter-of-fact voice. She moved into his field of vision. She leaned forward slightly, trying to force him to meet her eye. “Not this snow, anyway. Not very deep, either. Yet.”

“Black and deep,” he said. It was not a reply.

“Empty,” he added in a whisper. Marcia and Annie exchanged a glance. The man began to rock further. He closed his eyes. His lower jaw moved to one side, deforming his mouth into a lopsided frown. As Annie approached him, he stopped rocking, suspended in a forward tilt like a man arrested by a sudden pain in the act of getting up. He pulled his mouth shut and opened his eyes, then straightened his back and turned to Marcia. He gripped her hands in his. His eyes, now focused and clear, sought hers.

The silence in the room was like that in a theater when a rapt audience waits for an actor to speak, and the actor waits for just the instant when his words will tell most true.

The old man opened his mouth.

“Dead rats.”

The expression on Marcia’s face was one of great melancholy. Annie began to giggle. The man turned, dropping Marcia’s hands.

“Everything is torn in the same jaws,” he said with mournful emphasis. He got to his feet and fixed Annie with the stare of a desert prophet delivering a curse. “The same teeth rend them all.” He held Annie’s eyes for a moment, looking if not rational at least alert, then the intelligence drained from his features and he returned to the guise of an affable dunce. He shuffled to the window and looked out with nothing in his expression that wouldn’t have been there if he had been staring at a blank wall.

Marcia got up and joined Annie in the middle of the room. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“We,” Annie emphasized the pronoun, “are going to try to work something out. Clearly if he is in trouble, he’ll eventually be caught if he stays in the … palace”—she looked around the room with distaste—“but if he wakes up enough to tell us where he would be safe—a village or something—I would be willing to put him on a sleigh or cart. Not that it’s any of our business; we didn’t come here to do good works or advance the cause of justice.”

Marcia looked surprised.

“Marcia,” said Annie patiently, “if that were our concern, we wouldn’t have come to Arrleer. We’d have plenty to do at home. In fact, assuming for the moment that we had the ability to fix things up the way they should be, we could go to any small town on earth and spend the next century or so without finishing the job. And that involves the supposition that we would know what to do.”

Annie glanced back at the man. He had not moved. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t do a good turn once in a while.” She smiled broadly at Marcia. “If it’s not too much trouble. And anyway,” she added cheerfully, “if they are looking for our friend and can’t locate him, it might help to stir things up around here.”

“Do we want to stir things up?”

“Sure. We’re looking for something. The more things are stirred up, the more we’re likely to see. Besides which, this place is deadly dull. After dinner they have songs and stories on the approved themes, like how great it is to know the True Path, and how sorry everyone else is going to be on the day that the elect are separated from the unbelievers. I guess the idea is that if you listen to enough of this stuff, you can achieve a really elevated religious state of ineffable smugness.”

Marcia looked at Annie anxiously. “And what will we be doing while this is going on?”

“Suffering,” said Annie. “The music kind of reminds me of a top-forty radio station, except it’s not as loud. But it’s repetitious and monotonous and all the songs sound the same.”

“But what do people talk about?”

“Don’t worry, the conversation is always about one of two things—either expensive possessions, usually livestock or jewelry, or the fact that Providence arranges the distribution of worldly goods according to an invisible but absolutely just system, and it is heretical to question it. Meaning, basically, that poor people should shut up, pay their taxes, and not be envious of the deserving rich.”

“But I don’t have any livestock. I don’t even have a cat.”

“No, but you have lots of jewelry.”

“I certainly do,” said Marcia, “and I’m wearing all of it right this minute. I feel like a carnival fortune-teller.”

“Well,” said Annie, “there’s a difference, because your jewelry isn’t fake.”

Marcia looked down at her adornments. “I know some of this is real,” she said, “but this”—she lifted a pendant suspended from a jeweled chain—“just can’t be.”

“I’d have a closer look if I were you,” said Annie.

Marcia held the bauble in the palm of her hand and turned it to catch the light. “It doesn’t look like glass,” she said in a subdued voice. “But if it’s real, it’s worth—”

“A lot of livestock,” said Annie, finishing her sentence for her. “So you don’t have to worry about conversation. Just smile and do a little subtle flirting.”

Marcia looked troubled. “Annie,” she said in a faltering voice, “you’re kind of pretty …”

Annie rolled her eyes and raised a coquettishly limp hand to her bosom. “Thanks. Wow.”

Marcia went on as though Annie hadn’t said anything. “… but when you tell me to be decorative, and flirt, I’m a little, well …” She trailed off. She stepped closer to Annie and looked into her face. “You’re not supposed to be wearing glasses, are you?” she asked in a timid and very serious voice.

Annie burst into immoderate laughter. The old man turned slowly from the window, but his gaze passed over them as though they were absent. Marcia watched him as he continued to turn until he was facing the window again.

“Okay, Marcia, it’s true that no one is going to mistake either of us for a movie star, but I think I should cover a couple of points with you. You are not as unattractive as you think you are, that’s one thing. The other is that you can’t wear that ring without having it change you, and you especially can’t be in the garden and the grove without being affected. Not that I expect you to notice with all that makeup on, but you have changed, a little bit, since yesterday.”

Marcia remembered admiring herself in the mirror after her bath that morning. She felt herself blushing, but was sure it was masked by her heavy makeup.

“Now,” said Annie in a businesslike tone, “let’s try to cook up something to help our pal here.”

A few minutes later, while they were still trying to come up with a plan, they were startled by a knock, not at the door to the hallway, but the one that led to the porch.

Marcia jumped; Annie glanced at the man, still standing at the window paying no heed. “We’d be great kidnappers,” she said. “We’re in here plotting and he’s standing there at the window for all the world to see.”

“Footprints,” said Marcia, getting up.

“What?”

“Anyone who’s looking for him would just follow his footprints in the snow. There’s no wind, and the snow isn’t heavy enough to wipe out the marks right away.”

“You’re right,” said Annie. “Guess we’d better answer the door.”

The man at the door was wearing a robe like their guest’s. He pushed back his hood and bowed formally. “Just a word with your visitor, if I may, ladies,” he said. Annie stood back and motioned for him to enter.

The old man still gazed from the window. The new arrival stood just inside the door as though waiting for the other man to notice him. Annie and Marcia exchanged a silent glance. The man cleared his throat and manufactured a cough to draw attention to his presence. The old man did not turn. The man looked nervously at the women, then moved toward the window.

“Your Worship?” he said timidly.

Within minutes, Annie and Marcia were hostesses, briefly, to a number of physicians along with several inquisitive aristocrats.

“But how came the abbot to be here in the first place?” inquired the duke of every man in the chamber. It did not occur to him to question Marcia and Annie. At one point when he stood nearby, Marcia began to address him, but was prevented by a sign from Annie, who whispered, “Remember you’re only a woman, my dear,” with a malicious grin. Evidently the duke’s search for information was being conducted in order of rank, and did not neglect the noblemen who had come with him, each of whom solemnly professed ignorance. In due course he got to the monk, who told him that the abbot had wandered in from the garden. This appeared to satisfy the duke. He ordered that the abbot be moved to his apartments, and in a few minutes Annie and Marcia were alone again.

“That was sort of fun,” said Annie. “Did you notice Lord Shilmer?”

Marcia hadn’t.

“Well, he certainly noticed you. He was the one with the sideburns and the red cummerbund.”

“And the bulgy eyes?”

Annie nodded. “Your first conquest,” she said.

Chapter 8

Dinner was all that Annie had promised. It was true that the conversation was enlivened somewhat with gossip and conjectures about the old man who had disgraced the sacrificial feast at the abbey, and then had managed to escape, but this topic was overshadowed by the talk of the abbot and his strange affliction, which was generally thought to be a token of the displeasure of the god to whom the feast was to have been dedicated. The duke was seated at the head of the table. He suffered the general talk to continue for a time and then entered with the approximate effect of the arrival of a millstone in a mud puddle. At his first syllable, every other word was stilled.

“This outrage will not go unpunished,” he said in a conversational tone. The silence held for a few moments, then was broken by Lord Shilmer.

“No! The miscreant must be apprehended,” he blustered, with a quick glance down the table at Marcia. Two seconds later, Marcia felt an elbow in her ribs. Next to her, Annie was engaged in a successful effort to look insufferably smug.

“Not what I meant, Shilmer,” replied the duke. “I was thinking of the assessment against the villages. It was after all a peasant who perpetrated this offense, is that not correct, Count Vispas?”

“Indeed, Your Grace. Two of them, in fact, for the woman was—”

The duke silenced him by raising a finger. “Ah, let us not be unduly harsh with the woman, Vispas. I have yet to interview her. I’m inclined to believe she was misled, perhaps even forced in this debauchery against her will. When we can, we should try to lead the peasants from their sinful ways. That is the generous thing to do. If I feel her case warrants it, I may bring her into my own household and see to her reformation myself.”

This charitable impulse was applauded by all present, even Marcia, once she was reminded by another jab in the ribs.

After dinner, the songs began, performed by a number of young men who all managed to achieve an identical nasal quaver that apparently was much in favor at the duke’s court. They were supported by a small consort of winds and strings that squealed and twanged along with them enthusiastically.

Marcia tested a hypothesis she had formulated: if she kept drinking wine, the music would be unable to drive her crazy. She found herself wondering how it was that a civilization could build this large, if ugly and uncomfortable palace and yet not have developed musical instruments that would produce low pitches.

It was her fervent desire to stand as far away as possible from the singers and musicians that finally led her to leave Annie’s side and go off on her own. She even got into a few brief conversations about jewelry, discovering that if it was acceptable for strangers to ask the value of the things she wore, it was equally acceptable, even commendable, for her to have no idea what they had cost.

Marcia did know enough to recognize the source of her unwonted sociability, and knew enough, as well, to put her glass aside. The wine had enabled her to chat without the awkwardness that so often troubled her in social situations. For that she was grateful. But to the degree that it had diminished her shyness, it had diminished her prudence as well.

Since dinner, Marcia had from time to time caught sight of Lord Shilmer. And it seemed that every time she did, he noticed. It was as though he was waiting to catch her eye. When he did, he would draw himself up, tuck his chin into his puffy cravat, and smirk at her as though they shared a secret. Once or twice Marcia had greeted this performance with a polite and distant nod. Then she began simply looking away, she hoped not coquettishly. But a few moments ago, she had been caught off guard. The sight of the man contorting himself for her benefit had suddenly seemed positively hilarious. She had managed not to burst into outright laughter only by sending what she had immediately feared was a dazzling smile—at least as dazzling a smile as she was capable of—across the crowded room to the romantic aristocrat.

Enough was enough. Marcia looked around the gathering hoping to find Annie. At that moment the assembled musicians and singers struck and held an excruciating high-pitched unison. Before it had expired, Marcia was in the hallway walking briskly in the direction of her rooms.

The first thing she did once she was alone was to remove her makeup, get out of her evening finery, and look for something comfortable to wear. She was delighted to find that their closet contained a selection of baggy but otherwise sensible-looking pantaloons that she would have mistaken for pajamas but for the sturdy weave of the cloth. A plain blouse and a long-sleeved vest completed her outfit. She had kicked off her formal slippers just inside the door, but the stone floors sent their chill up through the carpet. Marcia put on the ankle-high boots she had worn on the journey from the grove. She laced them to the top, thinking all the while of Annie’s cottage and how pleasant it would have been to spend some time there, learning whatever it was she was supposed to learn, and slowly getting used to whatever it was she was going to have to get used to.

The looking glass above their washstand reminded her of the crazed mirror in the hall of the brownstone. From behind the flawed glass a girl with a little scar next to her eye looked out at her. Marcia shook her head and frowned. She was not a girl. She had been one twenty years ago—maybe even ten, by some definitions, but she was not one now. “Once was enough,” she murmured, then smiled at her reflection. She had always had a nice complexion, “like the Mibsey women,” her mother had assured her; she had passed through high school with the advantage of clear skin and the disadvantage of a bust not full enough to make noticeable contours in a sweater. But high school had been some time back, and she had not lived the years since then without acquiring a few wrinkles. She looked harder at the deceptive glass. The mirror had erased the small lines around her mouth and her eyes and smoothed the skin of her cheeks.

The fire had been built up and the room, which before had been almost chilly, was now too warm. Marcia considered taking off the heavy vest and then happened to glance out the window. She could see little besides reflected light from the room, but noticed immediately the absence of snowflakes falling against the glass. She opened the door and stepped onto the little stone porch.

The snow had stopped. In the garden the trail of footprints was still clear and distinct. Everything in view was white except the trunks of the trees beyond the shrubs and flower gardens. The temperature had dropped; the air seemed crisp and dry. Marcia closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the silence and the bracing air wash away the lingering noise of the crowded hall, the heavy fumes of wine, the clamor of too many voices.

She opened her eyes and was about to go back inside when she happened to glance up. The startling beauty of the night sky was almost frightening. Stars, impossibly bright and impossibly numerous, seemed to crowd toward her. Behind them the sky was black and empty: Marcia stared, entranced by a sight she had never before seen. She had been impressed in the past when occasionally she had been away from the city and seen how much more vivid the stars were. But this was a world of lamps and candles and flickering fireplaces. There was no ambient electric glare to kill the reality of the stars and turn them into distant flickering theories, the province of a guild of initiates who studied them with machines and computations. These stars were present, and more real than words or numbers.

Marcia was so engrossed in the spectacle of the heavens that at first she did not hear, or at least didn’t notice, the whistling that broke the silence. The sound floated across the snow-covered landscape, a fragment of melody, an unfinished rhythm, and was quickly swallowed into the crisp air.

The stars filled the sky in a vast randomness that seemed to transcend any order or pattern. They made a silent music. And in the midst of that silence, Marcia realized that the stars were not above, but all around her—that she stood among them. The accidents of her temporary circumstances—that she stood on a porch, or on a planet—were insignificant. Whatever her feet happened to be touching, she was passing through space and time in company with these stars she saw. At the same time that she was there, defined and concrete, Marcia felt that she was also uncontained—an expanding soul-substance that could embrace the stars and span the cosmos. Every being, every sight, every sound—all were arrested in her comprehension.

And then among the blazing stars, the vistas of atoms and universes, she became aware of a ghostly face that spanned the heavens. She saw the features as though she were at the same time both viewing a Rushmore effigy and examining the features close up with a magnifying glass.

“Mr. Miller’s trying to be a character, but he’s still just Mr. Miller.” So her mother had always said. Marcia had never been sure. She just knew that if you met him in the hallway, Mr. Miller would snatch his hat from his head and begin to wiggle it next to his ear as he went into his little dance, performed in a half-crouch with elbows pumping slowly. He would do precisely three fastidious steps, then freeze in position and contort his face into an expression of astonished delight. Then he would sing, in the same studied, stylized manner of his dance: “Life [wink] is just a bowl of cherries ….”

Marcia listened as the whistled melody died again in the night. She did not pretend to have a deep understanding either of music or the laws governing probabilities, but it seemed quite clear to her that, goddesses, angels, magic, Regions—whatever—the melody she had just heard, standing on a stone porch outside a guest chamber of the residence of the Duke of Arrleer, was “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” and that was all there was to it.

The fact that it took Marcia a few moments to realize that only Annie could be whistling from the canon of American popular song she attributed to the last glass or two of wine. She stared toward the trees where the sound had seemed to come from. At about the place where they had seen the abbot she thought she saw something. She moved to her right to try to get a better look, but could tell nothing. Why, she wondered, would Annie be outside? Marcia’s brain seemed to be moving in slow motion. Maybe she had drunk more wine than she thought she had. She remembered hearing somewhere that fresh air could intensify the effects of alcohol.

It was when she turned toward the door that she saw Lord Shilmer through the window. If Annie was out in the trees where she had no business being, His Lordship was equally out of place standing inside the door of their sitting room. As Marcia watched, he closed the door behind him and looked around the room with an expectant grin lighting up his features. Marcia remembered the way she had smiled at him just before leaving the hall.

She willed her brain to work faster. It would not do to stand around in a state of complete befuddlement. For one thing, she couldn’t expect to get rid of Lord Shilmer by stammering, shuffling her feet, and rolling her eyes. No doubt a show of feminine helplessness would bewitch him further. She suppressed an urge to laugh aloud.

In the room, her visitor was balanced on the balls of his feet like a dancing master, looking around the room with quick glances as though he expected to find her hiding behind a chair. With one last look, Marcia strode decisively to the stairs and descended to the garden. What had happened was clear. Annie had seen Shilmer take off after Marcia and had come by way of the garden to help her avoid an embarrassing contretemps. Finding Marcia on the porch, she had sent an unmistakable signal and was counting on Marcia to use her head and accomplish a strategic withdrawal.

Marcia hurried toward the trees. She wanted to whistle an appropriate code in reply, but the laughter that kept bubbling up in her throat prevented her. She didn’t look back until she had passed from the garden paths to the deeper darkness among the trees. In a moment, she saw Lord Shilmer pass the window, still tiptoeing daintily around the chamber of their tryst.

She pulled her vest around her. She tried to whistle again but was able only to produce a series of tuneless hisses. Then, as though in answer, she heard the whistled melody from someplace deeper in the woods. She thought again of Mr. Miller. She had a vivid mental image of the hallway back to the third-floor apartments: the flaking blue paint of the woodwork, the splitting edges and colorless flowers of the strip of linoleum that reached almost to the fire-escape door.

As she had noticed when they came out to retrieve the abbot, there were paths that led into the grove of trees. Marcia followed the one that seemed to go in the direction of the whistling. She fully expected to find Annie at any moment. It was only after she had been walking for perhaps five minutes that an uneasy doubt began to grow. She would call out, she decided, at the same time feeling an instinctive reluctance to do so. She turned back to see if the palace was still in sight. It was not. All she could see was the outline of the path and the trail of her footprints stretching behind her like a silent farewell.

The footprints in the snow, the starlight almost bright enough to cast shadows, the bare trunks of the trees … Marcia felt like a figure in a stark painting of blacks and whites. Everything she looked at tonight seemed to be, not stars, or trees and tracks, but compositions powerful and intelligible, weights in balance and patterns full of meaning. Again she felt that she could inhabit anything and everything, invest the night with her being.

And again the flight of her soul was halted by a mundane intrusion, this one more startling than the memory of Mr. Miller. Marcia looked at the tracks she had made in the snow. They were the only footprints in sight. How far around had Annie come? And how much wine had Marcia drunk, really?

From somewhere ahead came the same snatch of the familiar melody. Marcia looked annoyed. It was definitely the first couple of bars of “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” She pondered her conviction in the silence that followed. In fact, it was probably the national anthem of Arrleer, or maybe the local equivalent of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” She was probably heading for a rendezvous with a shepherd or a fellow refugee from the dinner.

Well, the walk would clear her head, and anyway, she had to give Lord Shilmer time to get discouraged. She wished she had worn a coat, but her vest was adequate for a short hike. She gazed back along the trail of footprints. Barring a sudden thaw, there was no chance she’d get lost.

The little manicured woods came to an end at the brow of a small hill. The ground descended in a gentle slope to a brook that etched a sharp pathway through the open field. Marcia was about to step out from beneath the trees when she noticed a line of footprints leading from the trees not far from where she stood and, where they ended, a man. He was dressed in a robe like the abbot’s. For a moment, while he was stepping across the brook, she thought it might be the abbot—she caught a glimpse of white hair—but when he started up the hill and was silhouetted against the snow, she could see that he was built more compactly than their portly guest and moved with a much more vigorous gait.

She watched idly as the man climbed the hill, looking more at the blazing stars than at him. When he reached the top, he paused for a moment as though deciding which way to go, then set out again. It was when he had nearly disappeared behind the hill that Marcia heard again the sound of the now-familiar melody.

She shrugged and turned to follow her trail back to the palace. In a few feet she stopped in her tracks. She recalled the sight she had just seen, picturing in her mind the man, first outlined against the snowy hillside, then climbing to the brow to stand surrounded by a billion blazing stars.

He had no aura. And while that might be possible, just barely, and with the aid of some exceedingly potent spells or whatever, in the building that served as a passage to the garden, it was clearly impossible anywhere else. Not only did Marcia’s experience bear this out, but Annie had told her so; going into rather some detail during one of her attempts to explain the ins and outs of Regions, invisible servants, and the etiquette of the garden, where auras were also invisible, and where one was well advised not to strike up conversations with women one was not acquainted with.

What had Annie said? We’d know what we were looking for when we found it. Marcia had just found a man who did not possess an aura but could whistle “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” She started up the path toward the palace. She’d grab a couple of coats, find Annie, and in ten or fifteen minutes the two of them would be across the brook following the tracks in the snow. She stopped and looked over her shoulder uncertainly. Then we make sure it doesn’t get lost again. That had been the other thing. And that would suggest she was walking in the wrong direction. But what could she do by herself? she wondered. She’d be on her own. We are always on our own.

And that’s what she had been last summer—on her own. She traced the path of her little scar with a gentle forefinger. She had faced a monster; would she shrink from following a priest?

In addition to which, she reflected as she hurried down the hill and stepped across the brook, what if she had simply been unable to make the aura out? She doubted it strongly, but she couldn’t deny that she was not at her best tonight, except perhaps in terms of seductiveness.

From the crest of the little hill she herself was almost seduced from her mission by the beauty of the night. The stars themselves, aided by no moonlight, illuminated the vast blanket of snow that covered the rolling fields. The man was not in sight at the moment, but his trail wandered off to the left in the general direction of a wood, not like the trimmed and cultivated one they had just passed through, but a wild thatch of dark trees that gave, at night and at a distance at least, an appearance of impenetrability.

Marcia walked as fast as she could. Her hope was to get close enough behind the man to have a really good look at him. If he had an aura, she was willing to overlook his taste in music. In any event, she did not relish the idea of going among those forbidding trees. With any luck, she told herself, she would catch sight of him when she crested the next rise.

She did not, but felt she must be getting closer, a feeling that was confirmed when she unexpectedly saw him, not straight ahead, but angling off more to the left in the direction of the woods. Marcia was acutely conscious of the danger of spraining an ankle on the uneven ground; nonetheless she picked up her pace. He was about halfway between her and the trees, which she estimated, with the help of an imaginary football field, to be about three hundred yards away.

As she moved ahead, Marcia made a rapid calculation which informed her that getting closer to her quarry was preferable to being forced to follow him into a woods where there was every chance that his aura, if he had one, would be invisible more than a few feet away. She reflexively reached for skirts to pull up before remembering that for once she was dressed sensibly. With her eyes locked to the ground right in front of her, she fell into a careful trot. She chuckled at the thought of the wine racing through her system. Hardly any point in getting tipsy, not that she had been tipsy, quite, she added to the silent colloquy, as though she had been accused of unseemly behavior. When she neared the crest of the next hill, she slowed to a walk. She wished only, she reminded herself, to see the man, not trip over him.

No aura. It was only when she confirmed that fact that she became aware of how much she had been counting on proving herself wrong. The sensation was similar to noticing a monotonous noise only at the moment it stops. She had been, she realized, expecting to be released from the obligation of pursuing this mystery on her own. She stared at the figure below her, striding against a background of nighttime white. There was not the slightest doubt. He had the same hollow, empty, rather eerie look that Annie had exhibited that night in the hallway.

That night. Marcia smiled ruefully. That distant night, that memory from the past—that had been last night. She felt a sudden pang of homesickness, something she had most recently experienced about two decades ago. But now it was not for her mother’s apartment, the worn linoleum in the hallway, Mr. Miller’s song. It seemed abundantly clear to her that she should be sitting in her own apartment, among her familiar things, relaxing with a book and a warming cup of tea.

But as she thought these thoughts, and in a part of her mind played out a rudimentary scene in which she told Annie that she wanted the Sisterhood to leave her alone, she was making another logical calculation. She decided it was better to follow the man openly, even though if he looked around he would see her, rather than waiting for him to enter the woods where, if he were watching her, she would have no way of knowing it.

She felt quite brazen, boldly walking in the man’s tracks, but the ground had leveled out, leaving her no way to follow him and stay hidden. Following the logic of her reasoning, she walked quickly to close the distance between them. At one point the man stopped, as though unsure of which way to go. Marcia considered and then immediately rejected throwing herself to the ground. Doing so would be unlikely to hide her, and would make her feel extremely silly. If he saw her she would wave.

As soon as the man entered the woods, Marcia began to trot. She considered leaving his path and going under the trees at a slightly different point. It seemed a clever, tricky thing to do somehow, but she couldn’t see that it actually yielded an advantage and so ignored the impulse.

When she reached the woods, she stopped and listened intently. She could neither see nor hear the man. That meant one of about seven or eight things, she guessed. He was able to walk quietly; he was too far away to be heard; he had come to the woods to sleep; and so forth. And of course her least favorite hypothesis: he was behind a nearby tree waiting to grab the nosy woman who was following him.

The wood was not so impenetrable as it had appeared from a distance. It did not have paths like the grove of evergreens by the garden, but it was far from impassable. Marcia had not gone far before she began to wonder how, precisely, she was to find her way out if her trail became too faint to see in the dark. And what, anyway, was she trying to accomplish? She wished very much that Annie were there to say something sensible, or irreverent, and be in control of the situation.

The sound of the whistling was so close that Marcia stopped dead and barely breathed. Life did not, in fact, seem to her to be a bowl of cherries, at least not at that moment. When she had satisfied herself that the man was not a few feet away staring at her, she slowly and very quietly moved forward. A few feet ahead, the tracks in the snow turned abruptly to the right. Slowly, Marcia followed them, occasionally being serenaded with the same idiot strain from the song. At one point she had an almost irresistible urge to shout out the next phrase: something, something, something, you worry so, but you can’t something something, when something, something something ….

She guessed she wouldn’t bother.

The footprints in the snow followed a meandering path through the trees and tangled brush. This was becoming serious. Marcia calculated that she had been gone for at least forty-five minutes, possibly longer. Furthermore, now that she was walking more slowly, she was beginning to notice the cold. This was not a night that she would choose to spend outside. She was visited by the conviction that she was doing something stupid. She stood a good chance of becoming hopelessly lost, assuming she wasn’t already. Not to mention whatever exotic dangers this old man without an aura might present.

Nonetheless, she now felt herself to be committed. She was sorry for the distress that Annie would (presumably) feel. Marcia felt a sudden upsurge of hope. Of course! Annie would have by now discovered she was missing and follow her trail. At any moment, in fact, she might show up to join in the chase. Marcia hoped she would think to bring an extra coat.

Except, she thought as she silently padded through the blackness, she had walked across the garden where she, Annie, the abbot, and the monk had disturbed the snow already. There was no reason at all to think that Annie would notice her footprints there.

She stopped and looked around. What, she asked herself, could she be thinking of? This made chasing around the city looking for a demon seem positively rational. She was in a woods following someone she should undoubtedly be avoiding, in danger at any moment of spraining an ankle, which disaster she would have brought entirely upon herself. Or perhaps she would be face-to-face with the man she was following. She wondered how effective the pushing trick she had learned from Annie would be against …

At the sound of a distant whistle she moved ahead. She was in the stupid position of being committed to this lunacy, and she had got herself in so deep that continuing with it made about as much sense as anything else. And anyway, the cold was getting to be a problem, so she needed to keep moving. She vowed, sort of, that if she came near the field and the footprints, she would give up and go back to the palace.

She had just noticed that the snow was thinning when the mist struck. At one moment the air was crisp and clear, then there were wisps of fog among the trees. In a few minutes she was enveloped in a heavy mist and walking on bare ground. She fought off a feeling of panic. She stopped, both to gather her thoughts, such as they were, and to try to get her bearings. She was having little success with either when she heard the sound of the familiar melody faintly in the distance. She followed it as best she could. It sounded at that moment like a signal from a trusted companion.

Eventually she concluded that she must have gone wrong. The melody stopped, or faded out, and did not return. Still she plodded on. The mist was thinning to attenuated remnants lying among the roots of trees and the debris of twigs and fallen branches on the forest floor. She stopped and looked around. There was no snow to be seen.

The stirrings of panic were beginning to seem quite normal to Marcia. She stopped walking, took a number of deep breaths, and surveyed her surroundings. The night seemed to have gotten darker. She looked up. She could see not a single star through the trees, though the branches were bare. No starlight to help her see, no footprints in the snow to follow. She listened—hard—and heard nothing.

The sob that she choked back surprised her. She had been calmly assessing her situation, then suddenly a jolt of despair had shaken her with the force of a slap in the face. Things, it was clear to her, were united in a conspiracy against her. It wasn’t fair that the snow had disappeared; it wasn’t fair that suddenly she could not see more than a few feet; and it definitely wasn’t fair that her lighthearted, I’ll-just-do-it-for-a-while-and-see-what-happens adventure had turned so serious. She was alone, lost, and in a situation where her survival might be questionable. She had not set out to risk her life, she thought, and it just wasn’t fair. The tears that had treacherously filled her eyes overflowed. She wiped at them with her sleeve, remembering to be grateful that she had removed her thick makeup.

At first, the rumble of distant thunder didn’t make an impression on her consciousness. Marcia was busy lecturing herself on the futility, pointlessness, and sheer waste of time that a binge of self-pity would represent. She was developing two operating principles: that there was every reason to hope that she could find her way back to the palace, and that there were a number of good reasons not to abandon her pursuit of the old man prematurely. It was then that the thunder, with the help of a flicker of lightning, finally got her attention.

Marcia allowed herself a moment to feel puzzled and look incredulous. Then she shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. She was not in a position to observe the weather, or marvel at it; she would have to cope with it. Being caught in the rain far from any shelter was no joke. Hypothermia could be fatal in almost any kind of weather. It was just a matter of being soaked and exposed.

Could it rain? Since she had come outside, the air had been still. Now a breeze had begun to blow. It was damp; it carried the smell of rain. And it was warm. She started to think about what she knew about fronts, pressure systems, and other meteorological details.

“Like that really matters,” she said aloud. She decided to accept the weather as she found it for now and work out the proprieties later.

She was still engaged in a fruitless search for shelter when the rain began. Marcia had spent very few of the hours, or minutes, of her life in forests. She had thought there was a good chance of finding a convenient hollow tree, something that might serve as a domicile for a family of woodland creatures in a fairy tale. She was not so unrealistic as to expect tea and biscuits; she just pictured taking shelter as she might in a doorway in the city.

The rain began with big slow splashy drops. The best shelter Marcia had been able to find was next to the trunk of a large tree that had a slight but definite tilt away from the wind. If the rain wasn’t bad, she could hope to stay dry there.

Her optimism was diminished when the woods were illuminated by flashes of lightning. The thunder was closer now. As it echoed and died, Marcia heard another sound. If it had been summer she would have said it was a wind approaching, rattling a million leaves in the trees. But the trees were bare.

Not sure whether she was being an imbecile or a genius, Marcia removed her vest and began undoing the buttons of her blouse. She was quickly out of it, and the shift underneath. With the rain hitting her bare shoulders and back, she quickly stepped out of her pantaloons and, after a moment’s hesitation, her undergarment as well. The rain began to fall harder. The drops were smaller and closer together now. Marcia rolled her clothing into a tight parcel and crouched beneath the tree, holding the scratchy wool sandwiched between her belly and her thighs.

The rain was heavy but soon over. As near as she could judge, it had not lasted more than ten or fifteen minutes. Her bundle of clothing had stayed dry except for a bit of dampening at the edges. She placed it carefully by the tree and then stepped away.

Marcia had never been out of doors unclothed. Before she dressed, she wanted to brush the water from her body and dry off as much as she could, but she also found the unaccustomed sensation of the fresh open air against her bare skin to be most intriguing. She had not removed her high-top shoes, so technically speaking she was not nude, she supposed, but she felt very naked indeed. She wished now that she had Annie’s bathroom mirror to peek into. She refrained from doing a pirouette or assuming any extravagantly graceful postures. There was, after all, no way of being certain that she was not being observed, if not by the old man, then by someone else.

With the intrusion of this thought the woods seemed less friendly, the air less warm. Marcia hastened to dress, first toweling herself lightly with her vest.

For the next fifteen or twenty minutes Marcia made a methodical reconnaissance of the area, being careful always to return to her sheltering tree. She was determined not to leave and then end up wondering later if the old man had been camped nearby the whole time.

He was not. Marcia squatted on her heels like a baseball catcher and leaned against “her” tree. She had satisfied her sense of responsibility. She had not given up and run back to Annie. But now she thought that she might honorably retreat. By the time she had found her way back, she would certainly be able to describe where she had been. They could take a coach or something to the other side of the woods in the morning—or immediately if Annie wanted to.

With the rise in temperature, Marcia’s spirits had risen as well. She had every expectation of being able to find her way to the palace, and there was no longer any chance that she would freeze to death on the way. The freak warming and the rain would have of course washed away the footprints in the snow. But she had not walked far on the fields. The trick would be first to find the field, and then to be sure that it was the right one, and not one bordering the wood on another side. She stood up and stretched. It had been a big day. She hoped that fate and Annie would permit her to enjoy a good night’s sleep in a soft bed.

She was sure she knew which direction to start out in. As she was leaving, she turned to look wistfully at the dark glade. Since last summer her life had taken a number of unusual turns. Since yesterday it had been a bewildering surplusage of experiences and emotions. But whatever might lie in her future, she doubted that she would ever again find herself in a woods alone at night, standing naked in the rain.

An hour later, Marcia was completely baffled. She could find no end of the woods within ninety degrees of the direction she thought she had come from. Back in the little glade she thought she had left forever she faced the possibility that she had been resisting: that the path she had followed through the woods had turned and twisted more than it had seemed to and that her opinion about the location of the field had no more inherent validity than one she might arbitrarily adopt on some detail of systematic theology or animal husbandry.

She rested for a moment, thinking with reluctance of the state she would be in now if she were shivering in saturated clothing. She pulled her mind from gruesome thoughts to practical matters. She knew she had come from the direction toward which her tree tilted. And yet when she walked in that direction, farther than she should have to, the woods went on. She turned in the opposite direction, checking over her shoulder to make certain her bearing was precisely 180 degrees from her first choice. Satisfied, she set out.

She had of course covered some of this ground before, when she had indulged in what she now considered the foolish waste of time looking for the old man after the rain stopped. Marcia was not sure how reliable her sense of direction was. It had always seemed to work quite well in the city. She knew her way around; if she had been somewhere once, she could find it again seemingly without conscious thought. But however good or bad her sense of direction was, and however well or poorly it was functioning tonight, it was mightily offended by the path she was following. If (when, she corrected herself) she saw the open field through the trees, she was going to be surprised, regardless of the logic of the result. But Marcia did not object to locating the field by the process of elimination, if that was the only way she could manage it. Her only actual interest was in a good night’s sleep. She was sure all of this would seem quite merry over coffee in the morning.

She found she was able to see almost as well now as when the sky had been clear. The stars were still invisible, but there was a bright moon rising behind the clouds, shedding a penumbral luminance that helped, a little, to light her way.

It was with a mixture of disappointment and tired pride that Marcia acknowledged, after having traveled rather too far, that the elusive meadow was no more easily to be reached by walking in the wrong direction than in the right. She sat down wearily on a tree that had fallen across the path.

She stared. She had arrived at a path—a rather well trampled one, as well as she could determine in the light. It was not a highway; not the sort of road she and Annie had traveled on to get to Arrleer, but it wasn’t a deer track either.

The impulse to leap to her feet and investigate at once was not strong. The path would stay where it was for a moment, surely, even if the field had not. She allowed her eyes to close and stretched her legs out in front of her. Too bad, she thought, that she had not been wandering aimlessly in the forest. If she had, she could hold some hope that the palace itself might be only a short way down the road. But since she knew her tree was not far behind her, there didn’t seem to be a plausible interpretation of geometry that would put her closer than a couple of miles to the palace.

Her next problem, she thought wearily, would be to decide which way to go. That was a problem with roads—they offered a choice of directions, something she had already had too much of for one evening. She sat on the log, patient with the delay, patient even with the damp spot that the saturated bark was making on the seat of her pants. There was no rush, she thought. Let the decisions wait for a moment. Anyway, if chance was an illusion, didn’t that mean that choice was, too?

She might have been discouraged to find a path she had not seen before if she had had any confidence left in her instincts. It would have been evidence that she was going the wrong way. But Marcia could not be sure she had not entered the woods parallel to this path. Following it—in the right direction—might well bring her out very near the place she was looking for.

She got up and brushed herself off. With the air of someone beginning an unpleasant chore, she peered into the distance in both directions on the little road. The light was better now than it had been since the stars had retired. The moon was higher now, and the clouds a little thinner. Still Marcia could make out nothing more inviting than shadows and ruts in either direction.

She decided to follow her instinct, simply because she had no better alternative. Marcia still had a strong sense of where the elusive field lay, and therefore an opinion about the location of the palace. If the path continued in the direction that it followed here, and if she was right about where she was, this path would pass not far from the royal residence, although on the opposite side from her chamber and her waiting bed.

And her waiting friend, she thought as she set off without further delay. Annie would have every excuse to be frantic if her novice disappeared without a trace. Not yet, perhaps—she might still be enduring the company in the hall, listening to songs and tales detailing the rewards of orthodoxy—but sooner or later she would notice that Marcia was missing. Marcia picked up her pace. She had always felt guilty and tense when she was late for anything, and she still did, despite having learned today that time is an illusion.

After the illusion of about five minutes had passed, the trees thinned out ahead. Marcia at first did not notice. She was keeping her eyes on the ground in front of her. When she did look up, it was to the sight of her little path coming to an end where a road crossed it just at the edge of the trees. Her impulse was to hurry forward. Instead, she stopped. Had she been right? Would the palace be just down the road to the left? She thought she had not come far enough, but was willing to be proven wrong. She walked forward slowly to the road.

It ran along the woods and was bordered on the far side by open fields. Marcia stood as tall as she could and craned her neck to scan the land for familiar sights.

Something was wrong. The snow-clad meadows she had crossed, like all the local landscape, had been deeply contoured, parceled out in curves and folds like a rumpled bed. This ground, though not flat, was more level. There was no trace of snow—not a millimeter of white. It was, indeed, difficult to imagine where so much snow had gone. Surely, Marcia thought, there should be water gathered in pools, flooding, some evidence of the violent change in the weather. She bent down and drew her fingertips across the rutted dirt of the road. It was hardly damp. Never mind the rain, the melting snow should have soaked it.

She rose slowly to her feet. “I’m tired of mysteries,” she said aloud. She looked down the road in the direction she meant to take. There was nothing in sight but road.

“I’m tired of walking.” She looked in the other direction, straining to see something, anything, besides night and loneliness.

“And I’m tired of being lost,” she said with some vehemence. At that moment she felt angry, but at the same time, Marcia was beginning to wonder how much longer she would be able to keep at bay the despair that she could feel mounting as a subtle tightening in her chest.

“I don’t blame you,” she said, continuing to talk aloud. She was finding the sound of her own voice to be a comfort in her increasingly wretched situation. She wondered if the people who talked to themselves in the city streets did it to fight loneliness and fear.

“The thing to do is keep moving,” she said with a heartiness that was completely counterfeit. She looked once more across the fields she had not crossed. There was yet more light than before from the rising moon, though the clouds remained unbroken. She thought of the stars she had seen, of the expanse of starlit snow, of the rainstorm. She pictured herself standing naked in the woods. She smiled, squared her shoulders, straightened her back, and started down the road with one last glance back at the path.

There, not ten yards from her, was the old man she had been following. His lack of any aura was so disconcerting that Marcia almost failed to notice that he was no longer wearing his robe, but was dressed instead in trousers and a loose pullover shirt. What light there was struck him full in the face. There was no missing the vacant quality of his unconvincing smile or the strange light in his eyes.

As her heart began to beat again, Marcia made the obvious connection that had somehow eluded her before. Last night a maniac whom everyone had described as an old man had gone on a rampage at the monastery, destroying a great deal of property and attacking a servant girl. This was certainly the man. She tried to calm her thoughts, and forced from her mind the voice that wanted to whine that if she had realized who he was, she would never have been so brainless as to follow him.

“The fountains are fed by pools of unknown depth.” The old man talked as though they had just been chatting about fountains. Marcia smiled uncertainly. The old man went on. “The statues watch the rats at night.”

Marcia raised her ring hand from her side. She tried to recall the feeling of pushing with the ring, of projecting the force as Annie had shown her. She pictured herself running from the old man—tired, frightened, hearing his feet striking the ground behind her. He was old, but looked muscular and compact, capable maybe of a burst of speed that would overtake her, bring her down.

“Unfailing morning finds the city. Sunlight paints the roofs and windows.”

At the same moment that Marcia was convincing herself she would never be able to call upon the power of the ring, she felt it. As it had been before, the force was almost visible, like an aura. She exhaled as if she had been holding her breath.

The old man looked at her quizzically. “Are you hungry?” he asked. Marcia shook her head. “I had a feast,” he went on. “A fine pig.” He looked down at himself, patted his ribs. “Wine like blood,” he said with a happy grin.

Marcia felt that she should say something. This situation was beginning to resemble being at a party trying to make conversation with a stranger—something Marcia had never been good at.

When the old man walked toward her, Marcia had no idea what to do. It seemed silly and, more importantly, rude to turn the power of the ring on him. She almost wished he would do something unambiguous, like run at her waving his arms and screaming.

“We have to go meet the others now,” he said matter-of-factly. “We don’t want to miss them.”

“We don’t?” Marcia felt stupid and awkward. She was visited by an unexpected feeling of optimism that came to her as a palpable sensation, as though the hopeful thought had originated in her stomach and was rising gently to her brain. Could this old lunatic be talking about the castle?

Another sensation originating from lower down and rising with greater speed overwhelmed the first when the old man reached her side, put his hand on the seat of her pants, and gave her an extremely familiar pat and squeeze before starting down the road.

Marcia had never been touched by a cattle prod, but the effect could scarcely have been more galvanic. Aside from the more general shock, the caress awakened hitherto unnoticed pathways of nerves in the back of her thighs that terminated in a particularly vulnerable location behind her knees. She stood and stared after him with her mouth open. After he had gone twenty or thirty paces he looked back, then stopped and waited for her. Having precisely no alternatives at all, Marcia picked up her feet and followed him.

Chapter 9

The house was nearly invisible. The black stone of the hills that bounded it on three sides had provided blocks for the walls; the dull slate of the roof matched their shade of camouflage. Far below, the Pacific Ocean battered the rocks and wet the skirts of the California fog with salty spray.

Alexander sat on the faded brocade of his chair surrounded by embroidered flowers and vines that seemed to have only the memory of color, like the old roses and golds of a Persian rug that has felt the scrape of slippers for a century and a half. Like the designs of the chair, Alexander himself seemed to be faded, or to be a figure constructed of paper and wires that, if placed in a window, would become an easily overlooked translucency.

His hands were folded on his lap, his eyes open but fixed on a spot just in front of his shoes, where their polished oxblood stain clashed mutely with the waxed palisander planking of the floor, Had Alexander at that moment died, it is unlikely that his appearance or posture would have altered in the slightest. He would have been a small, faded corpse dressed in silk casual wear fifty years out of date. The triangle of his chin was outlined sharply against his lavender ascot in a way that had the look of a final arrangement.

After a time he raised his eyes to the open French doors across the room. Mist lapped in over the sill like sluggish waters at the edge of a cresting flood. The light of the high moon served to make the evening fog opaque; the stone wall at the edge of the patio was invisible. Alexander rose from the chair like a leaf caught by a sudden gust of wind and stepped closer to the doors. No sound could be heard. Even the ocean on the rocks below was muted in the fog and moonlight. He looked around the room, peering into the distant shadowy corners where yards of glassed-in bookshelves met. The window seats and heavy folds of drapes he studied, and all the formal chairs arranged like maiden aunts and widows at a funeral.

When he stepped onto the patio he was enfolded by laminations of mist, and slowly paced into insubstantiality, disappearing by degrees. The room he left behind might have been a careful placement of antiques in a historic dwelling, doorways barred by brass stanchions and red velvet cords.

At the wall he could hear, faintly, the sea below, no more pacific tonight than on any other. The waves attacked, the rocks resisted, doomed to slow defeat. Ultimately the cliffs had no more substance than the fog that hugged them. Less, for the fog, indifferent and enduring, would cloak the last pebble as it was battered to foam.

Alexander leaned out over the wall, feeling the invisible emptiness opening below him. If the sea were on fire, smoke would rise like this fog, crawling up the black cliffs, absorbing the glow of the moon, obscuring a man perched like a songbird in a crevice, his house amounting to not so much as an incident on the miles of vertical rock. After a moment he straightened up and walked along the wall listening to the sea and staring ahead like a blind man.

And behind him, back where the wall met the rising cliff, and where the shadows were deepest, was a thickening darkness, as though a guttering candle had expired. And among the shadows a deeper, blacker shadow inserted itself.

Alexander stopped and looked once more out over the wall. He gazed for a moment into the mist as though his vision could part it. When he had seen enough of nothing, he turned his back to the sea. The light from the room, though dim, seemed positively cheerful now. Alexander felt a breath of chill from the damp air. As he walked slowly back to the house, the black thing shifted, slipping along the wall like a shadow cast on a sunny day.

Inside, Alexander closed the door behind him but did not latch it. He surveyed the room as he had done before, then left by a sliding wooden door to a gloomy hallway beyond. Outside in the mist, the shadow glided silently to the door and stopped, blocking the light that came from the room.

When the door opened, it did so slowly and without noise. For a moment it stood empty, admitting no more than the inevitable encroaching mist at the sill. Then, in a silent rush, the shadow translated itself into the room and hovered darkly at the opening as though prepared to flee.

The hand that closed the door was pale. The fingers were long, elegant, and terminated in claws.

The face within the hood was pale as well, but for the eyes, which were yellow. Obscenely quick, the apparition moved like a hurrying rat past the shelves of books until it reached the shadows of the farthest corner of the room. There it sank down, dissolving into a pool of inky opacity.

A few minutes later the sliding door muttered its way back into the wall and Alexander entered the room. He went directly to a cabinet by the wall. Turning the key that protruded from the lock, he pulled down a hinged door that opened like a desk to make a work surface. At the back were bottles, decanters, and a variety of glassware, all neatly arranged and ordered by species. Because life had long since informed him that it was most to be savored in the moment and in the task at hand, he gave his full attention to the selection of the snifter, taking pleasure in the clarity and shape of the crystal, its heft as he warmed it in his palm.

The brandy he spilled carefully down the side of the glass had been distilled from wine made of grapes grown eight decades ago on a hillside in Catalonia. In the heavy complexity of its aroma there could no longer be detected strong light and bright colors, yet all the warmth of that primitive sunshine seemed to rise from the glass, bearing the compressed perfume of all the flowers that bloomed on those ancient summer days.

Alexander rested his chin on the rim of the snifter. This scant measure of spirits would last him all evening. The bouquet alone was intoxicating. He often found that he forgot to drink, until dutiful bedtime sips emptied the glass and fulfilled his obligation. But sometimes to drink of such ethereal stuff seemed unduly carnal, a surrender to gross appetites, unworthy urgings. He smiled faintly, indulgently, and tilted the glass to take a drop into his mouth with the delicacy and precision of a hummingbird sipping from a flower.

He wandered to the French doors and pushed the thin curtain aside. He could see nothing but his reflection. He raised a hand to smooth his thin gray hair where it fell over his ears, then looked soberly, almost sadly, into his reflected eyes. He moved the drink from his left to his right hand so he could turn out the single light from the switch at the wall.

Now the room was darker than the misty moonlit night. His reflection disappeared, replaced with a view of the cloudy patio. He stared as he had stared outside, as though he hoped to penetrate the mist, or as a blind man might who stares at nothing.

In the corner, the waiting shadow rose without a sound. If the hood pushed back with a quiet pale hand made any hiss of cloth on cloth, it was a soft noise next to silence. The yellow eyes were fixed on Alexander; the jaw, heavy for the narrow, strangely delicate face, was thrust forward in a thin-lipped smile.

It moved, this thing, in utter silence, and quick, as if dedicated to speed. It flickered along the wall, stopping and starting like a snake approaching an unwary bird. It closed on the man at the door, and as it did, the yellow eyes seemed to dull. They had shone before as though illumined from within, as though some interior light glowed behind them. Now they became opaque, a dull mud-yellow. The thin hands looked larger as they rose behind Alexander; the figure itself seemed to grow in the darkened room, to loom behind the little man in his pastel silks.

“You have come, then,” said Alexander in a voice that sounded like the rustle of fallen leaves. He turned in time to see the clawed hands drop, the shadow shrink into itself. He was faced by a person his own size, pale and clothed in black. The claws were now not in sight, the heavy jaw simply an unattractive feature in a face no uglier than many ignored on crowded streets. Alexander raised his glass to his lips. He closed his eyes and inhaled luxuriously before drinking.

The other, the light back in his eyes, stared. When he opened his mouth it was as though he had exposed a wound. Gums too red, teeth too big, worked as he spoke.

“You mock me, Necromaunt!” His voice was an angry tenor that scraped the ear.

Alexander raised his eyes from the interior of his glass with a mild expression.

“You stalk me, Rhastopheris,” he replied in a dry whisper that scarcely broke the silence.

Rhastopheris wheeled and took what seemed one step, but that it carried him three yards. “I come,” he said, facing Alexander again, “because you have called. Why you have called I do not know.” His voice dropped in pitch and volume. “One day you will call and be stalked. And taken. That is always the way, finally. If today it is to be more riddles”—he gestured with a languid claw—“you will tire of them in time.”

Alexander reached out and turned the light back on. “It is not riddles,” he said, opening a drawer in the cabinet and bringing out a heavy bottle of black glass. From it he poured a clear liquid into a crystal tumbler. “It is the riddle. The one we spoke of last time.” He brought the glass to his visitor.

Rhastopheris took it and seated himself on a chair facing Alexander’s. He gazed at the glass in his hand. “Such a fine vessel to be broken in the fireplace and thrown out with the ashes,” he said.

“But only in that way can I be certain,” said Alexander, lowering himself into his old chair, “that it will never be used by anyone less worthy than Rhastopheris.” He raised his glass to the demon and then took an economical sip. The demon returned his salute.

“Of course, I may be wrong about you, old one,” he said between swallows. “It may be that you will still be pouring this for me a hundred years and more from now. From time to time there is a great necromancer who lingers on and on.” He sent his yellow glance across the space between them. “Why, I do not know.” he added, and then returned his attention to his drink.

Alexander allowed a few minutes of silence to pass, not speaking until he rose to refill the demon’s glass.

“Something is amiss,” he said, returning to his seat.

The demon formed his lips into a shape that on another face might have been a smile. “Much is amiss, as always. And that is a necessity, which you know as well as I. But we spoke of this before—last time—and I told you then what I knew.”

“Nothing.”

“In a word.”

Alexander put his glass on the table next to his chair. “Then what power must I summon? Who is it that will know more than Rhastopheris? You call me old one in jest, because of your great age, but I have lived long for a man in the Middle Regions, and something is troubled that has not been troubled in my time before.”

“You need summon no other. Why did you not ask the Lady, your visitor, of these matters.”

Alexander looked at the demon in silence for a moment before answering.

“Dread,” he whispered. “Once I recognized her for what she was I thought of nothing but my peril. But the fact that she was here at all convinces me that something is wrong.”

“It was Balder Rassadder—that was her concern,” said the demon. “This you told me yourself.”

Alexander shook his head. “That was foolish of me, as I have realized. There is the Brotherhood; they deal with such matters. She only happened to be among them.”

Alexander had occasion again to note how disquieting is a smile that reveals long sharp teeth. “Only happened,” repeated Rhastopheris. “What strange ideas you have.”

The necromancer shrugged. “Failing foreknowledge, it’s as good a way as any to think of things. In any event, it was not for me to bandy words with one of her sort.”

“Well, I knew nothing of it before, and know nothing still, save this one thing, and that only from the great”—the demon curled his lip—“Rassadder Baldersnarp, that has parlayed his names to one hundred by arithmetic, and thinks himself my equal. Rass. Rassadder. Rassaddersnat.”

“But he is ancient.”

“Ancient, yes. But he has not the names. Not in truth. Perhaps seventy. Eighty. No more.” The demon clenched his thin pale hands together. “Loose me in this Region for even one day and see what I wreak.”

“But,” interposed Alexander, “what is it that he told you, this pretender?”

The enthusiasm disappeared from the demon’s eye. “Only that something was awry in the Middle Region from which he was called. That some force or power was moving, so that there even the dead were unsettled, vampires stirring, so on.”

“But this is not some upheaval, some arising from the Lower Regions?”

Again the demon smiled, and with an effect even more chilling than before. “On that day, old man, I will summon you to my demesne. I will tell you now, I have already in my possession the waiting bottle from which I will pour for you. And though much will be forgotten on that day, I promise that I will recognize you. You have earned your remembrance, my enemy.” Rhastopheris rose from his chair. He drained his glass and flung it into the fireplace where it shattered musically against the stones. “The rites, the old rules of hospitality are now observed by only a very few. All this crystal over all these many years you have sacrificed to good effect. You will be spared much, if you still live on the day we rise.”

Much, but not all, thought Alexander as his guest departed in a dissipating haze. He rose from his chair and replenished his snifter with a celebratory dram. Had Rhastopheris meant to reveal so much? This was pledged truth. No lie was told with your host’s glass in your hand. This was sacred as few things were. You need say nothing, but you may not lie.

So now he had learned in this moment the thing he had wanted to know. He paced the room sipping from his glass. He had arrived at a point of decision, for he could no longer pursue this matter on a lonely cliff above the ocean. With a few words, uttered as though unimportant, the demon had informed him where he might fruitfully search for more information. And if it was scant cause for optimism, this snippet, this rumor half a year old, it was much more than he had had before, if something is more than nothing.

He pondered his situation. It required following no tortuous threads of logic, no subtle ratiocination. He would consult no oracles, ask for the advice of no ghosts or spirits. The question was not susceptible of subdivision; it could be answered by a single yes or no. Would he act?

He looked around his familiar room. He despised travel, even when meliorated by the powers he could exercise to make it shorter and safer than was the case for those who lacked his skills. But travel would be necessary in this case, just to get to the proper Doorway. Of course, there was nowadays the option of flight. One willing to travel in that way could cross the country faster than any necromancer, Alexander had flown, once, on a rare day long ago, and remembered it still with pleasure. But flight of the sort that was available to him at the moment—in a machine, a contraption—that was out of the question. He trafficked with demons, and worse, but the idea of being hurtled through the skies protected only by bolts, rivets, and physics made him shudder.

Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow would be time enough to make up his mind. He always arose a bit before dawn—listened to the birds in his garden, watched the first fingers of light seek out his roof, touch the tallest yellow blooms that climbed the wall. How he would miss these familiar comforts if he went away. But how, if existence was to be merely long, could he enjoy them? Comforts could not make up life, but only be incidental to it. This was necessarily and demonstrably so; to be absolutely comfortable was to be dead.

Alexander went to bed knowing, even as he assured himself that he would make up his mind in the morning, that his mind was already made up. In seconds he was asleep. He lay on his back like a corpse, his head supported by a small soft pillow with lace at the edges, his chin outlined against the neat fold of the sheet turned down over the summer blanket. On his lips was a faint smile.

Annie looked out the window over the snow-covered landscape. The tracks she and Marcia and the abbot had left made a dark valley across the otherwise unbroken blanket of white that covered everything in view. At least, she thought, the snow had stopped. And the sky was dazzlingly clear. Unless snow could fall from stars, no more would fall tonight.

It wasn’t even too cold. Perhaps tomorrow the snow would melt away. If the sky stayed clear, the roads would dry quickly. Everything was just fine, except she had lost Marcia.

Which wasn’t quite accurate. Marcia had lost herself. Annie forced herself to be calm. She had already been so irrational as to go back to the main hall to look for Marcia, even though she had seen the clothes she had worn to dinner hanging in the closet. She wanted to pace, so she made herself sit down. One of the most unpleasant aspects of the court at Arrleer was the degree of regimentation and the pervasive sanctimony. But it was dull, not dangerous. It was almost impossible to imagine that anything very bad could have happened to Marcia in the halls of this ugly and boring castle. In addition to which, she wore Elyssa’s ring and bore the demon’s scar. She was not as vulnerable as she might look.

Annie got to her feet and began to pace. What conceivable amusement could have tempted Marcia to go off without coming back to the hall and telling her, or at least leaving a note? Lord Shilmer was known to have retired early and alone. Not that Annie thought for a moment that Marcia had such poor taste that a night with Shilmer would tempt her. And even if he were attractive, Marcia would not just casually sashay off to his bedroom.

That was the problem. Marcia was not thoughtless and irresponsible. Everything about her suggested that she would strongly disapprove of someone who was. Annie went back to the window. It was getting late. Their friend at the court was a well-placed servant in a position of authority. The discreet search for the missing visitor was in capable hands, meaning that Annie had nothing to do but fret quietly, not one of her talents.

She stared at the uninformative landscape for a few minutes longer, then decided to go outside to escape the irritating cheer of the fire crackling on the hearth. Within seconds she came back through the door. She strode toward the bedchamber unhooking her frock and kicking off her slippers.

Soon she was back on the porch dressed in outdoor clothes and boots. As she started down the steps she glanced again at the footprints on the porch under the window. Either Marcia had been outside or someone else had been at their window. Whichever it was, Annie wanted to know more. She followed the tracks through the garden. She should have done this right away. It was so obvious. It was stupid that it had taken the footprints at the window to wake her up. Footprints or not, there was a chance that Marcia had gone outside. And if she had, it would be easy to follow her. Annie thought of herself staring stupidly at the tracks across the garden—assuming that they were the ones from earlier in the day.

As she approached the woods, she began to fear that she would find nothing more than their tracks and the abbot’s. Then she would have to trudge back to the room and wait. But instead of finding no tracks, she found too many. It was fairly easy to guess which ones the abbot had made; she had seen him walking through the trees. Then there were the tracks of the monk who had followed him. But there seemed to be others. It was difficult to be sure, but it looked as though at least one more person had come from the direction of the abbey.

She followed the confused trail for a few feet. From the tangle of footprints a single trail led into the woods, not following one of the paths that could be seen in outline under the snow, but wandering off among the trees and around bushes. The prints in the snow were noticeably larger than the ones she was making. Marcia’s feet were smaller than hers. Annie went back to the spot where they had found the abbot. There, leading down a path between the trees, was a trail left by a pair of small boots.

As she followed the path, Annie tried to calculate how long it might have been since Marcia had been here. She couldn’t have left the hall any more than one hour before Annie. And something less than an hour had passed since Annie had come back to the room.

When she came to the edge of the trees and saw the two paths converging at the little stream, Annie’s first thought was that the other person had followed Marcia. Her second thought was that she must be losing her grip. Following Marcia where, precisely? Unless Marcia had caught what the abbot had, the only reason for her trail to lead into the fields was because she was following the other person. Indeed, it looked as though she had started to turn back, then changed her mind and gone on.

Annie looked at the tracks one more time before hurrying down the little hill and crossing the stream. This could only have to do with their errand. Marcia had followed someone. That is, she had done something for which there was only one rational explanation. Marcia had been told that they were looking for some unspecified thing that, once found, would be manifestly the thing they were looking for. Evidently she had found it.

Annie moved fast, and when she reached the forest, she entered it without pausing. It was darker under the trees, but the path was clear in the snow. She followed the footprints until they stopped.

A number of stupid notions came to her mind as she looked up into the branches overhead, then peered across the unbroken snow to see if the footprints miraculously took up again a few yards away. She continued for a short distance in the direction Marcia had been walking, satisfying an urge she knew to be irrational. The path had simply stopped. It was as though the next step, the one that left no trace, had suddenly carried the pedestrians a long way off. And this, of course, as Annie knew very well, was precisely what had happened.

When she got back to the palace, Annie sent word that there was no more need to look for Marcia, and that she would be leaving in the morning. Having dismissed the servant, Annie extinguished the lamps and candles and went to bed.

Chapter 10

When Marcia saw the giant, she screamed. It was discourteous, she realized at once, but perhaps excusable in the case of one who wakens not knowing where she is and finds a seven-foot stranger looming over her.

“By the gods!” bellowed the man, stepping back from her quickly. His aura was not at all threatening, but friendly and generous. “You’re noisy for such a little thing,” he added in a softer but still quite loud voice.

Marcia looked around wildly. She was sitting in a pile of dry straw. A few feet away the old man was beaming at the giant. Marcia was confused, and seemed only able to think of one thing at a time. She had not awakened in her apartment; nor in her bedroom in Annie’s cottage, at the thought of which, strangely, a wave of homesickness clutched at her upper chest and throat; nor yet in the tall, lumpy bed she was to have shared with Annie at Arrleer.

She remembered the barn last night. She and the old man had walked for well over an hour, she was sure, before they had come to it. It had not been the first farm they had passed, but he was determined to come to this one, and Marcia had no choice but to follow. She remembered the deep voice that had greeted them sleepily as they crept through the open door: “Plenty of clean straw there in the corner.”

There was plenty of straw now on Marcia’s clothing and in her hair. She began to brush it away, at the same time stumbling over an apology to the man, who really was most disconcertingly huge.

“I just … I didn’t …,” she said helplessly, pulling at a thatch of straw that seemed to have woven itself permanently into her hair.

The big man nodded. “That’s all right. I understand, believe me.” He squatted down and sat on his heels. “My name is Breksin,” he said, looking at both of them. “I’m from … I’m a traveler.”

Marcia introduced herself.

“And this is … ?” said Breksin.

The old man laughed gleefully. “Her father,” he shouted before Marcia could answer, “I’m her father.”

Breksin looked puzzled. “If I may say it, you’re mighty ripe in years to have fathered one her age. I would have guessed grandsire at least.”

Marcia sent the giant a suspicious look. Was he making fun of her? The old man was probably twenty-five years older than she was. Certainly too young to be her grandfather. Breksin was getting to his feet. He looked around. “Now, where’s that cat?” he boomed.

“The little black one?” asked Marcia.

“Yes, he’s been following me for over two days. Strange behavior for a cat. Of course, I’m feeding him.”

Marcia got up, brushing clumps of straw from her pantaloons. “When we came last night, a black cat rushed out right under our feet, going so fast you almost couldn’t see it.”

“Frames of garb,” announced the old man. Marcia immediately thought of the strange utterances of the abbot.

“Huh?” said Breksin with a hand at his ear.

The old man stared at the floor. “Garbled frames,” he said uncertainly. “Something—I’ll remember. Something, something …” He looked up. “It’s very broad.” He made a sweeping gesture as though he were talking about the bam. “You have to be able to see it all.”

Breksin looked around. “Ah. Well, what’s your name, then?” he said, just as though he weren’t changing the subject.

“You want to name me?” The old man stepped back a pace and began to mumble to himself.

Breksin smiled sympathetically at Marcia. “I’ll just call you Father, then. How’s that?”

The old man looked up. “That would be best,” he said.

Breksin went to the door. “Well, Father, Miss Marcia, I’ve food if you’d like some breakfast before we part. I’ll wait for you by the road.”

By the time Marcia joined them, the two men were sharing Breksin’s bread and cheese.

“… wine like blood,” the old man was saying as Marcia sat down with them, but despite the image, she found that she was hungry. She gazed helplessly at the large round loaf of bread and the lump of yellow cheese resting on an oily cloth on the ground.

“Here, young miss,” said Breksin in a tone that was not quite a shout, “let me help you with that” He picked up a knife and cut a slab of cheese that would have made sandwiches for a foursome at a bridge party. He extended it on the blade with an air of formality. The china and doilies all seemed to be missing, so Marcia plucked the cheese from the blade with her fingers and made an unsuccessful effort not to look ill at ease. Her host was preparing to wrench a hunk of bread from the loaf when he glanced up at Marcia again. As though he had meant to all along, Breksin wiped the knife carefully on the edge of the cloth, then carved a slice of bread the size of a dinner plate and presented it to Marcia.

The old man tossed a crust of bread over his shoulder and got to his feet. He muttered something that couldn’t be understood, but sounded good-natured, and wandered off.

“Has he been like that for a long time?” asked Breksin in what he probably thought was a quiet voice.

Marcia was worrying about what she was going to do with the remaining bread and cheese when she could eat no more. She didn’t even have a pocket.

“Hmmm?” she said, swallowing.

“Out of his wits,” added the giant.

“Yes, I suppose he is,” said Marcia.

“What?”

Marcia wondered why Breksin looked puzzled. “Well, of course I don’t know, but he seems very strange.”

“But how long?” he said.

“How long?”

Breksin looked toward the old man standing in the distance, then back at Marcia. He leaned forward.

“I said, how long has he been out of his wits?” he rumbled.

“I don’t know,” said Marcia, glancing up from her breakfast.

“But he’s your father.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Marcia looked from the cheese in her left hand to the bread in her right as if she were planning to juggle them. Finally she balanced the cheese on the bread and put them on the cloth with an apologetic smile. “But he’s not,” she said.

“You mean he’s always been like this?” said Breksin.

“No, I mean he’s not my father.”

“Hah. I knew it. He must be over sixty. Your grandfather, right?”

“No,” said Marcia, “he’s not my grandfather, and he’s not too old ….”

“There’s my friend,” boomed Breksin. “Kitsey, kitsey,” he cooed in a deep bass that almost shook the ground.

A small black cat came tiptoeing up to the food and gave it a perfunctory sniff. Breksin reached out, but the cat snaked out from under his hand without seeming to rush and sat down just out of reach.

“He’s not too friendly,” said Breksin. The cat trotted to Marcia and draped itself over her thigh. Breksin looked hurt. Marcia reflexively began to pet the cat, then immediately felt guilty.

“So, your grandsire. Just as I said.”

“No,” said Marcia, remembering not to speak too softly, “he is not my grandsire—father.”

“But you just said he was.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Oh. So he is your father, after all. Funny, he’s old enough to be my father.”

Marcia felt herself running out of patience. She lifted the cat off her leg, then gave it an apologetic pat on the head. She looked the big man in the eye.

“That’s very gallant,” she said, “but I doubt that you are any older than I am.”

Breksin looked at her incredulously. “But I’m—wait a minute.” He looked down at the ground, then up at the clear sky overhead. “Well, anyway, I’m past my fortieth year.”

Marcia glowered at him. “I was born in nineteen fifty,” she said.

Breksin raised a hand to his ear. “Where?” he said.

Marcia raised her voice. “In the year nine—” She stopped, feeling like an utter dunce. Nineteen fifty. Next she’d be asking him for directions to the airport.

Breksin was looking at her sternly. “The year nine,” he said. “Not of Asbrak’s reign. I’m sorry, but you’re more than sixteen, my girl.”

“I am not a girl,” said Marcia through clenched teeth, “I’m forty.”

“Forty what?”

Marcia forced herself to take a deep breath. She was getting into an argument with a man that was at least a foot and a half taller than she and probably outweighed her by about two hundred pounds.

“I’m in my forty-first year,” she said sweetly.

Breksin looked like a man trying to be patient. “Whatever you say.” He sighed. “So the old man is your father.”

Instead of following her impulse and screaming, Marcia simply said no. Breksin looked at her, waiting to hear more. Marcia tried to quickly think of a way to account for the fact that she was wandering the countryside and sleeping in barns. She was relieved to realize that it wasn’t difficult at all.

“I am a visitor here,” she said calmly. “Last night I took a stroll after dinner and got lost. When I found that old man, I hoped he could help me, but …” She gestured toward the old man and shrugged.

“Ah,” said Breksin, “I wondered about those fine clothes.” He began to laugh soundlessly. “Well, miss, now you’ve spent a night in a barn, and none the worse for it. It’ll make a good tale to tell when you’re safe at home.” He wrapped the food up in the cloth, still chuckling. “And me trying to make the old man your granddad.” He nodded toward the cat curled up next to Marcia. “This cat and I have a long trip ahead of us, but I’ll see you safe with your friends before I go on. Maybe they’ll know where Father belongs,” he said, watching the old man stroll back toward them. “The gods expect us to help the loose-wilted. It’s a solemn duty.”

He put the bread and cheese in his pack and got to his feet. Marcia picked herself up. As she had at Annie’s, she noticed that she felt especially good. There was no hint of ill effects from the extra glass (or two) of wine last night.

She watched the old man approach. In the daylight his lack of aura made his appearance very strange. Something caught her eye. She turned just in time to see the cat disappear behind a clump of dried weeds. Marcia gazed at the spot the cat had occupied. Now that she happened to think of it, there was something odd about the colors in the cat’s aura. She shook her head. At least the cat had an aura.

“The Wendelings were just such,” remarked the old man, gazing up at the giant.

Breksin looked at Marcia. “What’d he say?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Marcia.

Breksin nodded in agreement. “He mumbles. I can’t hear half of what he says.”

“You aren’t missing much.”

“What?”

“They ruled the mountains,” said the old man.

“Who?” said Breksin.

“The Wendelings—lords of the high meadows.”

“That’s what the old legends say, Father.”

“Mighty heroes.” The old man looked Breksin up and down. “You are of their line,” he said.

“Nope,” said Breksin, “not me; I’m just an old soldier.”

“See?” cried the old man. “That’s just what Wendeling Asa used to say.”

Breksin laughed. “Oh, a friend of yours, was he?”

“Of course.”

Breksin looked at Marcia sympathetically. “Your guide must be even older than he looks. He knew Wendeling Asa.”

“Who’s that?”

“You know, from the fairy tale. The king of the giants. He rid the mountains of trolls and then reigned for three hundred and thirty-three years,”

Breksin slung his pack over his shoulder. “Now,” he said, “I’ve passed no grand houses since the border, so you must have come from down this way.” He pointed to the right.

“No,” said Marcia, “we came that way.” She pointed back along the road. The old man lowered himself to the ground and lay staring up at the sky.

“But you said you got lost after dinner last night. I’ve seen nothing but farms on this road for more than a day. There’s not even an inn. No great houses at all.”

Marcia smiled to herself. Evidently her “fine clothes” weren’t elegant enough to make him think of the castle. She tried to look modest. If he started apologizing and treating her like a countess she was going to be most uncomfortable.

“No, it’s not a house.” She hesitated. “I’m a guest at the castle,” she said shyly.

Breksin’s reaction was not what she expected. He glanced at the old man lying on the ground, then back at Marcia. He did not look like a person who has suddenly realized he is talking to someone important.

“The Castle,” he said. “An inn?”

Marcia’s shoulders slumped. This was beginning to sound like one of her colloquies with Annie. She wondered if she was ever going to have a normal conversation with anyone again.

“No,” she said patiently, “the castle. The court of the duchy of Arrleer. It’s back that way”—she pointed—“and it’s not something you’d miss. It must have three hundred rooms, and there’s a monastery or something right next to it.”

Breksin took his pack off and dropped it to the ground. He talked to Marcia without looking at her.

“So you were dining at the castle, and then you went for a little walk?”

“No,” said Marcia wearily, “I just stepped outside to the balcony for some fresh air. The stars were very bright and the snow was beautiful. Then I saw Lord Shilmer through the window ….”

Breksin reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “What did you say about the snow?” he said in his softest shout.

Marcia was trying to keep a clear head. She certainly didn’t want to start talking about following the old man, which was sure to sound completely crazy to Breksin.

“Well, that’s really how I got lost. I have a very good sense of direction, but I was counting on following my tracks in the snow back to the castle. Then when it turned so warm, the snow just melted, or else the rain washed it away.” She looked around. The sky was clear, the morning air springlike. “It’s really hard to believe that yesterday we had to come to the castle in a sleigh.”

Breksin sighed and looked as helpless as it was possible for someone his size to look.

“What’s wrong?” said Marcia.

Breksin shouldered his pack again. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “there’s no castle back that way.”

Marcia looked down the road, then out across the fields. Nothing looked right. She tried to recapture her feelings of last night about where the castle should be. She was unsuccessful.

“Then it must be this way,” she said.

Breksin nodded silently. “Come on, Father,” he said in his unintentional shout, “it’s time to move on.” He looked around. “Now where’s that cat?”

The old man got up, yawning and scratching.

In the early-morning chill, Marcia had been glad of her warm vest, but before they had been walking long, she took it off. Despite her protests, Breksin insisted on adding it to his pack.

“You just carry yourself, little miss. I can manage the burdens,” he said, scanning the road and fields behind them. “I wonder where that cat is.”

By the time the sun was halfway up the sky, Marcia had formed the conclusion that something was badly wrong. This was definitely not the road to Arrleer, and Breksin had assured her that within a day’s walk there were no other roads than the one they were on.

“There is but one road,” he had said, looking a little startled by the question.

“But what if you don’t want to go where the road leads?”

“Why then, Miss Marcia,” the giant had explained patiently, “you stay home.”

There’s a bit of good advice, thought Marcia. She gazed ahead on the little rutted path that Breksin insisted went everywhere there was to go. The road to Arrleer had been much wider than this, she was sure. And the lay of the land had been different—hillier, and with a less distant horizon. Of course, the landscape had been covered with snow, the sky cloudy, but Marcia was not prepared to believe that she was being fooled by a change in the weather, no matter how dramatic.

Nor, when she stopped to consider it, was she actually prepared to believe that this dry road and these meadows with warm breezes blowing over them had been frozen when the sun set last night. She looked at the landscape with a fresh eye.

It was so obvious. Somehow she had crossed to a different Region. According to Annie, that’s just what the two of them had done when they went from the brownstone to the garden and the cottage in the trees. This is also what Hannah and Daniel had talked about last summer. She wished that Annie’s explanation of the subject had been more complete. Marcia had the impression, though, that Annie had explained as much as she herself understood. She had treated it as though it were a theoretical matter of little practical importance. That’s fine as long as you know where you are, thought Marcia, who was beginning to realize she only knew where she wasn’t. Not only was she not in her own world, or on the mountain where Annie’s cottage was, now she wasn’t even in Arrleer.

No wonder Breksin was giving her funny looks. She undoubtedly sounded as nutty as the old man. She thought of the things she had been saying, chattering on about a castle that didn’t exist—three hundred rooms, she had told him—footprints in the snow …. She pictured the expression on his face when she had first brought up the snow. He had looked so terribly serious. Then what had she said? Had she mentioned Lord Shilmer? No, that was before; she had told him about the sleigh ride. She began to giggle. Ah yes, my good man, we were delivered to the castle in a sleigh. No snow, you say?

Don’t let that bother you. It’s all completely logical—there’s no castle, either.

Marcia brought her hand to her mouth in an effort to stifle her laughter. She looked furtively at Breksin. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, but looked away quickly at her glance. Stuffing her fist into her mouth did not stop her increasingly loud laughter, but it did make her look even more unbalanced than she would have otherwise. Breksin stopped and stared helplessly at her. He clearly thought she was having a fit of some kind. For some perverse reason, this made Marcia’s laughter more uncontrollable than ever.

Down the road the old man was stalking on ahead. He walked slightly bowlegged, like a seaman, swaying from side to side with each step. Feeling as if she were in front of an audience, Marcia took her hand awkwardly from her mouth. As her laughter subsided, she breathed deeply and tried to look rational.

“Are you all right now?” asked Breksin.

Marcia started a sober reply to the effect that she had merely thought of something amusing, but her words were suffocated by renewed laughter. She gave up any thought, for the moment, of convincing Breksin of her sanity, and started down the road after the old man. After a moment she heard the giant’s heavy step behind her.

It was not until their shadows had begun to walk on their right instead of their left that they came within sight of anything more well populated than two or three farms together. Marcia had been walking along in what had developed into a daze of doubt and unease. How had she been able to laugh, she wondered. It probably really was a sign that she was unbalanced. She was completely adrift—alone in a world where she was acquainted with only two people, one an incoherent old man, the other a kindly giant who had every reason to think she was insane.

When Breksin turned to her, he pretended not to notice her tears.

“You see. Miss Marcia, ahead there”—he pointed with a massive arm—“a village. There’s sure to be a tavern. We’ll sit under an awning out of the sun and have a nice rest and a meal.”

Marcia blinked and tried to look cheerful. Ahead, at the bottom of a long, gentle hill, next to a creek glinting in the sunlight was a cluster of single-story buildings.

There was a tavern, and an awning. When Marcia settled herself into a cushioned chair, it seemed a very great luxury. Though she felt slightly wicked doing so, she took a tentative sip of the cool wine that the girl had brought them as soon as they sat down. Breksin sat opposite her on a heavy bench and sipped with a thoughtful expression. He exchanged pleasantries with others, all men, seated there. Marcia scarcely heard the talk of weather and inns. The wine was pale and weak, but had a lovely flowery aroma and a pleasant sparkle on the tongue. Without exactly meaning to, she emptied her cup. Breksin refilled it with an encouraging smile. She lowered her eyes.

The old man did not eat with them. He drank some wine without sitting down, then walked off to stare at the creek. They lunched on boiled eggs, small loaves of bread with salt-studded crust, and dried smoked fish that Marcia tasted with reluctance and found to be addictive. Considering his size, Breksin ate daintily, and at a leisurely pace, like a restaurant critic more concerned with analysis than nourishment.

Though the food and the wine improved her mood, Marcia left the tavern no more optimistic than she had arrived. Over lunch, Breksin had asked her first where she had come from, and then, failing to get an answer, where she was going. Marcia was grateful that he did not press her for answers, though she knew it was only because he thought she was a lunatic.

“Don’t worry,” he had said as they left the village, “this evening we will reach a big market town. It may be that you will know someone there.”

Marcia doubted it.

As they walked on, Breksin would frequently check behind them, looking for the cat. For her part, Marcia kept wishing she would see Annie catching up to them. But she didn’t expect it. Annie herself had told her that she possessed only the ability to pass from one Region to another by means of established, well-marked passageways. The strange old man with no aura had led her, whether by accident or design, on a path that Annie would not be able to follow. But for one thing, Marcia knew that she would be in the grip of utter despair.

She looked down at the ring on her finger. While she wore it, she was not adrift and lost. It was her connection to Elyssa, and whatever Elyssa was—goddess, angel, some kind of mother superior of witchcraft—her ability to travel did not depend on passageways.

It was that reassuring thought that made it possible for her to continue to follow the old man without any particular preference about where he might lead her. It was, she realized, the old man that was her other source of reassurance and comfort. The one impossible, inexplicable thing about him saved her from the distress of wondering if she had made some silly mistake. There could be nothing more strange than a person without an aura. Sometimes, in certain light or when she was tired, auras did not catch her attention. She could ignore them in the same way she might not notice the color of a person’s hair or eyes. But to look for an aura and find nothing, no trace of color or form … Marcia had no fear that she was pursuing the wrong mystery.

Then there was the matter of crossing Regions. The old man, whether consciously or not, had managed to pass, or at least to blunder through, a border that few could navigate. That meant that he had access to power of more than a trivial variety.

By the time they reached the market town the sun had fallen behind the clouds that bolstered the horizon. Breksin engaged two rooms at the inn, one for himself and the old man, and one for Marcia. She did not obey her impulse to protest, remembering in time that the alternatives to accepting Breksin’s charity were few and unattractive. She did have a handful of coins from Arrleer that he at first did not want to take, but did after examining them with curiosity.

It wasn’t like a steaming sudsy tub at Annie’s, but Marcia was able to get a quantity of tepid water and some gritty strong-smelling soap for an awkward but thorough bath. Her clothing she had to be content to shake out and brush.

Breksin, with the old man following him, had gone out to change her coins. She heard his thunderous conversational bass echoing up the stairs from the common room when he returned.

She hurried to get back into her clothes, expecting to be invited to dine. She was still barefoot and fastening her blouse when she heard him come up the stairs. He stopped at her door and called to her,

“We’ve a table below. Miss Marcia,” he boomed.

“Thank you,” called Marcia. “I’ll be right there.”

For a moment there was silence.

“Miss Marcia?”

“Yes?”

“Hello? Are you there?” Breksin tapped on the door. Marcia pictured him filling the hallway, his eyes level with the top of the door. She began to answer again, then realized that with the combination of his poor hearing and the closed door, she would have to shout to make herself heard. He was rapping again when she opened the door. She could only see him from the chin down. He backed up and bent over.

“Couldn’t you hear me?” he asked.

“I tried …,” she began, then paused. “No,” she said.

“Hmmph. That’s funny, I was practically shouting,” he said. He brought a small pouch of soft leather from his pocket and handed it to her. “Your money,” he explained. “The money changer didn’t recognize your coins, but they were all true, and can be melted, so he gave you full weight.”

The pouch was surprisingly heavy. Marcia was sure her few coins had not weighed nearly so much. She supposed these might be smaller denominations, except she had thought her Arrleer money was only small change to begin with. She thanked him and put the pouch on a table. Breksin nodded toward it.

“I’d keep that by me, miss. You don’t want to lose it.” He turned to the stairs. “I’ll wait below, then,” he said. “Father has started on the wine without us.”

Dinner was quiet. The old man ate with unseemly haste, and made a number of cryptic remarks that Breksin couldn’t hear and Marcia couldn’t understand. Finally he wandered out a side door and into the night. Marcia looked after him anxiously; it just wouldn’t do to lose track of him. She leaned back in her chair to peer from the window just behind her. In a moment she was relieved to see the old man saunter across the road and seat himself under a tree.

At midday the wine, though agreeable, had been pale and weak. The wine in Marcia’s glass now was so intensely red that it seemed to be tinged with blue. She was not at all surprised to find it potent and authoritative. It reminded her of the old man’s rambling talk of a banquet where the wine had been “like blood.” Nonetheless, she enjoyed it. It went well with the spicy sausage, chopped cabbage, and fried potatoes. Marcia stared at her plate in sudden delight. Here she was, she thought, in … another universe, eating soul food. She thought of lunches fifteen years before in the Purity Pork, a corner restaurant near her office that had been staffed entirely by overweight black women who called everyone “honey.” She had finally persuaded her mother to meet her there for lunch. Marcia had a black-and-white memory, like an old movie, of watching her get off the bus just as a warm rain had started to fall. She wore a scarf like a wimple, with her face back inside it somewhere, eyes nervous, lips pursed. Her smile when she saw her daughter was a formality and did not brighten her expression. She had looked like an acquaintance, or an aging distant relative who would feel compelled to trace the details of kinship through a chain of unknown third cousins, and collateral great-uncles who had moved to Cincinnati.

“A fine cask,” said Breksin, considerately refilling her glass. Marcia smiled politely. She was self-conscious about talking loudly enough for Breksin to hear her, and anyway was wary of conversations about wine, which in her experience had a way of becoming capriciously metaphorical and never failed to sound pretentious.

They talked little during the meal. Marcia drank perhaps a bit more wine than she should have, but she was finding it a comfort. She leaned back in her chair, let her shoulders relax. After all, she thought with a private little smile, she was doing a job. For what purpose, she couldn’t tell, but she had found—surely she had found—the unmistakable thing she and Annie were to look for, and she was keeping it—him—in sight. She glanced out the window. The old man had not moved from his spot under the tree. She looked at her ring. Elyssa would come for her, or send Annie, or something, she was certain. There was no reason for her to worry at all. Besides which, she had no choice. At this point, all that she could do was follow … Father, as Breksin kept calling him. She couldn’t see, really, why something shouldn’t happen pretty soon. The door could open right now and Elyssa could walk in. Marcia straightened up in her chair. She wondered if Annie would be with her. Maybe tomorrow night she would be back at the cottage—maybe tonight.

The old man came back and joined them. He was carrying a fresh glass, which he filled from their beaker.

“Well, Father,” said Breksin, “you may eat like a horse, but you drink like a fish.”

The old man narrowed his eyes as though he were looking at something far away. “The fish are quick in the sea,” he said. “The deeps are blind.” He took a thoughtful drink. “I had a feast,” he said, looking up with a smile. “A pig. On a spit. And wine. Virgin wine, it was, but the woman—”

“Now, now. Father,” said Breksin, interrupting hastily, “you’ve told me all about the woman already.” He nodded in Marcia’s direction. “But our young lady”—Marcia rolled her eyes and dropped back in her chair theatrically—“she wouldn’t like to hear such a tale.”

The old man gazed at Marcia with a quizzical expression. She found it hard to meet his eyes, which was odd because they didn’t seem to be focused on her, particularly. She raised her glass and hid behind it as she drank.

The old man went outside again. As Marcia and Breksin sipped the last of the wine, he explained the currency to her. Marcia, it seemed, had enough money in her purse for many nights of lodging and meals. It was clear to her that Breksin was serious about caring for the “loose-wilted.”

“Now,” he said in a kindly but thunderous voice, “you will be able to make your way home, I hope.”

Marcia’s forlorn smile was involuntary. She stared into the wine in the bottom of her glass. “You can’t get there from here,” she murmured.

“Did you say something?”

Marcia looked up. What a nice giant the old man had found. Her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.

“Not a very promising first date, is it?” She dabbed at her cheeks with her napkin.

“Huh?”

Marcia sat up straight and took a deep breath. One incoherent lunatic was enough for Breksin to have to put up with, she decided. “I said I must take care of the old man.” She tried to make her voice audible by intensity instead of sheer volume. Breksin was staring at her lips. “I can’t go into detail,” she said, speaking a little louder, “but I have to stay with him. I don’t have any idea where he is going to go.” She looked around. No one was paying any attention to them.

Marcia could tell by Breksin’s expression that he was reminding himself that she was the woman who had told him the tale of the castle and the beautiful snow.

“There are only two ways to go,” he replied. “Ahead are a few more villages, then empty hill country.” He leaned across the table toward her. “But if you go back, you’ll cross the border in two days. Then pretty soon you’ll come to the sea. Turn left. In a couple more days, if you keep moving, you’ll come to the capital.” He lowered his voice to an almost conversational tone. “Here’s what you do,” he said, glancing at the nearby tables. “Go to the palace, wake up the guard at the gate, and get directions to the cellars. There you’ll find a boy named Jason. Tell him I said to take care of you and Father until I get back.”

Marcia looked him in the eye. “You want us to walk to the palace,” she said.

“Yes, if you don’t find your …” Breksin waved his huge hand vaguely in the air.

“But,” Marcia continued, beginning to giggle, “wouldn’t it be easier to go by sleigh?”

She couldn’t help it.

Although she had spent only one night in a barn, a bedroom seemed a great luxury. The night was cool, but Marcia’s bed was well supplied with blankets, so she didn’t close her window quite all the way. In the middle of the night, she had cause to regret it. She awoke suddenly and completely from a sound sleep. She listened, frozen with fear, to an almost silent step just behind her pillow. A cold breeze washed across her from the window. She was rigid, clamped to the mattress by fright. She felt, more than saw, a long shadow pass across her. An eternal second hung between heartbeats as she waited to feel a hand at her throat. Or a knife.

“Meow.”

Her pent-up breath escaped in a noisy rush somewhere between a moan and a subdued scream. As she struggled to raise her suddenly limp body to a sitting position, she felt the light feet land on the bed. The cat picked its way across her trembling legs and walked calmly beside her to settle in the crook of her arm. Marcia put her head back on the pillow and stared at the invisible ceiling. The cat lay its chin next to her breast and began to purr.

When she felt that she could depend on her knees to hold her up, she got out of the bed. The cat looked up and made a noise of complaint at the disturbance. Marcia went to the window and leaned her elbows on the sill. The sky was cloudless, the moon full. Her window, which she had left open a few inches, gaped wide, the cord that had secured it dangling free. She pulled it in and latched it as before, but somewhat wider, to leave room for her visitor to depart when he might choose.

She was halfway back to the bed when it occurred to her to wonder how a cat had reached a second-story window. She went back, undid the cord, and leaned out. Below was the sloping roof of a shed built against the wall. She supposed it was not too far for a cat to leap, but how had the animal scrambled across the sill without making enough noise to waken her? She secured the window again. She wondered how it had come open before. She had a clear memory of knotting the cord around the hook. It might easily have blown closed in the breeze, but not open.

Just as she was turning away from the window again, she saw the old man. He came into view like a traveler who had misjudged his distance and arrived too late at the inn. But his pace was neither that of a tired wanderer nor of a man in a hurry. He was strolling carelessly in the manner of one who walks purely for the pleasure it gives him. She watched as he sauntered along. She wondered if she ought to whistle a couple of bars of “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” When he passed out of sight beyond the wall of the inn, Marcia went back to bed. It was disturbing to have him out of her sight and in a position to disappear, but on the other hand, she could not do without sleep, even if he could, and she couldn’t see what good it would do for her to get dressed and go outside. She was determined to do her best to keep up with the old man, but she was not going to abandon common sense—any more than she already had—in the effort.

The cat protested her return to the bed, very much as though it had engaged the room and Marcia was the uninvited guest. Nevertheless, when she was settled, the cat snuggled against her naked body like the very most intimate sort of friend and picked up its purring where it had left off.

Marcia awoke at dawn and, for the first time since three days ago in her apartment, did not have to figure out where she was. The first thing she saw was the cat, still next to her in the bed, and looking quite well rested. Marcia had never had a pet of her own, but she had been around plenty of cats, and there was definitely something strange about this one’s aura.

As she dressed, she watched the sun beginning to come up through molten clouds. Overhead the sky was clear as it had been in the middle of the night, but at the edge of the world was a rim of heavy mist. She wondered if it might cloud over and rain; there was a scent of something in the air that had not been there yesterday. She walked to the window to get a better look and deeper breath. Below, on the road where she had seen him hours before, stood the old man watching the distant rising sun.

Marcia brought her fingers to her open mouth. The poor old guy. He must have gotten locked out. Or maybe he was so befuddled he had just forgotten that he had a place to sleep. Why had she not thought to go out to him last night? He was probably exhausted. She shook her head at the thought of one who could move between worlds and yet could not find his way to his bedroom. She wondered if something had happened to him that so disordered his senses, so disturbed his personality, that his very aura had been erased, in much the way that memory could be erased by trauma, physical or mental. Perhaps he had been a powerful wizard who had run afoul of some great inimical power that had destroyed his mind. Or he might have been disciplined by the wizardly fraternity, always assuming there was such a thing.

Every time Marcia tried to draw any conclusions about him, she ended up in a swamp of conjecture. There was absolutely no more reason to believe one wild guess than another. She had facts—the man had no aura, he had led her to another world, his utterances could be relied upon to be incoherent—but none of the facts had any traceable connection to anything concrete, or even to each other.

The cat sprang effortlessly up to the sill of the window, looked outside, then dropped to the floor. Marcia sat on the bed and laced up her boots. When she left the room, the cat followed her. Just as she was closing her door, Breksin’s opened.

“Well, Kitsey,” he said in a delighted whisper that rattled the plaster, “you’re a fickle friend to be sure.”

Marcia wondered if there could be anyone in the building still asleep. Breksin tiptoed to the stairs. “We mustn’t make any noise,” he bawled, raising a cautionary finger to his lips.

“Father must have come down to find an early breakfast,” he remarked as they descended to the common room. Marcia started to tell him about seeing the old man in the middle of the night, but stopped at the thought of adding her soprano to the basso reveille he was providing.

While Breksin ordered breakfast, Marcia went outside to find the old man. He watched the sunrise still, standing where she had seen him from her window. He glanced at her as she approached.

“The sun,” he said with a satisfied smile, as if drawing attention to some accomplishment of his own. Marcia nodded. “It colors the air,” he added. He pointed to the darker sky above. “Light like spears—the dawn advances like an army.”

“It’s time for breakfast,” said Marcia, feeling prosy and inadequate. Was there a way in which breakfast is like an army, or a love affair? she wondered. There is bacon singing in the skillet, and the teapot is enshrouded in the effluvia,… Probably not. And anyway, why wasn’t there any coffee? Marcia was pretty sure she could extemporize a few dozen respectable pentametric couplets on the subject of a cup of strong black coffee.

“You must be tired.” I sound like somebody’s mother, she thought. She touched the old man’s shoulder. She wished she knew his name. “Come inside now … Father,” she said.

“See the circle forming?” He spoke without looking at her, pointing toward the rising sun. “It is born and dies.” Marcia thought that was probably her cue to ask him if his feet hurt. She started to lift her hand from his shoulder, but he reached across his chest and covered it with his own. Marcia was intensely conscious of her ring trapped under his fingers. She looked toward the brightening horizon.

Everything had changed. The sun was flat and hypothetical, as though viewed through smoked glass. The clouds no longer looked like melting copper; their reds and golds had turned to shades of gray. Marcia felt as though she were examining a blueprint of a sunrise. Where earth met heaven it was blade sharp, as definite as an abstraction. It impinged on the sun, two geometric properties in a relationship of attitudes.

Something had become very clear. Or everything. At Arrleer, looking at the stars, she had seen them, and herself, as concrete—manifest and realized. Complete. Now she was behind the clockface among the springs and gears.

And then they were walking toward the inn. Marcia stopped and put her hands up to cover her eyes, then ran her fingers back through her hair as though she supposed her thoughts were tangled there. The old man went on ahead, unconcerned. Marcia looked back over her shoulder at the dawn. She tried to rearrange it, make it back into the sterile planes and angles of her vision, but the sun was resolutely yellow, the low clouds smoldered as before. The stark geometry was gone, or clothed with the diffusion of reality.

She looked for the space of a few breaths, willing her mind to clear. As she turned away from the sunrise, she saw the little black cat pass behind the building. A sudden thought ripped at her sluggish consciousness. Her ring! She jerked her eyes to her hand. The thin band encircled her finger as it had since Elise—Elyssa—had put it there. Marcia’s heart was pounding. For a searing, anguished moment she had imagined—she had no idea why—that it was gone. Her pulse began to slow at once, but she was left with an unaccountable feeling of sadness.

The old man did not skip breakfast. He consumed much bread and cheese, and called for wine, ignoring the pot of strong tea served with cream so thick that Marcia thought at first that it was whipped. Just one cup of black coffee, she thought. I’m wearing a magic ring, and Father is God knows what sort of powerful mage, if a bit off his game. A cup of coffee should be manageable.

Afterwards, Breksin settled up for the rooms and food, adamant that Marcia not contribute from her purse.

“You’ll need that for yourself and Father,” he said. “It’s a long road you’re taking.”

The three of them walked together to the verge of the highway.

“Now,” said Breksin, looking down at Marcia, “you remember what I told you. The road crosses the border and goes on to the sea. You go so the sea is on your right”—he pointed to Marcia’s right hand—“so your ring is nearest the sea,” he explained, “and you’ll come to the capital.”

He was continuing with his instructions, but Marcia interrupted, meaning to point out in a dignified way that it wasn’t actually necessary for him to tell her which of her hands was which.

“Really,” she began, “I know you think I’m … Wait a minute; what did you just say?”

“Your ring,” he said. “It’s on—”

“No. About the city. What did you call it?”

“The capital.”

“The name,” said Marcia. Had Breksin’s hearing been more acute, he would have heard the tinge of desperate hope in her voice.

“Ambermere, of course. What else would you call the chief city of the kingdom of Ambermere?”

If anything in Marcia’s past life had encouraged spontaneous displays of emotion, she would have hugged Breksin, or jumped up and kissed him. She did neither.

Ambermere was the place Daniel had talked about with Hannah. He had been there and wanted to go back. Something about a princess—Marcia wasn’t clear on the details, and she didn’t know if he had been allowed to return. She only remembered that Hannah had said she would try to help him. And Hannah lived there. She had told Marcia on that last day that they would meet again.

“But where?” Marcia remembered asking.

“I rather imagine it will be in Ambermere, my dear. When you come to my cottage, I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.”

Coffee, thought Marcia involuntarily.

“Well?” said Breksin after the silence had stretched out.

“Oh, nothing. Sorry.” Marcia favored him with a nice sane smile.

If Breksin looked slightly disappointed, Marcia missed it. The flooding sense of relief she was feeling had crowded everything else from her mind. She was not on her own, after all. She had someone she could turn to. Someone who would know what to do. Within a few days she would be with Hannah. If necessary, Hannah could even take her back to her own world. Marcia tried to remember what street Annie’s brownstone was on. She wondered if Dennis would be able to take her to the garden. Somehow she doubted it.

“I’ll be on my way, then.” Breksin’s shout sounded rather stiff. He turned to leave.

Marcia blinked. “What? Oh. Oh, wait,” she said, walking after him. She pulled at his sleeve. Being around someone so large made her recall vividly the feeling of being a four-foot-tall child among adults.

“You’ve been so kind,” she said, remembering to speak up. “I’m very grateful.”

“It’s nothing, nothing,” he rumbled. “You remember about Jason, now? At the castle?” Breksin looked as though he were waiting for her to mention sleighs.

Marcia smiled and looked up at him mischievously. It occurred to her that she was becoming downright coquettish. That will be enough of that, she thought, hearing her mother’s voice.

“Yes, I do. And I won’t forget. I promise.”

They said good-bye awkwardly. The old man added to the farewells in the approximate style of a drunken poet, wishing both his companions godspeed and then adding a number of other sentiments that sounded vaguely appropriate, but when examined turned out to have no actual meaning.

“May all your paths be underfoot,” he said with an eloquent flourish of his hand.

“That’s enough, Sancho,” said Marcia.

“What?” said Breksin.

Finally Breksin set out. The old man looked at Marcia for a moment, then started after him. He ignored Marcia’s protests. In a moment they had caught up with their departing companion.

Explanations proved to be useless, as did promises and, in their turn, commands. The old man was immune.

“I must go with the hero,” he said. “I am going to show you the ancestors,” he told Breksin.

Though it was clearly out of character, the giant finally resorted to threats, raising his voice in a most alarming way. The old man watched him with great calm, and no sign of comprehension.

“All right,” said Breksin finally, “come on, then.” He turned to Marcia. “I will try to take care of him. We can’t force him to go with you. You go to Ambermere. I should be back before long.” He looked around. “And if you see that cat, take him back with you. The cellars will be a heaven for him.”

Marcia watched the two men start up the road. She had done a lot. No one had ever said she was supposed to take care of this project all by herself. She couldn’t even be absolutely certain the old man was the project—not beyond all possibility of doubt. In a few days she could be in Ambermere. Hannah could advise her—help her. She wouldn’t have to be responsible anymore. She looked down the road. She could make a real effort—reach Ambermere in three days instead of four. It was completely logical. She had done everything anyone could possibly expect. She looked around to see if the cat was in sight, then took off at her fastest late-for-work walk.

It only took her a few minutes to catch up with Breksin and the old man. They had a brief but animated discussion, then continued on the road together. For quite some time they could be seen diminishing into the distant shadows on the tree-lined path, Breksin’s great trudging bulk flanked by the old man’s seamanlike pitch and roll on the one side, and Marcia on the other, taking two steps to his one.

Chapter 11

Rogan the Obscure couldn’t decide if he was ensnared in a quandary or painted into a corner. He knew that he was not on the horns of a dilemma, because no choices, however unpleasant, were available to him. Not that he needed choices; what he wanted was a loophole. All he could think of was that vampires could not cross flowing water, which he didn’t believe, and in any event was completely irrelevant. What was it that witches couldn’t do? Touch metal, maybe. No, that was silly. Hannah the witch had sipped wine from a metal goblet in this very room not six months ago. So had the wizard, Errin, come to think of it.

Rogan realized he was thirsty. Actually, he thought as he filled a tin cup from a crusty bottle, he had entertained some pretty impressive guests last summer. Hannah, of course, was just a witch, and a local one at that, but she had an undeniable air of potency—you could never really tell about witches. Then the wizard. Not many magicians ever had a wizard as a visitor.

He went to the window. The afternoon was dying of old age and he had not thought of anything yet. Weren’t magicians exempt from anything? Of course he was flattered that the king had sought his help in this crisis, but Rogan had a clear idea of the sort of help he was good at. His talents lay along the lines of deep thought, long study, subtle penetration. He pictured himself seated at his desk by the window, sipping with a contemplative and reflective air from a goblet of deep red wine, and bending his powers of ratiocination to the service of his monarch.

How agreeable, how dignified, how congenial to his talents and his tastes. How different from the vexatious inspiration that had settled itself in the mind of the king. Travel. By sea. Excepting those he had designed himself, Rogan did not trust machines. And a ship was indisputably a machine, though a clumsy and unreliable one. Considered in terms of its function, which was to enable people to cross water, a boat was nothing more than an unmoored bridge—an unsound idea on the face of it.

Why couldn’t people stay put? Travel was costly, hazardous, and offered a ceaseless string of inconveniences. And when it was over with, the traveler simply dined and slept in, say, Felshalfen instead of Ambermere.

Or Devlin. Most cities of any size had a thieves’ quarter. In Devlin the entire city was a thieves’ quarter. A haven for every sort of scoundrel, home of every violent practice, a kitchen of criminality, a library of license.

“You must do as I do when I go among the people,” Asbrak had told him. “Blend in with the crowd.” Rogan smiled bitterly as he refilled his cup. It was amusing that the king imagined himself able to pass anonymously among his subjects. But there was no amusement in the prospect of playing at espionage in Devlin. Always assuming that he arrived there safely, what could he hope to accomplish beyond survival, the prospects of which would be dubious?

Blast his “success” with the prisoners at Ascroval last summer! The king believed that his magician had accomplished a marvel, and there had seemed no harm in allowing him to persist in his delusion. Now the harm had shown itself. He was to top his brilliant success with another. A princess in a tower? A two-penny trick. Now for a real challenge, the heirs of two kingdoms to be rescued from the securest haven a pirate had ever known. Devlin, girded by the Devlin reefs and the Devlin cliffs. Against this fortress the king meant to deploy Rogan the Obscure. He would be the engine of the siege, the battering ram to splinter the gates of stone.

Rogan felt the beginning of a headache. He poured more wine.

“A fast ship,” the king had said. “Small and light. You’ll be there in no time.” Rogan had tried to point out, diplomatically, that lack of bulk could scarcely be considered an advantage in a craft meant to ply the open sea. Rogan’s conception of an ideal aquatic conveyance was a heavy barge just narrow enough to fit between the banks of a placid river. The thought of a thin keel slicing the waves inspired neither his admiration nor his confidence. The king, though, was most enthusiastic. “With luck, you’ll be in Devlin before the delegation arrives in Felshalfen.”

“Oh … splendid,” Rogan had replied in a faltering voice, “but has Your Majesty considered that my talents might be employed—”

“My thought precisely,” said the king. “When you are there in the midst of them, you will have them at your mercy. You know”—the king raised his goblet to his lips—“it is a great advantage when I slip unnoticed into the taverns.” Rogan looked earnestly at Asbrak the Fat as though there could be no difficulty whatever picturing the king “slipping” into the public room of a tavern with his anonymity intact.

The king surveyed the room with a knowing look. “Will you require paraphernalia?”

“I beg Your Majesty’s pardon?”

“Magical gear. Retorts, phials, staves, wands?”

“Uh, no, Your Royal Highness, I—”

“Good. I’m of your mind entirely. In this sort of business it’s best to travel light.”

Rogan turned from the window with a sigh. By this time tomorrow, unless he managed to think of something really spectacular, he would be on the high sea—or beneath it. The king had been impervious to hints, immune to subtlety. He had left the magician’s tower convinced that Rogan the Obscure relished this secret assignment and would not be happy until he was out of sight of land.

The magician slumped into a chair. At least this rescue effort would not get him into trouble with the wizards. He had got off lightly last summer, he knew. All Errin had done was erase his book, and make some more or less cordial threats. Remeger, on the other hand, had been reduced to a trivial rank. Of course, he had been guilty of impersonating a wizard. Rogan’s crime had been merely to unleash a demon.

Remeger wasn’t a bad sort, really. A little pompous, even bombastic, and fond of eccentric headgear, but not bad once you got to know him. He certainly was not lazy. He had spent months mastering the complicated arithmetic required for the practice of astrology. “I shall be a real astrologer, no more poses,” he had asserted with some vehemence, while standing in front of Rogan’s mirror adjusting his enormous pointed hat.

Rogan was rather proud of the fact that the wizard, Errin, had noticed, and mentioned with approval, the spell of rebuff he had on the door to his chamber. Remeger had told him so at their first meeting, during the festivities surrounding the wedding of the princess Iris, admitting that the wizard had not noticed the spell on his own door. This had done much to reconcile Rogan to his former rival, and had in retrospect become a small but reliable source of professional vanity. Still, wizards—as the saying advised—were best avoided. They were only infrequently the bearers of comforting news.

It was probably because at that very moment Rogan was engaged in recollections of the wizard’s visit that he was not particularly startled when the door to his apartments, still protected by the famous spell, opened to admit a stranger, an aged gentleman dressed in silks of delicate hue. He peered calmly over the rim of his cup and did not choke on his wine. After a moment, he lowered the cup.

“Wait—don’t tell me,” he said, feeling rather self-possessed, “you’re a wizard, right?” Really, he thought complacently, if enough odd things happen to you, you start to get used to it. He raised his cup and managed to sip while smirking.

“Actually, I’m a necromancer,” said the man in a voice slightly above a whisper.

It was a good thing, thought Rogan as he heard the cup bouncing on the stone floor, that he hadn’t been using one of his fancy jeweled goblets. He dabbed at the wine on his vest with one hand while covering his mouth with the other.

“Went down the wrong way,” he choked, staggering from the chair. He felt the cup crumple under his shoe as he lurched toward the window to find out if he could learn to breathe again. He stood with his palms braced on the sill and tried frantically to remember what he knew about necromancers besides the fact that it was inadvisable to be in the same room with one. Nothing else came to mind.

“You see, it is the spell itself I am interested in,” said Alexander as Rogan poured himself a fresh cup of wine. The magician raised the drink very carefully and took a calming draught before trusting himself to answer. So far everything was going smoothly. The necromancer had introduced himself when Regan’s fit had subsided. His demeanor was mild, no sparks leapt from his fingertips, his glance did not paralyze. They had even discussed the weather briefly before he brought up the subject of Rogan’s attempt, last summer, to call a demon.

“Not a small glass? You’re sure?” said Rogan before returning the bottle to the shelf. Alexander declined. “Well,” said Rogan, “the wizard erased my book. Errin, his name was. Do you know him?” The necromancer shook his head and waited for Rogan to go on.

“And so, the spell, that is, I got the spell from the book, you see, and—well, of course, now it’s blank.” Rogan looked expectantly at his visitor. “Would you like to see it?” he added when the silence became awkward. “I still have it. It’s sort of a curiosity—a book full of empty pages.”

“No, thank you. As you say, it no longer contains the spell.”

“That’s just it,” said Rogan briskly. “It’s completely gone, just …” He fluttered his hand in a gesture reminiscent of falling autumn leaves, which was meant to reinforce the notion that something that is completely gone is no longer present.

Alexander seated himself by the desk under the window.

“Indeed. In that case, why don’t we just have a look at your copy?”

Rogan stammered for a few moments while he feverishly pondered his options. “Good idea,” he said, finally. “I’ll just be a moment.” He left the room, returning almost instantly with a piece of rolled parchment and laying it out on the desk. While the necromancer studied it, Rogan poured himself just a hit more wine.

Alexander gave a dry chuckle. “Ah yes,” he whispered, “the Mage Eater.”

“What’s that?” said Rogan, coming to look over his shoulder. Something about “mage eater” sounded a bit pessimistic to him.

“The Mage Eater,” said Alexander again. “A dinner spell.”

Rogan, left in doubt, said, “Ah.”

Alexander glanced up at his host. “It gives the demon an option,” he said.

“An option?” Rogan put his wine down. He was beginning to feel a bit queasy.

“Yes. Not a good policy, usually. In this spell, the demon can choose, once he steps into the circle, not to be bound by it, but return to the Lower Regions, usually after, uh, disassembling the magician who called him.” Alexander looked up from the parchment. “A dinner spell,” he said with a reassuring smile.

Rogan sank into a chair. “Must be messy,” he said, looking around the room.

“So I’m told,” said Alexander.

It was nearly dark when Alexander left the castle. He engaged a room at a nearby inn and had a light supper before retiring early. At midnight he awakened. He left his room and passed silently down the stairs. The common room, so full of gay chatter a few hours before, was dark and still. Alexander crossed it quickly without a lamp to guide his steps. At the door he murmured to the locks and bolts, then passed into the quiet night like a shadow.

He moved through the cobbled ways light and quick as a cat. Any restless citizen catching sight of him from a bedroom window would have thought they saw a runaway boy, or a furtive thief looking for a wall to scale. White hair and wrinkles would not have come to mind.

The river was low between its banks and covered with fine shreddings of mist. At a place where two roads crossed, Alexander stood in the juncture and repeated, thrice, a spell of calling, but the place, though likely, was barren. He did not wait long, but went on quickly. It was not his intention to spend the whole night at his business.

He reached the shrine sooner than he had expected to. The wizards in the tavern had simply said it was outside the town. Rogan, whom he questioned on the subject, was extremely vague about not only distances, but points of the compass. As far as Alexander could tell, the magician was burdened with a fundamental misunderstanding: he seemed to believe that he was always facing in the same direction. Therefore, something—a building, say—that lay at some distance to his left when he faced his fireplace remained, in his personal system of geography, on his left when he turned around and faced his desk.

Alexander stood at the roadside and looked intently at the small chapel. It sat like a citadel in the night, one whose precincts he had no wish to violate. The one to whom it was dedicated had come to him on a memorable day last summer. Conversation with her was an honor that he would rather remember than repeat. Although there was no reason to fear she would frequent them, Alexander would avoid her altars on principle. He took the garden path between the shrine and the house, peering at the dark windows as he passed. Behind the house was a kitchen garden, now dormant except for some hardy herbs that crawled close to the bare soil on twisted woody stems. He bruised a tight closed leaf lightly between his thumb and forefinger and raised his scented hand to his nose.

He made a complete circuit of the house. As he retraced his original steps through the front garden, the old lady appeared at the back of the house and watched as he approached. Alexander slowed his pace. The shade had appeared of its own will, and he wanted to do nothing to send it away. He stopped five yards from it The lady had died more than a year ago, and yet the ghost that stood before him was no vaporous projection, no faint organization of waning energies. This was a spirit that retained the strength to touch the living, to topple crockery. From the look of her, she had probably had little more strength when alive than she had retained in death.

Alexander was interested. Here was the rare ghost that could wield the bloody knife of horror tales. In most cases, such persistent “life” was achieved only by unusually determined malice bolstered by deep insanity. Death was, after all, the most efficient disseminator of understanding. After His quick lesson, all but the most maniacal passions were apt to dissipate. Life is interesting only—and then not unfailingly—to the living; normally it retains no attractions for the dead.

The niceties of social intercourse are not included in the etiquette of conversation with the departed. Alexander spoke without preface or introduction.

“I seek the cause of the disturbances,” he said.

“Do not.” The voice was softer than his own.

“I will.”

“It comes and goes.”

“You feel it here?”

“Yes.”

It never failed to occur to Alexander when speaking to a ghost how much to be preferred was the conversation of even the most bestial of demons. But demons had the perceptions of the living, the corporeal. They could not report the things that a shade, however unwillingly, could tell of. He looked soberly at the house, the garden, the shrine.

“If I must, I will call, and other shades will come.”

“Not here.” The voice of the old lady became louder.

“Here,” said Alexander. He was lying.

“That would be unwise.”

Alexander blinked. The ghost had vanished in a manner most unghostlike—instantaneously and without a trace. He turned with great reluctance to face the voice behind him. It was one he knew, and feared.

Her appearance was as it had been last summer on his patio, a young woman, not really pretty enough to attract attention. Alexander bowed, avoiding her eye.

“Holy One,” he murmured.

She gave a short laugh. “Your old book, necromaunt? What am I called there?”

“Many names, Holy One. Elyssana is the oldest.”

“Good. Use that, then, to name me.”

“Yes, Holy … Elyssana.”

“The oldest,” she said with the faintest of smiles. “It is not.” She peered at Alexander. “Come, look up—old one. Am I so terrible?”

Alexander raised his eyes to her. “Yes,” he whispered.

“Then why visit my altar?”

“To find the old priestess, Elyssana. I was told there was unrest here.”

“Told by whom, then?”

“Rhastopheris.”

“Rhastopheris? You have lived long, old man, for one who courts such company.”

Alexander performed something between a nod and a bow, acutely conscious only of the company he was in at the moment.

“Tomorrow at your inn, inquire the road to the Outer Kingdoms. It is on that road, if at all, that you might find what you look for. That is as much as any shade can tell you. You will travel at a wizard’s speed. If you overtake the giant, join his company.”

An expression of surprise appeared momentarily on Alexander’s face, then vanished quickly.

“Just a big man,” she added. “A friend of the priestess here.” She extended her hand. “Come. I will take you to your inn.”

Dibrick the roaster of meats had seen a number of unusual sights in his many years of drinking more ale than was strictly good for him. He had, as well, spent more than his share of restless nights. For one thing, his bladder, which had failed to become stronger with constant exercise, called him from his bed at frequent intervals. And if he had drunk either a bit too much, or not quite enough, he sometimes found it more restful, on the whole, to pace than to toss.

This was such a night. He had paused by an upstairs window at the front of the house. He thought he might now seek his bed with some hope of finding rest. He had decided quite positively that tomorrow he would drink no beverage stronger than tea. He gazed down the lane to the corner. It was a wonder, he thought, that he had not worn a furrow in the bricks that paved the way to the inn. It was a walk that he was resolved to make less often, and tomorrow, just for the principle of the thing, not at all.

Except, he reminded himself, the oven would be hot, the roaster of meats himself roasted not long after morning tea. It was as he was working his way through this equivocation—one at which he was well practiced—that he saw the man appear out of nowhere. Dibrick had fixed his eye on the fateful doorway, wondering if perhaps it would not be better to put a limit on his visits to the inn, rather than adhere to an immoderate and extreme position that no sensible person would … He started. His jaw, slack already, dropped like a trapdoor.

There was no question about it. At one moment the step before the inn was unpopulated, and then with no warning or preparation of any kind it held a man. Not a very large man, it was true, but an undeniable one nonetheless. Dibrick was in the process of reconciling himself to this wonder when he witnessed another. The man who should not have been there in the first place put his hand on the latch of the locked and bolted door—and opened it. In a moment the step was empty again.

Dibrick gawked at the empty spot for a while, then crept off to bed resolved to live a different kind of life.

Marcia’s eyes opened at midnight. One moment she had been in a sound sleep, the next, wide awake. She remained completely still except to bend her thumb so that it touched her ring. She listened. Behind her she could hear Breksin’s deep breathing. Otherwise the night was silent. The moon had come up, still nearly full, but from her position she could see nothing but the blanket that folded in a stiff peak at her shoulder.

She heard the old man’s voice, indistinct but recognizable. It fell across the silence like the call of a distant bird. Marcia pushed back her blanket and turned over. Breksin was like a sleeping mountain. Between them was the cat, its chin on crossed paws, watching her with expressionless eyes. Careful to make no sound, Marcia sat up. She was dressed except for her boots, which she slipped on but didn’t lace, passing the braided cords around the ankles and knotting them to keep them out of the way. She stood up and listened.

Silence. She moved away from her blanket, careful to keep her eyes on the ground. She had gone a dozen steps when she heard a voice again. She turned her head, listening hard. This did not sound like the old man. She looked back toward Breksin. Beyond him, the old man’s blanket was empty, tossed aside on the ground. She followed the sound of the voice, heard the old man again, first his voice, then a vagrant snatch of his disquieting laughter.

She stepped forward. Through the trees she caught a glimpse of two figures in the moonlight. She heard the old man again, then a deeper voice, like Breksin’s but not so loud. She moved to one side to get a better view between the trees. They sat together in an open spot. Had she not known Breksin was asleep behind her, Marcia would have said that both her companions had left her for a nighttime chat. Detail was not visible, but the person with Father was very large, like an oversize statue of a seated Buddha dwarfing the old man.

Marcia tried to move without making a sound. When the old man began to talk again, she stopped and listened.

“… the old kings, and forty armies leagued ….”

The voice trailed off. She wondered if they were leaving. How, she thought in a panic, could she follow the old man if he just took off in the middle of the night? She moved forward as quickly as she could in the weak light. At the edge of the clearing she stopped. The old man was still seated where she had seen him, but he was alone. She ignored the fact that he was looking directly at the place she stood and scanned the empty ground around him, the line of trees beyond. There was no one there.

She stepped out from under the trees and stood in the moonlight. She wished she were asleep under her blanket. The old man got up and came toward her. He looked as he had two nights ago when she had been following him and turned to find him behind her: he looked deranged.

Would Breksin hear a scream? How far had she come? She clenched her ring hand into a tight fist. The old man was grinning like a wolf. She felt the power of the ring, felt the pushing force flow from her hand. She took a deep breath, raised her hand to her waist, and stared at him as he approached. She could see it! In the moonlight it projected like an extension of her own aura. She could feel it, weightless and yet heavy, a balanced lever.

She turned it to him, remembering how she had pushed against Annie, feeling the force gather in the ring. The old man laughed—cackled—and came on. Marcia pushed a little harder, but carefully. Annie had cautioned her against doing damage to the masonry; it wouldn’t do to injure Father.

His step did not slow. Marcia let the force grow. She didn’t have to push, the power had its own momentum. She could see it strike him, but with no more effect than the beam of a flashlight. She relaxed her hand in a way that seemed somehow to entail effort. More force escaped, focused on the old man, gathered against him.

When he reached her he threw his arm over her shoulder and gave her a companionable squeeze. Marcia released her breath in a rush. She realized she was perspiring. Her ring hand hung limply at her side, emanating nothing. She tried to speak—her voice caught in her throat.

The old man caught her wrist and raised her arm. Her hand felt weak, the ring loose on her finger. He touched it, turned her hand over. He bent forward and stared at the ring like a jeweler contemplating a purchase. He looked at her, spoke. Marcia heard him but understood nothing of what he said. She felt ill.

With her first step she stumbled. Her knees felt unreliable. By the time she got back to her blanket, the old man was wrapped in his and motionless on the ground. The cat was not in sight. Marcia curled up with her ring hand pressed against her belly and fell asleep trembling.

Chapter 12

“You look awful,” Breksin had rumbled when Marcia unrolled herself from her blanket in the early light. She had felt, if not awful, at least tired. Drained. Breksin had vowed the day before when she had insisted on coming with him, that he would not slow his pace for either her or the old man. But all morning, Marcia noticed, they had been ambling along at something less than the giant’s customary march tempo.

She couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Ever since her night at Annie’s cottage she had felt especially good. Now she felt spectacularly bad by comparison. Her sleep had been troubled by vivid dreams that had slipped just beyond recollection when she got up. Maybe she just hadn’t gotten enough rest.

Then again, maybe the awkwardness of her situation was finally sinking in. All morning she had felt not only physically worn out, but unsettled and apprehensive. At work these would have been signs that a project she was responsible for had slipped beyond her control. Here on the road through the hill country it meant, if anything, something entirely different.

The cat was out of sight again. The sun was almost directly overhead, and she hadn’t seen Breksin’s “kitsey” all day, not since … The memories came back reluctantly, one at a time. She saw Breksin’s sleeping bulk, the cat looking up at her, the old man’s empty blanket. She squinted at the edge of her memory, trying to force the pictures to clear. She thought of her boots, of tying the laces around her ankles. Something about the old man—there was something about the old man that she couldn’t remember.

These were the threads of some nightmare, she thought. Some mental filing drawer that her unconscious had tried to straighten out last night. Marcia wondered if perhaps there was an inner version of herself that had the job of tidying up every night—mopping up spilled emotions, putting the closets in order, and then sitting down with the ledgers and accounts and trying to see that everything balanced. The perfect office manager, a model of efficiency locked in a perpetual battle with the disorder of the messy outward life.

She wondered why that would be the image that would come to her: her mind as a sometimes frustrating but basically manageable office. A rational place where every little discrepancy was the immediate target of the reconciling ballpoint. After all, she thought, there was another model for the way her mind operated—that of a raving madwoman trapped in a spider-infested tower chasing bats with a flailing broom. It could be that every night as she drifted into restful sleep, her alter ego awoke and began groping for her broom. Or was it the office manager after all, surveying the mess with pursed lips and saying things like “Oh, dear” and “Really!”

For some reason, Marcia’s spirits lifted with these musings, then lifted further when it turned out that lunch was to be eaten at a table and chairs in a village they came to rather than on the ground by the road. The tavern didn’t amount to much. The common room was cramped, with a ceiling so low that Breksin had to walk in a careful crouch to pass under the beams. Windows were infrequent and candles scarce. Nonetheless, the meal seemed downright cheerful to Marcia, even though the tavern seemed to present another model for a mental landscape—one even worse than the tower and the bats.

Breksin sighed audibly and with deep melancholy at the quality of the wine. It had no aroma whatever, which was probably just as well since it tasted like last week’s iced tea laced with just a touch of cough syrup. The beer was better, marginally, so they drank that with their meal. They feasted on a thin soup that Marcia was sure had been made of potatoes and water and no other ingredient. Breksin looked positively morose. Marcia began to giggle.

“What’s so funny?” he asked in a confidential tone that could have been heard across a basketball court.

Not wishing to make public announcements in order to be heard, Marcia had been developing a talent for the eloquent gesture. She indicated their repast with an economical wave of the fingertips and a slight motion of her chin accompanied by a conspiratorial glance. Breksin smiled for the first time since entering the tavern.

“I’ll say,” he boomed.

The taverner brought them some smoked meat that was flavorful and filling, along with a tray of biscuits that had probably been passable a day or two before. As seemed to be his habit, the old man skipped the midday meal, not even entering the tavern or sharing the drink.

“Shame for Father to miss this,” said Breksin, making a face as he sipped his beer.

When they left the tavern, the old man was nowhere to be seen. Breksin went to a young man leaning against the wall in the sun and loomed over him.

“Did you see where the old man went?” he bellowed.

The man just gawked up at him stupidly. Marcia couldn’t tell if the giant had terrified him or just deafened him momentarily.

“There was an old man with us,” she said with a reassuring smile. “He has white hair—wearing a brown jacket. Did you see which way he went?”

The man turned to her slowly. “Nawp,” he said finally, and looked back up at Breksin.

“Have you been standing here long?” Marcia tried to remember if she had seen him when they arrived. He looked at her quizzically, as though she had posed a riddle. Marcia repeated her question. The man leaned back and kept his eyes fixed so that he gazed over her head.

“Why,” he said in a distant voice, “years.”

“What?” said Breksin. The young man jumped. A little girl danced up to them and leaned herself against him, then tilted her head back as far as it would go and studied him upside down.

“Is he hard of hearing?” asked Marcia.

“What?” said Breksin again.

The child adjusted her head so that she could look up at Marcia through her curly “brown hair. She put her forefinger against her lips and raised one foot off the ground.

“No,” she said, pursing her lips. She paused. “He’s just hard of … thinking.” She detached herself from the man and began to pirouette along the wall, still with her finger at her lips.

“Wait,” said Marcia. “Did you see the old man that was here?”

The little girl rolled herself back in their direction. “Sure,” she said. “He told me a story.” Marcia at once thought of the feast, the “wine like blood.” The woman.

“Oh?” she said cautiously.

“Yeah. Something about rats, and the … um … dogs of time. It was pretty good.” She arrived back where she had started. “What are the dogs of time?”

“I don’t know,” said Marcia. “Just something he made up.” Marcia looked around. “Where did he go?” she asked.

The girl pointed along the road. She took the young man’s hand. “C’mon, Hillie, it’s time to go home.” She looked up at Marcia. “Good-bye.” She tilted her head back to look up at Breksin. “Good-bye,” she called, as though he were far, far away.

Marcia had ample time to worry about losing the old man. Since it was irrelevant in a land with no clocks, she had stopped considering the passage of hours and had begun thinking instead in terms of mealtimes and the progress of the sun. This was what Hannah had recommended to her last summer. She had dutifully tried going without a wristwatch, trying to be indifferent to time viewed as something registered by a device. “Time is not gears and springs,” Hannah had remarked indignantly. More recently Marcia had been informed that it was an illusion, though Annie lacked the passion on the subject that Hannah had displayed.

But whatever time was, a noticeable quantity of it had passed with no sign of the old man. The sun was throwing life-size shadows of them ahead on the road.

“He’ll be at the inn,” said Breksin. “with a brimming tankard, you mark my words.” Breksin had been chatting about the inn and the fine dinner they would be served there. “They have a valley wine there—or they used to—that is almost as good as the reds from behind the hills outside of Ambermere. It keeps for years in a good cellar, and gets better and better.”

It had taken a while, but Marcia was starting to get used to the giant’s refined palate and discriminating taste. His table conversation sounded remarkably like something from a public television gourmet show, but with the volume turned up all the way. He ate and drank slowly and with close attention; though common sense told her it could not be so, Marcia had the distinct impression that he consumed hardly more food than she did. The old man, on the other hand, flung himself at food like a flock of starving sparrows. He generally ate with both hands, and seemed incapable of drinking wine without spilling some of it on himself. It was rather like dining with a four-year-old, except that Father’s talk was ordinarily less coherent than a child’s.

“But what if he left the road?” said Marcia. Inwardly she was reproaching herself for not keeping the old man in sight. He was the only reason she had for being here. If she was going to casually let him wander off, she might as well have stayed in Arrleer with Annie. Or, she thought with a pang, she could be on her way to Ambermere to find Hannah.

“Why would he leave the road?” asked Breksin reasonably. “That farmer we talked to said he had passed him. And if he does stray, why, then he will just be in the care of the goddess.”

“The goddess?”

Breksin glanced down at her. “Sure. Elyzianya, or one of the others.”

“Elyssa?” Marcia blurted out.

Breksin thought about that. “I don’t think so. They call her Elyssana in Ambermere, though.”

“But aren’t you from Ambermere?”

“No, I’m from the Far Mountains.” Breksin grinned. “I’m a barbarian. From the land of Wendeling Asa—and the other fairy-tale giants.”

Marcia tried to remember where she had recently seen another person of Breksin’s size. There was an image, just out of reach, in the shadows of her mind. She screwed up her face in puzzlement. It was tantalizing, this picture she could not quite see, like something she had been about to mention, then forgotten.

“Is everyone from the mountains big?” she asked.

“No, but there are quite a few. Not like down here.”

Marcia concentrated on looking innocent. “So, what about this goddess?” she said carelessly.

“She’s one of the old goddesses, the Ladies of the Sacred Mountain. Do you not know of them?”

Marcia shook her head and tried to look vague. She didn’t find it difficult.

Breksin raised his eyebrows. “They live in a garden at the top of the world, on the Unknown Mountain. The garden is surrounded by a sacred grove where the virgin warriors who attend them live.”

“Virgin warriors?” Marcia fought to keep a straight face.

“Yes. Holy maidens, it is said, who serve the goddesses and carry out their wishes here below. You don’t know any of this?”

“Not really.”

“It’s all these new gods,” said Breksin with a deep frown. “What’s the use of them, I’d like to know. There’s a philosopher in Ambermere who comes up with a new god every few years, and it doesn’t seem to occur to anyone to doubt him.” Breksin sighed. “Maybe it’s all just legends, like Wendeling Asa, but even if it is, I like the old ones better.”

Marcia thought about the garden, about Annie’s cottage, and especially about Elyssa. She could see the burning eyes in her imagination. It was eerie to hear her companion talk about a place lost in legend that she herself had been to. And she was one of the virgins. Well, almost, she thought, a bit wearily.

“After all,” Breksin went on, “the Ladies of the Sacred Mountain have been around for a long time.” He gestured toward the woods and meadows ahead. “They watched the world being made.”

“Oh, I’m …,” Marcia began, then broke off in midsentence. She felt suddenly lightheaded and disoriented. She became intensely conscious of the little ring on her finger. It felt cold. She thought of the vision she had seen yesterday at dawn, standing with the old man and watching a sunrise devoid of light and color, an abstract new day on a geometrical world of points and lines. She tried to imagine a Being, similarly an abstraction, that could bring such things about—participate in their origination. She, Marcia, was a child of … She recoiled mentally. She was not a child of this world, unless the Regions were repeated manifestations of the same planet. But she was at least the child of a world like this one. She was a bit of temporary biology—brief, breathing local vapors, participating in events that were utterly transitory. To even imagine that Elyssa, a person she had touched and talked to, whose ring she wore—to imagine that she was so completely outside, alien to this circle of existence, was to conjure a nightmare.

Except, she thought, they were all children of the universe. How had she stood in the shadow of a demon? She had, of necessity, accepted his existence. Was he less alien than Elyssa, no matter what she was? And the old man—was he not the most removed? Elyssa, the demon—they both had auras, ones that were strange and powerful, but auras nonetheless. The old man, though, was like a shadow, or a corpse—a surface of only skin and air, with no mediating hues or contours. And yet she dined with him, walked beside him on the road. Or she had.

Marcia looked around. Breksin was staring at her. Without realizing it, she had stopped walking and was standing in the middle of the narrow dirt highway.

“Is something wrong?” asked Breksin.

“No. Sorry, I’m just …” She stopped in the middle of the sentence, distracted by the sky. It had been pale all day, but now the blue was thickening in the east. Her eyes were filled with the sight. She felt as though she could drink it in. “Aren’t the colors beautiful?” she said.

Breksin looked around doubtfully. “It looks pretty brown to me,” he said. “Wait till spring. There’ll be flowers everywhere.” He gazed off toward the horizon. “In the highest mountain meadows, the colors are so bright sometimes that you have to look away.”

The terrain was becoming more and more hilly as they journeyed farther from the sea. The road turned and curved to follow the contours of the land. Breksin had been persistently vague about both his destination and the reason for his trip, and Marcia had not pursued the matter. Nothing except staying with the old man had any importance to her. She thought it appropriate that Elyssa was regarded as a goddess. That made this a religious matter, sort of, and she, Marcia, was certainly proceeding entirely on faith. Well, she thought, what’s a virgin warrior to do? She giggled, then instantly regretted it when Breksin sent one of his supposedly surreptitious looks in her direction. She caught his eye.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Really. I just thought of something funny. I’m not having a fit or anything.”

Breksin looked uncomfortable. She supposed it was just as well that he thought she was unbalanced. Since the story about the snow and the sleigh ride, he had not pressed her for information about where she was from. Besides, the fact that she and the old man were “loose-witted” made watching out for them a religious obligation, and she wasn’t quite sure how they would be faring without the generous giant to lake care of them.

They had crossed a brook at the bottom of a long hill and had just emerged from the trees that lined it when they caught a glimpse of the old man in the distance. It was Breksin who noticed him. Marcia had been looking disconsolately along the empty road ahead. Breksin caught her attention and pointed off to the right. The bare ground rose in rough terraces, as though it had been an extensive vineyard sometime in the distant past. At the top, almost too far to be recognizable, was the figure of the old man, outlined against the afternoon sky.

Breksin took an oceanic breath, then sent a tremendous shout bouncing up the hill. Moments passed before the old man raised his hand. He motioned once for them to follow, then promptly disappeared over the brow of the hill.

The giant stared at the empty spot as though he had witnessed a bit of witchery. When Marcia stepped from the road and onto the rocky hillside, Breksin turned his attention to her with an ungiantlike snap that would have been a credit to a military cadet on parade.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a tone he might have used if she had suddenly started climbing a tree or walking backwards.

“Following Father.” Marcia started up the hill.

“Wait.”

When Marcia turned, her eyes were level with Breksin’s. It gave her the sensation of floating a foot and a half above the ground. For some reason, the impression of his bulk was more vivid from this unusual perspective. She wondered momentarily if she had been underestimating how truly large her companion was.

“The road goes around to the left beyond that hill.” He pointed off to the left.

Marcia gave him a beady stare. “I know what left means,” she said evenly.

“There’s nothing up there but empty hills. Father is probably planning to meet us on the road ahead.”

Marcia hesitated. “What if he’s not?” she said.

Breksin gave a massive shrug. “Then he’s in the hands of the goddess.”

So much for excuses, thought Marcia. She looked over her shoulder, hoping the old man would be in sight again. The horizon was empty. It looked like one of those peaceful scenes in an old cowboy movie where a couple of million Apaches in war paint were about to appear on the brow of a hill.

“Breksin, I have to follow him. We’ll meet you on the road or at the inn. That’s probably what he means to do, but I have to be sure. I can’t take a chance on losing him.”

Breksin shook his head. “Maybe I’m dull. You know, I’m beginning to think there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

Marcia waved and started up the hill. “See you at dinner,” she called cheerfully, but at the same time a chill of misgiving passed over her. We are always on our own. Maybe she was about to find out what that was like.

“Just a minute.” Breksin’s voice boomed past her and echoed from the rocks above. Marcia turned as he covered the few paces between them. “I’ll go up to the top with you, just to see what’s what,” he said. “There’s plenty of time to get to the inn.”

It was not long after they had passed the crest of the hill and were out of sight of the road that a subtle disturbance manifested itself briefly there. Had there been travelers on the highway, most would have noticed nothing. The most percipient among them would have seen a transient region of crystallinity in the atmosphere, like an example of the philosopher’s thickened air. Whatever it was, it passed too quickly to be examined. It approached, crossed at the boundaries of perception, and was gone.

The old man was waiting at the bottom of the hill. At first they hadn’t seen him, and then at the same time they noticed him lying on his back, hands behind his head, ankles crossed, a perfect picture of carefree indolence.

It took them a while to reach him; walking down a steep hill is slower, if not harder, than climbing one. The old man watched calmly as they made their way to him.

“I found it,” he said, still lying on his back. No one inquired what he had found. Consecutive sentences from the old man rarely were related.

“Come along, Father, we don’t want to miss a good supper, now—or a soft bed,” said the giant.

The old man got to his feet. “Can you feel it?” he said. “This is your home.”

“No, no,” said Breksin, “my home is in the Far Mountains, a month or more from here.”

The old man turned to face the hills behind him. “Pipes and drums,” he said. “Nighttime torches and fires. Lights like a cloudy winter noon.” He looked back at Marcia and Breksin. “Blood and bones—flesh and stones.” He smiled delightedly at Breksin. “A riddle,” he said.

Breksin looked at Marcia. “Everything he says is a riddle,” he said under his breath, or in other words, with all the privacy of an announcement by the town crier.

The old man waited, as though expecting an answer.

When Marcia broke the brief silence, she listened to her unbidden words as if to the voice of a stranger.

“The bones lie in the earth, but the blood is an endless river,” she intoned.

Breksin looked annoyed. “If you say so,” he muttered thunderously.

As though in reply, there was a faint grumble of distant thunder from behind the hills. Marcia glanced over her shoulder. Clouds like heavy smoke had risen up to hide the sun. The afternoon shadows had softened and faded, and the air was quiet and still.

Breksin’s eyes followed hers. “It’s winter, or I’d say we were in for a thunderstorm,” he said.

“I heard some thunder,” said Marcia.

“Oh? That’s funny, I didn’t notice it.” He turned to the old man. “That’s enough riddles, then. Maybe we can get to the inn before the rain starts.”

The old man gazed into the darkening distance. He shook his head thoughtfully. “We must go to the cave,” he said. He turned and strode off briskly without another word.

Breksin opened his mouth to call after him, but was interrupted by an echoing crack of thunder that was audible even to him. He looked at Marcia, shrugged, and set off after the old man.

They were still in the open when the rain began; fat, lazy drops that struck like liquid snowballs. The rain stopped and started as though the hikers were skirting the edge of a storm that had stalled before it reached them. Marcia had the definite sense that at any moment they were going to be engulfed in a downpour. The old man was walking fast, staying a few paces ahead of them. They climbed another rocky hill and crossed the top. Below, the ground was rockier still, and descended steeply to a woods of bare trees with boulders and broken rock among them.

The rain started up again, heavier than before. Marcia pulled her blouse together at the neck, then blushed with the sudden recollection of her naked dance in the rain of a few nights ago. The old man bounded nimbly down the rough slope like a creature of the mountains. Breksin, despite his ungainly appearance, was able to keep up. Marcia noticed that the giant actually looked graceful navigating the uneven terrain. She, on the other hand, was a city girl. She was used to long walks; with good shoes she was sure she could hike forever. Climbing, however, was something else again. As the hill became less like a hill and more like a cliff, Marcia went slower and slower.

The old man went on with no concern for his companions. Breksin wedged his boot against a protruding spine of rock and turned to watch Marcia’s cautious progress. The rain had slowed to random splashes, but with the strong hint that it was gathering itself for a real assault. As Marcia came up to Breksin, the ground shook with a blast of nearby thunder even as the sudden shadows from the lightning seemed still to be visible on the ground.

“Pretty rough,” observed the giant, looking at the rock-strewn hill. Marcia looked down over the ground they still had to cover. The old man was not in view.

“Where’s Father?” she asked. A warm wet wind began to blow down the hill.

Breksin scanned the ground ahead. “I don’t see him,” he said. “I guess there must be a cave after all.” Another flash of lightning and deafening thunderclap got their attention. The raindrops were developing a rhythm, and the beat was picking up. Below, the old man stepped into view from behind a pile of rocks and gestured to them urgently.

“We have to get to shelter,” said Breksin. “The lightning is too close.”

“You go ahead,” said Marcia, “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Breksin looked at her as though she had just said something of surpassing foolishness. He bent forward at the waist and stretched out his arms. Marcia was still trying to sort out what he might be doing when he swept her off the ground and cradled her in his arms like an infant.

“With apologies,” he said as he jolted his way down the slope in massive strides.

Marcia was still formulating her objections when they got to the old man. Breksin set her carefully on her feet. The rain began to fall harder.

Breksin looked at the old man. “Well?” he said.

Behind the pile of rocks was a hollow in the side of the hill. It was shallow but below an outcropping of rock and afforded shelter from the rain.

“Very cozy,” said Breksin, settling himself on the ground against the inner wall. The rain began to fall harder. “Just in time, too.” He looked at Marcia. “Sorry about—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of the cat, which slipped in in a rapid blur of black, glanced at the others, then gazed out at the rain.

“Well,” boomed Breksin, “the faithful kitsey.” Marcia saw his mouth continue to move, but his words were drowned out by a terrifying crash of thunder that Marcia was sure was the loudest noise she had ever heard.

The old man stepped to the front of the shelter. “The drums of Hell!” he shouted enthusiastically. Marcia had jumped at the report. She turned to the cat, expecting to see it flinch, or perhaps even run back into the rain. It raised an indolent paw to pat behind its ear, like a man with a thirty-dollar haircut checking his wave. Breksin, protected by his poor hearing, looked calm and relaxed. The old man stood in the splash of the storm with an eager expression on his face. Marcia remembered “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” Maybe he was about to launch into “Singin’ in the Rain.” She smiled to herself. Would he start with the doo-be-doo-doos? she wondered. She could hear Gene Kelly’s voice with the faint sandpaper edge, see the water falling on the soundstage in Technicolor.

The light fell as heavy clouds rolled in over the hill. The rain began to pound down in earnest. Not really a dancing sort of shower, she thought.

The next explosion of lightning seemed to repeal time. Marcia felt that she could make a leisurely count of the drops of rain caught like stars in the raw harshness of the sudden glare. She saw the old man grinning at the weather, saw Breksin’s kitsey wrapped in an aura that made no sense for a cat. Then the thunder put the lights back out.

“Father!” said Breksin. “Come back here away from the lightning.” The old man turned.

“What?”

“You’re going to get struck by lightning.”

“Oh.” He stepped back from the falling rain and settled himself in a corner against the wall. The cat got up and trotted past Marcia to sit on the opposite side of the shelter. Marcia stared through the shadows. The cat, she realized, always avoided Father, It had slept in her bed and sat on her lap. Sometimes it would sit by Breksin, but she had never seen it near the old man. Could animals see auras? Or did the cat have some other way of sensing the old man’s strangeness?

Marcia had to keep on reminding herself how truly odd he was. This was the person she had followed from another … dimension, she supposed would be a good term. Then there was the disquieting experience with the sunrise. What was he seeing when he stared off into the storm? Or any time? Had she had a vision of the way he saw things at all times? If so, it was no wonder his talk made so little sense. Annie had likened their ability to see auras to existing in a slightly different dimension from people to whom auras were not visible. What if Father was only tangentially present in the world that she and Breksin—and the cat—lived in?

Except that raised other difficulties. Was what she had seen at sunrise more strange than the cat’s view of the world? Weren’t cats color blind? And who really knew what anyone else saw, anyway? She and Breksin agreed that the sky was blue, grass green, but all that meant was that they used the same words to talk about what they observed, not that the actual experience was the same, or even similar. The only frame of reference was convention and, ultimately, words. Marcia stared out at the rain from her seat against the cold rock. She had been informed that chance was an illusion. And time. Now she was close to concluding that reality wasn’t particularly real. “That doesn’t leave much,” she murmured.

The coziness of their immediate situation was, if not an illusion, more theoretical than actual. It was undeniably an advantage to be out of the rain, but the wet weather carried a chill that was becoming unpleasant. She looked over at Breksin out of the corner of her eyes. If she were the child she had felt like when he carried her down the hill, she could go curl up in his lap and feel warm and safe. She leaned forward to move away from the cold rock. She’d have to keep warm as best she could, though. She was no child; she was an adult with what was becoming an unusually complicated resumé. In just the past year she had been progressively an office serf, overpaid consultant, apprentice witch, demon hunter, and currently, virgin warrior.

As the center of the storm moved past them, the wind shifted and began pelting their shallow refuge with sheets of rain. The old man scrambled to his feet and, before anyone could say a word, strolled into the storm and around the wall. Breksin and Marcia, who had both gotten to their feet, looked at each other in silent perplexity. Marcia experienced a fleeting impulse to shout in the presumed direction of Heaven, “That’s it, Elyssa. I quit,” except the mere thought of addressing a flippant remark to the Lady made her tremble. Beethoven, she realized at that moment, had probably had the temerity to shake his fist at Heaven only because he was not personally acquainted with the Proprietor.

The old man, soaked and annoyed, appeared at the opening. “Come to the cave!” he commanded, and was gone again.

“What’d he say?”

“Come to the cave,” Marcia repeated, shouting above the noise of the storm.

Breksin looked around. “I thought this was the cave,” he said. The cat slithered between the giant and the wall and darted into the rain after the old man.

Marcia and Breksin exchanged another look of helpless incredulity, then followed without a word.

The entrance to the cave was ten yards away in a fold of the hill. The old man stood just out of the worst of the rain and waited as they made their way among the rocks and mud. The cat was not in sight.

The old man led them down a short passageway partially open to the sky. At the end they turned a sharp corner and climbed what might have been the remains of a stair of hewn stone, but for its unmanageable size. Only Breksin was able to mount it without clambering. As they passed beyond the daylight and falling rain, Marcia thought she saw a flickering glow in the shadows ahead.

The torches were in rings set into the wall. There were three of them, but the chamber was big, the illumination slight. Marcia heard an echo of rumbling thunder from outside. The sound of the rain could not be heard. A movement by her feet drew her attention. The cat stood next to her, its eyes glinting in the reflected light of the torches. Marcia waited for her vision to adjust.

The floor was level and clean, as though the cavern had maid service and had just been swept As she got used to the light the vast chamber seemed to get smaller. It was not the size of a playing field as she had at first thought, but more the size of a high school gymnasium. A few balloons and streamers and a staticky sound system and they could put on a dance.

The old man smiled benevolently up at Breksin. “You see?” he said. “They are all here.”

Breksin was blinking and looking around. “How did you find this cave?” he asked. His voice echoed like thunder.

“It was here,” said the old man. Like many of his replies, this one did not encourage further questions.

“Well, it’s dry,” said the giant, advancing across the floor. Marcia became aware of a faint but persistent sound somewhere in the distance. She closed her eyes and strained to listen, feeling forward through the silence like a benighted traveler groping for his way on an unfamiliar path. Off somewhere near the border of audibility, a high-pitched wail wavered and died, then started up again. She raised her chin and tilted her head slightly to one side, trying to catch the subtle pulse of what might have been a melody.

It was at the moment that her senses were concentrated on the tiny focus of the distant thread of sound that Breksin raised his voice in an astonished shout.

“BY THE BLESSED SHORES!”

Marcia’s shriek was lost in the echoes of Breksin’s oath. She swayed on her feet and considered for a moment the comforts of crumbling to the floor in a heap like a delicate maiden felled by a swoon.

Breksin was standing at the far wall. “There are tombs here,” he announced. Marcia watched him in the flickering light. The three torches cast multiple dancing shadows of him on the cavern walls, as though they had blundered into a cave of ghostly giants.

And Breksin had found the bodies. Marcia looked at the torches. Breksin had taken ten or fifteen minutes to get a fire lit the night they slept outside. How did this old man, soaked to the skin, get these torches to burn right away? Marcia laughed at herself. As far as she knew, he was able to go anywhere. He probably had a Zippo in his pocket from his last trip to Baltimore or Toledo. She straightened her lips so she wouldn’t look like a grinning lunatic and went to join Breksin. The cat followed at her heels.

The coffins were made of stone and stood upright against the rear wall, towering even above Breksin’s seven feet of height. The old man stationed himself next to the one on the far right.

“Here,” he said, “stands the greatest of your line.”

Breksin walked toward him slowly, counting the caskets as he passed them.

“Twelve,” he said. He turned to Marcia, who was following a few steps behind. “In the legends there were twelve chieftains, and their leader”—he looked up at the coffin next to Father—“was Wendeling Asa.” The old man nodded. “But,” said Breksin in a tone of wonder, “his reign ended nineteen centuries ago. And anyway, it’s just a story ….” He stood and stared in silence.

Marcia felt like an outsider at a church service. She stepped back, careful to make no noise. She avoided looking at the old man; you could never tell when he was going to start talking about the dogs of time, the king of the rats, or any of his other incoherencies. The cat drifted silently past her in the direction of the entrance. She could just barely see it as it settled itself on the top step where the waning daylight pushed against the shadows.

She wondered if the rain had passed. She listened for thunder, but heard none. Instead, she heard again the faint melody, less indistinct now. Something about the disjointed reedy tune sounded familiar. As she listened, she heard as well a pair of low-pitched tones in a hollow, open harmony that pulsed like breathing.

“I hear the pipes,” said the old man. As he walked past Marcia, he took her arm and conducted her to the deepest corner of the cavern. The music was more easily heard mere, although still at the volume of a whisper. Marcia couldn’t tell if it was getting louder.

“What pipes?” said Breksin, joining them.

“Listen,” said the old man. Marcia concentrated on the sound. It did seem to be growing louder.

“Bagpipes,” she said quietly. She glanced up at Breksin. He hadn’t heard her. His features were screwed up in concentration; he held a massive palm to his ear. After a few moments he caught her eye.

“Can you hear anything?” he asked in an intimate half shout.

Marcia felt a painful wave of sympathy. Whatever this music was, it had something to do with his race, his ancestors, and he was the only one who couldn’t hear it. She listened harder. It was getting louder, she was sure.

“It’s very faint,” she said. “Just wait; it’s getting louder.”

“But what is it?”

“The Funeral Pipes,” said the old man impatiently. “Listen.”

Breksin put his hand on Marcia’s shoulder. He looked agitated. “Do you hear music?” he asked in an anxious voice. “A piper?”

Marcia admitted she did. It sounded closer now. She looked at him encouragingly. He shook his head.

The old man moved around Marcia to the giant’s side and took him by the elbow. “Come over here,” he said, walking him to where he had been standing. The old man wasn’t much taller than Marcia. He had to reach above his head to put his hand on Breksin’s shoulder. “Bend down here,” he said, “where you can hear.”

Breksin lowered himself to one knee. Marcia willed the music to be more clear, more present in the gloomy cave. It was much more audible than when she had first heard it, but still too soft, she was sure. The old man stood behind the kneeling giant and rested his hands on the wide shoulders.

Breksin turned to Marcia. “Are you sure you hear something?” he said.

Marcia nodded sadly.

“Quiet,” barked the old man. “How do you expect to hear? Just wait.”

In the silence, the music became more distinct. A solitary piper playing a tune quite unlike any she had ever heard, and to a rhythm the cycle of which she could not manage to catch. Marcia was fairly musical but untutored. Her ear told her that, though strangely pleasing, the melody she heard could not be picked out on a piano—that many of the pitches would lie in the cracks between the keys.

Marcia listened, trying to imagine where the music might be coming from. They were facing a wall of solid rock, and yet it sounded as though someone with bagpipes were approaching slowly from the distance. She could almost picture a solitary kilted figure marching in time to the music he played.

Breksin settled himself cross-legged on the floor of stone. He stared intently in the direction the music seemed to come from. Marcia sat down next to him. A moment later, the old man walked behind her and seated himself on her other side.

“It’s the wind,” Breksin whispered. “It has to be the wind in some tunnel.”

For a moment, Marcia didn’t realize he had spoken. The pipes had her complete attention; the shape of the sad melody had displaced her thoughts and her awareness of her companions. When his words sank in, she began to answer, then stopped. The pipes had been coming closer, or getting louder, ever since she had first heard them. Now she realized that the music was becoming more faint. The piper had turned and was slowly marching away.

She listened until the last strains failed, then listened for long seconds more to the echoes in her memory. Next to her, Breksin got slowly to his feet. She and the old man rose with him. The expression on his face was that of a man who has only his thoughts for company. He walked past the giant caskets, stopping before the one at the end. Marcia was sure the old man would sing out something irrelevant and irreverent at any moment, but even he seemed to respect the giant’s mood. When Breksin turned, finally, and made his way to the exit, the two of them waited until he passed through before following him from the cavern.

Outside, Marcia was surprised at how much time had passed. Before the storm, the sun had been well up in the sky. Now the storm was spent, but so was the afternoon. Marcia doubted they would reach the inn with the famous kitchen and cellar before dark. If asked, she would have guessed they listened to the music for fifteen or twenty minutes, meaning they would have been in the cave for no longer than, say, three quarters of an hour. She looked at the sky. Evidently the recital had lasted longer than she thought. Much longer.

Between them and the road was more high ground, blessedly more gradual of ascent than the hill they had climbed down. Breksin led the way. He had not uttered a word since leaving the cave. Marcia had no wish to break his mood, and simply followed quietly. Father walked silently behind her. The cat, as usual, was not to be seen.

They reached the road while the sun was yet above the horizon. Breksin stopped and turned to face them. To Marcia he looked as though he heard the piper still. His eyes sought hers.

“You knew nothing of the cave?” he asked.

Marcia shook her head. There was something slightly odd about his voice that distracted her, but that she couldn’t quite identify.

“Father,” he said in a gentle tone, “the cave. How did …?”

“There are caves beneath the city,” said the old man. “Dead rabbits, collars, oily water.”

Breksin closed his eyes for a moment before replying. “I see,” he said. “Well, let’s find out if we can reach the inn. Be a shame to miss a good dinner. And the ground is going to be damp for sleeping.” He looked out across the open land. “Where’s the kitsey?” he said, shaking his head. Marcia thought he sounded pretty much like the Breksin she was used to, except for the unidentifiable oddity that was troubling her. Probably, she thought, it was not in his voice, but her mind. The experience in the cave had been strange for her too. For all of them, she would have supposed, except that Father seemed to have forgotten all about it.

They passed no other travelers. The road—the world, to all appearances—was empty but for the three of them. The hills at dusk, the infrequent trees, the starless void above, these things combined with the echoing memory of the ghostly piper’s lament in a way that made Marcia’s sense of displacement painfully keen. She might have been trekking across an asteroid.

Her memories of Annie’s cottage—even of Arrleer, seemed remote.

Nightfall was abrupt. Marcia had been peering through the cloudy dusk at the road ahead, then without a noticeable transition she was looking into empty darkness. The way, which had been merely rough, became in the scant illumination of the beclouded moon an obstacle that forced them to slow their pace.

“We’ll go on a ways. We may yet reach the inn,” said Breksin. “At least at the top of the next hill we can look for the lights.”

It was not long after that, while they were yet climbing the hill, that a shout reached them from the darkness ahead. Marcia looked around. The old man had been just behind her when she last looked. Now he was not in sight.

Breksin stopped and looked at Marcia. “My name? Who could be calling my name?” He looked beyond her. “Where’s Father?”

As if in answer, the shout was repeated, closer now. “Breksin! Have a care!” It was not the old man’s voice, and anyway was coming from ahead of them.

Breksin turned, and without taking his eyes from the darkness in front of him, snatched the hammer from his belt. He held it at his shoulder and leaned forward, tossing his pack to the ground behind him. Marcia listened intently but could hear nothing more. The night seemed just as empty as it had before the shout. Breksin was starting to say something to Marcia when a running man came to a halt just inside their field of vision.

“Breksin. You know me. Egri, of Ambermere.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you. What’s wrong?”

Marcia watched Egri step closer and turn to face back the way he had come. This was someone from Ambermere, and yet at the sight of him she had a feeling of recognition. She wondered how had he run in the dark without breaking his neck and without making a sound.

Egri stared into the night. “Blood drinkers,” he said.

When Breksin answered he sounded confused. “Wolves?” he said skeptically. “We’ve heard nothing.”

Egri shook his head. Marcia watched him closely, trying to figure out what it was that was familiar about him. She wished there were more light. She wished for light yet more when he answered Breksin’s question.

“Vampires.”

Marcia raised her open palms in a gesture that her mother had resorted to when things got, as she would put it, “completely out of hand.”

“What?” she said. It came out as a shriek. She pictured a pale aristocrat in evening dress appearing out of the darkness to smirk at them. You have a strrrong will, Van Helsing.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Breksin, still scanning the darkness.

“Get serious,” Marcia muttered in reply.

Breksin turned to her, then looked around. “Where is Father?” he asked again.

Egri pointed behind them on the road. “The old man’s a little back that way. He’s all right.” He looked ahead again. “Here they come,” he whispered. He dropped to a compact crouch. Breksin raised his hammer from his shoulder.

“You see something out there?” asked Marcia.

“Probably highwaymen,” said Breksin, looking askance at Egri. “How many are there?” he asked him.

“More than there should be. Get ready.”

Marcia was just persuading herself that something might actually be wrong when she saw them. The vampires looked like starving children. Their thin, pale faces were like candles in the night. Their long white arms dangled at their sides; their strangely elongated hands looked limp and ineffectual. She tried to count them, but they weaved in and out among one another as they approached, ranging across the narrow road and onto the fields on either side. There were at least a dozen. As Egri said, too many. They began making soft mewing sounds in their throats. They walked without looking at the ground or each other. Each unblinking pair of dark, hollow eyes was fixed upon the travelers.

She heard Breksin inhale sharply. He began to swing his long-handled hammer in a tight orbit just above his shoulder.

The things were getting closer, advancing like the waters of a flooding river. Some few paces more and they would be in range of the hammer. Breksin took one step in their direction.

Marcia thought she saw a wave of hesitation in the oncoming rank. Egri began to uncoil himself from his crouch. It crossed her mind that he was preparing to run. He was moving so gradually that he seemed almost to be motionless. His mouth was not quite closed, and he stared at the oncoming monsters with a look of intense concentration.

Marcia was looking right at him, and yet when he moved, it was with a speed that she could not follow. Had she blinked, she would have missed what happened. He seemed to cross the distance to the vampires without touching the ground. Marcia heard a thin cry, a blow, and saw one of the child figures crumple to the earth. Before it had settled, Egri was crouched beside her again. At nearly the same moment, Breksin took two strides forward, swinging his hammer in a murderous arc. It passed through empty space as the pale crowd faded backwards out of reach.

Let them go away, thought Marcia. But even as she wished her wish, she saw that they were coming closer again, and again making the nasty little noises in their throats. There were too many, she thought. She glanced to the rear. “Father!” she called. She thought she could see him. He should be helping. He had powers, she was sure of it. In fact, she was suddenly certain that of all of them, the old man was in no danger at all. She watched Egri begin to move again. She wondered if she had moved as quickly as he last summer when the mugger in the alley had tried to take her ring.

She looked down at her finger stupidly, then glanced up at the approaching menace. She tried to concentrate on her ring. Now, if ever, was the time to use whatever power it gave her. She raised her hand, trying to recall the sensation she had felt when Annie had shown her how to push with it. At the same time, Marcia was acutely conscious of the scar on her cheek. It began to burn, just as it had when the demon had cut her.

She felt a deep, cold anger building inside her. Annie had said the ring would project power. Marcia concentrated on pushing the force of her growing anger through the circle of gold, and then of turning it on the approaching monsters. When she thought she felt the power of the ring, she leapt forward with an involuntary snarl of rage.

“No,” shouted Breksin. Marcia heard him behind her at the same time she saw Egri leap ahead. She heard a piercing cry as the hammer struck brittle bone, saw Egri cut a path through the pale company. She pushed among the small, cold bodies. There were more of them than she had thought. She felt stabbing fingers clutching at her arms, trying to pull her down. She fell to one knee, then struggled to her feet, pushing at the pale forms that surrounded her. They were frail and light, these things, but there were so many of them, like a flock of fanged birds. She heard her name, saw Egri moving like a whirlwind. She looked around for Breksin.

Marcia felt strangely detached. Her anger was forgotten. What, she wondered, was she doing in this place? At the same instant that she felt the searing pain in her shoulder, she heard an earsplitting scream. Her own, she realized as she sank beneath the pressure of many cold fingers at her neck and face. She clutched at her ring. Elyssa, she thought. Elyssa will come.

Chapter 13

Marcia awoke to Breksin’s voice and quiet answers from Egri that seemed to be originating a few inches from her ear.

“You’re hardly bigger than she is.”

“I’m all right. And I can see the road better than you.”

“But you don’t see the old man?”

“He’s nowhere between here and the top of the next hill.”

“You can see that far? It’s pitch black. How do you do it?”

“It’s a family trait.”

Marcia’s shoulder ached with a throbbing ache. It felt as though it had been deeply bruised. The voices went past her ears, but all her attention was on her wound. The pain was concentrated in one spot; the fire burned but did not spread. The pain was hot, but was, in her mental image, surrounded by a circle of cold white light that contained it.

She drifted in and out of a troubled slumber. Time passed without leaving an impression.

“Lights. You were right.”

“It’s the market town. The witch’s place is this side, not far off the highway.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve been there.”

“You want me to take the girl?”

“I’m fine.”

Marcia’s arms were crossed under her chest. She felt a gentle motion, as though she were resting in a cushioned chair on a small boat. The pain was intense, but isolated, as if it were not in her shoulder, but suspended above it, where her aura was. Her eyes were closed, her lips pressed to warm fragrant skin.

“What?” she said. She rolled her head to the side and looked up. She felt a big hand on her back.

“Be still,” said Breksin’s voice.

Marcia moved carefully, trying to keep her shoulder absolutely still. Egri was carrying her; Breksin walked next to him and slightly behind.

“Let me down.”

“I said be still,” said Breksin gently. “How do you feel?”

“Like an idiot.”

Breksin said nothing.

Marcia felt tired. She closed her eyes. “I mean because I’m being carried,” she murmured. Her head dropped back to Egri’s shoulder.

“First things first. Put her in the chair.”

Marcia smelled the aroma of a pungent tea. Just one cup of coffee, she thought. She felt herself being lowered into a soft chair.

“But, her shoulder …” Breksin sounded worried. And still there was something strange about his voice. Marcia reached up to touch her injury. The cloth of her top was torn and sticky. She opened her eyes.

The room was small and dimly lit by a single lamp. Next to it, Breksin, bent over beneath the low ceiling, and Egri stood with a woman whose shape, if she had one, was completely disguised by the garments she wore in layers. She looked like a dressmaker’s scrap pile crowned with a bonnet. She turned briefly to Marcia.

“Drink the tea, dearie,” she said. Marcia was surprised. The face under the bonnet was not that of an old woman, but unlined, and with a halo of blonde curls.

“She’s bleeding,” said Breksin urgently.

“A good thing,” said the witch. “Now, tell me if you were scratched or bitten.”

“No.” Breksin’s tone combined resignation and impatience.

The witch looked at Egri.

Egri glanced in Marcia’s direction. She reached for the tea with her good arm.

“They couldn’t get near him,” said Egri, nodding toward the giant. “And when Marcia went down, they all swarmed her.”

“And what about Egri?” said Breksin. “He has cuts all over his arms.”

“Little Egri is different,” said the witch. “You were the one in danger. If the poison had chanced to touch you … well, good for you it didn’t.”

The tea was even stronger than it smelled. Marcia found that it both cleared her head and let her feel the pain more intensely.

Egri smiled at the woman. “Chanced?” he said softly.

She glared at him. “Don’t you start that with me,” she said. She looked at the bloody marks on his arms. “Do you want a draught of something?”

He shook his head.

“But,” said Breksin, “the poison.”

The witch looked up at him. “You sound just like a physician,” she said. “If a medicine is good for one, it’s good for all. Little wonder their patients die so often.” She looked over at Marcia. “Drink all of that, please.” She sounded like a school nurse. She turned back to the men. “You two go ahead to the inn.” Breksin looked at her in astonishment. He began to straighten up. “Mind your head!” she snapped.

“What about Marcia—Miss Marcia?” he said.

“She’ll be along shortly. I’ll walk with her to show her the way.”

“What do you mean? She can’t walk.”

The witch folded her arms and leaned back to look up at the giant. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “She has legs and feet.”

Breksin began to speak, but she interrupted him. “And order a big dinner. This invalid of yours is going to eat like a pair of twins.”

The cleansing of the bite on her shoulder was unpleasant but soon over. Afterward, the pain was lessened by an icy compress and by a draught of a peppery infusion that Marcia took reluctantly, and out of politeness.

When she remembered Father, she jumped to her feet. She felt slightly dizzy, but ignored it.

“The old man. Where is he?”

The witch looked up calmly. “Egri said the old man, the one they call Father, went ahead on the road, and by the time the two of them had tended to you, he was nowhere to be seen.”

“The vampires got him?”

The witch shook her head calmly. “Egri says not. He said they fled when the old man joined you, and that he saw him alone after the vampires were gone.” The witch dropped her glance to the table beside her. “I had thought you would be able to tell me more, lady.”

“Me?”

The witch looked up again and spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact way. “I see your aura, I see the ring you wear. I know that the poison of the vampires is not having the effect on you that it would on another.”

Marcia said nothing. The witch waited for a moment and then went on.

“Very well. But still I may ask how there come to be monsters in this land that have been unknown but in fables.”

Marcia remembered Hannah’s aura. The one that clothed this witch was, by comparison, quite ordinary, one that might easily be mistaken for the aura of a woman unconnected with the occult. At first she had hoped the witch would be able to answer some of her questions. She could see now that that was not to be, and further, that it would be improper to speak to her of the things she had done, places she had been. Marcia had not been sworn to secrecy, but it was clear that the affairs of the Sisterhood were not to furnish material for idle chatter.

“I’m sorry,” said Marcia, “but I truly do not know.”

“But will we now be rid of them?”

Marcia looked apologetic and made a helpless gesture.

The witch nodded sadly. “All right,” she said after a moment. “I know the rules. Come, I’ll show you to the inn.”

They walked out the short wooded lane to the road. The lights of the town could be seen a short distance ahead. Marcia even thought she heard a snatch of song, doubtless from the inn. Her spirits raised at the thought of cheerful company, music, and especially a good meal. As the witch had predicted, she was ravenous.

They had almost reached the brook at the edge of the town when Marcia noticed the shadowy form standing just across the footbridge.

She pointed it out to the witch. “If you’re sure you won’t join us, I can just go on from here.” The witch bid her good night and set off back toward her cottage.

“I just thought I’d wait for you,” said Breksin as she joined him.

Marcia took a deep breath. “You’re a good friend.” To his inquiries about her shoulder she was able to reply that the pain was now much more bearable.

“Any sign of Father?” she asked.

“Not yet. But he’ll show up. Egri saw him up ahead after those things were gone. You know how he wanders off.”

The inn was bright and cheerful. At one of the tables a gray-haired woman was playing an instrument that looked like an undersize guitar and singing in a voice that, though she seemed scarcely to be exerting herself, filled the room with a honeyed alto.

Egri stood inside the door wearing an unreadable expression that didn’t change when he saw them enter. Marcia smiled at him. How odd, she thought, to have comrades. And how foreign to her experience. A guilty thought of Annie crossed her mind. If only Annie would come through the door. She entertained the idea for a moment and concluded that if Annie did show up, the first thing she would see was her partner Marcia collapsing from sheer relief. She thought again of Father, but pushed that care from her mind. She knew enough about him to be pretty sure he wasn’t in danger. Her worry was that she would lose track of him permanently. But right now there was nothing she could do anyway, and dinner seemed more important.

As usual, the appearance of Breksin drew glances. As always, he took no note of them. Marcia looked up at him. He was not a handsome figure, or a graceful one, with his alarming width and rather stooped posture, but he had a natural air of placid imperturbability that was positively regal.

Marcia was intensely interested in the trays of fried yams and roast fowl that were being served throughout the room. Her sense of smell had become suddenly acute. She found she could detect the aromas of the individual herbs seasoning the flesh, though she couldn’t name them.

Why, she wondered, had Egri not secured them a table? As she looked around the room, her eye was caught by an elderly gentleman making his way in her direction. In a room where the women’s clothing ran to primary colors and the men’s was uniformly an all-purpose dun, his light pastels were as conspicuous as Breksin’s bulk. He was dressed like someone from the Hollywood of the 1930s. He smiled and nodded to her as he came closer.

Marcia did not catch his words the first time he spoke. His voice was soft, and did not compete well with the singer’s. He moved closer and Marcia leaned toward him.

“Is that Master Breksin?” he asked a little above a whisper.

As Marcia answered him, the singer finished her song. Breksin bent to greet the man.

“Master Breksin, my name is Alexander. I was told at the chapel in Ambermere that if I took this road I might meet you. I hope that you and your company will dine with me.”

The table was in a quiet corner. It was supplied already with wine. Marcia sat across from Breksin, and between Alexander and Egri. When they had made their introductions, Alexander filled their glasses.

“Your shoulder, my dear girl,” he whispered. “What has happened to you?”

Marcia was still trying to decide what to say when Breksin answered for her. “We had some trouble on the road,” he said softly. “She and Egri were scratched up a bit.”

Alexander was looking at the compress. “You have seen a witch,” he said. Marcia nodded. “May I look? I have some knowledge of healing.” Before Marcia could reply, he had gently raised a corner of the cloth. He lowered it almost at once. Marcia saw his eye go to her ring hand. “I see,” he said, looking directly at her for an instant before glancing briefly at Egri’s scratches.

He raised his glass. “To successful journeys,” he said in his quiet voice.

“Indeed,” echoed Breksin. “Successful journeys.” He raised his glass, then lowered it quickly after a swallow. Marcia couldn’t imagine there was anything wrong. The wine was the best they had been served.

“They have ice,” he said reverently. “The provinces are surpassing the great cities.” He looked at Marcia. “This,” he said earnestly, “is exactly how this wine is meant to be served, but you’ll not have it so again any time soon, I promise.”

All Marcia could really think of was food, but she tried to look as though the temperature of the pale wine were important to her. She raised her glass and buried her nose in the fragrance. At the same time, she listened to Breksin’s voice, trying again to figure out what was different about it.

“Where is your home, Master Alexander?” he was saying. “You are Alexander of …?”

“California.”

Marcia was trying to assimilate too much data. At the precise moment she heard Alexander name the Earthquake State, she figured out what had been bothering her about her friend’s voice. She decided to tackle the simple proposition first. Her hand was trembling as she set her glass carefully on the table and turned to Alexander.

“Are you talking about the California that’s south of Oregon?”

“Yes.” Alexander did not look surprised.

Marcia stared at the table for a moment. “Okay,” she said. She peered at Breksin, who was opening his mouth, doubtless to ask about California, but stopped at her look. Now for the real puzzle.

“Breksin,” she said.

“Are you all right?” The giant looked concerned.

Marcia nodded impatiently. She raised her glass and spoke from behind it. “An excellent wine, you say?” she murmured.

“Yes,” he answered. “Especially chilled like this. Mind you”—he lowered his voice to a confidential tone—“I’ve some in my cellar that is much like this but from grapes grown in salt air, which gives it more tooth.”

Marcia spoke more softly, still with her glass raised. “Would you say it is unusually noisy in here?”

“Huh?” Breksin looked around the room. “Yes, it is, now that you mention it. A lot of clicking and clacking. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Marcia drained her glass slowly. Ever since the cave, Breksin had been talking in a normal tone of voice—no shouts in her ear, no asking her to repeat things two or three times. Something in the cave had cured his deafness. She should have realized it when he was able to hear the pipes. She recalled the eerie melody, the shadows on the walls, and remembered also how Father had stood behind him, insisting that he would hear the music.

She watched Alexander refill her glass. Breksin could hear whispers, and they were dining with a man from California. Even without the vampires this would qualify as quite a day. The wine began to warm her blood. The pain in her shoulder was about like that of a headache, dull and insistent. The poison had been neutralized, according to the witch. She looked down at her ring. No mystery there, at least. Then she thought about the monsters. She had felt the force of the ring—had seen it briefly, or so she thought. But it had been insufficient to repel the attackers.

She raised her hand to her cheek. Her scar was back to normal now, but she could still feel the memory of the burning. She couldn’t escape the feeling that her cute little scar was something of a liability. She had been impetuous—gripped by a frightening anger. Behaving like a maniac had established one thing, though: she could not count on Elyssa showing up every time she got in trouble.

Breksin went outside to see if the old man might be there. “You can’t be sure he’d have sense enough to come in,” he explained to Alexander as he left the table. While he was gone, the food arrived. Marcia had to restrain herself from starting without him and from eating with table manners like Father’s. But even though she waited for his return, she was almost ready for a second helping while Breksin was just beginning to savor, and explain in detail, the effect upon a capon of basting it with an herb-flavored butter. Alexander and Egri ale sparingly. The old gentleman comported himself like someone accustomed to taking his meals with titled ladies or writers on etiquette. Egri looked as if he wished he were elsewhere. Once in the course of the meal he went outside to look for the old man. He took longer than Breksin had, and returned to report that Father was nowhere nearby.

Once she had eaten enough to satisfy the more desperate pangs Marcia began to think again about the events of the day. Except there were too many to think about. Since this morning so much had happened that it should have taken a week to do it all. Marcia was quite certain that she had passed entire years that were not so eventful as the previous twelve hours had been. She tried without success to figure out the date, but in the process realized that only three nights ago she had been at Arrleer, which meant that four nights ago she and Annie had been in the cottage on the mountain, which in turn meant that it was only four days ago in the afternoon that she had been in the office wrestling uncooperative data from a spreadsheet and daydreaming about a nice quiet evening at home. Now her shoulder hurt because she had been bitten by a vampire.

She glanced at Egri. His arms were scratched, deeply in a few places. No bites, though. No wonder, he had been moving like a dervish among the little monsters. Breksin, she supposed, had been too busy to notice, but there had been something downright uncanny about the way Egri moved. Uncanny, but not in any way magical. On the contrary, it had been intensely physical, like some violent form of dancing.

“Little Egri,” the witch had called him, and she had been completely unconcerned about his scratches, while very worried that Breksin’s skin might have been broken in even one spot. Egri’s aura was strange. Marcia couldn’t examine it without staring rudely, but it was much more off than, for instance, hers or Alexander’s.

As a person who could move between Regions, Alexander would of course be a bit out of the ordinary, which would be reflected in his aura. Beyond that, all Marcia could tell was that there was no malice shown there. This was more than could be said for the colors surrounding Egri. There was something in his aura that she could not fathom, some undertone of implacability. She would not have called it an evil hue, but its presence made her uncomfortable. It gave her an impression, somehow, of amorality.

Breksin was, once he stopped analyzing the cookery, utterly enchanted by the singer. “She’s so clear,” he kept on saying in a tone of wonder. “And she doesn’t swallow the words the way they all do in Ambermere.” Marcia wondered what he would make of the remarkable improvement in vocal technique when he got back home and listened to the singers.

Marcia made a conscientious effort to worry about the old man, Egri’s aura, and Alexander’s business, but she was too tired and sore to manage it properly. She looked around their table. Outwardly, they were three ordinary citizens in the company of a giant. In fact, the giant was the only one among them who was not radically extraordinary. The colors and conformation of his aura were normal for an intelligent, generous person with an open nature. As for the rest of them, there were two interlopers with casts to their auras, and one—she looked at Egri’s bizarre hues—who was impenetrable.

Egri noticed her glance. He smiled at her in a very non-impenetrable way. “You are doing well, aren’t you? Healing quickly?”

Marcia nodded. There was something very appealing about this young man, despite his rather distant air. He seemed self-contained in a way that was totally admirable.

“I was stupid today,” she said.

“You were angry. That’s never useful, but it didn’t matter in this case; there were too many of them. If you hadn’t struck at them, they would have been at us anyway. The only real way out was to run, but …” He shrugged.

“But you helped us.”

His look was direct and frank. “I always had the option of running.”

“What happened when the old man came?”

“They scattered and ran. After that, I don’t know. We were busy with you. The old man went on by himself.” He glanced across the table at Breksin. He and Alexander were talking about something involving wine. “The giant was sure you were dead,” Egri said softly.

For a time, Marcia and Egri were drawn into a discussion on the merits of the singer. Marcia noted, if no one else did, that Egri, though he was polite, in fact had no opinion whatever on the music. Or the wine, she thought, noting that his glass still contained most of what had been poured for him when they were first seated.

Breksin had arranged for lodging as soon as they arrived. On the way to their rooms, he stopped to praise the landlord for serving chilled wine.

The man looked up from his pouring with a distracted air. “Iced, you say? A marvel. Unless it was in the mountains, of course. Where did you have it?”

“Why, here,” said Breksin. “Tonight.”

There followed a long and inconclusive conversation in which the landlord refused to admit he had served chilled wine.

“It’s just cool from the cellar,” he insisted over and over.

“Well,” said Breksin in an impatient rumble, “it must have been iced by magic, then.”

“Oh, don’t say that, master.” The man looked around the room anxiously. “It’s bad for business.”

Marcia turned to Alexander. He glanced at her guiltily, then looked away.

Her room was much like the one she had stayed in two nights before. One thing, though, was different: this room had a mirror that was not flawed and darkened. Marcia looked at herself as best she could with the light of a single candle. She looked tired, even lifeless, but her face seemed a little fuller than it had been a week ago, and at least in the dim light she could not see the lines and wrinkles that she had been acquiring ever since she had turned thirty. At this moment, and in this bad light, she could imagine why Breksin thought she was younger than she was. In the daylight, she promised herself, she was going to have a good thorough look.

But now she was going to sleep. Marcia wanted, of all things, to pass a restful night. This morning, for no reason, she had awakened tired and out of sorts. Perhaps tonight, with every reason for worry and restlessness, she would have a refreshing sleep. If her shoulder got no worse, she might have a chance.

She was startled by the quiet tap at her chamber door. She wrestled her top back down past her elbows and her sore shoulder and opened the door. Alexander, dapper in his pastels, stood in the dark hallway. He was holding a glass of amber wine. Marcia’s thoughts were drawn to embarrassing memories of Lord Shilmer. Was she to be the scourge of the elderly and the lame-brained? Virgin warrior was definitely to be preferred.

“This is not really in my line,” he said as he entered the room. Oh, please, thought Marcia, spare me. “But I’ve done a little something with the local wine that should help you sleep.”

Marcia felt rather awkward as she took the glass. “Well, thank you,” she said, raising it to her lips.

“No, no,” whispered Alexander urgently. “Not until you are in bed.”

Marcia looked at the wine dubiously. “It’s not knockout drops or something, is it?” she asked.

Alexander smiled reassuringly. “Not at all,” he said. “But it should get you into a deep sleep rather more quickly than you are accustomed to. And,” he added, “I believe it will mask the pain until morning.” He turned to leave, then stopped when he was halfway out the door. “We must talk, of course, but I’m sure you’ll agree it can wait till tomorrow. I myself have had a tiring day, though nothing to compare with yours.” He leaned back into the room and lowered his voice to a complete whisper. “But vampires are not normal here, isn’t that right?”

“According to the witch, they aren’t. She seemed worried about it.”

“I don’t blame her. Good night.”

Chapter 14

Marcia’s night was peaceful, her sleep dark and dreamless. Her first thought on awakening was for the old man. Would he be outside, calmly watching the sun come up? Or perhaps sitting at a table downstairs, drinking wine and talking nonsense? She dressed as quickly as she could while favoring her lame shoulder, and hurried from the room.

It was just past dawn, but the common room was busy, and full of the smells of tea and toasting bread. As it did every morning, the thought of coffee came unbidden to her mind. She barely noted it as she looked around the room for her companions and saw that none of them were down yet. The old man was nowhere to be seen.

She went outside where people were already abroad, tradesmen off to open their stalls, and fanners driving carts of goods to be bartered or sold. The morning chill penetrated her light clothing as she scanned the highway and walked quickly to the corner where the market lane led to the square. The old man was not in sight.

She began walking in the direction of the stalls, but the morning was too chilly for her light clothing, and she was too sensible to risk catching cold. Breksin would be awake soon and she could get her vest from his pack. She hurried back to the inn.

She was inside before she realized that the cold air had made her shoulder worse. The ache seemed to be, not spreading precisely, but deepening. Marcia could tell at a glance that Breksin was not in the room, but at the same quiet table where they had taken their dinner, Alexander and Egri were seated in front of steaming mugs and baskets of bread.

Marcia joined them, but found that she had no interest in food. The bread was warm, the butter pale and sweet, the cream thick, and the tea hot and strong. Even Alexander was showing signs of appetite, though he remained unexceptionably prim. Marcia sipped distractedly at a cup of tea. Breksin had ordered a bath and had told Egri that he was going to soak until the water got cold. The three of them agreed that they would visit the market together.

Alexander wore a silk sport coat and a cap of a color Marcia did not know a name for. When Marcia mentioned her vest, Egri went to fetch it for her.

“Now,” said Alexander as soon as Egri left, “I think you and I should be frank with each other. I will begin. As you undoubtedly can see, I am a necromancer. I have been led here by certain disturbances I have been noticing. You, I have deduced, stupidly not until this morning, are the person who defied the demon, what’s-his-name, Bald-something. What you might be doing here I cannot imagine, but obviously we have both arrived at the center of the disturbances, the vampires demonstrate that.

“That is what I do know. What I do not know, yet, is what is causing the trouble. II you can enlighten me, I will be grateful.”

Marcia looked at the old gentleman thoughtfully. Her impulse was to be secretive, but two considerations argued against it: one, she didn’t know anything anyway and two, she needed all the help she could get.

Alexander leaned toward her. “You are wise to be hesitant,” he said, “but with your gifts, surely you can read something of my nature and intentions.” He smiled. “Let me tell you one thing that is puzzling me. Unless I am wrong about your identity I am surprised to find you here on your own. This must all be new to you. I would have thought to find you in the company of a more experienced person. At first I thought Egri was, how do they put it, bound to you, but he tells me he was already with Breksin when you joined them.”

“But that’s not true,” said Marcia. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He came just before the vampires. Last night.” She stared hard at Alexander. Was she seeing his aura wrong? Could he be tricking her?

“My, you are an innocent,” he said in a kindly voice. “Tell me, does your friend the giant not have a pet raven?”

Marcia set her tea mug down harder than she meant to. She pictured Egri’s strange aura. “Oh boy,” she said, closing her eyes to picture the auras she was recalling. “The cat.”

Alexander shrugged. “Cat, raven,” he said. “Any wild animal, really, or one that is only nominally domesticated, like the cat. Wolves, for instance, but never dogs.”

Marcia shook her head. “But Breksin is no wizard.”

“Certainly not,” said Alexander. “Not that it matters—wizards don’t keep familiars. But Egri has been sent to help Breksin on this mission of his.”

“I don’t know where Breksin is going,” said Marcia. “Or why. He’s sort of mysterious about it.”

“It’s something about a princess who’s been kidnapped. Let’s see”—he looked up at the ceiling—“the princess, the prince—Hubert or something, another woman who is named for one of the virtues, Mercy, I think. No, it was Charity. Modesty. That’s it. Modesty and her husband Daniel. Anyway, they—”

“Daniel?” interrupted Marcia. “I know Daniel. They’re from Ambermere, right? And Modesty is the lady in waiting or companion or something to the princess?”

“That sounds right,” said Alexander. “I’ve just this moment heard this from Egri, you understand.”

“But Daniel was with me when I—when the demon … Anyway, he was trying to get to Ambermere.”

“Evidently he succeeded.”

Egri appeared at Marcia’s side with her vest. He returned her involuntary stare with a mocking smile. It wasn’t until she was standing at the door putting on the vest that Marcia remembered that two nights ago she had slept with the cat cuddled against her naked body.

The market was completely awake by the time they arrived. They strolled among the stalls and tables like tourists, enjoying the crisp, clear morning and the friendly bustle of buying and selling. Marcia purchased a comb, a change of clothing, and a closely woven hooded cape that reached below her knees. No one they talked to had seen the old man.

Once he had helped with the currency and the purchases, Egri went back to the inn. Marcia and Alexander walked in the quiet lanes near the market square and talked.

“No aura at all?” Alexander was saying. “Isn’t that a bit odd?”

Marcia had decided that agonizing about whether to confide in Alexander was idiotic. She had little to confide, and didn’t have enough information to do a proper job of agonizing.

“As far as I know it’s impossible,” she said. She had related the circumstances of how her path had crossed Father’s. None of what she said astonished her companion.

“Clearly,” he replied, “it is not.”

Marcia adjusted her hood. Her new cape, though utilitarian and plain was, of all the articles of clothing she had ever acquired, with the possible exception of a pink party dress when she was nine, her favorite. She realized that she was anxious to show it to Annie.

“Not what?” she said.

Alexander sent a sharp look in her direction. “Not impossible. Father having no aura. Why does everyone call him Father, by the way?”

“He told Breksin on that first morning that he was my father. Actually, I don’t think he knows his own name.”

“And you know nothing more about him?”

“I know he can whistle ‘Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.’”

“So you said. And, of course, he moved between Regions in the middle of a woods.” Alexander pursed his lips. “Still, so could I, given a little luck, and supposing I wasn’t particular about where I ended up.”

“But,” said Marcia, “remember that I said he seemed to know we were going to find Breksin.”

“But he didn’t name him.”

“No. He said something about meeting ‘the others,’ and about ‘the hero,’ which he calls Breksin sometimes.”

Marcia realized she had forgotten to mention Breksin’s hearing. She was about to bring it up when Alexander said something that drove all other thoughts from her mind.

“You know, it’s strange that when Elyssana mentioned the giant she didn’t tell me that I would find you with him.”

Marcia stopped in the middle of the lane and stared at Alexander as though the words he had just uttered could be read in the air in front of his mouth. By the time he had answered Marcia’s questions they were back at the inn.

“But, still, she might not know,” she was saying as they stood before the sill.

Alexander paused with his hand on the door of the common room. “Are you trying to see if I’ll change my answer? I won’t. I would assume that she could find you if she wanted to. Whether that means she always knows where you are, I doubt very much. I remind you that last year she didn’t know where the demon was, and demons are much more conspicuous than you, uh …”

“Virgin warriors,” said Marcia with a demure smile.

“What? Oh, yes, that’s right. I have it in a book somewhere. You must visit me sometime. Maybe you could find the answers to some of your questions in my library.” Alexander smiled back. “Or you could ask Rhastopheris.”

“Who?”

“A … friend of mine. You would find him fascinating, if a bit disconcerting, and I’m sure he would be delighted to meet you. He’s acquainted with your demon.” He peered at Marcia’s scar. “You know,” he went on, “we must do that. It’s been a very long time since I’ve brought anyone to meet Rhastopheris. I believe we could pass a pleasant evening together, the three of us. He knows a very great deal indeed, if only you can get it out of him. Maybe a new face would have better luck than I.”

“Is he a necromancer, this Rhastopheris?”

Alexander’s laugh sounded like dry leaves being blown across an autumn lawn. “Oh dear, no,” he gasped. “That wouldn’t be interesting at all. Rhastopheris is a demon.”

They joined Breksin and Egri at the table, where Breksin was gratifyingly impressed with Marcia’s cape. “Classic,” he pronounced it. “And not only is it a very handsome garment, it is marvelously practical as well. You’ll not be cold when we cross the High Hills, my girl.”

Alexander raised a cautionary palm. “I should think that Marcia—Miss Marcia, pardon me—I should think that Miss Marcia will not be crossing the High Hills with us, Breksin.”

“Excuse me?” said Marcia, rather stridently. She remembered to lower her voice. “Could you go into a little more detail?”

“Certainly,” said Alexander. He turned to Breksin. “Marcia is not what she appears to be, as I know you have begun to guess. For that matter, neither am I.” He glanced at Egri but didn’t mention him. “She and I both have a … professional interest in the old man you call Father.” He turned back to Marcia. “We don’t know if Father will follow Breksin or end up here at this inn. Someone must wait here. Breksin has his business to attend to, and Egri is bound to accompany him. I have some skill in enchantments, so I may be a help to Breksin. In addition, if we find the old man on the highway I can bring him back to you, or if he will not come, I can come and bring you to him.”

“How?” said Marcia and Breksin in a bass and soprano duet. Alexander chuckled. Egri’s expression did not change.

“I know a spell for covering ground in a hurry.” He glanced up at Breksin. “How do you suppose I caught up with you? Passed you, in fact?”

Breksin was pouring honey on a thick slice of buttered bread. “I’m still trying to figure out how Egri knew where to find us in the dark last night. I haven’t started worrying about you yet.” He lowered his voice to a whisper that matched Alexander’s. “And if you’re a mage of some sort, I’m not going to bother.”

“Very wise,” said Alexander. “Of course, Marcia has already told me that you are intelligent.”

Breksin looked as flattered as a person who is seven feet tall and has a piece of bread and honey in his mouth can.

Marcia did not raise the many objections that came to her mind. Her shoulder had begun to hurt more, and her forehead was hot. She thought that in a while she would probably go back to bed, then visit the witch later. The idea of a daylong hike was not appealing.

Breksin called for a quill and inkpot and a clear skin to write on. These were produced with some difficulty, and he penned an introduction for Marcia to present at the castle at Ambermere.

“If you get to Ambermere, you need stay at no inn,” he said. “You will sleep and dine at the castle like an aristocrat.” He shaded his eyes and gazed down the highway toward the High Hills, then turned back to Marcia. “I hope I Find you there when I return.”

Marcia was feeling dizzy, but making an effort to conceal it for fear that Breksin would delay his departure. She was sorry to be parted from her protector, and even sorrier to lose the company of this giant who had so quickly become her friend, but if he was to go, she wanted it to be at once. He had his business to attend to, and she had hers.

It was with a sense of loss and of sadness that she watched him take the road with Egri and Alexander. She had been admitted to few fellowships in her adult life. Her solitary nature and retiring habits had guaranteed that. To see her comrades growing smaller on the narrowing highway, with the rising run at their backs, bound for the High Hills and the lands beyond, for the skirts of the sea and the great, if wicked, city of Devlin, while she was stuck in the equivalent of nineteenth-century rural Iowa—this was a moment of pain and doubt. Surely she should be going with them.

She watched until they were lost in the distance, then went inside and slowly climbed the stairs to her room.

When she awoke, the afternoon sun was streaming in through her window. Her shoulder was stiff and sore, her mouth dry, her face hot and flushed. She felt shaky crossing the floor between her bed and the washbasin. There was little custom in the public room downstairs. Marcia ordered tea, then found when it was brought that she couldn’t drink it.

“Something else, then, miss?” asked the landlord, retrieving the tea.

“Wine, I suppose, but just a cup.”

“The pale wine, Miss?”

Marcia tried to consider this point. “No, red, I think.”

The man turned to leave.

“No, wait,” Marcia called after him. “Do you have ale? A nice heavy brown ale?”

“Yes, miss. Last ale, we call it. I still have some.”

“Good,” she said decisively. “Bring me that.” Guinness Is Good For You, she thought, with a weak smile.

It was a good stout ale, heavy and bitter, and it made her feel, if not lively, at least less torpid. Thus fortified, she put on her cape and strolled outside for a while in the sunny afternoon. She had meant to visit the witch, but it seemed a lot of trouble. Her shoulder, while painful, was improving. What she needed, she thought, was a little air and exercise, and then another nap.

She had an early supper in her room. Not the feast of the night before, but a good substantial repast accompanied by the valley wine Breksin had been looking forward to, but had forgotten in his excitement about the ice. After the girl who brought the tray had left, Marcia raised her glass to the absent gourmet. She wondered if it would often happen in this line of work that she would make friends that she was fated never to see again.

When she crawled wearily into her bed, the sun had not yet sunk completely below the horizon. Still, she thought, it would do no harm to relax, and rest her eyes. Her skin felt dry and hot. She considered tossing aside the light blanket that covered her, but before she could make up her mind, she was asleep.

Marcia awoke abruptly from a dreamless sleep in the middle of the night. She was vaguely conscious of the fact that the precise moment of midnight had not yet come. She left the warm bed and padded across the bare floor to the window. The night was clear. In the moonlight she could see the highway, the near corner of the market square, the footbridge under the trees. In the shadows there she could see someone. She caught a glimpse of white hair.

She did not waste time trying to get a better look, nor did she stop to consider her hot brow or the chills that shook her. She dressed in haste, hurting her shoulder without noticing it. She snatched her new cape from the hook and was out the door.

The entrance to the inn was bolted. She tried to be as quiet as she could without slowing down, but first the bolt and then the door itself seemed to be thunderously loud. At every squeal and thump her knees fell weak. By the time she closed the door carefully behind her she was perspiring.

The old man did not look up until she stood before him. He was leaning on the handrail gazing into the water that flowed beneath the bridge.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He straightened up. “They’re like birds in a winter-locked land. They must feed every day or they die. When they hunger they fall on one another until only one is left. Or none.”

Marcia pictured the vampires. In her memory they were like refugees from a famine. “Where are they?”

“Beyond the reach of pain.”

Now that she was standing still, Marcia felt very hot, though she was conscious of the chill in the night air. The old man was wearing what he always wore—trousers and a shirt that would have been comfortable in warm weather. She took a step toward him and stumbled. The old man took her arm firmly and led her off the bridge. He guided her down to the creek and knelt to scoop up a handful of water. Marcia watched it catch the moonlight as it fell in droplets from his open palm. He raised his hand and poured the icy water onto her forehead, rubbing it down over her eyes and across her tight, hot cheekbones. As she watched, he knelt again. He pulled back her hood and wet her hair, spreading the water with his hand. A third time he dipped from the creek, this time wetting her neck from back to front and running his frigid hand under her chin.

Marcia had never seen him so close, looked at him so carefully. His skin was etched with lines and wrinkles that might have been incised with carving tools. His eyes were pale as the pale moonlight. She had not noticed it before, but his lack of an aura gave him a strangely concrete appearance, like an insistently realistic painting that is more photographic than a photograph. His beard, which should have been tangled in the hues of his aura, was tangled only in itself, white hairs and graying ones, and fading stains of wine.

He stepped back from her and watched the drops of water fall from his hand. “See,” he said. “Even these. Every one.”

“What?”

The old man wiped his hand on his pants and looked at her from the corners of his eyes. “Everything happens,” he said.

They climbed the shallow bank back to the road. “Come to the inn,” said Marcia. “I’Jl waken the landlord and get you a room.” Marcia had no idea how to accomplish this, but supposed she would manage. Or Father could doze in the chair in her room until morning. The old man was staring back along the highway in the direction they had come from yesterday.

“Breksin is gone,” said Marcia. “He wants us to go to Ambermere.”

Father walked out from under the bare trees and pointed at the moon. “All connected,” he said, and let his arm drop heavily.

Marcia looked at him hopelessly. She had thought for a moment when he told her about the vampires that he was no longer incoherent. He beckoned. She had been brought up to think it was rude to call someone with a gesture—“Save that for when you have servants,” her mother would tell her—but found his summons oddly compelling. She went obediently to his side. She raised her hood on general principles—she knew it was cold, and her hair was wet—but she felt neither the cold of the night nor the heat of the fever.

It was when he took her ring hand and raised it that Marcia realized the pain in her shoulder was gone. He looked at the ring with great interest. Marcia had a foggy recollection of another time when he had examined her ring in the same way. It had been in the middle of the night in some lonely place.

The old man spoke without taking his eyes from the ring. “My daughter,” he said in a distant tone.

Marcia shook her head wearily. “Listen, let’s—”

“You can watch, but you can never get outside.”

The ring slipped easily from her finger. Her hand remained limp. She stared in impotent silence as the old man put her ring on his finger. He gazed at it for a moment, then looked up at her.

“Never get outside.”

Marcia slept late and awoke feeling very good. Her shoulder no longer hurt, her temperature was back to normal, and her lethargy had been replaced by a feeling of energetic freshness. Again her sleep had been deep, restful, and disturbed, if at all, only by easily forgotten dreams. As sometimes happened, her moment of waking at midnight had left no trace in her memory. She washed and dressed, then carefully went over her hair with her new comb. That finished, she remembered that she had promised herself a good look at her girlish complexion.

She looked younger. Probably by a dozen years. She leaned closer to the mirror. Marcia did not have much experience admiring herself. She had known from girlhood that “the Mibsey women are not beauties,” and she had not been encouraged to spend a lot of time in front of what her mother persisted in referring to as “the looking glass.” She raised her hands to pull her hair back.

She didn’t see her lighthearted smile fade. Her eyes were locked on the reflection of the bare finger where her ring should have been.

It took her a frantic ten minutes followed by a methodical half hour to convince herself that the ring was not in the bed, or anywhere else in the room. Nothing else was gone. Her sack of coins was undisturbed.

She forced herself to go to the public room and order breakfast. Forcing herself to eat it proved beyond her powers. She swallowed tea without tasting it, and stared so persistently at the table that the landlord asked if there was something wrong.

The ring was not to have been taken off. Elyssa herself had put it on her finger. Only then did she come to the full realization that it was Elyssa’s ring that she had lost. She remembered Annie telling her about the pedigrees of the rings. Each wearer added to the power. When Annie had learned that Marcia’s ring did not come from a long line of Sisters, but from Elyssa herself, she had been vastly impressed, had pointed out the subtle but visible difference between her own ring, one of long lineage, and the ancient band that Marcia wore.

And she had lost it.

She poured more tea and forced herself to drink it. She made her thoughts stop tripping over themselves. She had, in fact, not lost the ring. It had been on her finger for over six months. It was not loose. It had shown no more signs of falling off than the finger itself. It was not as though she had gotten careless with it and let it drop in the grass somewhere. She permitted herself a slight smile. She had been under a pile of clawing vampires and the ring hadn’t even shifted towards her knuckle. No thief had come into her room and taken it from her finger. She doubted the ring itself would put up with it, and she had compelling evidence to support that doubt. She wondered if the mugger had ever completely recovered from his injuries and the experience of trying to take her ring last summer.

She buttered a healthy slice of bread. The ring was gone. The old man was gone. Breksin was too far away to catch up with. She ladled some honey from the pot. She straightened up in her chair. Looking at her empty finger, she felt as though a weight had been lifted from her.

By any rational standard, her responsibilities had come to an end. A few days from now she could be in Ambermere. If need be, she could, with Hannah’s help, make her way back home. Right now her apartment and her well-paid consulting job seemed awfully uncomplicated. She imagined Hannah offering to take her again as an adept. “Gee, I’m pretty backed up with work right now, Hannah. Why don’t we just settle for lunch a couple of times a month instead?”

Now that she thought of it, the Sisterhood of Virgin Warriors didn’t seem to be a particularly well run operation. Where had they been when she was being murdered by vampires? If they came to her complaining about their ring, she was going to point out, forcefully, the deficiencies of their health-care plan.

She went out after her late breakfast. She thought she might drop in on the witch.

“For what, exactly?” she said to herself as she crossed the little bridge. She was trying to keep, if not the feeling of euphoria she had talked herself into, at least her sense of proportion.

She leaned against the handrail and looked into the running water below. Odd, she thought, that there should be footprints on the bank. Either the temperature wasn’t as low as it seemed, or the ground there had been wet Hardly good weather for wading, though. She looked more carefully at the shallow outlines, then stepped to the end of the bridge and stared down at them intently.

There was no actual need for Marcia to leave the bridge for a closer look, though she did. The larger footprints in the soft earth were identical to those she had followed through the snow not many nights before; the smaller ones were hers. She watched as her boot fit neatly into the impression near the water. She and Father had stood here, yet he had vanished before she had arrived in this town. She looked at the bare spot on her finger with narrowed eyes.

She walked the lanes of the town, asking those she passed if they had seen the old man. At the inn, the landlord knew nothing of him.

“Unless he’s the one opened my door last night,” he said indignantly.

Marcia saw a mental image of a bolt. She left the landlord and went to the door. When he heard her working the noisy bolt, the landlord came and stood behind her.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “it was bolted, all right. I did it myself. I don’t leave my door hanging in the wind. The times may be easy, but sense is sense, I say.”

In her room she tried to pry her memory open. She paced and frowned, shook her head impatiently and muttered to herself, and wished for something to throw. She had a recurring image of an old movie where a woman with rosebud lips and blond curls smashes a huge supply of crockery piece by piece in a lengthy tantrum.

She succeeded in recalling far more of the movie than she would have thought possible, and nothing of last night beyond the image of the bolted door. Alter an early supper in her room, she decided to imitate the Buddha, about whom she knew nothing beyond a vaguely remembered story that he had vowed to sit in contemplation until enlightenment came to him. Marcia had the impression that he had sat for months or years, but her goal, after all, was only to recall one incident that had occurred the night before.

She was tempted again and again to hammer at the thing she remembered, hoping to force her way into her memory. Instead, she pushed the thought away like a toy boat, on a pond. She found herself turning from all thoughts and memories, which led her into a silent discussion with herself on whether that was the best way to try to remember something. After a while she remembered to push that question away too. As she understood it, she was to stop thinking, but when she came closest to stilling her mind, she always began to think about how close she was to stilling her mind.

She had been staring at the flame of the candle. When she became aware, gradually, that she was sitting in a dark room with her eyes open, she smiled in a way that seemed to be more a smile in potential than one that actually involved facial muscles. A mental smile, she thought. She undressed in the dark, looking out the window at the empty night. Her eyes came to rest on the footbridge under the trees.

Her mental pictures were jumbled and out of sequence, but sharp and clear. She remembered the bolt, how noisy the door was. She had gone out into the night. She was dressed in her cape. She saw herself throwing the cape on in the room. She had pulled the door closed behind her, careful to make no noise. She saw the dark stairs, the empty common room. Again the bolt, the noisy door, the cold night. She was walking toward the lane, quickly. She felt the cold air on her hot skin. She remembered leaving the warm bed; she felt the floor under her bare feet, felt the chills that shook her. She saw the old man from the window, just a shadow under the trees, a shock of white hair. She was standing with him on the bridge. His lips moved but his words made no sound in her memory. She saw the water fall from his hands. She felt it on her face. She saw him beckon. He pointed to the moon and talked soundlessly. He took her hand. The ring slipped onto his finger easily.

Marcia stared at the bridge. “All right, Father.” Her voice was quiet and even. “All right.”

The rain was steady. Marcia woke up when it started and listened to it in the dark room for a few minutes before slipping back into a comfortable sleep. At breakfast she sat next to a window and watched the rain come down. It looked as though it were never going to stop.

She conducted negotiations for a tub of hot water, and by midmorning was soaking luxuriously. She had her afternoon planned. She had partaken of a substantial breakfast. At lunch she ate very lightly, then stood just outside the door under the eaves breathing the clean wet air. When she started to feel the cold, she retreated to her room.

She moved her chair so that it faced the window. She settled herself comfortably, folded her hands on her lap, and stared at the raindrops running down the glass. She listened to the sound of her breathing until she could no longer hear it. After more time had passed, the rain that splashed against the windowpanes and battered the roof did so soundlessly, and she was motionless in a silent void.

Again the sequence of the memories was jumbled. The old man was walking toward her in the night. She was pushing at him with the ring, could see the stream of energy strike him. He sat with a giant under the moon, talking of ancient armies, wars long past. He walked through the power of the ring. She came into her chamber. She was not wearing her ring. She removed her clothing and fell into the bed already asleep. The door of the inn hung open in the night, the latch biting air, the bolt undone. On the highway, the old man walked back in the direction they had come from.

When Marcia awoke in the chair, the rain had stopped. She took her cape and went downstairs, but the ground was too muddy for a stroll. The sky was still sullen, though growing lighter where the sun was descending behind the clouds. Marcia had an irrational impulse to go tune in the weather report to see if she’d be able to travel tomorrow. She ventured across the wet ground as far as the highway. It was soft and puddly. She wondered if Breksin and company had spent the night at a cozy inn or had camped along the road. No doubt, though, Alexander would be able to provide some comforts. Surely his talents were not limited to chilling wine. Marcia did not know what a necromancer might be capable of, but he had spoken most casually of getting together with his pal the demon, so his powers must be substantial.

She took dinner in the public room for the first time since the others had left. She felt decidedly odd but very calm in this setting. Without her ring and without her companions, she was completely out of place here, not in the sense of feeling herself an outsider, but because she knew, if no one else did, that she had been left with absolutely no excuse for being there.

She would have liked to stay for a while at her table, but as the room was not crowded with travelers, it was clear that she would be forced to join in the general talk. Marcia did not think she was a talented enough liar to answer questions about where she was from and why she had not gone on with her party, so she went back to her room to face the long evening alone. She had a pitcher of the valley wine sent up for company.

Chapter 15

Marcia got out of bed before dawn and went to the window. The sky was clear, the road looked as it had before the rain. The pools of gathered water were gone. She tried to go back to sleep, but she was too anxious to get on with her plans. She was going to follow the old man, no matter how hopeless it seemed. The fact that he had taken the road toward Ambermere was a bonus, it was true. Failing all else, and given a little luck, like not running into vampires, she would at least end up in a place where she knew somebody.

At first light she went downstairs. No one was about, so she undid the bolt and opened the door. Her memory now was clear—of opening the door in the middle of the night, of the noise she made getting outside. Yet those memories, and the ones from the other nighttime encounter with Father had been out of reach of her conscious thoughts until she had pursued them.

The morning was crisp. She walked to the highway. The ground was firm. Not bone dry, but as clean and passable as it had been before. She walked a little way before coming back to the inn. The landlord was standing at the door, looking off in the other direction. He jumped when she greeted him.

“Gods, miss!” he exclaimed with a startled look. He scratched his head. “You opened the door, did you?”

“Yes, just a few minutes—moments ago.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then. I was beginning to think we had goblins.”

Marcia had a big breakfast and arranged to have a package of provisions made up. Less than an hour after dawn she was on the road.

She found that she could not pick out the place where the vampires had attacked them. It might have been on any of the hills she crossed. That, however, was not important. The question was, would she recognize the thing she was looking for?

She had to find the cave of the giants. From what she knew of his abilities, Father could be anywhere. Detroit, for instance. She had no realistic expectation of finding him. If they were to meet again, it was much more likely that he would find her. But since he had not started off after Breksin, the only place she knew to look was the haunted cave. Assuming that what she had been able to draw from her memory was not a fantasy her subconscious had cooked up, Father had been talking with one of the ghosts the night before they went there. All that she knew about him, except “Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries,” had something to do with either Breksin or the cave.

When Marcia recognized the way to the cave, she felt unusually lucky. She knew she should stop to eat, but the idea of delay was intolerable. She looked around carefully until she was certain she would be able to find her way back to the road, but farther along in the direction of Ambermere, then set off across the rolling slopes.

She had ample leisure while she hiked along to wonder why she was doing this. The very most sensible thing she could have done was to hire a stout fellow with a reliable aura to escort her safely to Ambermere. She patted the bundle on her shoulder. She even had a reservation at the castle. She didn’t know anything else about Ambermere, but she was pretty sure they ate well there, and managed to keep comfortable.

But he had her ring! Marcia’s jaw set. For all she knew, the ring had lost its power—everyone had made such a big deal about never taking it off. But she wanted it back just the same. She had won that ring—she raised her hand to the scar on her cheekbone …. Her laughter surprised her. She had won the ring by doing something just as crazy as what she was doing now. Maybe that was the whole answer. Maybe she was just crazy.

She stopped short. She turned around carefully and walked back a few steps. On a spot not so rocky as most of the ground was a familiar footprint. It was pointed in the direction of the cave. Marcia looked up at the sky before hurrying on. There were many hours of daylight left. No matter what else happened, by nightfall she wanted to be at the little inn where she and Breksin had had the awful lunch.

She reached the cave sooner than she expected to. She made her way down the last steep hill with great care. It did not take much imagination to predict the consequences of breaking a leg. A badly sprained ankle could achieve the same result. She was probably no more than two or three miles from the highway, but that would be enough. And the highway itself was as lonely as the hills. Evidently the peak season for travelers had not arrived.

She was watching her feet so carefully that she didn’t notice the old man right away. When she looked up, he was standing at the bottom step of the entrance to the cave.

Marcia felt as she had the night the demon appeared in the alley; an awful, empty dread had its hand on her. The old man didn’t look as though he was going to start babbling about the king of the rats or the city that was bigger than the world. She forced herself to continue toward him. When she was still a dozen steps away, he turned and began climbing the gigantic stairs.

She stopped. She wanted to let him disappear into the cave. What could she do, after all? She couldn’t take the ring from him by force. She couldn’t even catch him if he wanted to get away. Aside from whatever powers he might have, he was stronger than she was, and faster. She had tried. She had done everything she could. He reached the top step.

“Hey!” Her shout echoed from the rocks and hills. The old man turned to face her. Marcia clenched her fist as though the ring were on her hand. When she spoke, her voice was tight and harsh.

“I want my ring.” She gathered herself for a sprint across the rocky path. The old man was going to be surprised at how quickly she could get to him. She did not take her eyes from his.

He jumped down to the next step, and then the next, dropping lightly like a boy. Marcia kept completely still as he came closer. She felt like a person being approached by a deer or a bird, as if any movement she made might break the spell.

“Still you follow me,” he said.

“You have my ring.”

The old man turned his hand and looked down at it. How did it fit, Marcia wondered. His hands were muscular and heavy like a laborer’s. For a moment both of them gazed at the ring. He extended his hand to her. Marcia began to reach for the ring, then stopped. There was a way that this should be done. She felt as she had when she had seemed to stand among the stars at Arrleer, All fear, all feeling left her. She held out her hand.

“Put it back.”

“You are certain?”

“Put it back.”

“You will not follow where I go now.”

“Put it back.”

He slipped the ring from his finger and held it in the light. It looked small. Marcia felt a sudden tension. She took a deep, slow breath. The old man raised his eyes to hers as he took her hand. They were pale. Transparent. She felt the ring encircle her finger, looked down to see it secure again on her hand.

When she looked up, she was alone. This was what had happened the last time. Elyssa had been sitting next to her, and then hadn’t been there anymore. Possibly it was just that putting the ring on distorted time or, less exotically, captured the attention so completely that it seemed to. Probably while she was staring at the ring Father had just walked away.

Of course, she didn’t even know if the ring retained its properties. It was not to have been taken off, of that she was certain. Her ring had not only been taken off, but worn by another. Marcia thought for a moment. The old man had worn the ring for two and a half days. She started to laugh. Everyone who wears the ring changes it, alters its powers. So she had been told. She wondered when she was going to start talking about the king of the rats.

She wished she knew more than one trick with the ring. All she had been taught was the pushing thing which, she recalled, had been of little use against the vampires, and of none on the old man. So she had never really used the ring for anything anyway. She glanced at the sun. She had plenty of time to get to the little inn.

“Right, Marcia,” she said. She climbed quickly to the top of the hill and scanned the visible countryside for signs of Father. As far as she could tell, she was alone on the planet. She worked her way back down the hill until she was in front of the cave again. Her next step was obvious. There was really, following the screwball logic established by her previous decisions, no alternative. Besides, if chance was an illusion, so were choices. Comforting, in a way, she thought.

The torches were burning in the cave. It occurred to Marcia that they probably always burned. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloomy interior before proceeding. Before, she had been alone in an empty landscape; now she was alone in a cave. For some reason, it was worse. Death was death, no doubt, but she would prefer to meet it under the open sky. To perish in some dark hole would be just too depressing.

Marcia could not see Father anywhere. She called out, timidly, and then had to listen to the eerie echoes that ricocheted from wall to wall. When they died out, she heard the pipes. She went to the place where she and Breksin and Father had sat. The music seemed to come from directly ahead. She crossed the floor. As before, it looked as though it had been freshly swept.

The wall was solid rock, and cold as ice. The music, oddly, was softer there. Her eyes were now thoroughly accustomed to the low light. She looked into every corner. If the music was being reflected from the wall, it should be coming from the opposite side of the chamber. She spent perhaps twenty minutes wandering around the cave. There was no place where the pipes were louder than the position the old man had led them to, nor were there any holes or tunnels that she could locate. So she was not to be obligated to get lost or trapped in some maze of passages under the earth. Marcia felt positively grateful.

She considered her situation. Father was not anywhere outside, but he was not in the cave either. With the possible exception of the piper, the dead were all safely in their tombs, at least for the moment—Marcia was finding it difficult to keep from looking over her shoulder every few seconds. The only action was the music.

She returned to the good seats and settled herself cross-legged on the spot Breksin had occupied almost precisely four days before. Marcia did some mental arithmetic. It was four days since they had been here in the cave. That meant it was one week ago tonight that she had followed the old man from Arrleer.

Having worked that out, she set about emptying her mind. She straightened her back and folded her hands, very conscious now of the ring on her finger. She fixed her eyes on the point the music came from. Her mind she tried to center on her ring.

Whether it was her surroundings or the fact that she wore the ring again, Marcia had no way of” knowing, but something was very different from anything she had experienced when meditating at the inn. She felt at once that she was totally divorced from her physical environment. She could not feel the floor she sat on, had no peripheral view of the cavern. She had to suppress a sense of disquiet, almost panic. She pushed the feeling away with a gentle, patient hand.

She felt not at all disembodied. On the contrary, she had a heightened awareness of herself not as a being that possessed a body, not as the soul that animated a corpse, but as a unity indivisible.

The piper was a giant dressed in dark robes, pacing alone on a rocky plain. He stepped in time to the dirge he played, advancing slowly across the intervening distance.

She turned her mind from the piper and from the sound of the pipes. She thought instead of the old man. He had passed this way. Marcia willed herself to rise, and rose, and did not feel that she had moved. At a great distance, through a gathering mist, she saw the shadowy form of the old man. The mist rose to obscure him entirely. With hands still clasped over the ring, Marcia advanced, conscious only of the enveloping whiteness thickening with her every step.

Gradually she became conscious as well of the ground beneath her boots, and of the rise in temperature around her. The dreamlike quality of her perceptions began to dissipate along with the mist she walked in. She became conscious of her breathing and of an acrid smell that was getting stronger. As well as fading, the mist was turning from white to a dirty yellow that seemed a visual analog of the stinging smells.

Marcia had gone far enough that she knew herself to be in no danger of walking into the wall. Wherever she now was, she had left the cavern. She could see the ground ahead of her and, further into the yellow haze, the grosser details of landscape and topography. Still she was careful to keep herself … elevated … trying to maintain the trancelike state of focus on the ring.

The air burned in her throat. She raised her chin by about one millimeter and continued forward, hands clasped at her waist, eyes trained on the invisible distance. She walked like a nun in a holy procession. It was obvious she was moving between Regions, traveling magically in Father’s wake as she had that first night in the woods at Arrleer. Whatever spell was at work, she wanted to do nothing to break it.

She felt a rivulet of perspiration tracing a path behind her right ear. It was simply a matter of concentration, she told herself. Her surroundings were becoming more visible. She could see the path winding ahead, in and out of sight according to the rise and fall of the ground. She wondered about the time and permitted herself a quick glance above.

She gasped, taking in a searing mouthful of acrid air. She began coughing, and at the same time stumbled on something and nearly pitched forward in a headlong sprawl. When she stopped coughing, she looked around quickly and then turned her eyes upward.

There was no sky. It wasn’t that it was dark, or cloudy, or an unusually foggy day. There was nothing above. What light there was seemed to come from the atmosphere itself, which provided an ambient yellow glow that looked unwholesome and was nicely coordinated with the smell of sulfur that was choking her.

She removed her cape and folded it over the back of her shoulder bag, then sat down by the side of the road. As there was nothing that could properly be termed a horizon, Marcia did not scan it, but she did look around in all directions, punctuating her search with nervous glances above. She was in an area of broken hilly ground that stretched out until everything finally resolved itself into the same yellow murk she saw when she looked up, which she decided to stop doing because she found it disquieting.

It occurred to her to wonder what would happen if she put herself back into the trance, assuming she could do it again, and walked back the way she had come. Would she pass through the cool white fog and end up in the cave? Somehow she didn’t think so, although she conceded to herself that she might simply be yielding to her native pessimism. Marcia had always cherished her pessimism, since it was the one thing about her that did not conform to the paradigm of the Mibsey women. The Mibsey women, it turned out, were inclined to Look At The Bright Side. Marcia couldn’t help wondering what her Mibsey ancestresses would think of her prospects at the moment.

From somewhere ahead she heard a thin, piercing cry. A moment later a shadowy something sailed across the road at a height of about thirty feet. The old man had said something about her not following where he was going. It had sounded like a simple statement of fact; perhaps it had instead been meant as a piece of friendly advice. Or a warning.

It was warm. Marcia removed her vest and stowed it in the pack with her food and wine. She was getting used to the air. The smell was not so pronounced and her throat didn’t burn with every breath. She looked around once more. There was nothing to do but go on. It was as she was getting to her feet and slinging her bag across her shoulder that she realized with dreadful certainty where she was. She reached up to touch the demon’s mark on her cheek. She had seen him only in the form of the thug Ferris, but she had a vivid recollection of his eyes, and of the dirty yellow fire that had burned in them. She let her gaze wander over the scrofulous landscape. She was in the Lower Regions.

Because her only alternative was to stay where she was, and it was the most unpleasant place she had ever been, she went on. She had to either catch up with Father or try to change Regions entirely on her own. She would have no way of knowing where she would end up, of course, but one advantage of being in the Lower Regions was that anyplace else was sure to be better. But where she might end up was an academic question anyway. She had crossed into this Region with the strong feeling that she was riding on the coattails of Father’s magic. She doubted that on her own she could transport herself anywhere that her unaided feet could not take her. That was another academic question—at the moment, she was too tired and discouraged to try any ambitious magic.

She picked up her pace. If she was to catch the old man, she would have to move faster. Why would he come here? she wondered. Marcia stopped abruptly. Maybe he belonged here. She knew nothing about him, really. He had no aura. To say that he talked in riddles was to make favorable assumptions about his sanity and understanding that were unwarranted. And even if he was sane, there was no reason for her to conclude that he was benign. Anyway, what did that mean? Was Elyssa benign?

If the old man was a demon, though, he was a much different one than the demon she had been acquainted with. She could not imagine her demon palling around with Breksin, taking him to the cave where his deafness was cured.

A stray memory came to Marcia. The old man baptizing her there by the bridge. He had not washed away her sins but, she remembered for the first time, she had been dry and hot with fever until then, so she might as well say he had washed away her ills. That made it seem more plausible that he, and not the ghosts of the Wendelings, had helped the giant.

Then there was the matter of the vampires. She remembered now that he had likened them to starving birds. If he was a demon, he was a softhearted one. A day had not passed that he had not mentioned the tragic end of the king of the rats. Of course, excessive sympathy for rats and vampires might be taken as evidence of demonhood.

But why would a demon return her ring? The demon last summer had promised her to rip it from her hand, not bothering to leave the finger behind. The old man had stolen it, to be sure, but he had meekly returned it in a manner that suggested he had forgotten all about it and considered it to be of no importance.

“So stand here,” she said aloud. She started walking. Demon or angel, Father was the person, or being, she had to find, and the sooner the better. The only thing to do was go on. And watch her step.

Marcia walked on, remembering to keep her speed up and her eyes open. Every time she crossed a rise in the road she peered ahead, hoping to see the old man. Now and then she would hear cries in the distance, and once heard a scurrying noise close behind her but saw nothing when she whirled to face it. The light was not changing. It had no direction, cast no shadows, and did not increase or lessen to a degree that Marcia could notice. She began to think, and hope, that night would not fall in this place.

And with the unfortunate thought of night and long treks came all the other considerations too dreary to entertain. When Marcia had thought she might be lost in the woods the night she followed the old man she had felt a rush of despair. She smiled coldly. What should she feel now? How far did this road stretch? A hundred miles? A thousand? If she could know what lay ahead, would she bother to go on?

She clenched her hand around the ring. She remembered sobbing in the woods. She narrowed her eyes and tightened her jaw. She might well die in this miserable place, but she would not die weeping helplessly like a heroine in a melodrama. She was going to try to catch up with the old man until she ran out of food. At that point, while she still had strength, she was going to try to conjure up a way out of the Lower Regions. If that failed, she would go on until she dropped. She smiled again, more grimly than before. At least her plans were uncomplicated.

She reached back to touch her cape. She was going to carry it a little further, just on the chance that the weather might turn cold. If it didn’t, she would have to leave it behind. It seemed sad, really, and unfair to the garment to abandon it in such a place. It was so new, and was trying to be a very good cape. Marcia felt tears running down her cheeks, and let them fall as she trudged on.

The shout that broke the silence was entirely unexpected and almost stopped her heart. Marcia had been drying her eyes and congratulating herself on being smart enough to find something, however silly, to cry about, because it had greatly improved her mood.

There was a moment of tense silence, broken by noisy protests and a thrashing sound from among a garden of rocks and boulders along the road.

“No! Hey!” called a distraught voice, followed by a breathy grunt and then another outraged cry.

Marcia’s angry shout was involuntary. As she rushed among the rocks a small island of sanity in her brain was broadcasting the frantic question, What do you think you’re doing? and the equally frantic advice, Run!

The small creature was suspended upside down above the gaping jaws of the large creature. The small creature was writhing and protesting as the large creature lowered it slowly by the ankles.

Marcia barked her command in the sledgehammer soprano of a lady drill sergeant. “Put him down!”

The heads of both creatures turned to face her in astonishment. The smaller one looked even more shocked than his attacker, doubtless because he was upside down.

“Eeewwwww,” said the big one with a delighted grin. “More food. Bigger, too. Almost my size.” The thing glanced up at its captive briefly, then dropped it and turned toward Marcia. The little one fell with a startled shout and danced back out of the way.

The demon looked like something constructed of gigantic orange pipe cleaners. Its limbs were long and spidery, and it stood in a crouch. Its hands and feet were clawed, its grin filled with long, sharp teeth. What Marcia could see of its aura blended in with the bilious atmosphere in a nasty marriage of hues.

The demon inclined its head slightly. Marcia noticed the heavy musculature of the jaws. The face, in fact, seemed made of muscle.

“Don’t you want to run?” it asked in a wheedling voice.

Marcia realized she should be afraid. This thing was bigger than she, had a head like a leopard, and teeth like a shark. All she felt was anger and contempt.

“Last chance,” it said. The coaxing tenor had dropped to a menacing baritone. Marcia saw it flex its legs and arch its back as though preparing to spring. She raised her ring hand slowly from her side. She had tried to use the ring against the vampires and had come close to dying by their fangs, and the vampires were like a troop of Cub Scouts compared with the horror that threatened her now.

The same cold anger gripped her, she could feel the connection with it just as she had in the trance. She watched the demon gather itself.

“I seek Rhastopheris,” she said, surprising the two demons and herself.

“Uh-oh,” said the little one.

The large creature adjusted its position. “But you are alone,” it breathed. “With us”—it gestured toward the little one—“and Lord Rhastopheris is far away.”

Marcia kept her attention on the demon. It stood no more than twenty feet from her. The little one had edged off to a comfortable distance from both of them. The thing joined its claws across its abdomen.

“What will you give me if I take you to him?”

Marcia felt her lips curl into an undisguised sneer. Though she had started this talk she found she had no patience for it.

“Don’t trust her!” cried the small demon urgently.

The big one glanced its way. “I shall trust her if—”

“I wasn’t talking to you!” the little one said indignantly. It moved one step toward Marcia. “Don’t trust her, lady. She’s just hungry.”

She? thought Marcia, staring at the orange horror. It took a tentative step toward her. She could see the little one moving farther away. “Look out!” it called. “Once she gets her claws on you, you’re just a meal.”

“That’s right,” hissed the monster. “Why don’t you run?” It flexed itself into a taut crouch. “I’ll give you a start.” Marcia raised her ring hand. Her scar was throbbing. She wondered if Elyssa would come. If so, this would be the time.

“No?” The thing smiled at her. “Eewwwww, how you’re going to wriggle.”

The monster started to uncoil herself, just as Egri had before leaping at the vampires. The pushing trick. The only use Marcia knew for the ring. She had pushed Annie. How long could she hold this horror off? If at all. She had broken the rule. The ring had been removed and Father had worn it for over two days. There might well be no power in it at all. The only power Marcia was conscious of was the pressure of her cold-blooded anger.

The demon shifted. “Get ready,” it said in an intimate whisper.

The ring, perhaps, retained no power, but she felt a strong sense of connection with it. She focused on the demon and pushed as hard as she could, at the same time uttering an unwilled cry.

The air between them exploded. Marcia watched it break into yellow shards, then further into a trembling cloud of dust. About forty feet from her the body of the demon lay broken on a jagged rock.

“Gods, lady, you don’t have to blow up the world. It was just one Gorgle.” The little demon sidled toward her with a great show of caution. “Nice, though. You do remember that I was on your side?”

Marcia nodded. She felt drained and shaky. The demon strolled toward the corpse. Marcia had a sudden presentiment of unpleasantness.

“If you plan on eating her, you can just wait till I leave.”

The small one looked at Marcia with an expression of disgust. “Eat her? You must be kidding. I may be infernal, but I’m not insatiable. Anyway, I prefer my meat cooked.” He turned around and walked toward Marcia.

She peered at him in the murky air. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of three feet tall, had smooth, pale skin and, for a demon, a surprisingly innocuous aura. In fact, Marcia realized, at college there had been at least two or three girls in her dorm with auras worse than his.

Marcia blinked. “Why are you wearing clothes?” she said. She was beginning to wonder precisely where she was.

“Huh?” The little demon looked down at his dusty, wrinkled outfit. “Why are you wearing clothes?”

“Well,” Marcia said, nodding in the direction of her victim. “She isn’t.”

“Yeah, but she’s a Gorgle. You know how they are.”

Marcia didn’t feel like going into it. “Where am I, anyway?” she asked, changing the subject.

“What do you mean, where are you? You’re right here.” The demon pointed to the ground at Marcia’s feet.

Marcia realized she was still wearing her pack. She shrugged it off and put it down.

The demon looked at it uncomfortably. “Listen,” he said, “we’d better get going.”

Marcia said nothing. She felt dazed. She looked from her ring to the body of the big demon.

“Exactly,” said the little one. “As soon as they get their nerve up, every Gorgle in the valley is going to be around to see what happened.”

“You mean, more like her.” She reached for her pack.

The demon snatched it up. “Allow me,” he said. Marcia thought she heard a faint cry from the road ahead.

They cut across the open country, the demon promising to lead her back to the road farther along. “The Gorgles will be using the road,” he said, “and I’d hate to see you blow the whole tribe up.”

“Why?” said Marcia. She really wanted to know.

“Because then the Fimmits would get completely out of hand.”

Marcia decided to let it drop. The ecology of Hell, she thought. What next?

She watched the small figure trudging ahead of her carrying her pack, complete with her cape rolled into a neat bundle. “Isn’t that getting heavy?” she called.

He stopped and put the burden down. “I’m beginning to think you haven’t visited us before,” he said. He walked to a boulder about the size of a dishwasher, hooked his little claws under it, and heaved. It left the ground and traveled in a brief ponderous arc, landing a couple of yards from its original position. The demon brushed his hands off on his trousers with a sidelong glance at Marcia, picked up her pack, and marched off without a word.

Marcia stared after him for a moment, then shuddered at the thought of how strong the Gorgle must have been. Which led to a consideration of the power of her ring. She had used it meaning to push the monster away; the result had more nearly resembled a mortar attack.

She did not have long to ponder the moral implications of destroying the demon, which in any event seemed to her about as momentous as using toxic sprays on roaches, and more justifiable, considering that roaches do not actually intend to do harm, and if they did, probably would not gloat about it.

They hadn’t traveled far and already Marcia was getting bored. She wasn’t sure she could eat, but she thought a few sips of wine might be a big help.

“Uh … hey.” The little demon turned to face her. “I’m sorry,” said Marcia, “I don’t know your name.”

“Name?” He drew himself up proudly. “I have four. Well, actually, three.” His eyes dropped. “But I would have four if … Oh, well, you don’t want to hear about that.” He bowed. “Just call me Borphis,” he said.

Marcia introduced herself. “But,” said Borphis, “how am I to address you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Honorifics. Is it Lady Marcia or Miss Marcia or—”

“Just Marcia,” she said. “Please.”

The demon looked uncomfortable.

“No, really,” said Marcia. “People have been driving me nuts with all this ‘Miss’ stuff. It sounds like a Jane Austen novel.”

Borphis raised a silencing palm. “Listen,” he whispered.

The cries were faint, but chilling.

“You don’t look very fast to me,” said the demon. “I hope I’m wrong.”

Marcia, who had been swept up in the fitness craze just long enough to find out she was built for running and that running was tedious and time-consuming, felt as though she were being slighted. “I can keep up with you, if that’s what you mean.”

Borphis took off like an impatient motorcycle. By the time Marcia had blinked twice in astonished awe, he was out of sight. From behind her the cries seemed louder. And angry.

She turned to face whatever was coming. The flat ground offered no hiding places, not even a big rock to put at her back. She was definitely on her own. She had exactly herself and the ring. Even if she got through the next challenge, she was now without food or drink, meaning that the hazards presented by demons or other supernatural beings were pretty much irrelevant. If she could wish herself into the middle of the Mojave Desert, her chances for survival would be about the same. She listened to the invisible voices coming nearer. They resembled the calls of migrating geese passing above the clouds on an autumn night, but were far less comforting.

When she heard the noise behind her she wrenched herself around to face it.

“That’s what I thought,” said Borphis. “Running is out.” The relief that she felt at the arrival of the little demon was groundless, Marcia told herself. She was sure Borphis could do nothing for her. Still, it was nice to have company.

“So,” he said in a conversational tone, “how many Gorgles can you blast?”

Marcia didn’t know.

Borphis eyed her speculatively. “Would you say fifty?”

She wouldn’t.

“In that case,” said the little demon, “I think you should consider leaving real soon.”

Marcia looked down at her ring. “I don’t know if I can,” she said. “I’ve only ever done this once.” From not far away came the sound of a single call.

“Try,” said Borphis. “Just do what you did before.”

“But I was following someone. I was able to picture him, but he’s gone now.”

“If you came here, you should be able to go someplace else. Just picture a place you want to be. Your home.”

The nearby voice was raised again, then answered by other cries, now closer than before. Marcia looked around, trying to see if the pursuers were in sight. She raised her ring and held it in front of her.

“Forget the Gorgles,” said Borphis urgently. “I’ll watch for them.”

With an effort of will, Marcia forced herself to turn her back on the noises. She closed her eyes and folded her hands at her waist. Home, she thought. She pictured her apartment, the windows that overlooked the avenue, the reading lamp by her chair, the door, always open, to her tiny kitchen.

She heard the calls behind her and pushed them from her mind. She sought the sense of elevation she had experienced when she sat in the cave. The feeling had been centered on the ring. She brushed aside the picture of the cave and brought her mind to her breathing. The noise of the angry voices behind her diminished and died. Her thoughts came to rest on her living room; she was conscious of that image and of the ring.

The center of her mind was placid as a sheltered pond. She knew that when she opened her eyes she must see the mist around her, and she knew that if she didn’t, she would have to drop this dream and turn to face a harsh reality. Of this she was aware, but did not let the awareness impinge on the center of her thought. There she held the image and the elevation.

At the same moment that her eyes opened, she moved forward. The white fog was touched with yellow, but deepening as she advanced. The fingers of yellow mist extended, grasped, and closed behind her. She heard a shout, felt something tug at her skirt from behind. Still she maintained the elevation, kept the even pace, pulled every line of focus to the ring.

She remembered, and pushed aside, the agonizing pain of the vampire’s fangs in her shoulder. At the edges of her mind she considered the awful error of trying to hurry the progress, to run—of being pulled down, of seeing the white mist fade and the yellow haze close over her. She moved like a bride, with measured cadence, ignoring all but the pinpoint center of the idea she held like a fragile …

Her cry of pain and surprise ripped away the crystalline enclosure she had moved in. She pitched forward violently, striking her elbow, her chin, and then her forehead before coming to rest in a daze of hurt and confusion. The white mist disappeared, replaced by a descending curtain of black. Her eyelids fluttered, then closed.

Chapter 16

The courtyard below the king’s chamber was dark but for the vagrant flickerings of a few torches. Rand peered down from a window. Behind him, Asbrak the Fat was seated in his heavily reinforced chair giving his attention to a slate covered with chalked numbers.

“Your Majesty, I fail to see what possible advantage can be expected to proceed from these baseless speculations.”

“Ah, but you see, Rand, they are not baseless. I have looked into the matter and the underlying geometry is quite subtle, not to mention the complicated arithmetic that supports it all.” The king raised himself from his chair and went to the window. “Mind you, I don’t understand it—not entirely—but this Remeger is a scholar—very scientific. I expect you to treat him accordingly.”

“Your Highness, I am a diplomat. If necessary, I can treat the astrologer’s pet snake with courtesy.”

“Snake?” The king sounded alarmed. “I didn’t know he kept a snake. Why wasn’t I informed?”

“Your pardon. Majesty. The snake is hypothetical. I used it merely to illustrate a point.”

The king looked uncertain. “I don’t much care for snakes, to be perfectly honest,” he said.

A page entered the king’s chamber and stood next to the open door. He glanced down at a scrap of parchment in his hand.

“The Great and Learned Scientific Astrologer Remeger,” he said. Moments passed, during which the boy wilted under the eye of the royal adviser. When the doorway remained empty the page darted through to have a look. He was just in time to collide with the personage whose entrance he had announced. The king and Rand heard a thump and a grunt, then watched in amazement as a very large hat came toppling into the room, bounced on the tiles, and rolled to a stop against an ornamental urn.

Outside the door, there ensued a muffled discussion punctuated by outbursts of strangled acrimony. The king stared. Rand, standing slightly behind him, looked pained and raised a hand to his forehead.

A tall man entered the room scowling fiercely. He was bareheaded and wore a green robe that looked as if it would glow in the dark. He made a stiff bow and forced his lips into a smile.

“How very kind of Your Gracious Majesty to send for me.” Behind him, the page tiptoed into the room and retrieved the hat from the floor.

The king gestured in Rand’s direction. “You are acquainted with my chief adviser, I believe?”

Remeger bowed again, less deeply.

Rand nodded slightly. “How very delightful to see you again … so soon, Learned Astrologer,” he said in a courtly drawl.

“Now, Remeger,” said the king, rubbing his hands in the manner of a workman eager to get on with his chores, “let us see these latest calculations.” Asbrak lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “I am particularly interested in the aspects and progressions pertaining to voyages that commenced five days ago.” The king stepped closer to the astrologer. “That is the day on which Rogan the Obscure embarked for Devlin.”

Remeger stalked to the table by the window. From somewhere under the folds of his robe he drew an assortment of straightedges, compasses, and other weapons from the geometer’s arsenal. The king favored his adviser with a significant look. Rand had arranged his features into a mask of affable neutrality that did not reflect his feelings. He nodded to the monarch as if to acknowledge the impressive complexity of the arcane hardware the astrologer was piling onto the table.

Rand was in fact thinking about the question that had been troubling him for the seven days that had passed since they had received news of the royal kidnapping. Black Jack Flanders was an unprincipled and ruthless old ruffian, meaning that the ordinary mechanisms of political intercourse and civilized diplomacy were perfectly adapted to dealing with him and the city of bandits he controlled. Given that, and the history of relations between the Nine Kingdoms and Devlin in recent times, Rand found himself unable to formulate an explanation of what had occurred.

For a diplomat to view the kidnapping of the heirs of Ambermere and Felshalfen as a simple act of piracy would have been egregiously and inexcusably naive. Rand might wish it so, but the world, regrettably, was neither so innocent nor so honest as that. If it were, the affair could be quickly settled by paying the ransoms, making the conventional promises to refrain from reprisals, and then if it seemed worthwhile, either reducing Devlin by starvation or putting it to the torch, whichever was easier and cheaper.

That intrigue and treachery were at work here was axiomatic. But what intrigue? And whose treachery? These were the mysteries. Rand turned again to look down over the empty courtyard. He could hear the king and the astrologer in the background chattering about irrelevancies. Doubtless they would soon tire of their sums and begin to discuss the endlessly fascinating topic of the “portents.” Rand permitted himself a quiet sigh.

A trooper strolled lackadaisically across the yard. Rand recognized him as one of the group of carousers who had claimed, last fall, to have run afoul of a demon. This was widely taken as another piece of evidence, along with reports of ghosts, unusual weather, and signs in the heavens, that some momentous change was imminent. The king himself, with Rand in enforced attendance, had interviewed the loutish quintet and heard firsthand their tale of encountering a young man in a dark street late at night. They presented as perfectly respectable their whim to “have some fun with the laddie,” meaning terrorize and bully him, and were unanimously indignant to report that he had turned out to be wondrously fast and strong and had treated them harshly. They had found themselves being bounced against each other and nearby walls and buildings in an extremely rude way, and then unceremoniously left in a heap.

The guard slouched around the corner. Rand returned his attention to the puzzle of the kidnapping. In a few days the first messages and emissaries could be expected from Felshalfen, and perhaps Devlin as well. But it was on Felshalfen that Rand would be concentrating his skills. Of the many possible sources of treachery, Felshalfen was the most likely, if only by default. Ambermere itself Rand dismissed. First because it was so unlikely, and second because of simple logic: If a conspiracy had arisen and flourished undetected under his own nose, that constituted decisive evidence that he was an incompetent nincompoop, and as such, would by definition be unequal to the task of dealing with the problem.

Devlin would, of course, necessarily be a party to whatever was afoot. Rand had quietly seen to it that the ship that carried Rogan the Obscure on the king’s secret mission carried a real spy as well, along with an aristocratic emissary of trivial rank bearing the open offer of a bribe. The realistic hope, though, depended on the discovery of some ambitious royal cousin or in-law at the court of Finster the Munificent. And though the situation was dark, Rand’s experience as a diplomat and statesman told him that a search for human greed and duplicity is rarely long and never hopeless.

His reflections were interrupted by a summons from the king. “Rand, come and look at this. It’s really most remarkable.” The adviser approached the table with a reluctant step. He had never met an astrologer who could resist making lengthy and gleefully minute explanations of how he arrived at his absurd prognostications.

He was surprised to see the geometric gear pushed to a corner of the desk to make room for an array of playing cards. The king and the astrologer were seated at opposite sides of the table like gamblers in a tavern.

“You see, Rand?” said the king, pointing to a card that bore a representation of a man who appeared to be carrying either an empty sack or a dead fish.

“Indeed,” remarked Rand tentatively.

Asbrak looked impatient. “It’s the Trickster,” he said. “It keeps coming up.” He looked across the table at the astrologer. “You explain it, Remeger.”

Remeger inclined his head deferentially and stood up, fixing the adviser with an earnest stare. Rand’s face was impassive. There was a philosopher in the city who insisted that time did not exist. What a comfort it would be, he thought, if he could believe it.

Much to Rand’s surprise, Remeger was brief. He explained that to use the cards as an oracle, various games were played out according to strict rules. The resulting arrays of cards, and their association with the winning or losing side of the game, could be interpreted to answer questions or illuminate problems. The king and the astrologer had played a pair of brief games in which the king represented Ambermere, Remeger, Felshalfen.

“And in both games, my lord, the Trickster appeared in my array.”

“You see what this means, Rand,” said the king. He lowered his voice like a conspirator. “There is more to this than we have imagined. There is a traitor at the bottom of this supposed kidnapping. There is intrigue at Finster’s court!”

The king got himself out of the chair and walked to the window. He stared out at the night for a few moments, then turned to Remeger. “I should have consulted you sooner. I fear I have sent Rogan to the wrong place. He should have gone to Felshalfen. But how,” he said, turning to his adviser, “could anyone have imagined such a thing?” The king resumed his seat at the table. “I trust, Rand, that this will help convince you of the value of my inquiries.”

“Your Majesty,” replied the adviser smoothly, “I have never had the slightest doubt concerning their value.”

Marcia struggled against the dark, the sleep that wanted to overcome her. She would stand, and she would fight. She pushed against the curtain of oblivion. Time enough for that, she thought grimly. She willed her eyes to open.

It was dark and, she became aware, quiet. Her arm hurt where she had struck it in her fall. Likewise her chin and forehead. She blinked several limes. She saw no yellow haze.

Hope sprang up in her. Had she managed to get to some intermediate place between Regions? Some area of repose? She felt confused. She was sure that less than a minute had passed since she had fallen. She could still feel the sensation of her eyes closing against her will, and then the immediate and continuous effort to stay awake, to force her eyes to open. She had not been unconscious, not even for a few seconds. Of that she was confident—of that and little else.

She reached out tentatively. She was not on the rocky soil of the Lower Regions. The smell, too, was entirely different. No sulfur in this air. Slowly she sat up. There were shadows around her. She thought of the cave of the giants, of the ghost the old man had talked to in the night. But this was no floor of stone. She passed her hand over the carpet of … carpet.

Marcia sat very still. She listened in the darkness, closing her eyes and trying to feel the invisible space around her. Her heart was racing, beating faster than it had when she had faced the Gorgle. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, but beyond that interior noise she began to hear others.

Street noises. She forced herself to breathe deeply, counting the breaths in an effort to contain herself and her rising hopes. Careless emotion had nearly gotten her killed in the confrontation with the vampires. It was necessary to concentrate, to be deliberate. By force of will she brought the focus of her mind to the present instant.

Somewhere in the distance, a siren began to howl. Marcia got up onto her knees. Caution was in order; unreasonable delay was not. She was not going to sit on the floor forever trying to achieve some unattainable state of perfect certainty. She had made it; she was home. She reached out and steadied herself on the chair that was exactly where she expected it to be. She stood up. Like the chair, the reading lamp was just where it belonged. After she turned it on, she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust.

She was determined to remain calm. If she screamed with joy and relief and woke up breathing sulfur and surrounded by Gorgles it would be intolerable. Better to enjoy the dream. She walked slowly to the window and pulled the heavy curtain back. Traffic was light on the avenue. The sidewalk looked icy. She reached up and touched the windowpane. The glass was cold. It felt very solid.

Still she was apprehensive. The objects around her were solid, but was she? She thought of opening the door to the hall. But what if it opened onto the Lower Regions? Or if she went across the hall to Mrs. Ingram’s and a Gorgle answered the door? She was in her apartment; she knew that. But she knew also that just a few steps from where she had nipped over her magazine rack, she had been in the Lower Regions. Having crossed that border once, how could she be sure she wouldn’t cross it again? Or that she wasn’t somehow in both places? She glanced in the direction of the kitchen. The door was open, as always. She took one step toward it, then turned her eyes quickly back to the thing she had seen but not noticed.

On the table under the mirror was her handbag. She had left it at Annie’s cottage, and now it was here. She closed her eyes and tried to gather her thoughts, which had become frantic and clamorous. Had she lost her mind? Had she been dreaming, walking in her sleep? Pacing and muttering? She had left her handbag at Annie’s—but did Annie exist? Marcia was visited by a sudden and forceful childhood memory of old Mrs. Granlee sitting on the front porch two steps up from the sidewalk on a flimsy pancake of a cushion that was as hard as the concrete. Day after day she would talk endlessly, answering voices no one else could hear, and courteously including acquaintances and passersby in the phantom conversation. Marcia pictured the earnest madness of Mrs. Granlee’s eyes, and the desperate fits of haste that sometimes overtook her and made her trip over the syllables tumbling from her lips.

Marcia stiffened her back and marched to the mirror. With only the reading lamp on, the room was mostly in shadows, but she could see what she needed to see. She gave an audible sigh of relief. The clothing she wore, she had bought with Breksin’s coins. These were garments that had come from no department store. She had bought them at the village market three days ago, these things and the cape.

But her new cape had been left behind in the putrid yellow fog of the Lower Regions. A sad smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. She was usually so careful with her things.

She realized when it began to slow that her pulse had been hammering again. She started to reach for her handbag, then decided that she was too tired to bother with it. She went back and settled herself in her familiar chair.

She slapped the padded arms of the chair repeatedly, assuring herself that it and she were both real. She leaned back. It suddenly seemed to her that she had not relaxed for many days, perhaps not since she had been in that old familiar chair. The book she had been reading was on the table next to her. She stared at it. She could read it. In bed. After a shower. It occurred to her—as it had a few days before when she had lost the ring—that her everyday life had been remarkably uncomplicated before she became a virgin warrior. She had followed a routine. Every morning she woke up in the same bed and went through the same …

Coffee. Marcia turned her eyes toward the kitchen. In the morning she would be getting up and making coffee. Things wouldn’t be the way they were at Annie’s cottage, of course, but she had paid quite a price for that little taste of luxury. Marcia stared up at the ceiling. Her own familiar ceiling. She wondered if she hadn’t had enough of adventures. What had Bilbo Baggins said? Nasty things. Make you late for dinner.

She slapped the arms of the chair again. Home. She closed her eyes. With the help of the little demon, she had made it. She was safe. Except for a few minor bruises, she was even comfortable. She was determined to organize her life so that she never again had occasion to visit the Lower Regions. That meant she wouldn’t get the chance to thank the demon for his help. At the moment, that was her only regret. She shook her head sadly. She would never be sure—really sure—that he had managed to get away himself. How promptly he had managed to repay her for saving him from the Gorgle. Odd, the way things had worked out. It was pretty nearly certain that he had saved her life, and all she could do for him was to be sure to remember his name.

“Borphis,” she said aloud.

“What?”

Marcia came up out of the chair in a blur of motion. She looked around the room frantically, then headed for the light switch on the wall.

“Do we have anything to eat around here?”

She turned on the lights and wheeled to face the voice. Borphis was propped on a cushion at the end of her love seat. Although she was sure he hadn’t really changed, the little demon looked smaller among the familiar surroundings of her apartment than he had in the Lower Regions. He shoved himself forward and scrambled to the floor. Next to him was her bag with her cape rolled up under the strap.

Marcia stared at him, then back at her bag and her cape. Her new cape. She hadn’t lost it. She continued to gaze at it as a number of more urgent matters crowded for position in her mind. She considered them for a moment, then shook her head. One thing at a time, she thought. She picked up the phone and dialed.

“How about getting the wine out of my pack,” she said, then turned her attention to the phone.

“I’d like to order a large pizza.” She looked across the room at the demon. “Double sausage.”

The old man inhaled the rich stink. From the crest of the hill he scanned the valley ahead. The yellow haze lay thick along the bare ground, stirred by no breeze, torn by no rising draft. He stared across the long stretch of unbroken plain that disappeared into the heavy air. He might have been gazing at the basin of a long-dead sea.

He searched his memory, chuckled at the thought of boats plying tepid yellow waters. What sort of craft would they make here? And what swimming things would glide beneath their hulls?

“Rats and frogs,” he murmured, thinking of the outsize creatures that might inhabit the marshes at the borders of the sea. He thought of fish that would leave the lapping water at night to creep on muddy beaches, snouted and heavy, with bright unknowing eyes and slow gray blood that would make a stinging slime to lubricate their scales.

Dwellings, too, would be found along the strand: villages of shacks, groupings of watery pits and holes, lonely guarded manors. His eyes wandered the imaginary ocean. The two castles would be drowned. Now they rose like islands from the mists, facing each other across the wasted landscape. But his sea would cover them. Fishes would glide in and out the windows; tentacled monsters would lurk in the closets and in the corners of the great halls.

He had seen these castles before, had been here before. Maybe. He stared at them. They were far away, half-hidden in mist and fog, dark and silent—yet they seemed to glare at one another like two opposing generals across a battlefield.

On the yellow sea, the dark hulls of ships would drift far above the castles; from time to time through the ages a sodden corpse would settle gently onto a turret or balcony. The old man smiled. He seated himself on the pebbly ground and leaned back against a boulder. Picked bones would become brittle with salt. Oozy depths would claim them.

He let his eyes close. Ages would pass. When the castles had fallen in on themselves and remained only as silted nibble—uncertain tracings of walls and stairways—then the sea would slowly dry, and bake into a hardened plain. Finally no pools would gather, no deep holes bubble. Then one day two castles would rise to glare with hollow windows and house the mighty,

He opened his eyes. He raised one arm and began to stretch out his hand, then hesitated and brought it to his forehead. In his mind pictures of the two castles and a quiet ocean were jumbled together. He had been here, but in a brighter time, he thought. He glanced at the lowering firmament above, then closed his eyes again.

He pictured the chamber of his recurrent dream: the bare and dimpled maids, the immaculate tiles under nimble feet, the billowing curtains, the vast white bed. He peered through the mist at the castles, awkward piles of ill-dressed stone oppressing the ground beneath them. They had no such chambers, no such maids.

The feast came to his mind. Wine like blood, dripping meat that burned the fingers, a woman like a fragrant ripened melon. Later it had snowed. A bright chill had cleaned the air. No more cold rain, biting wind. The next day was a wonder; on the night that followed, the white meadows had glowed beneath the stars.

Behind him, at the bottom of the last hill he had climbed, two figures stood bathed in yellow vapors. They were cowled, and bent, like aged monks or pilgrims, but that they moved with a purposeful, sinuous fluidity, and were nine or ten feet tall. Their deep hoods moved together and parted repeatedly, like lovers sharing one last kiss again and again.

Finally they parted. They flowed up the hill like apparitions, neither using the road, but moving among the rocks to flank the old man where he sat musing. Their hoods dipped and bobbed like semaphores as they converged obliquely from the rear. When they had reached a point where they were as close to the old man as they were to each other, perhaps three dozen strides, they stopped. As though by a signal, they threw back their hoods and let their long robes fall to the ground.

They were dead gray. They looked like immensely tall bony men with little heads, lipless mouths, long stringy limbs, and bulging elbows and knees like sacks of knotted cable. They exchanged no more looks or signals as they began to creep toward the old man. They moved to him like a careful pair of hands about to seize a prize.

When he rose and faced them, they stopped like chained dogs, straightening abruptly from their furtive crouches. They stared at their prey with mouths open as if in silent screams. For a moment they were motionless, then at precisely the same instant, each began to back away. The old man looked from one to the other, back and forth, and then up and down, like some connoisseur of the physique demonic.

“Boatmen,” he said. “Ferrymen with wide-keeled skiffs that you will pole and scull.” He smiled broadly at them and raised his hands in an encompassing gesture. “The salt swamps will lead by secret ways to the open water. You will know them all, crouched in the bottoms of your shallow boats.”

He turned and waved a hand toward the desert plain, then stopped and stared as though he had expected to see a vista of rolling yellow water. The old man shook his head and began muttering to himself.

The tall creatures were moving away slowly, planting huge splayed feel carefully as they withdrew without a sound. Their interlocking teeth were set in perpetual grins, giving their retreat a cheerful air. They reached their robes at the same moment, and bent to snatch them from the ground. Without putting them on, they turned and leapt into a furious gallop, their bony knees rising past their ears with every stride, their elbows scything through the dirty air. At the bottom of the hill they angled back to the road. By the time the old man turned to face them, they were wavering stick figures in the murky distance, rising and falling with the rhythm of their flight and trailing the fluttering rags of their robes.

He watched them for a few seconds, then turned and started down the other side of the hill. After a long time he reached the floor of the valley and was soon far out on the ocean floor, following the path that would lead between the castles, and ultimately to the far shores of the nonexistent sea.

In his wake, all was still. No creature stepped, or slithered, or scuttled over the cracked surface of the desert plain. It was only much later, when the old man had been translated from a receding figure, first to a wavering blur, then to a small dark spot, and finally to invisibility, that the absolute calm was ruffled by a tiny event. Near the road, in a depression ringed with boulders, a pebble was tipped aside as if by an emerging scorpion or adder. Moments later it was an island in a thimbleful of yellow water.

The Wizard Of Ambermere

Ambermere, Book 3

J. Calvin Pierce

1993

ISBN: 0-441-01959-5

What the sorceress dragged in …

And she had trolls. Marcia stared at the wall behind Borphis. Trolls! Or gnomes—whatever. She had never even had roaches. She looked furtively from side to side, moving only her eyes. There were no little creatures in sight. No pixies; no fairies with insect wings. Everything was, for the moment, perfectly normal. Just her and a demon from Hell, eating doughnuts.

I want to thank my agent, James Allen, for providing advice and encouragement, and my editor at Ace. Peter Heck, for his skillful work on the three Ambermere novels.

Prologue

Ulda sat with her eyes closed. She had sat thus for a long time, her attention caught at first by the same tiny riddle she had noticed in the past. Within her realm lay a secret. Some elusive fold in the mantling darkness that blanketed her domain concealed a mystery. She had meant, this time, to track it to its source; to exert herself and root it out. Then she noticed a more pressing matter.

The sea. Long dormant, little more than a vast stagnant pond—now it was suddenly alive. She could hear it stirring, lapping at the muddy shore, encroaching slowly to dampen dust long dry. She let her memory drift back to an earlier age. Then, yellow water had reached from the edges of the plain on one side to the peaks and cliffs on the other. Long-oared ships had skated on the swells like giant insects. Gales had disturbed the sullen air and sent foaming surf to batter at the shores. But through the slow course of time, she had herself seen the waters recede, seen the swampy bottom dry and harden, crack and turn to fine yellow dust. And now, out of season, this dead sea began to rise.

She meditated long on the subtle turning of the waters until her reverie was interrupted by an unexpected disturbance. She dropped her thoughts of the sea and cast her vision far outward. Here was a burst of raw force, jarring in its unrestrained intensity. It took her some moments to trace her way back along the echoes of the shock, and yet some more to extend her sight to that distant place.

She found only a gorgle, a desert hunter, now a twisted corpse on a rock-strewn byway, broken like a victim of a stone-wight or a dreen. But that blast had come from no such, nor from a demon lord, nor yet from any Middle-Regions mage who might be wandering there. The heavy force she had felt, though naive, had come from a different order of power.

Who had intruded here? Who stalked the Lower Regions? When she felt the power being exercised again, this time with more control, Ulda moved her distant eye and found the source of the disturbance.

It was an interloper from the Middle Regions, a woman, attended, unaccountably, by a demon of the plain and pursued by an entire clan of gorgles. So many, so stupid; next to a gorgle, the dullest troll would seem a creature of lively intelligence. Had they been capable of understanding anything more complicated than hunger, the gorgles would have been running the other way.

Yet the interloper was not using her power to attack, but to withdraw. The crone strained to see past the woman’s aura to the source of her strength. As the intruder was enveloped by the bordering mists, Ulda saw the glimmer of a ring. She caught her breath and strained to hold the vision to the very boundaries of the Middle Regions, but the view faded and she was left to observe the antics of the bewildered gorgles.

Still there was something amiss. The sorceress was gone, the demon with her, and there yet remained the feeling of imbalance, intrusion. She continued to search, looking for the source of her disquiet, but she could find nothing. After some time, she stopped her careful probing and cast the net of her perceptions wider. She would be patient. She would wait, and she would watch.

Borphis was elevated in his chair by a stack of phone books. “Pizza, huh? It’s great. As far as I’m concerned, we can have this every day.” A clump of cheese and sausage fell from the overburdened slab he held. He caught it deftly without taking his eyes from his hostess. “You know what would be good on this? Mushrooms.” He washed down the rescued morsel with a swallow of wine. “Along with the sausage, I mean. The sausage is important.”

Marcia nodded distractedly. The pizza was almost as big as the little demon, yet it seemed likely that, except for the two slices she had accounted for, he would eat the whole thing. She sipped at her wine. Home. She was safe at home. She hadn’t been mauled, ripped, chewed, and digested by the gorgle. Her mutilated corpse was not disfiguring the landscape of the Lower Regions. She was in her apartment. Her library book was on the lampstand beside her chair. She was back in the world of credit cards and telephones.

It had been quite a week. Eight days ago the biggest problem in her life, aside from tedium, had been a stubborn spreadsheet at the office. Since then, things had been more lively.

First, she had been initiated, sort of, into a mysterious sorority of enchantresses. Then, on her very first assignment she had accidentally followed a mysterious old man out of one parallel world and into another, where enough bizarre things happened to her that being attacked by vampires, though it had held her attention at the time, now seemed nothing more than a minor incident.

She wondered what had happened to the old man. She was supposed to be keeping her eye on him. Instead, she was slouched in a chair drinking perhaps a little more wine than she should, while her charge wandered somewhere in the yellow wastes she had just escaped. At least she assumed that’s where he was.

Marcia got up and went to stare out the window. Tomorrow she would have to locate the Sisterhood. She choked on her wine at the thought of checking in the Yellow Pages under Virgin Warriors. But she was being silly, she realized, beginning to laugh aloud. The listing would be Warriors, Virgin.

Chapter 1

It seemed he was always hungry. He remembered a feast. Wine rich and strong. Meat singed in a blazing fire. Maidens with flesh bare, their plump feet soundless on pale tiles. But no—that was not the feast. No logs smoked there, no hot fat dripped and pooled on that immaculate floor. That was some other place, a place lost in the tangle of his memory.

The feast. It was an ox, or else a pig, he wasn’t sure. Wine from a cask, spilled like dark blood on a floor of stone. Jeweled goblets. The woman, just one, with long dark hair. No maiden. They had tipped the meat into the fire. The smoke had billowed, filled the chimney, hung like clouds in the rafters. Stung the eyes. They had smeared the altar with fat, stained it with wine. The priests were angry, shouting. Afraid.

The old man laughed. It had been cold there. It had snowed, and then the sky had cleared. He remembered the stars, like holes in the black night, hints of a burning heaven beyond.

Here it was warm. There were no stars, no night. No day. The rhythm here was long, the pulse infrequent. He turned his gaze to the yellow dirt at his feet. What had he forgotten? About the rats? And the little ones, the frail blood-drinkers? They were like the last pale flowers bending in an autumn wind. Weak. Dying.

He began to walk, rolling from side to side like a mariner. He whistled. Some old tune he had heard somewhere. The sound died quickly in the yellow air. He clapped his hands together. Smiled to hear the melody in this place. There were words, he knew, that went with this tune, but they would not come to him.

The giant couldn’t hear the piper. When was that? Was this the piper’s tune? He listened to his own music, cheerful as it died by his ear. The piper, too, had been dead, and his song had been a sad one. A dirge for the Wendeling kings, upright in their tombs of stone.

He saw the torches in the wall. The cat, the giant. The woman with the ring. His daughter—something about his daughter. Why had she called him Father?

He sniffed the air. It stank, but not of flesh. No cook fire burned nearby. The giant was of Wendeling blood. They had dined at inns on fowl and pots of wine.

In the distance, through the yellow air, beyond the strolling pillars of mist, he could make out the far edge of the sea, now a dry basin, a desert, but with pools of yellow water gathering, cracks and fissures oozing, deep holes bubbling. The old man cackled, rubbed his palms together. He must whistle a chantey, then. A nautical air.

He looked up again into the yellow murk. Would hulls float overhead, casting watery shadows below? How high above this dust would they be suspended? When had he first thought of this? Dust and spiders. How soon would this be bottom mud, and what things would lurk here then?

Off to one side was a pool. As he passed, something disturbed the deepest water at the center. He heard a heavy splash, watched the water wrinkle and heave. He chuckled and went on, taking up the same old tune.

It was much later when he saw the fire, in the distance among a pile of rocks. He left the path and followed the wavering flames, the gouts of tarry smoke. What were they cooking, these hooded pilgrims bunched around their meager blaze? Something bony, and with little savor. A thing to toss in the soup, not roast on a spit like a prize ewe. A little hopping thing with stringy flesh, or something cold and fishy with smooth tough spotted skin.

When he got close, he hailed them. The hoods all turned and peered as he approached. It was a dark company. They bickered over the meat they shared, drank noisily from the stoppered skin of wine he offered. This was no feast with fragrant smoke to rise to heaven. No drops of wine were scattered for the gods. When he did so, wetting their stingy fire with his libation, they hissed and drew back, turning their hoods from side to side in agitated consultation. The old man laughed, and passed the skin around again.

The last man spoke with a voice that sounded like glass breaking. “It does not lighten,” he said, handing the wineskin to the old man.

The old man drank deeply before answering. “An ocean of wine,” he replied, replacing the stopper.

When the meat was gone, the bones, picked clean, and cracked and sucked, were added to the dying fire. The old man sent the bulging wineskin around one final time, then tucked it under his arm and lay himself down among the rocks at a distance from the company.

The others, all but one, put their hoods together and whispered by the fire. The old man heard their voices as murmurous clicks and hisses, strangely comforting, as he drifted into sleep.

They talked on, keeping their voices low, but gesturing sharply with thin knobby hands like birds’ feet that poked from the folds of their garments. Finally the one who had spoken last to the old man silenced the others with an angry gesture.

“We cannot agree,” he said.

The others nodded, bending their hoods in unison. They turned to the silent one who sat apart.

“And so we must ask Mother.” He stood. “If we kill him will the wine fail?”

Another spoke. “Or turn to blood?”

“Or run bitter, like blackroot sap?”

“Children!” hissed another. “If you shrink from killing, you must give up theft. We will dig for worms, and feast on maggot stew.” He turned toward the place where the old man lay sleeping. “If you must fear, fear a living mage. One that may pursue you, and come upon you you know not when, or with what powers.”

The silent one spoke without raising her hood, as though she addressed the dirt at her feet.

“He sleeps. Lift the wineskin from him gently. If he wakes, kill him.”

For a moment, there was silence. Then all but she rose. Together they drifted slowly, quietly to the place where the old man slept.

Chapter 2

The inn stood high on a craggy pass, at the place where the sea road and the mountain road crossed. It seemed almost a part of the mountain itself, built of massive blocks of gray stone that looked as though they had erupted from the toes of rock that supported them. From the balconies and deep windows of the broad rear wall could be seen a dizzying view of the sea below. From the front of the inn, the mountain filled the eye, and seemed to lean over the roof as though it might at any moment fall upon it and crush it.

In fact, the inn had stood for years beyond the reach of memory, growing slowly larger and more misshapen as the whim or fancy of successive proprietors dictated additions and alterations. Somewhere beneath the accretions of the ages was the original structure, a sensible building of two stories, adequate for the shelter of such men and their beasts as had journeyed that way in times long past.

Now the original form was lost, the classical purity of line obscured by dormers and cupolas; here a mansard, there a tower in the mode of the Valley People. Inside were blind passageways, and staircases that ended at blank walls, as well as a maze of corridors that had ramified beyond the power of human mapmaking.

It was a widely held belief that at some time in the past, the inn had begun to build its own additions, growing like a living thing—a coiling monster of the ocean depths, or one of the giant snow-trolls said to prowl the icy wastes above the tree line. In the dead of night, lodgers often heard mysterious noises—the sounds of rocks being chipped to shape, then raised and fitted to cap an arch, or rolled to a place in some extending wall. Winches squealed, beams were wedged with heavy mallets, and many a traveler left his bed more tired than he had entered it.

The rain had begun at dusk, whipped on by a wind that grew stronger as the night deepened. Nonetheless, the three travelers who arrived well after dark entered the common room with coats scarcely dampened. The landlord had seen mountain men many times before, and paid little heed to the great hulking fellow who had to mind his head at the lintels. And the dark-haired boy was of no great interest, but for the graceful way he moved, rather like old Fillip in his youth, when he was known through all the towns for his dancing, long years before his joints had swelled and lamed him.

It must be the third man who was the magician. Little he was, and old, and dressed in fine clothes of close weave and marvelous colors. And some mage he must be, to keep dry on such a night. Might even be a wizard, but for the fact that wizards don’t announce themselves. A wizard would come in drenched and shivering, more like, just to keep his secrets. Or would know to stay at home on such a night.

The landlord had many empty rooms. Travelers were not plentiful in winter. Back in the distant mountain kingdoms, the snow would not break till spring; in the lands below, the favored path of winter travel was the sea, where evidence of the season was rain, and winds that were often cool but rarely cold.

The three guests settled themselves near the fire and called for supper, but not until the giant had questioned him most particularly about the preparation of the meat pies, and given him to understand that they wanted his best wine, and were willing to pay for it.

“I’ll call them strange, for certain,” he told his wife after he had cleared their table and seen them to their rooms. The boy scarcely ate—just some meat from the pie, didn’t touch the turnips—and had no more than three little sips of the wine, that black red from way the back of the cellar. The oldster, he ate like a princess—tiny bites, and always dabbing at his mouth with the cloth. Then the giant, I thought he’d be good for three pies and a half a peck of turnips at least, but he ate like it was his second supper, then complimented us on the pies, he did, though he ate just one. He did all right by the wine, but it took him forever, holding it up to the candle, and sniffing at it like a pig hunting mushrooms.”

His wife looked up from her kneading trough. “Let them pay, and I don’t care if they grease their hair with the gravy and put the turnips in their ears. What bed did you give them? With that hill man, they’ll need a big one.”

“No, they each have one. They’re in three rooms, and up top, for the old one to have windows.”

“Well, lords and ladies, husband! Three rooms, and you’re worried over their table manners.” She began to count on her fingers. “The good wine, you say?”

“Yes, but while you’re figuring, don’t forget what I told you about how their coats weren’t wet from the weather when they came in. There’s magic with them for certain, so watch your fiddling.”

“It is not fiddling,” she murmured without looking up from her counting. “Anyway, if they’re too grand for one bed, they’re too grand to miss a few pennies.”

At midnight the house was silent, but for the rain that still fell, and a faint tapping, in some distant corridor, that sounded like a mallet nudging a chisel or driving a wedge. A traveler passing in the dark might have missed the inn entirely, back from the road wrapped in black shadows, except that at one window, high beneath the dripping eaves, there flickered the faint light of a single candle.

Alexander sat just at the edge of the candle’s wavering glow. The logs in the fireplace were smoldering beneath a layer of ash, and radiated a comforting warmth that cheered the corner, if not the entire room. He was still and silent. He might have been a corpse propped up in a chair, though the delicate pastels of his silk shirt and ascot were anything but funereal.

A log snapped and settled in the fireplace. A flame rose for a moment, sending shadows to dance along the walls and floor. A very attentive listener might have heard a small answering noise, like an echo, from the shadows at the far side of the room. Alexander raised his eyes from the floor and watched the rain against the window. Outside, the night was filled with the noises of the weather; inside, he sat in an island of peace and silence.

He smiled faintly, almost imperceptibly. Although he was in a world where time was measured by the sun and the seasons, yet the minutes ticked away just the same. He raised his hand to brush back a wisp of gray hair and leaned forward in the chair.

“You must come into the light where I can see you,” he said. His voice was thin and whispery.

The room was silent.

“Come. Don’t make me impatient. You’ve had enough time.”

Again he was answered by silence. He turned his head slowly and stared into the shadows at the opposite end of the room.

“Not your house.” The voice was rough, and pitched low.

Alexander shook his head. “No. Not my house.”

There was a rustling sound from the shadows. “Something wrong. The stones … something …”

“I know. It’s very odd. I’ll come back someday, I think, to investigate.” Alexander looked up at the ceiling.

“No. Your house is good. You belong there.”

A dark form moved in the corner. It raised up and floated along the wall. Alexander watched as a man almost as tall as Breksin, but impossibly thin, drifted around the bed and slowly approached. He was pale, and dressed in tightly buttoned clothes of pitch black. He moved like a person walking underwater, lifting his knees high with every languid step. The light from the candle caught his eyes. They were yellow.

Alexander rose carefully from his chair and went to the mantel. He poured from a pitcher into a pair of deep slender cups.

“They have a wine here that’s almost black. Most unusual.” He slowly approached the ghostly being and handed him a cup, then returned to his chair. “You may sit, you know, Fildis.”

Fildis sat. He perched himself on a stool, bending like a folding knife, with his knees against his chest.

Alexander sipped from his cup. “Try the wine. I think you will find it good.”

“I will not lie to you.”

Alexander nodded. “Still, I wish you would drink. You always do at my house.”

Fildis raised the cup to his lips. When he lowered it, his narrow smile bared teeth that were curved and sharp. “Always a gracious host,” he said. “Even away from home.” He turned his yellow eyes to the wine. “The spirits from your cabinet are better, though.” He raised the cup again.

“There were disturbances,” said Alexander. “Here, in this Region. Now they are gone. I called you to ask only one thing. No riddles this time, nor will I keep you long.”

“The disturbances here are in this house. They have awakened something in the roots of the mountain.”

Alexander put his cup on the floor beside his chair. “But that is simply local, like a haunting.”

“Not ghosts. Mountain things.”

“I understand. What I seek is something else.”

Fildis looked into his cup. “I know nothing of these matters. You must ask some lord. Why do you speak to me of these things when you can summon even the great Rhastopheris?”

“Not summon. Rhastopheris I call. Sometimes he comes. But I dare not call him here, to a place not sealed.”

“Well, I am only Fildis, and must come when summoned, but I know little of the Middle Regions.”

“But what of your place? What of the Lower Regions?”

Fildis turned and watched the rain at the window. He emptied the cup. Alexander rose silently from his chair and brought the pitcher from the mantel. Fildis held his cup as Alexander poured, then sipped again.

“Pools of water gather in the desert. Deep holes bubble. My lord’s castle looks out now on a pond.” Fildis curled his lips. “Soon we will be an island.” The yellow eyes sought Alexander’s. “Some say it was the old man.”

Alexander looked sharply at his guest When he spoke, his voice was even softer than before. “Tell me of the old man,” he said.

“I know only that he passed.”

“Was this a necromancer?”

Fildis smiled a toothy smile. “No. Your pardon, necromancer, but this was some Power—a potent being.” He paused to sip again from his cup. “It is said that in ages past a sea filled the great valley where my lord’s castle stands. Some say the sea is coming back. My lord says he will not permit it.” The demon stared into the fireplace and began to laugh, softly at first, and then louder and louder, until the sound filled the room. Alexander began to raise a cautioning hand, then turned abruptly as the door from the hallway opened.

A dark-haired youth slipped in quickly and closed the door behind him. Fildis froze in mid-laugh, staring at the intruder. He tore his eyes away and turned to Alexander.

“Necromancer! I have your cup in my hand. You are pledged—”

“Be still,” said Alexander without taking his eyes from the door. “You are in no danger.” He rose from his chair to address the young man.

“Egri. What is your business? Why do you disturb us?”

Egri took his eyes from Fildis. “My business is to see the giant safely to Devlin, as you know. I disturb you when I hear the laughter of a demon.” He looked around the room. “Is this place not bad enough? Must you raise the Lower Regions?”

“Fildis will be gone soon. I am only asking him some questions.”

Egri looked from the demon to the necromancer, then turned and left without a word.

The demon stared at the door. “You know what he is?” he said. Alexander nodded and returned to his chair. “They are dangerous,” Fildis continued. “He is not bound to you; you cannot control him.”

Alexander smiled. “I have my powers,” he whispered.

“Yes,” replied the demon, “but you cannot see him as I do. If you could, you would not be so certain. I am from the Lower Regions; you are a man of these worlds. Yet you and I are more like each other than either of us is like him.”

“I am sure you are right, Fildis, but I am more interested in the old man. You did not see him yourself?”

“No. I know only what I have told you. I can tell you what I believe, though.”

“What is that?”

“I believe my lord will drown in his castle.” The necromancer and the demon laughed quietly together.

“You see,” Fildis said. “Tell me when you ever heard this Egri laugh.”

When he was alone again, Alexander went to the window. The rain had slopped, the wind abated. He stared out at the night. Now what did he know? Breksin was on his way to the pirate stronghold of Devlin for reasons that didn’t concern Alexander. Egri was accompanying him. As far as he could tell, their relationship to the old man was incidental and unimportant.

It was the woman, Marcia, who was the key. She had followed the old man, Father, they all called him, for lack of any other name, from another world of the Middle Regions. Though she was but a novice, she wore a ring of great power. She had only an imperfect understanding of her mission, but she was doing her best to follow the orders of her Sisterhood.

Alexander had left Marcia at an inn four days ago. They had hoped one of them would find Father. Now it seemed that Father had crossed to the Lower Regions.

And what of the desert sea? If Father was causing momentous upsets in the Lower Regions, was it not reasonable to assume that he had been the cause of the signs and portents that had brought Alexander so far from home? He thought of his house, high on a cliff above the ocean. Maybe he had come too late. He smiled. He would gladly go back home.

He pictured the climbing roses on his garden wall, his quiet rooms, the fog that so often obscured the sea below. Breksin and Marcia had both said the old man was out of his wits, that his talk had the character of delirium. And yet it seemed he possessed vast powers. Egri said nothing of him, whether because that was what he knew, or because he was willing to say no more, Alexander did not know. But if he was gone, none of it mattered. Alexander would not enter the Lower Regions just to satisfy his curiosity. The preparation required was too strenuous, and still there would be dangers.

He returned to his chair. So, he had come all this way for nothing, leaving his studies, the comforts of his refuge. Now he would have to return to Ambermere, cross from there to his own world, and then still be faced with crossing the continent. He sighed. It almost made a shortcut through the Lower Regions seem appealing. Almost.

He pulled his thoughts from quiet mornings in his garden. Before he returned, there were one or two things to be done. First, there was the matter of Marcia. Though she evidently had substantial powers of her own, she was, after all, a novice. She had been carried into this world by Father’s magic. When the old man did not appear, she would wait at the country inn where Alexander had left her, so his first chore was to return to her. From there they could journey to Ambermere together and cross to their own world.

A happy thought occurred to Alexander. He had invited Marcia to visit him someday, to look in his books for answers to some of her questions, and to meet Rhastopheris. She could come with him now. It would be interesting to have a house guest. He cherished his refuge, but it was, he realized, lonely, even gloomy sometimes. He supposed that was why he called demons to talk and play at riddles. He shook his head sadly. Just another lonely old man looking for company. Still, the idea of inviting Marcia was a good one. For the time, it seemed that she was separated from her Order anyway. A few days more—a week or so, perhaps—wouldn’t make any difference.

Alexander got up and went into the dark corridor. Egri’s room was next to his, a reflection, he supposed, of how little trust the youth had in necromancers. He raised his hand to knock, then thought of how Egri had entered his chamber. The door was not latched. Alexander pushed it open. Inside, the embers cast a faint glow from the fireplace. He peered into the shadows. The bed was piled with blankets and cushions, but the young man was not in it. He took a step toward the far wall, but there was only darkness and an empty chair. After seeing the demon, Egri must have gone to stand watch in Breksin’s room. Alexander turned to reach for the door, then started at the sight of the young man, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

“Oh. Sorry, did I waken you?”

Egri looked at him in silence.

After a moment, Alexander went on. “I wanted to tell you I am leaving.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. If I leave now I can reach the inn by dawn.”

“You have learned something of the old man, then.”

Alexander nodded. He sat down in the chair. “He is gone.” He peered through the darkness at the dark eyes of his host. “Back to the Lower Regions.”

Egri’s expression did not change. “Breksin will be disappointed. When he saw your tricks—chilling the wine, keeping us dry in the storm—he began to hope you might help him in Devlin.”

“But what could I hope to do?”

“Nothing. Nor is there anything that Breksin can do. When he considers it, he will see that if things go wrong, he can hope for nothing more than revenge. With my help, he might free the prisoners from a cell, but how to escape Devlin?” Egri leaned back slowly until he rested against a pile of cushions. “What will happen, will happen.”

In a few minutes, Alexander returned to his room. He put his few belongings together and made his way quietly down the stairs. As he began to open the outside door, he heard a faint sound from below, like something large and heavy being dragged through the cellars far in the back where the inn was built against the mountain. He listened for a moment, then went outside.

He stood in the entryway for a time, preparing himself, eyes open, staring sightlessly into the night. There was a momentary disturbance of the air around him as it seemed to coalesce, so that the little gray-haired man in the pastel clothing was hidden from sight. The shimmering air wavered, then moved into the night and was gone.

Chapter 3

On the morning after her escape from the Lower Regions, Marcia sat in her bedroom thinking about all that had happened to her in the last nine days. How to unravel the complications? She had now, it appeared, participated in so many strange events, had acquired a history of such a surrealistic complexion, that the most amazing adventures had come to seem perfectly normal, if a bit intense.

Marcia’s life had not often been disturbed by intensity. She lived alone, had worked in the same office for fifteen years, and had begun to suspect that the pattern of her existence was not likely to change. Even her unusual talents, which she was inclined to view as quirks—her ability to see auras, her sensitivity to unspoken communication—had become predictable and ordinary. Auras either confirmed judgments she would have made without their help, or else reminded her of the discouraging difference between appearance and reality. As for her mind-reading skills, they were too slight to be of any use, though they occasionally caused her to suffer hurt feelings or embarrassment that someone lacking the gift would have been spared.

But embarrassment and boredom had not been her biggest troubles lately. Last night, just after she had made it back to her apartment with her mind still full of the nightmarish horrors she had escaped, she had begun to doubt her sanity. Then she discovered she had not returned alone. Borphis, once she noticed him, proved that either she was sane, her perceptions accurate, or else she was so hopelessly lost in hallucination and fantasy that there was no point in worrying about it.

She smiled and stretched lazily. This morning her head was clear, she knew exactly where she was, and the Lower Regions seemed very far away indeed. She had not forgotten her guest, nor any of the unsettling events that had occurred yesterday, but she felt herself to be solidly grounded in the moment and in this particular place. She did not fear that she would find Hell in the next room—only one small devil.

A few minutes later, Marcia, wearing a blouse and slacks, came into the living room with a cheerful smile on her face. She had been thinking that it was a pleasant novelty to have a houseguest. It was also a pleasant novelty to wake up in her own bed among her own things, but that, she had figured out, was at least partly because the trappings of her familiar life were illuminated by the drama of the past week.

The pillow and quilt were in a pile on the love seat, but Borphis was not in the living room. Marcia looked toward the kitchen. Could he be making breakfast? Did demons cook? Marcia had entertained few houseguests, and only one who had insisted on cooking. Early in Cousin Ellie’s memorable visit it had become clear that she thought of herself as a sort of Caucasian Aunt Jemima. Every morning she had made stacks of “multi-grain” pancakes that had the heft of horseshoes and the consistency of something that should have been fed to animals with more than one stomach. Marcia sincerely hoped Borphis was not standing on a chair at the stove rustling up some breakfast specialty from the Lower Regions.

As she crossed the room, she noticed her purse lying open on the floor. She hurried into the kitchen. No demon. She went back to the living room and looked behind the love seal, then in every other place where a three-foot-tall gnome might hide. Were demons fond of tricks? she wondered. Was Borphis being impish? She recalled the sight of little Borphis lifting and tossing a boulder the size of a dishwasher and shuddered to think what form impishness from him might take.

Marcia went so far as to check under her bed and in her closets. She even peeked into the hamper. A one-bedroom apartment offered only so many hiding places—even for a little man three feet in height. She made one more pass through the rooms, going from one to the other in a methodical way that would not allow her to miss anything, nor permit a mischievous demon to slip past her. Once or twice she thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked, there was nothing there.

He was not in the apartment. Marcia opened the door and looked up and down the hallway. When the elevator chimed, she pulled herself back inside and closed her door. This was no time to run into an inquisitive neighbor. She went to the window, opened the drapes, and tried to figure out what to start worrying about first. When she happened to notice her aura in the daylight, the problem of what to worry about was solved.

Every color had changed. She looked more closely, distrusting what she saw. Last summer after she had been given the ring, her aura had changed, had taken on a cast that had exerted a subtle influence on all the colors. Now another cast had been superimposed. Sometime since she had last looked, her aura had become one that, had she seen it surrounding someone else, would have frightened her.

She sank into a chair by the window to stare at the eerie colors that clothed her, but her reverie was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Borphis entered. He was carrying a large white paper bag.

Marcia bounced up from her chair. “Where have you been?” she asked, speaking at a pitch normally reserved for climactic moments in coloratura arias.

Borphis regarded her calmly. “I think we ought to move,” he said, closing the door behind him. “I had to go five blocks just to get doughnuts.” He took some bills and coins from his pocket and handed them to Marcia.

Marcia took the money without taking her eyes from the demon. “You went out?” Her disbelieving gaze shifted to the bag beside him. “For doughnuts?”

“I got hungry.”

Marcia’s eyes settled on him in an astonished stare. “But you’re a demon. You can’t … I mean …” Marcia stuttered to a halt, then started again. “How can you just walk around on the streets?”

Borphis shrugged. Marcia looked at him carefully. Actually, the only thing terribly unusual about him, besides his pallor and his yellow eyes, was his height. He didn’t have horns, or obvious fangs. When she thought about it, she realized that he was by no means the strangest-looking person to be seen on the streets of the city. He would just be taken for a particularly ill-favored and oddly dressed little boy. The people at the doughnut shop probably hadn’t given him a second glance.

Marcia made a pot of coffee. No matter how good the tea had been, richly aromatic and laced with cream you could float a spoon in, she had thought about black coffee every morning while she was away. She poured two cups, and carried them to the dining room. Borphis was sitting at the table, elevated in his chair by a stack of phone books with a pile of doughnuts in front of him.

“I want you to try something,” she said, inserting a cup among the pastries.

Borphis glanced up from his doughnut. “Oh, coffee. Thanks.”

Marcia sat down with a quiet sigh. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of Borphis and his hoard of doughnuts. A nagging dream-image from last night floated at the edge of her consciousness. She remembered being able to see the relationships between her world and the others she had visited: the enchanted woods on the mountain, Arrleer, Ambermere—even the Lower Regions. She had suddenly understood the relationships in concrete terms. The places she had visited were simply occurrences, or manifestations, of a certain kind of permutation, or combination of … harmonic energies ….

Marcia opened her eyes. How quickly words could deflate an insight. Using language to explore her intuition was like trying to build a sand castle with cinder blocks.

She had just looked up from her coffee when she saw something move near the love seat. She turned quickly, but there was nothing, or nothing more than a hint of a passing shadow. So now she was jumping at shadows. It wasn’t really surprising, she thought; she had a right to be a little jittery. After the things she had been through, it was a wonder she was willing to leave her bed, let alone function, although her ability to function, beyond dressing and making coffee, was only a supposition so far.

It was while she was in the kitchen pouring more coffee that she was visited by another memory from last night. She remembered opening her eyes and seeing, not the ceiling over her bed, not the shadowy forms of her bedroom furniture, but a vision of points and lines against a background of deep black that had an impossible quality of luminescence, as though darkness, if sufficiently profound, possessed a paradoxical power to radiate light.

Last night, half-asleep, she had found the vision no more troubling than any dream image that might come to her in the small hours. Now, recalling it, she recalled as well the sunrise she had seen a few days ago. The strange old man they called Father had touched her ring. When he did, the sun, the distant mountains, the clouds, all had become flat and colorless, like the blueprint of a sunrise.

She glanced up at the light fixture in the kitchen ceiling. One of the bulbs must have burned out, she concluded. The illumination seemed suddenly pale and wavering, as though provided by torches set in the wall. “That would be a nice touch,” she murmured as she turned the light off.

She had overfilled the cups, and was concentrating on balancing them on their saucers when she noticed the small person disappearing into the hallway from her living room. Her immediate, unreflective assumption was that it was Borphis, though the clothes were wrong. There was no wrinkled jacket or battered hat. For a confused moment, she tried to figure out how Borphis could possibly possess a change of clothing, and anyway, hadn’t she made it abundantly clear that he was not free to just go wandering off whenever he happened to feel like it?

Borphis was still seated at the table. Marcia stopped abruptly, staring, then looked back at the hallway.

“Who was that?” she said, trying not to shriek. Her thoughts raced. Was she going to be responsible for an infestation of demons? This had to be connected with Borphis, or with their escape from the Lower Regions. Had her apartment become a vestibule of Hell?

Borphis was swallowing a doughnut. “Looked like a cellar troll to me, only a lot smaller. More like a biggish hearth gnome, but,” he said, glancing around the room, “you don’t have a hearth. In fact I’ve been wondering about—”

“A what?” Marcia was no longer concerned about her tone of voice. She looked down at the cups she was carrying as though she had no idea where they had come from, which at the moment was true.

“You know,” said Borphis, wiping his mouth with a napkin, “one of those big sooty trolls that—”

“Just wait a minute,” said Marcia, interrupting. She walked to the table and put the coffee down. Not a drop had been spilled. She sat, and fixed her gaze on Borphis, noticing, against her will, the abundance of powdered sugar that had fallen on his vest and jacket.

Marcia tried to focus her thoughts. “A hearth troll,” she said.

“Gnome,” said Borphis, looking up from his doughnut. “There’s no such thing as a hearth troll.”

Every once in a while Marcia found herself wishing she had been blessed with a talent for profanity. This was one of those occasions.

“Is that so?” she replied evenly.

“Sure. A good thing, too. Just think what it would be like, living around trolls. For one thing, they’re kind of clumsy, and,” he added fastidiously, “they’re really not very clean.”

“But gnomes are?”

“Yeah, they’re okay.” Borphis put his doughnut down and looked at Marcia quizzically. “Why are you asking me, anyway? I’m from the Lower Regions. Gnomes, trolls, elves, whatever, belong to the Middle Regions. You should know more about them than I do.”

Marcia looked startled. “You mean that thing, whatever it was, belongs here?”

“I don’t know.” Borphis shrugged. “You sound like you never saw him before. Isn’t he one of yours?”

“One of my what?” asked Marcia in a weary tone.

“You know, uh, dwellers, or whatever you call them here.”

Marcia shook her head vaguely. “Probably,” she said. “He’s probably one of mine.”

Marcia ate a doughnut slowly without tasting it. She sipped at her coffee distractedly. All the time she was away, she had been wishing for a cup of strong black coffee. Now that she was back, all she could think of was the wonderful tea she had been served at the inns and taverns. Coffee had an aroma that was bracing and enticing, but tea, she now realized, had a fragrance.

And she had trolls. Marcia stared at the wall behind Borphis. Trolls! Or gnomes—whatever. She had never even had roaches. She looked furtively from side to side, moving only her eyes. There were no little creatures in sight. No pixies; no fairies with insect wings. Everything was, for the moment, perfectly normal. Just her and a demon from Hell, eating doughnuts.

She choked back a rush of laughter. “What,” she said, trying to look like a person talking about something perfectly sensible, “do these gnomes do, exactly?”

“The usual, I guess,” said Borphis. “Steal earrings, mix up socks, stuff like that.” He glanced at Marcia’s ring as she reached for her coffee. “Of course, they wouldn’t do that around you.”

“Because of the ring?”

Borphis looked perplexed. “I’m getting confused,” he said apologetically. “You walk alone through the Lower Regions, blow up the nastiest gorgle in the valley by waving your hand at her, then bring both of us here without using a Passage, and without any spells or jumping around or anything. It’s pretty obvious you aren’t a conjurer, so I have it figured out that you’re connected with the Upper Regions, but then you act like you’ve never even seen a gnome before.” He looked down at the table. “Do you mind if I eat this last doughnut?”

“Go right ahead.” Marcia lifted her cup and drank, then scowled at it as she lowered it to the table. When she thought she saw a furtive movement by the window, she followed it with her eye. There was nothing there … except, there was something—there, just by the lamp … where she couldn’t see anything. She squinted and tilted her head. It was like trying to see around a corner.

She stopped squinting and made herself relax. Since getting her ring back from Father, she had become good at concentrating. She let her thoughts fall away and drew her attention to a focus.

What she saw by the window was movement. She saw nothing move, and yet, somehow, saw the movement itself, as though a quality could be seen independent of the object that possessed it. This was of course impossible, but Marcia was doing it anyway, which she found perplexing.

Intensely conscious of her ring, and its connection to what she was seeing, she pushed at her perspective, at the visible spectrum itself, until she began to see a trace of color moving past the curtains. She skewed her vision more, making small, unconscious motions with her ring hand. The colors were becoming more substantial; she tilted her view even further, feeling the shift in the spectrum, then stopped as she became aware of how odd everything else looked.

Marcia could make out the details of her apartment—the furniture, doorways, even the curtains at the windows, but everything seemed shadowy and insubstantial. Only the auras were whole and solid, including those she hadn’t expected to see. In the kitchen doorway were stripes of primary colors in the form of a person smaller than Borphis. And by the window, just in the shadow of the tall bookcase, she could see intertwined blues and greens, a pair of them, slender and fluttering like little flowers in a breeze.

Except for the auras, everything was in shadow, devoid of color. It was like looking at a faded negative from her mother’s old photo album. As a child, Marcia had liked to pull the curling negatives out from behind the pictures and look at them, holding them up to the light. She remembered giggling at the tiny black smiling teeth and the halos of absent hair. Then, if you turned the shiny side away, and held the negative up to the lamp just right, you could see the image the other way around—white teeth, black hair; eyes whole, not hollow and dark.

Unlike the eyes that stared at her from across the room. Marcia peered at the shadowy form, surrounded by no aura, of an old woman dressed in a shapeless gown. Marcia thought of the ladies in her mother’s album, buttoned and posed, immobilized in black and white, but did not recognize the negative image that watched her from her bedroom doorway. Not a family ghost then, she thought, with surprising calm. Mother would not approve. It would be more fitting if it were the shade of Great-grandmother Mibsey come to see that Marcia was keeping the sideboard polished.

Marcia regarded the specter with an unsympathetic eye. Enough was enough. If she was to socialize with a ghost, let it be either one that is invited, or some family member with a claim on her concern. The melancholy expression on the old woman’s face was touching, in a remote and abstract way, but basically it was irrelevant. Marcia knew that she had merely to walk the streets of the city to find the living in misery. If the dead had sorrows, she could only suppose that she would learn of them soon enough.

She turned her attention to the ring. She had been using it without any knowledge of the forces involved. Now she began to have an inkling of what its powers were and the paths they followed. Banishing the ghost, for instance, would be no more difficult than sweeping a cobweb from a corner. And no more urgent.

She found she did not have to make an effort to return her perspective to its normal state. She allowed it to happen in the same way she could allow her mind to clear. It was as though she had quite literally tilted the spectrum, and had only to let it settle back into its accustomed position.

When she looked, the ghost was gone. She saw a hint of motion by the kitchen door, but no aura, nor any blues and greens by the bookcase. She glanced down at the ring, then folded her hands on her lap.

“What?” said Borphis. He looked at the half-eaten doughnut he was holding. “You said I could have it.”

Marcia looked around the room. They were, to all appearances, alone.

“I beg your pardon?”

Borphis put the doughnut down. “You tell me to go right ahead, then you give me this really funny look.”

“You didn’t see the ghost?”

“Ghost? I thought we were talking about a doughnut.” He looked around the room. “All I see is those window sprites, and that kitchen thingie … wait … no, he’s gone now.”

Marcia sipped her coffee and watched Borphis finish the doughnut.

“So,” he said, wiping his mouth and dusting the sugar off his fingers, “what next?’

“Good question,” said Marcia. She looked at the demon suspiciously. “Unless you’re talking about a snack.”

“Me? No, thanks. I couldn’t eat another bite.”

Marcia got up and went to the hall closet. Borphis sipped his coffee and watched as Marcia put on a coat.

“We going somewhere?”

Marcia looked down at the little man. “I am. Do you want to go out in this weather again?”

Borphis shrugged. “If you’re from the Lower Regions, you don’t get cold,” he said. “We’re built different than you are—a lot tighter.” He set his coffee cup down out of the way and held out his arms. “Try to pick me up.”

Marcia was in no mood for games, but she didn’t want to be rude. She approached the little demon reluctantly and made a halfhearted attempt to lift him from the chair.

She might as well have tried to lift a piano. This little man who came to just above her waist when wearing his hat must have weighed at least two hundred pounds. Borphis pushed himself from the stack of phone books and landed on the floor light as a cat. He looked smug until he remembered he had left his coffee out of reach on Great-grandmother Mibsey’s mahogany sideboard.

To Marcia’s relief, they made it down the elevator and out of the building without running into anyone she knew. She was in no hurry to find out what sort of lame improvisation she would end up blurting out to introduce Borphis, who did, after all, look a bit odd. Even the cab driver gave them a suspicious stare as he pulled over to the curb. All the way downtown he checked them in his mirror every few seconds. Since Marcia was a person who had always tried to arrange her life so that she would remain inconspicuous, she was especially sensitive to this sort of inspection. Of course, she reminded herself, if the driver became too annoying, she could always blow him up or, for all she knew, turn him into a duck or a lobster. One thing that was quite clear was that the ring had virtues she had not explored.

She had the taxi drop them off at the place where she had met Annie nine days before. After taking a minute to get her bearings she set off confidently to the nearest intersection. As they waited for the light to change, she looked down at her little companion, standing calmly at the curb within inches of the rush of traffic. She recalled the denuded landscape of the Lower Regions. Rocks and noxious vapors had provided the only scenery. She leaned down so she could talk to Borphis without shouting.

“You don’t seem very impressed,” she said.

Borphis peered up at her. “Huh?”

Marcia looked around to see if anyone could hear her. “The buildings, the cars and buses, the lights. How we got downtown. You just rode in a”—Marcia gestured helplessly—“horseless carriage.”

“I did?” Borphis thought for a moment. “What’s sless?”

“What?” Marcia noticed a woman watching them warily out of the corner of her eye. She looked like a middle-european peasant in a Dracula movie. Marcia pictured a mob with torches and pitchforks.

“Sless,” Borphis repeated, raising his voice to compete with the traffic.

“Never mind,” said Marcia, darting a glance at the woman. Borphis began to protest. “We’ll talk about it later,” she insisted in an urgent whisper.

They crossed with the light, and walked down a less busy street. At the next corner, Marcia stopped.

“Now,” she said. “About my question: I didn’t see any elevators or taxicabs or electric lights when I was in the Lower Regions. But none of this seems to surprise you, or even get your attention.” She looked around at the parked cars and neon signs. “Don’t you have any questions? I mean, we’re walking on a sidewalk. Stepping off curbs. Dodging trucks. This isn’t exactly what you’re used to.”

Borphis scanned the neighborhood politely but without great interest. “This is all just surface,” he said. “It’s temporary, like fog. In a way it’s almost invisible. It’s like noise—you hear it, then it dies.” He looked at Marcia’s ring. “I know I’m not like one of you,” he said, “but I can see what’s real.”

Marcia looked around uncertainly. “Okay,” she said, “but what about doughnuts?”

“No, thanks. I’m really not hungry.”

“That’s not what I mean. How did you know about them? I didn’t notice any doughnut stands in the Lower Regions.”

“Well, for one thing, there’s more to the Lower Regions than you saw, and anyway, the doughnut is an Idea.”

“Huh?”

“Sort of like a universal concept.”

“Doughnuts?”

“Right.”

This was starting to sound very much like the kind of conversation in which it would be important to know the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism, so Marcia decided to drop it.

They walked in silence for twenty minutes or so as Marcia tried to retrace the route she had followed with Annie last week. She had a good sense of direction, she thought, but she was not having much luck finding the house they had gone to. The blocks of brownstones she did find were nothing but rows of indistinguishable houses.

Marcia had never been fond of cold weather. She felt every little gust of wind that came their way, and couldn’t convince herself that Borphis, dressed in clothes that were as inappropriate for the weather as they were unfashionable, wasn’t being turned to ice. When they came to a small coffee shop with steamed-up windows, she went in gratefully.

They took seats away from the other customers, who all seemed to be acquainted and were talking about the weather. When Borphis climbed up onto the stool, the counter came almost to his chin. Behind it were trays of doughnuts displayed in glass cases. He craned his neck to look at them, then glanced up at Marcia with a puzzled expression. He looked back at the trays unenthusiastically.

“Listen, about these doughnuts. I’m not really very—”

Marcia ignored him and ordered two black coffees. The waitress gave Borphis a funny look when she put his down in front of him.

Borphis lasted the coffee and frowned up at Marcia. “We didn’t come all the way down here for this, did we?”

A stiff gust of wind rattled the door. Marcia wrapped her fingers around the hot mug, grateful for old-fashioned restaurant crockery even if it could have been a bit cleaner.

“No,” she said. “I’m looking for the place where my life started getting complicated.”

“You’re looking for a demon here, in the Middle Regions?”

Marcia looked around nervously. “What do you mean?” she asked in a soft voice.

“The one who marked you,” said Borphis, looking at her cheek.

Marcia raised her hand to the little scar next to her eye. “No,” she said, “that happened last summer when I got the ring. But after that, things got back to normal. No more demons.” She looked around to make sure no one could hear her. “No witches, no magic. Then last week a woman with a ring like mine took me to another—place—in the Middle Regions.” Marcia paused and looked into her coffee cup distractedly, as though she could see pictures there.

“We got separated and I ended up following an old man who didn’t have an aura. He led me—took me, sort of—to the Lower Regions, and then I ran into you.”

Marcia looked up. Borphis was staring intently at a tray of doughnuts.

“Really,” said Marcia. She looked for the waitress. “I thought you weren’t hungry.”

When Borphis didn’t answer, Marcia followed his gaze. On the third shelf from the bottom was a tray of dumpling-shaped doughnuts bursting with pastry cream. It occurred to her that she had not had much for breakfast. Maybe a doughnut and a cup of tea …

She saw something move, or thought she did. She leaned forward and stared harder, at the same time using her ring to make a slight tilt in the spectrum. As she watched, a three-fingered hand snaked out from behind the shelf. It hovered just above the fat little doughnuts, reaching down here and there to pinch or prod. It wavered indecisively for a moment, then plucked one from the tray and withdrew so quickly that Marcia wondered if she had imagined it. She stared at the empty spot in the ranks of the pastries for a moment, then shook her head and turned away.

“I don’t know,” said Borphis when they got outside. “A pastry elf, maybe? You understand, I’m guessing now.”

Marcia wandered the likely neighborhoods for as long as she could stand the cold, then spent a small fortune cruising around in a taxi before giving up and having the driver take them home.

They picked up a carry-out lunch on the way, and managed to get back to Marcia’s apartment without running into any neighbors. After having a luxurious bath, Marcia made a quick trip to the store. Last night, after their spectacular escape, she had called out for pizza. Tonight she would be a better hostess. Cooking was not one of her talents, but she knew she could manage steaks, baked potatoes, and salad. When she was picking out the wine, she thought suddenly of Breksin. Where were her friends now? she wondered. Were they safe? Was Breksin able to dine according to his standards?

Dinner, predictably, was a huge success. Afterwards, working on the theory that there was nothing like going all out, she served cognac. Borphis was gratifyingly impressed. “You can smell that stuff all over the room as soon as you pull the cork out,” he said.

Marcia left Borphis happily absorbed in the spirits, and went to bed with her library book. She resolutely put all thoughts of adventures and other worlds out of her mind. She was, after all, basically a very down-to-earth person, despite having a demon in her living room.

She tried to get interested in the thriller, but couldn’t. Espionage, betrayal, intrigue, narrow escapes—it all seemed so improbable and unrealistic. Marcia closed the book, turned out her light, and went to sleep.

Chapter 4

Lord Rand, chief adviser to King Asbrak the Fat of Ambermere, stood in the shadows at the end of a long, chilly corridor and gazed out beyond the palace walls. On the avenue there were lights at every window, smoke poured from every chimney, silhouettes played across the curtains of every tavern in sight, but no one braved the wind and icy rain, no pedestrians wet their boots in freezing puddles, or tried to tiptoe beneath the dripping eaves.

How very excellent, thought Rand. Despite the efforts of the king, the evening was not to be cluttered with foolish speculations and pointless chatter. Ambermere was famous for the mildness of its winters; the inhabitants were not accustomed to wet cold that knifed through their cloaks. Inclement weather like this would be sufficient to excuse the astrologer from attending the king.

Astrologers! It was bad enough that the king insisted on consulting Remeger on matters in which his advice could make no difference. For the king to send for him with the intention of discussing matters of state was one more of the plentiful instances demonstrating the romantic credulity of the monarch.

Asbrak’s world was filled with excitement and mystery. He was convinced that secret practitioners of every occult art filled his capital and padded about on errands of deep unearthly import. Meanwhile, Asbrak’s imagination populated the taverns and cafe’s with spies whispering the secrets of kingdoms, conversant with every intrigue, and united in labyrinthine networks of conspiracy. It left, Rand was often tempted to point out, few ordinary citizens for the innocent pursuit of mundane business—baking bread, weaving cloth, keeping inns. If everyone was sending furtive glances, slinking around comers, and lurking in shadows, then the advance of commerce must be merely incidental to the real business of the populace, occurring more or less by accident, tangled in a web of deeper purposes.

And as the king’s view of the world resembled that of a boy lost in childish fantasies, so did many of his actions. Rand was sure that as soon as the weather improved, Asbrak would be rummaging in the closet of disguises he maintained for the purpose of passing unrecognized among the populace. It seemed never to occur to the king, who boasted the largest belt size in the kingdom, and whose rotund silhouette was represented on the signs of every merchant and tradesman in the city, that his unmistakable bulk could not be successfully disguised. Nor did any of his subjects ever do or say anything to disappoint his fancy. The citizens of Ambermere expected foibles from the royal family, and few generations of Asbrak’s line had disappointed them. If the king imagined that he could go among his subjects with his anonymity intact, how much to be preferred was that to many of the notions to which royalty was susceptible.

Rand closed his eyes momentarily and pictured the triple-length sash and jaunty cap the king had worn on his last outing. He had watched from the very window at which he was now stationed as the king seemed almost to fill the avenue, the upper half of his body swaying gracefully above the choppy, stiff-legged awkwardness of his gait. Rand had watched until Asbrak was lost in the crowds, resolutely making his surreptitious way to the nests of intrigue he was convinced were sheltered in the waterfront taverns.

Rand shook his head and turned from the window, sending a departing glance down the empty thoroughfare. A man, bareheaded and slender, slipped from a tavern door and dashed across the cobbled way, picking his legs up high and dodging puddles, all the while holding the collar of his jacket at his throat with clenched fists, as though by doing so he could keep the rain from wetting him. When in a moment he had disappeared through the door of another tavern, the scene was so still that it seemed to deny that anyone had just that moment passed. The only movement to be seen was lamplight playing against the windows, and the rain that spilled from the eaves and ran in the gutters.

Except, Rand noted with surprise, a wavering mirage two crossings away. He watched, half turned from the window, waiting for the illusion to dissipate. Instead, the shadowy form became slowly more distinct, until it resolved itself into the figure of a pedestrian. Rand squinted through the falling rain. The person was approaching at a steady, unhurried pace, and instead of trying to keep to the lee of the buildings, was walking in the middle of the avenue, rather like a ceremonial procession, but one consisting of a single participant.

As the lonely figure on the avenue grew closer, a thoroughly unwelcome thought formed itself in the adviser’s consciousness. Might this be, not some wandering fool who didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain, but the astrologer, faithfully obeying the summons of the king? Rand leaned forward into the deep windowsill until his nose nearly touched the glass. Surely even Remeger would not be so foolish. No one would, excepting perhaps a philosopher, the actions of which category of citizens Rand had found to be particularly resistant to anticipation. One of Ambermere’s most eminent insisted that time did not exist, a proposition Rand had often wished he could believe. No doubt another could be found who had convinced himself that rain did not exist, and who would arrive on a night like this in squishing shoes, sodden to the skin and denying he was wet.

It was with a feeling of profound relief that Rand noted successively that the pedestrian was much shorter than the astrologer, and was dressed in feminine apparel. As she drew closer, he could see that the woman was wearing only a hat and an ordinary cloak of a sort that would offer no great protection from the rain. Rand was on the point of ringing for a footman to go outside and fetch the poor creature, but as he reached for the pull, he saw her leave the avenue and enter a tavern.

Now the street was truly empty, and promised to remain so, for a gusty wind had begun to blow, and the rain was falling ever harder. No citizen of Ambermere was likely to brave such weather. Rand had in his youth lived in a climate not so temperate as that enjoyed in the lands that ringed the Great Sea. The winters of his youth had been characterized, not by the occasional chilly drizzle, but by hip-deep snow that forced all work and travel to cease. Here in Ambermere, a heavy rain achieved the same results.

Rand turned from the window and, not without a quiet sigh, set out in the direction of the king’s chambers.

He found his royal employer watching the rain from a deep-silled window that overlooked a courtyard.

“You missed an excellent capon, Rand,” said the king, revolving himself from the window to face his adviser. “The cooks truly outdid themselves. I hoped to see it tempt your appetite. You pick too much, you know. The body must have fuel; it cannot burn air.” The king crossed the room at a sedate and dignified pace. The fact that his long robes hid his feet made it appear as though he were advancing on a trolley. “Why, even I,” he said, coming to a ponderous halt, “with my strict habits of restraint, was persuaded to indulge myself a little.”

“I regret that I missed it,” said Rand, who didn’t. Once at the king’s table, one did not leave until the king had finished, and even at Asbrak’s alarming rate of consumption, a brace of fat capons was not a snack that disappeared quickly. Rand had been dining with the king for more than twenty years, and had no recollection of a meal in which Asbrak had failed to detect compelling evidence that the cooks had outdone themselves, persuading him to abandon the “strict habits of restraint” that he imagined to regulate his behavior, unaware that no one else had ever been able to detect evidence of their existence.

“But you ate something, surely?” said the king, an expression of genuine concern on his face.

“I sent to the kitchen for a plate, my liege.”

Asbrak’s face brightened. “Then you tried the capon after all?”

Rand shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Your Majesty. Just some bread and soup.”

The king seated himself laboriously in a heavily reinforced chair piled with cushions. “Really, Rand,” he said when he had caught his breath, “I wonder that your flesh persists. I believe if it were not for those pastries you allow yourself with your morning tea you would simply dwindle away, until one day we realized that you hadn’t been seen, and a thorough search could discover nothing more than your empty clothing piled somewhere in a drafty corner.”

A sudden gust rattled the windows, and for a moment the two men watched the heavy rain flinging itself against the glass.

“Remeger will not come tonight,” announced the king.

“No, Your Highness.”

The king sighed. “I had hoped to learn something of the princess and her party,” he said.

“Must I remind Your Majesty that Remeger is the astrologer who selected the day for the departure of the princess? Did he not inform us that every sign promised a safe and uneventful journey back to Felshalfen?”

“Rand, you are too literal minded. Besides, had they left on some less propitious tide, something worse might have happened to them.”

“Very well, Your Highness, but as we already know that your daughter is being held for ransom in Devlin, what more can we hope to learn from a perusal of the heavens, however skillfully conducted^1?”

The king looked shocked. “But, Rand, we must find out what their situation is. We know the hour the pirates came upon them, and where. With those facts, it is possible to examine the heavenly aspects that governed the unfortunate events. I have asked Remeger to plot the fortunes of the princess, and Hilbert and the others, of course.”

“So we may hope to learn from the astrologer whether the kidnapping occurred at a favorable moment?”

“Precisely,” said the king. “And that will tell us, you see, if they are being treated with due respect—if they are being well fed, served the proper wines, things of that sort.”

The king shifted his position in the chair and stared at the ceiling contemplatively. “And then there is the matter of Rogan. By tomorrow or the next day he should be in Devlin, among our enemies without their knowledge.” The king brought his eyes back to his adviser. “And of course, we have Reffex carrying our offer to the pirate, old what’s-his-name.”

“Flanders, Highness. Black Jack Flanders.”

“Ah, yes. Anyway, Rogan and Reffex will both be there, not to mention Breksin. You don’t suppose his presence will interfere with my plans?”

“Your Highness, I am certain that what Rogan will be able to accomplish will be completely unaffected by the presence of the royal cellarmaster. And I have instructed Hebbick to watch for him.”

“Ah, so that’s why you insisted on sending Hebbick. I couldn’t imagine what possible use he could be. Still, Breksin must be nine or ten feet tall; Hebbick won’t miss him, I’m sure.”

“I believe Breksin’s height is closer to seven feet. Your Highness. Even so, he is too large to be overlooked.”

“And you say he was a soldier?”

“In his youth, Highness.”

“But then, how is it he serves us in the cellars rather than as a member of the royal guard? You know, Rand, he would be a most impressive figure on the parade ground.”

“I think perhaps, Your Royal Highness, the cellarmaster’s military experience did not include extensive training in the art of the parade. No doubt he is happier caring for Your Majesty’s wines and cheeses. Besides which, how would Your Majesty replace him? How could we find another with his knowledge of food arid drink?”

A look of genuine distress crossed the face of the monarch. “But what if some evil befalls him? Should we not dispatch someone to look after him?”

Rand refrained from pointing out that there was scarcely anyone at court who might be trusted to look after a lapdog. He simply smiled his diplomat’s smile. “I believe that Breksin may be relied upon to look after himself, my liege. I am sure he will be back to us soon enough. In the meantime, his assistant seems to be managing.”

“Yes, now that you mention it,” said the king with a comfortable smile, “he sent us a very nice wine to accompany the capon. It had an aroma that was … bountiful.” The king pushed himself from his chair energetically and moved to the window.

“Now, Rand,” he said, looking out over the puddles in the courtyard. “If this infernal rain will ever stop, I will be able to pursue my own plans. I mean to take steps.” He turned and fixed his adviser with a determined stare. “I will go into the town at the first opportunity. I have already alerted my valet. I want all my disguises to be in readiness.”

“Your Majesty, I really—”

“You may not realize it, Rand, but there is an art to selecting a disguise. It takes talent. Inspiration. It is not every monarch, I can assure you, who could pass among his subjects undetected.”

Rand pictured, once again, the massive form of the king draped in one of his “disguises.” It sometimes occurred to Rand to wonder if the position of chief diplomat and adviser in a kingdom so pacific that the monarch could wander unprotected among the populace offered any test to his abilities. But then, if the royal daughter continued to be abducted semiannually, he would have plenty to keep him occupied.

“Rand?” The king was favoring him with a beady look.

“As I have so often remarked, Your Majesty is a master of disguise.”

The king beamed, then sent a worried glance toward the storm. The wind was growing ever more insistent, howling in the eaves. “You don’t suppose it’s like this at sea tonight, do you?”

“It may be. Your Highness. But I would point out that the captain and his schooner have been sailing in winter weather since the reign of your father. Surely he has encountered rough seas in his day. I believe we may rely on the seaworthiness of his vessel.”

Chapter 5

From time to time during his long career as a magician, it had occurred to Rogan the Obscure to ask himself why it was that there seemed never to be a spell to do the things he most deeply wished to be able to do. He wondered if the wealthy generally found riches and property to be as much a disappointment as he had found magic to be. He did not know of a spell to strengthen or otherwise improve wine—at least none within the range of his powers. That was more a wizardly sort of magic. He could wield no spell to deepen sleep or improve the amorous capacities. Those matters were in the province of witches.

Regrettable as these deficiencies were, at the moment his greatest regret was that he knew of nothing less violent than poison that would still the tongue of Count Reffex. Why, Rogan had been asking himself for days, would fate play him this trick? Surely any unexpiated sins of his were being amply punished simply by the fact that he was at sea, a helpless victim of the whim of King Asbrak the Fat of Ambermere. At any moment, the ship could do what he had been expecting it to do since the bitter moment he had made his reluctant way up the gangplank. Rogan had a remarkably clear mental image of the placid, uncaring swells of the indifferent deep closing forever over the decks he paced by day and night.

But no, drowning was not to be a harsh enough punishment for whatever gods he had offended. He must be ushered to the dripping jaws of death by Reffex, whose conversation was unceasing, and devoted entirely to the subject of his own importance.

“Of course, the king has always relied on me.” Count Reffex helped himself to another cup of Rogan’s wine, careless of the drops spilled by the rolling of the ship. Rogan watched them gather and course to the edge of the table, then run over the lip and onto the tilting deck. The sea was always perfectly horizontal; the ship never was. This mystified Rogan. He knew there must be moments when the deck was level. He watched for them, but they seemed never to come.

“Aye, she rolls,” was the captain’s closest approach to an explanation.

Rogan watched Reffex drain his cup. He was sure there must be a poison that would produce a temporary paralysis of the organs of speech. Would Hannah the witch deal in such things? he wondered. Not that it mattered. The witch was ashore with all the other sensible people in creation.

He hadn’t known that Reffex would be on the ship until the morning of their departure. “Urgent business for the Crown,” the count had informed him in a stage whisper, glancing quickly at the officers and crew near enough to hear his announcement. “Of the utmost confidentiality. Matter of extreme delicacy.” He had waved indifferently in the direction of a short, stout man who had followed him aboard. “You know old Hebbick, I suppose?” Rogan scowled at old Hebbick, who was younger than he. “Rand,” Reffex paused grandly and allowed the name to resonate, “Rand insisted that I have someone to serve as an assistant. Of course, in this sort of business I prefer to work on my own, but still, the judgment of the chief adviser to the king is not to be ignored. As I said to His Majesty—when we were conferring in private—best to let old Rand have his way.”

Rogan did what he had been doing for five days—stared at the expanse of water and wished he were back in his tower where he belonged. He was a palace magician, not a traveling wizard or mage to break the chains of captives and spirit them out of their dungeons.

Not that Rogan supposed the royal hostages were actually chained, or imprisoned in some gloomy cavern with damp walls and scuttling rats. Undoubtedly the princess and her consort were safe and dry in pleasant surroundings that did not dip and sway, sipping chilled wines and waiting for their ransom to arrive.

Travel on the high seas had proved to be as terrifying as Rogan had expected. What he had not expected was that it was at the same time tremendously boring. Even without the aggravation of the unendurable Reffex, the voyage would have probed the extreme reaches of tedium. An odd quality, Rogan thought, to be found in surroundings that bore such a heavy tint of terror.

The hour of the evening meal eventually arrived. Rogan chewed his way through the ship’s biscuit with an air of relentless determination and ever-growing feelings of resentment against his sovereign employer. He pictured the table at the palace. Asbrak the Fat would doubtless be working his way through his third helping of roast goose or boar or whatever succulent meat perfumed the great dining room. The long table would be littered with great split loaves fresh from the hearth, and trays of steaming yams and other winter vegetables would be replenished as they were emptied by the enthusiastic diners. It was only the endless pitchers of wine that Rogan had no cause to regret; he had seen to it that his own supply was carted to the quay the night before his departure, and had-personally watched the ewers being loaded onto the ship.

Rogan scowled at the meat, ostensibly lamb, lying on his platter in a pool of congealing gravy. It was tough and stringy and broadcast, Rogan thought, the unmistakable whiff of goat. Not a young one, either. Old, and boiled since breakfast. Until this voyage, it had never occurred to Rogan that he might be, by some standards of judgment, a gourmet. Meals he generally considered an interruption. He ate but one a day, when he put in his obligatory appearance at Asbrak’s table. Otherwise, he had found that for a man of his many years and spare figure, a supply of wine throughout the morning and afternoon was sufficient to sustain him.

When dinner was over, Rogan, having no place better to go, went onto the deck. The ship was rocking less than usual; the sea looked like dark glass under the cloudy sky. Rogan acknowledged grudgingly to himself that if the ocean had its terrors, it had its beauties as well. If he ever got back to the peace and safety of his tower in the palace at Ambermere, there might, he supposed, come a time when he would recall his ocean voyage with more gratifying emotions than sheer relief.

Rogan was drawn from his thoughts by the snap of the sails overhead. He was alarmed by every noise the ship made, convinced that any of them might well be heralding his doom. In this case, however, all that was being announced was the awakening of the wind. Rogan peered at the rolling sea apprehensively. A drop of water struck his cheek, followed by another on his forehead. The sudden breeze was warm, and smelled of rain.

“As if there’s not enough water,” he muttered.

The ship began to roll more heavily. Rogan gripped the rail and stared into the night He tried, as he had every day since boarding the ship, to remember the feeling of standing on solid ground, of looking at a world that did not ceaselessly tilt from side to side. The tempo of the rain increased. The sun had gone down, so he sensed rather than saw the clouds rolling in low above the masts. A heavy gust of wind flung a stinging mixture of salt spray and rain into his eyes. Rogan shook his head resignedly and carefully made his way below.

Reffex envied Rogan his quarters—had grumbled about his own accommodations for the first day or two—but in fact the magician’s private cabin was no more imposing or comfortable than a good-sized closet. The bed was no bed at all, but a bedroll on the bare planks of the floor. “That way you don’t fall out, you see,” the mate had told him.

Rogan actually disliked nights aboard ship even more than the days. He spent the hours of daylight on the foredeck, either seated in a wobbly chair that rocked with the motion of the ship or, more in keeping with his mood, pacing back and forth with numerous stops to grip at a stanchion or a bit of cable and stare mournfully over the endless expanse of the waiting sea. At night, though, his windowless cabin had all the cheer of an undulating tomb. Rogan had never been an abstemious man, but he had to drink more wine than usual after dinner to assure himself of a night of sleep rather than hours of rigid worry. He took a final sip of his favorite Ambermere red, then, still dressed, wrapped himself tightly in his mass of twisted bedclothes and drifted into an uneasy slumber.

He awakened, whether hours later or minutes, he couldn’t tell, with his head ringing from a collision with the wall. The room was pitch dark, but he had the distinct impression that the floor was tilted almost perpendicular. From above on the deck, he heard the sound of shouting voices and the pounding of many feet. He was still disentangling himself from his blankets when his door opened with a crash.

“We’re going down!” came a frenzied shout.

Rogan sprinted for the door, which he missed, and ran into the wall. He picked himself off the wildly tilting floor and began feeling for the exit. If Rogan had possessed a sense of direction, it would have by now deserted him. He had no way of knowing even if it was the floor or the wall he was staggering across. What if the ship had capsized? He might be blundering about on the ceiling, or whatever the nautical term was. One of the most annoying things about being on a ship was that sailors refused to call things by the perfectly sensible names that served everyone else so well. The floor was the deck; the kitchen, the galley. The ceiling, he recalled, had some name that no one would ever guess.

Rogan found the door, which was actually called some other name that he had learned, then promptly forgotten. As he made his way to the deck, he realized that he was completely calm. The plentiful noise from outside suggested that the ship was not yet submerged. For that, he was grateful. If he had to drown, he would prefer to do so in open water, and not trapped in the vessel that had carried him into this predicament.

Outside was almost as dark as his cabin had been. Rogan had the impression that it was raining heavily, but realized that it might well be spray from the churning sea. The deck was crowded with shouting sailors, busy with ropes and sprinting from place to place in the murky gloom. One ran into him, then shouted something urgent and completely incomprehensible into his face as he darted past. A prayer, perhaps, thought Rogan. The deck tilted most alarmingly under him, then, as he adjusted his posture to accommodate the change, rose beneath his feet in an entirely unexpected direction. Evidently his death was to be an entertaining one. As Rogan stumbled and fought to keep his feet, he felt a pang of longing for the solid stone walls and floors of his rooms in the lower. Who would be the next magician to occupy it, he wondered.

“Rogan! Quick!”

It was unseemly, Rogan realized, to be picky about the people one died with. The face of Count Reffex loomed out of the darkness. He seized the magician by the arm and dragged him along the swaying deck. Rogan recognized the captain as they passed him in a rush. He shouted something at them, and then disappeared into the spray and shadows. When they passed a group of men working silently at securing a furled sail, Rogan felt a surge of unexpected hope. They seemed calm enough, and intent on their task. Surely they were not laboring simply to make the ship tidy for a journey to the ocean floor. He tried to plant his feet and yank his arm from Reffex’s grip.

“Here! It’s just here!” shouted the nobleman, and then added a strangled cry as the bow plunged alarmingly and a sheet of sea-water washed over them. Rogan felt Reffex release his arm just as his feet went out from under him. When his shoulder struck something hard, he grabbed for it and hung on.

Damn the darkness and damn the confusion, he thought. Rogan remembered that he had sort of counted on quietly drinking himself to death sometime in the distant future when he was so old that he wouldn’t care, or possibly even notice. To be simply washed away in the violence of a storm at sea was personally offensive to him. Another wave swept over the deck, clutching at him as it passed. As the water drained away he heard Reffex shouting in his ear.

Rogan opened his eyes. He was holding on to the back end—what did they call it?—of one of the longboats that were lashed to the rail ahead—forward—of the sighting mast. Reffex was working feverishly with a long knife, hacking at a rope. Rogan pulled himself along the boat.

“What are you doing?” he shouted into the furious wind.

Reffex glanced up from his work. “We have to free the boat,” he shouted without stopping.

As a palace magician much occupied with the sort of magic associated with ceremony and spectacle, Rogan had experience not only with all manner of gadgets and contrivances, but ropes and rigging as well.

“All you have to do is untie this knot at the back here,” he said.

Reffex looked at him stupidly, then turned his gaze to the knot, all the time continuing to saw with the knife. At that moment, the bow dipped and the ship seemed to be standing on its head. When it righted, another still larger wave pushed itself past them. Reffex shook his head and clambered into the boat.

“Quick, get in,” he cried, pulling Rogan bodily in after him. “Untie the knot.”

Rogan began to explain in a rational shout that since the knot could be released in the blink of an eye there was no reason to untie it until the boat was needed. Reflex stared at him wildly for a second, then shouldered his way past the magician and clawed the knot loose. Rogan, meanwhile, was distracted by the sensation of rising into the sky, as if the ship were being lifted from the water by some vast aquatic giant.

At that moment, a seaman slid down a rope from somewhere in the murk above. Rogan had a quick picture of the ship sedately slipping beneath the waves, the last man to drown, a watchman perched on the highest mast. The man was hurrying down the tilting deck when he noticed them.

“What are you pair up to?” he shouted, in a manner that seemed to hold no respect for their rank.

Rogan found it was difficult to shrug while desperately gripping the sides of the longboat in anticipation of the next wave. He fell the ship begin again to descend into the trough of thundering water. The seaman stepped toward them with the unconcerned ease of a courtier crossing a dance floor.

“We have to be ready to abandon ship,” cried Reffex in a wavering alto that was quickly lost in the wind and rain. He tossed aside the loose end of the rope.

The seaman stared at him with an expression of sheer incredulity. He gestured in the direction of the dipping bow. “This is nothin’ but a little blow, you damn fool lubber!” The man snatched up the line Reffex had dropped and began to secure the longboat. Reffex yanked the rope from his hands. In the next instant he was himself yanked unceremoniously from his seat in the boat by the impatient seaman. Rogan watched his heels bounce over the side as the titled gentleman howled an outraged protest.

It was as the optimism of the sailor’s words about the “little blow” settled comfortably into Rogan’s consciousness that the ship again seemed to point directly at the bottom of the sea. The longboat, no longer tethered, began to slide along the deck, until its progress was arrested by the arrival of the largest wave that had yet come crashing over the bow. Rogan felt the longboat scrape sideways, then lift and turn in a giddy tilt as the floor of water washed it, and him, over the side. He had one final view of the bounding schooner he had unwillingly vacated, before a mountain of black water rose and blotted it from view.

Chapter 6

Breksin looked down the road that tumbled across the rocky landscape to the sea. It was only midday and already he could see the city far in the distance. He might hope to reach it today. If not, by morning for certain. Now that he was traveling alone, he felt he could cover a lot of ground in a hurry. Not that his companions had slowed him down. Even old Alexander had kept up quite well, and Egri never seemed to be exerting himself, but flowed across the ground with an unconscious ease that was a pleasure to watch. Of course, he was very strong for his size. He had carried Marcia on a long, hilly road the night she had been injured, and never even breathed hard.

But now he had no companions. Old Alexander had left in the middle of the night. When he had learned of it he had been concerned, but Egri had assured him that Alexander had nothing to fear from anything he might meet on the highway.

Breksin had not been convinced. “Only think what we found in our path that night.”

Egri had smiled. “I have not forgotten.”

“Yet still you say he is safe alone at night.”

“Beyond doubt.”

Breksin had looked up from his breakfast and laid his knife by his plate. “I know he has some tricks—chilling wine, keeping us dry—but you speak of him as though he were a wizard.”

Egri gave a derisive laugh. “He is no wizard, this Alexander. He is more than that.” He raised his hand as though in a gesture of caution. “Do not ask what. You will not like the answer.”

Then Egri too had left, and would say only that he might join him in Devlin.

Breksin strode down the steep road with the ease of the mountain born. How would Marcia—Miss Marcia, he corrected himself—have fared on such a path? She had been a good hiker, but he remembered cradling her in his arms and carrying her down the rocky hillside when they had to get out of a storm. Egri could have matched his pace, but Marcia and Alexander would have been left behind.

And it was best, no doubt, that he was again a solitary traveler. He had never meant to arrive in Devlin with a party. If things turned bad and there was work for him to do there, it would be work that was best done alone.

His life had been a solitary one, had become so on a single day now nearly twenty years in the past.

Present yourself to us, for our mercy. So had read his uncle’s note, affixed to the door of his father’s hall with a jeweled dagger. Inside, the walls and floors, the rafters, all were stained with the blood of his family. His uncle, now king on the death of his older brother, summoned him.

The young prince, at his full growth and as tall and bulky as any fighter in the mountain clans, did not have to consider long his uncle’s offer. His birthright stolen, with no roof, and only ghosts for comrades in arms, he could see but one choice. His only hope was that his treacherous relative meant not to kill him out of hand, but would let him prove his loyalty to the new-made king.

He took the note, and the dagger, and presented himself to his kinsman. He listened meekly to talk of regrets, necessity. There was to be a new order. He pledged his honor to his sovereign lord, drank from his cup. His uncle, cheeks flushed with wine and bloody guilt, had cried, “Now what may we not hope to accomplish, when we can effect a reconciliation like this?”

Late that night, when wariness had faded from the glances of the men at arms, he walked on a high balcony with his uncle and his eldest cousin, now heir, to see what portents might be read in the stars on a night of such promise.

The new king’s cry was piteous when he saw his brave son lifted like a helpless infant and thrown from the balcony to die broken on the rocks below; in the next instant he gagged on the jeweled dagger in his throat.

The first guard through the door, aghast and staring, was struck down by a blow from the waiting giant’s fist. Breksin snatched the hammer from the soldier’s belt and stormed the royal hall like a furious army. He left a trail of corpses and staggered from the door with a splintered lance wedged in his ribs.

When he had recovered from his wounds, sheltered in a hermit’s cave, and had his strength again, he knew that honor bade him go back, gather a force of clansmen, and crush the life from every cousin he could find. His duty was to wash the blood from his father’s hall, and establish there a line that would endure forever.

So it was that on a day in early spring, he took the lowland road, and left the mountains never to return.

And now his hammer was in his belt again. The diplomats would negotiate the freedom of the hostages, that was a certainty, he thought. The ransom would be paid, and the royal party would go on to Felshalfen. He would return to his duties in Asbrak’s cellars, and his closet would once again hide his bloody battle-hammer. But if things went amiss, as things had a way of doing, then it might be that he could be of service.

Indeed, had the captives been only the royal couple, Asbrak’s daughter Iris and her husband, Hilbert the Silent of Felshalfen, Breksin would at this moment be in his cellars, seeing to the cheeses and selecting wines for the royal table. But with the prince and princess, the pirates had taken another couple. Daniel, a newcomer who had found great favor with the king, and Modesty, now the Lady Modesty, whom Breksin had known since she was a child.

Not only was she the niece of his great friend Renzel, votaress of the goddess Elyziana, or Elyssana, as they called her in Ambermere, but Modesty herself, even when she blossomed into beauty that in many would harden to pride, even when she came to live at the palace as the pampered favorite of the princess, had found time to come to him often and while away an afternoon with cards and comfortable talk.

Breksin’s huge hand strayed to touch the hammer at his belt. May the gods pity the pirate at whose hands this woman came to harm! For half his life, Breksin had been a peaceful man, but he knew all too well, remembered all too clearly, the practices of bloody violence. There was a way to step beyond yourself ….

He pulled himself from these thoughts. His memory was amply furnished with bloody scenes of the past. He had no need to imagine new ones.

At the far turning of the road, where it dropped below a rocky shelf, a small animal appeared. Breksin squinted through the afternoon sun. As it came closer, he stopped. It moved like a cat, effortlessly flowing across the ground.

Was he to inherit another cat? For the first part of his journey, a little black wanderer had kept him company, surprising him by showing up day after day. He had last seen it when they had visited the mysterious cave Father had found. It had picked a good time to abandon him, for it was that night the little horrors had attacked them.

As the cat came closer, Breksin slipped his pack from his shoulder and let it drop to the ground. He stepped forward.

“Kitsey?” The cat trotted up to him and meowed, then ducked out from under his hand as he had always done when Breksin tried to pet him. “By the Daughters, it is the faithful kitsey.” The giant dropped to his haunches to have a closer look. There was no question about it. After—he counted on his fingers—an absence of six days, his original companion had turned up again.

“But you’re ahead of me.” Breksin thought of the ground he had covered since last seeing the cat. “You must be a magician,” he said.

He peered more closely at the cat. What had Egri said about Alexander? He was not a wizard, but “something more.” They had met Alexander at the inn a few hours after he had last seen the cat. There were stories of mages who could take the shape of animals, and witches, too, were said to have as “familiars” demons—or was it spirits, or ghosts—that looked like ordinary cats or owls or wolves.

The kitsey slunk past him and began to nose at his pack. Breksin laughed.

“That’s sausage you smell. Too spicy for you, I fear. But I’ve some cheese I’ll share, once we’ve covered some distance.” He picked up the pack and slung it on his shoulder. A moment later he felt a tug as the cat leapt easily from the path and settled itself on the pack. Breksin pictured Alexander, a whispering oldster dressed in colored silks that would have better adorned a lady of pleasure. He chuckled and glanced over at the cat perched securely on his shoulder. His smile faded and was followed by a thoughtful frown as he looked once more at his passenger. He studied the little black cat for a long moment, men laughed again and set off down the road.

Chapter 7

“A wine factor?” Had he not been conversing with his sovereign monarch, the expression on Rand’s face might have been mistaken for one of polite boredom.

“Exactly.” The king turned his profile to the unusually wide mirror set in his wardrobe door. “Not a broker, you see. It is in the details that a disguise is tested.” He waved a didactic finger in the air. “This is what you fail to appreciate. You imagine that I need only don a cloak and clap a bonnet on my head to go among the populace.”

Rand, who was quite certain he had never offered, or even held, an opinion on any aspect of the art of disguise, did not protest. Having learned that it was impossible to dissuade the king from these occasional forays, he wished only that Asbrak would leave, so that he might the sooner return.

“I fear the subtleties elude me, Your Majesty.”

“Indeed,” said the king, studying the effect of a corner of pink lace kerchief that hung as if by accident from a vest pocket hemmed in blue silk. He turned to his chief adviser.

“That’s just it, you see. Subtleties, niceties.” A little man who had been completely hidden from view darted from behind the king and reached up to tug lightly at the royal lapels. The king peered over him. “If ever you are to be disguised. Rand, you must come to me. I,” said the king with a nourishing gesture, “shall act as your valet.”

“Your Majesty is too kind.”

After he had seen the king to the garden door. Rand stationed himself at a window that overlooked the avenue. The gutters were still damp from the storm of the night before, and the lingering rain of the morning, but the skies had cleared during the afternoon, and a warm breeze had blown in from the sea. Rand reached his vantage point in time to see the king perform his caricature of slipping furtively from the gate to join the pedestrians on the avenue. Before he was lost to sight among the evening crowds and flickering lamps, Asbrak passed beneath the signs of numerous shops and taverns, all decorated with the undisguisable royal silhouette.

Rand heaved a sigh, as he had so often done when standing at that window. All Ambermere seemed to be abroad tonight. The labors of the day over, citizens were free to sit in taverns and discuss the kidnapping of the Princess Iris and her husband, Hilbert the Silent of Felshalfen. It must be pleasant. Rand supposed, to sip wine and talk of momentous events. He turned from the window and set off briskly down the hall. He, on the other hand, was expected to do something about them.

He mounted a flight of narrow stone stairs and entered an upper corridor. In fact, he thought, he might as well drink and talk. For the time he had done all that he could do. Asbrak conceived diplomacy and statecraft entirely in terms of masterstrokes and intrigue. Rand was not at liberty to be so naive. The king was gleefully anticipating the secret arrival in Devlin of Rogan the Obscure. He was convinced his functionary possessed deep magical resources that he could use to confound their adversaries. This, coupled with the intelligence he expected to gather in his anonymous nocturnal prowlings, he believed would prove decisive—but only in some vague and never-specified way.

For Rand’s part, he supposed that one could hope that the unexpected arrival of Rogan in the pirate capital might precipitate a sudden critical shortage in the fortress city’s stores of wine. The magician would certainly have nothing but drink to occupy his time. Count Reffex, meanwhile, would be conducting irrelevant negotiations for the exchange of hostages and ransom. Ransom, unfortunately, could not be at the bottom of these troubles.

Black Jack Flanders had not broken long-standing agreements and risked arousing the Nine Kingdoms merely to make an incremental addition to his hoard of wealth.

Rand had left the selection of the emissary to the king, knowing the business was of no significance whatever. He himself, however, had appointed the count’s assistant, the quiet and retiring Hebbick, a courtier of no rank or consequence. Had he been of such station as to warrant an epithet, he might have appropriately been styled Hebbick the Unnoticed. A faint smile moved the diplomat’s lips for just an instant, then vanished without a trace.

Then there was the cellar master. His apprentice had reported that as soon as Breksin heard of the kidnapping, he strapped on his hammer and set out for Devlin. Rand knew of no further military action that the kingdom could possibly be expected to undertake. Ambermere of course had an army, one that had cultivated a certain niggling exactitude in the obscure niceties of parade-ground drill. Rand was himself willing to concede that they had brought to a state of mature perfection the art of polishing dull swords to a blinding gloss, and could flourish them harmlessly with unsurpassed virtuosity.

In the person of Breksin, the only bona fide soldier in the service of Asbrak the Fat had already deployed himself. Though it would not have occurred to him to ask the giant to go, Rand was confident there would be no harm in it. Breksin would conduct himself with good sense. And it was always possible that a situation might develop in which a seven-foot berserker with a battle hammer would prove a useful tool of diplomacy.

Rand stopped at a narrow door set deep in the stone wall. It opened onto a tunnel-like stair that rose steeply to a landing where a single fat candle guttered in a niche. A door at the top opened onto a sheltered rooftop garden. Rand listened for a moment to the pulsing murmur that floated on the night air, then stepped through and closed the door behind him.

It had been many years since Asbrak the Fat had found it possible to walk from his palace to the quays without stopping for rest and refreshment. On this night he got scarcely past the first crossing before he found it necessary to stop, not for rest, but because he suddenly realized that he was hungry. Perhaps, he thought, his appetite had been aroused in anticipation of the long walk to the waterfront taverns that were his goal. Or it might be that he had simply been more than usually abstemious at dinner. He was quite sure he had eaten very little of the goose he had been served, and that he had neglected to do justice to the wine, though it had possessed a velvety richness that had melded gracefully with the dark succulence of the fowl. Of the potatoes stewed with garlic and cream, he had a memory of a few bites—no more than half a plate, probably much less.

He stopped outside a tavern and composed his features. He was acutely conscious of the need to suppress the air and posture of royalty natural to him. It was not enough to wear the clothing of a commoner; he must wear a mask of affable complacency through which the fire of the kingly eye could not be seen to penetrate.

As was his frequent practice, the king waited until he could make an entrance in the company of others. This, he was convinced, had the effect of diluting the impact of his arrival in a room, and of further distracting attention from him, lest some fugitive air of nobility draw a canny eye to a discovery of his counterfeit.

The king lounged a few paces from the door and gazed idly at the paving stones with an air of innocence. After a few moments, a small, slender man that Asbrak was sure he had seen before rounded the corner at a brisk pace. He glanced at the king, then nodded and darted through the door. Asbrak followed. Inside, the little man seemed to have disappeared until the king noticed him waiting by a barrel as a maid filled a large mug with ale.

Asbrak sauntered after the man, and negotiated with the girl for a beaker of amber beer and some bread and brined cheese and olives. As she peeled the wet vine leaves from the cheese, Asbrak questioned her about the man, careful to employ the accents of lisping gentility he imagined to be a characteristic of merchants of substance, but which were in fact the peculiarity of a certain well-known man who had become prosperous supplying the royal household with preserved roe, smoked fish, and other dainties.

“Oh, that’s just my uncle Dibrick, Your … Honor,” she said. Asbrak raised his eyebrows, then turned to see where the man had gone. The girl seemed, not nervous, perhaps, but somehow distracted and suddenly clumsy at her uncomplicated tasks. The man, meanwhile, had seated himself by a window and was observing the scene outside with his elbows on the table and his mug at his lips.

The girl tried to lead Asbrak to a large chair by the fire, but the king, ever watchful for signs of intrigue, threaded his way among the crowded tables and seated himself on a three-legged stool near the window. He was congratulating himself on placing himself so inconspicuously near the suspicious little man when the girl arrived with his food and drink.

“Oh, here, sir,” she said in a loud voice. “I hoped you would sit by the fire.” Asbrak raised his hand and shook his head.

“This will do,” he whispered.

The maid placed his things on the table with a clatter that made the secretive monarch wince. The man she had called her uncle didn’t look up, but as she left, she strayed in his direction and bumped his table with a force that almost unseated him. He began to protest, then caught sight of the king and got to his feet.

“Ah! Ha-ha,” he said, shuffling his feet and tapping the tip of his nose with his forefinger. “Ha-ha,” he repeated. Asbrak stared at him. He was beginning to wonder if the man possessed the power of speech when he uttered a single word.

“Dibrick,” he said. He glanced behind him, as though not sure his chair would still be there, then abruptly sat down. He grimaced at Asbrak. “Roaster,” he said, getting to his feet again, “of meats.” He raised his hand to the brim of his hat, then began to rub his car. “Ah,” he said, turning to look at his hand as though he didn’t know where it had come from. He sat down.

“Tobbruk,” said the king, trying to recall where he had seen this odd fellow before. “Wine factor.”

“Ha-ha,” said Dibrick. He cleared his throat laboriously, then took a lengthy nip from his pot of ale.

Asbrak raised his own glass. He began to wish he had accepted the cushioned chair by the fire. When, a moment later, he remembered his previous meeting with the roaster of meats, he wished so even more. He had talked to him, or rather, listened to his incomprehensible babble, outside this very inn one night last summer. Asbrak lifted a succulent olive from his plate, then dropped it as Dibrick began once again to clear his throat.

“Ah. Ha-ha.”

Asbrak raised his eyes reluctantly from his plate.

“Ha-ha-ha.” Dibrick took another heroic pull. “I sit at the window,” he announced.

“So you do,” said the king. He had planned to say no more, but realized that he had neglected to disguise his voice. “Soooo,” he lisped from the side of his mouth, “ah, that is, ah, one can certainly see things from a window.”

Instead of answering, Dibrick only grinned at him brightly. After a moment, Asbrak turned his attention to his snack, clipping a slab of bread into the pool of fragrant oil at the bottom of his plate. He made a mental note to have his kitchen procure some of this grape-leaf cheese. Here was a tavern in the very shadow of the royal residence, serving a cheese of surpassing excellence that had never, he was sure, graced his own table. Asbrak looked around the room. He did not begrudge his subjects their culinary pleasures. He knew there were kingdoms where certain dishes were restricted to the use of the aristocracy, but he found such practices inexplicable. In Ambermere, the very porters and drovers were welcome to their delicacies. Asbrak only wished them not to be withheld from the palace.

This, then, was an unlooked-for benefit of his anonymous visits among the populace. He resolved to make a practice of donning his disguises more often, if only for the purpose of sampling the products of the city’s kitchens. How fine it would be if he could have Breksin accompany him. The giant had more knowledge of food and drink than anyone in the kingdom, not excepting the king. At the thought of Breksin, he remembered his absence, one that might well be perilous. As this worrisome thought intruded itself, Asbrak became aware that someone was standing behind him. He placed his glass on the table and turned to see the roaster of meats positioned at his elbow like a butler at a banquet.

“Your … you mentioned the window.” Asbrak noticed that Dibrick’s head was now bare. Dibrick paced backward to his table and picked up his mug of ale. “Last night,” he began, then stopped to drink, at the same time advancing toward Asbrak. He lowered the drink and dabbed at his mouth with his sleeve.

“Last night, when it was raining and blowing so, I ran from just across the way there.” He pointed vaguely out the window. “Just crossing the avenue I got”—he looked down at his clothing—“good and wet, as you might say, not meaning soaked, but it was only a few steps, don’t you see, and I was mighty brisk about the business, and yet I got good and wet.”

Asbrak nodded absently and ceased to listen, concentrating instead on the way the mature pungency of the olives united with the youthful tang of the cheese to produce a rare effect. He looked’ for the girl, meaning to call for wine. The beer was good, but not suitable for his little feast. What it wanted was some red from the middle slopes, not too heavy. He tried to guess what Breksin would send from the cellars to go with this. Maybe even some still, luscious white, long in the cask, aromatic and buttery.

A word from Dibrick caught his ear.

Asbrak turned his attention to the roaster of meats. “What did you say about a witch?”

Dibrick favored him again with his grin. “Well, that was the woman, don’t you see?”

Asbrak nodded. “Ah,” he said. He tried to look past Dibrick’s gleaming teeth. “What woman?”

“The woman in the rain.”

“A witch, you say?”

“So it would seem.’”

“I see,” said Asbrak. “And why was that, again?”

“She came walking up the middle of the avenue in the pouring down rain, as you might say.” Dibrick blinked and sipped from his mug. “Just after I crossed from the public house.”

Asbrak looked out the window, recalling the blowing rain of the night before. “Yes?” he said. “And then?”

“And then she came in here. Walked right past me, straight as a soldier, wearing that hat, and dry as a summer morning.” Dibrick peered into his mug. “Near lost my thirst, I did. She wasn’t even damp. A witch is all right when you need a powder for a cough, or some such, but a man doesn’t like to see magic, unexpected, when he’s, as you might say, lifting a glass.”

Asbrak fixed the man with his kingly eye. “And this witch, then. What was her name?”

“Oh, it was that Hannah, which I’ve never seen her, but I’ve heard her name. I didn’t know she was one to walk dry through a storm, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes, as you might say, so I’ll not deny it.”

The king, his plate forgotten, rose from his seat. He murmured something absently to Dibrick and put a few coins on the table beside his beaker. Why, he asked himself as he moved through the room at his fastest stride, had he not thought to consult a witch? They had magical powers without doubt, and yet one was not accustomed to thinking of them in those terms. Witches were ladies to whom one touched by illness turned when the attentions of physicians either failed or, as was often the case, began to show signs of doing harm.

Outside the inn, he stood undecided. His impulse was to return to the palace and have Rand dispatch someone to fetch the witch. If she was a person of substantial magical resources, it was imperative that he consult her at once. Then he remembered that witches, at least those in stories, invariably lived in cottages away from other habitations, usually in a lonely woods, or on a mountain. He glanced up at the sky. He could scarcely ask a messenger to visit her after dark, assuming she could be located.

He turned again in the direction of the docks. He must continue with his original intention of visiting the taverns at the waterfront. It was there, if anywhere, that he might hope to overhear something that would be of use.

It was some time later that Asbrak found himself wearily passing through an alley not far from the docks. The damp night air carried the smell of pitch and salt, and the sound of a wine-smeared melody being sung somewhere nearby in an unsteady baritone. He had come all the way from the tavern without another stop, save for a sausage pastry he had bought from a vendor. This he had meant to eat standing, but the man had politely relinquished his bench, and then had gone so far as to fetch him a cup of hot spiced wine from another stall across the avenue. As always, Asbrak felt a glowing pride at the courtesy with which he was unfailingly treated when he walked the city streets in masquerade.

But now he had begun to feel a burning ache in his knees and ankles. He had left the lighted street for the alley in the belief that it was a shorter route to the taverns by the water. Now he was not quite sure which direction he was going. He knew only that the inhospitable backs of darkened buildings offered little cheer.

The song, which had died, rose again. It seemed to come from farther down the alley. A tavern then, or inn. Asbrak pictured a chair, perhaps cushioned, and a platter of steaming shellfish, or a chowder, rich with lumps of butter and aromatics from some sunbaked hillside. He quickened his pace. Even an alley grog shop would be a grateful haven, if only for a moment’s rest.

But for the song, renewed again just as he passed, Asbrak would have missed the entrance. He stopped and peered into the darkness. Though no sign hung above the door, the music was coming from behind it. He lifted the latch and pushed. He could see no light of lamp or candle, but the song spilled into the alley.

Once inside, the king could see a dim light. He walked down a hallway almost too narrow for one his size. At the end was a short descending stair. Just as he started down, the song rose again, this time carried by a number of careless voices. At the bottom, he was confronted with a hanging tangle of loosely knotted ropes decorated with beads and shells, sailors’ handiwork, as he recognized from other visits to the docks. He was at the point of pushing his way through when there was a loud clatter from the room beyond, and the song dissolved into shouts and laughter.

“Go ahead, break another one! Finnie don’t care.”

“Don’t worry, the rats’ll drink it.”

At the mention of rats, Asbrak looked around nervously, trying to see into the corners. He hesitated for a moment. Clearly he had come in the back door. Still he hoped to slip into the room unnoticed. He leaned forward, attempting to see through the curtain of ropes before committing himself.

Only shadows could be seen, and the glow of smoking lamps. There was a lull in the talk and laughter. Asbrak hoped the song would come to life again. He wondered if he might enter singing, and thereby seem merely to be another member of the company, unnoticed in the darkness and jollity. He would signal for wine and settle quietly in a corner.

But now the gathering had grown murmurous, a lazy drone of voices decorous enough for a tea party. He waited, perched on the last step, his joints aching. A few moments more, he decided, then he would simply enter as quietly as he could.

“And then there’s the chickens.”

Asbrak jumped at the quiet voice almost in his ear. His left foot slipped and he had to lean backward to keep from pitching headfirst through the curtain. He bent forward at the waist to keep his balance and sat down heavily on a narrow step that seemed to rise to meet him with a painful thump. At just that moment, a woman shouted something that was greeted with general laughter. Asbrak began to struggle to his feet, then was stopped by the sound of another voice.

“As loud as they say, are they?”

A second man had spoken. They were seated together at a table just on the other side of the curtain. Asbrak was, in effect, seated with them. He heard the sound of a glass being filled and realized he was very nearly in a position to reach through the hanging and steal the wine from their table. He wished he dared.

He squirmed on the step. The one he was sitting on offered but scant support for him; the one just above was pushing into his flesh in a most incommodious fashion.

“Louder. And the city just sleeps right through it like it was a lullaby. I tell you, Fossick, I was with a woman the first night, and them chickens—sea hens, they call them—brought me out of bed at dawn like the muster of Hell. And there I stand—naked—trying to sort out if I’m dead or alive, and that little witch from the public house is snoring! Ladylike, you know—soft—but snoring, and cuddled in the blankets like a baby in a basket.”

Asbrak was trying to adjust his position to one of less discomfort. He had heard of sea hens, but in what connection, he could not recall. Rand would probably know.

“Still,” said Fossick, “you’re a great traveler. It’s not everyone’s been to Devlin.” He laughed. “And bedded a pirate beauty.”

“Pirate, is right,” said the first man. “She got her price, she did, and counted every copper, too.” The two men laughed. “Then in the morning I saw a thing as made me wonder if I was still drunk from the night before. I was up with them cursed chickens, like I told you, so I went outside to see the city in daylight, and just as I came out of the inn, a man walked by that was the image of a great lord from home, but that he was dressed plain, and was by himself, which would never be,”

This got Asbrak’s attention, but at that moment the song was picked up again.

Asbrak leaned forward, every ache and discomfort forgotten. These men were speaking of Devlin. And spoke on, but the raucous song made their words difficult to hear. The king inched himself forward on the step so that his rolling flesh gradually translated itself down to the next step. Now his knees were almost touching the curtain. As he strained to hear, he tried to think what lord the man could possibly be referring to.

He supposed a common sailor might consider Reffex a great lord, if he knew nothing of him, but Reffex would not be one to be about at dawn, or dress himself in modest garb, either. Besides which, the count and Rogan could scarcely have arrived in Devlin by today; this seaman must have left Devlin before they arrived.

“ … the king’s nephew. I’ve seen him often enough. I was going to say something, but he passed so brisk, he was around the corner before I got my mouth working.”

As Fossick made remarks about the effects of wine and wenches on the brain and other organs, Asbrak made a rapid inventory of his nephews, a task that was greatly simplified by the fact that he had none. His only living male relatives were a few distaff cousins at barely calculable removes, none of whom could have been mistaken for a great lord by a bumpkin fresh from the hamlets, let alone a worldly salt like this one.

“You may say so, but we sweated the wine out, the little witch and I. My head was clear. The thing was, even his hair was the same, cut straight, not curled to fashion. And he was shaved the same—only a mustache. I tell you, I wish now I’d run after him and looked for his scar.”

“And then,” said Fossick, “what?”

The answer was drowned out by the swelling song. When it subsided, the two were discussing particulars of the little witch, so that Asbrak soon was acquainted with details of her body and her habits to a far more intimate degree than was seemly or proper.

The two men talked on and on, and spoke of everything except the one subject of interest to Asbrak. Some lord had been in Devlin. But who? Of what court? And when?

When, much later, the men rose to leave, Asbrak was sure he would be unable to gain his feet without either crying out in pain, or pitching forward and rolling into the room in an absurd and undignified manner. He carefully straightened his legs, allowing the tips of his boots to stray between the strands of rope that hid him. As soon as sensation returned to his feet, he pulled them back and planted them on the step. Being as quiet as he could, the king, balancing himself like an acrobat walking a rope, slowly brought himself to an upright position.

He had barely finished congratulating himself when he noticed that, given the shallow steps and narrow passage, he was unable to turn around. Feeling very put-upon, the king began to slowly ascend the stairs backwards. Having gained the corridor, he turned, with difficulty, and made his way to the space and freedom of the alley.

Despite his hunger and thirst, Asbrak visited no other taverns, but made his way to the lonely spot where a groom waited with his horse. With the help of a mounting ladder, the king gained the saddle, and soon was on his way home.

Chapter 8

“One and one is three.” Marcia was packing the satchel she had bought at the village market a few days ago.

Borphis was watching from his perch on the edge of her bed. “Oh yeah? Who says?”

“No one. It’s a math thing. Any system you want to invent is okay as long as you make sure it’s internally consistent.”

Borphis screwed up his face and stared at the ceiling. “Oh, okay,” he said after a moment. “You mean imaginary numbers.” He crossed his legs and dropped back on one elbow.

Marcia’s memory played a recording of her mother’s voice on the subject of shoes on the bedspread. “I don’t know about imaginary numbers,” she said, rolling a sweater into a tight bundle, “I didn’t get that far in math.” She looked up at Borphis, then at the sweater. What am I talking about? she said to herself.

“What math? I just meant numbers that aren’t real. What you were talking about is sort of like pictures of numbers, right?”

Marcia stuffed the sweater into a corner of her pack. “Pictures of numbers? I’m talking about numbers. Well, actually I’m talking about packing my bags for a trip to the Lower Regions. The only way that makes any sense at all is that it’s consistent with all the other crazy things I’ve been doing. I mean, I should be getting ready to go back to work on Monday, checking on my dry cleaning, things like that. Instead, I’m on my way to track down a crazy old man who is wandering God knows where, and when I find him the only thing I know to do is follow him, because those were the instructions—at least I’m pretty sure they were—that I got from my … den mother on my second day in the Celestial Girl Scouts, which is headquartered here in a rundown part of the city, but with a rear entrance on Mount Olympus.” She looked up at Borphis. “You get the picture.”

The little demon rolled over on his back. Marcia couldn’t refrain from glancing nervously at the bedspread to check for marks from his shoes.

“Yeah, but numbers are real.”

“Huh?” Marcia could feel the blank look on her face.

“They’re real things.”

“Numbers?”

“Right.”

Marcia straightened up and finished rolling the pair of socks she was holding. Lately it seemed that she had developed a knack, if not a genius, for getting into conversations like this.

“You mean like bricks?” she asked.

“What?”

“Numbers, Are you saying they’re real things like bricks are?” Again her eyes were drawn to the bedspread. “Or shoes?”

Borphis sat up. “Sure. You mean you didn’t know that?”

Marcia ignored the question. “I just have to ask you this,” she said. “Would you say chance is an illusion?”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded.

“And time, too?”

“Right. What’s your point?”

Marcia stared at him for several seconds, then looked down at the socks she was holding. She shook her head slowly.

“I don’t know.” She put the socks in the pack. “Let’s have lunch.”

Borphis was polite about the egg salad. Marcia had always liked it, but Mother had made it better. After they ate, she cleared the table. “Do we have to take water with us?” she asked as she put their dirty dishes in the sink.

“What for?”

“To drink,” she called over her shoulder. “Can we find water there?”

“Well, yes,” Borphis answered unenthusiastically. “But aren’t we going to pack some wine? And some cognac?” he added.

Marcia put a movie from her collection on the VCR and left Borphis curled up happily on the couch. It was clear that he saw no reason for them to go anywhere. He had mentioned that there was “more excitement” in the Lower Regions, but he seemed in no hurry to get back.

Alone in her room, Marcia finished packing, remembering to leave room for a few bottles of wine. She settled herself in Great-grandmother Mibsey’s rocker and relaxed, allowing her eyes to close. After her ring was stolen, she had learned to put herself into a meditative trance. And since Father had put the small gold band back on her finger, she had found the trance much easier to get into. That was how she had been able to follow him into the Lower Regions, and more important, how she had been able to get back to her own world.

Her eyes blinked open. She looked across the room at the satchel she had packed. She wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that if she really could cross from Region to Region freely—although that was a proposition that had not yet been thoroughly tested—she should be able to commute. She could look for Father during the day, then come back for a shower and a safe and comfortable night in her own bed. She laughed aloud. Should she take weekends off? Knock off in time for “Mystery” on Thursdays?

That, of course, was the lighthearted view of the question. There was also the chance that she wouldn’t be able to take herself anywhere, or that she might not be able to control the destination; or her personal favorite—that wherever she ended up, she wouldn’t be able to get back.

Which brought up the question of Elyssa. Where was she? And would she come if Marcia got lost somewhere in the confusion of dimensions and worlds?

With that cheerful thought, Marcia got out of the chair. Having interrupted her meditation anyway, she decided to clean up the kitchen so she could pursue her insane strategies with a clear conscience.

Borphis was still engrossed in the movie, a vintage musical full of big-band jazz and lively dancing. Marcia waved to him as she passed through the room. The dishes she had left in the sink were not there. A quick check of the cupboard revealed that they had been washed, dried, and put away. The cutting board had been scrubbed and hung up on its hook. The counter was wiped clean.

“Wow!”

“What’s wrong?” Borphis came into the kitchen. From the living room, Marcia could hear what sounded like an argument between a trumpet and a drum.

“The dishes,” she said. “That’s great.”

“Right.” Borphis looked around. “What are we talking about?”

Marcia smiled at him. “You did the dishes. I appreciate it.”

“What did I do to them?”

Marcia looked around the tiny kitchen. What had Borphis stood on?

“You didn’t come in here and wash the dishes and the cutting board and put everything away and wipe off the counter?” Somehow, saying it aloud made it sound silly.

“Was I supposed to? What should I stand on?”

Marcia was getting out of patience with forever wondering if she was crazy. She knew she hadn’t done the dishes, and she refused to speculate any more about her grip on reality. If she was nuts, she’d just have to try to enjoy it.

Borphis was looking up at her. “Anyway, doesn’t the kitchen thingie take care of that?”

Marcia stared into the sink. At Annie’s cottage, all the chores, including cooking, had been done by invisible hands.

“Evidently he does.” She wandered back into the living room. “I should have let him make the egg salad.”

She retreated to her bedroom again. Maybe, she thought, too many things had been happening in too short a time. She had worn the ring since summer without experiencing any profound changes in her life, her perceptions, or how her housework got done. But since last week, everything had undergone a radical change. Her aura had become positively eerie, and now she had an elf working in her kitchen. Which made a lot of sense, when she thought about it—the kitchen was really too small for a human being.

She sat down, determined to stay in the chair until she accomplished something. If she was going to follow Father, it would be a big help to have some idea where he was. She allowed herself to drift into a quiet stale and let her mind wander, putting her head back and closing her eyes.

Pale, unwholesome-looking corpses. Black cloaks in tatters. They were the size of men, nearly, but looked like furless rats. Nasty little teeth were bared as if in pain. Among the boulders were furtive movements, shadows that eased themselves forward with slow and patient secrecy.

One cloaked figure sat, a little apart, still but not fallen. Pale sharp fingertips showed from under the dark folds of the garment. The shadowed hood was turned from the corpses, looked across the cold ashes of a fire, down a rubble-strewn hill. At the bottom, a pool of water reached with dirty yellow fingers among the broken rocks. It seemed dead and still, but at its edges it pushed against the dry ground with a slow, unhurried pulse.

The hooded figure rose. It moved among the corpses, pausing once or twice, then drifted down the hill. It skirted the water and moved onto the rutted path that lay like a twisted ribbon across the plain. It moved at a pace that seemed unhurried, yet soon it was a distant shadow, black against the yellow ground.

From the garden of heavy boulders above the water, there arose a chorus of eager noises as the feeders advanced.

Marcia opened her eyes and looked around her bedroom with anxious glances. She sighed and got up from the chair. With visions of Hell fresh in her eye, her bedroom looked like Heaven.

What had she seen? Dream images, perhaps. She had looked for Father, and found instead a scene of misery and desolation. The figure had been draped and hidden, but could not be the old man she sought. She recalled the sturdy pitch and roll of Father’s gait. She had walked with him for days and never seen him float like a specter as the hooded figure had.

And what of the other old man she had met? Where would Alexander be now? He had gone with Breksin hoping to find Father. Had he come back to the inn for her? Marcia began to feel uneasy.

Would he follow her to the cave? To the Lower Regions? And if he did, then what? He was only a necromancer—a mage of this world. She did not know the precise limits of his power, but he himself had told her that without the convenience of a portal he could not readily travel between Regions. She stopped to think. Actually, only Elyssa and Father were able to manage that particular trick. Present company excluded, she reminded herself. Weird.

Marcia went back to her chair. She wanted to know what was going on, and she wanted to know now. She did not try to attain a state of relaxation; her jaw was set in a determined frown. She closed her eyes and leaned forward in the rocker, her heels planted in the carpet.

After a few sterile minutes, she was forced to conclude that gritting your teeth and squeezing your eyes shut was not conducive to visions. She had seen just what anyone unequipped with a magic ring would have seen—an uninformative pattern of faint lights and shadows that doubtless had less to do with clairvoyance than with the electrochemistry of vision. She allowed herself to settle back in the chair.

She was going to have to be methodical, she decided. Perhaps if she were to shift her view of reality, as she had yesterday morning when she saw the ghost and the sprites, she would have more luck. She tried to recall the feeling of tilting the spectrum, of shifting her perspective.

Nothing happened. For all the good it was doing her at the moment, her magic ring might as well have been a wedding band. She got to her feet, hoping that a little constructive pacing might help her to concentrate.

In the living room, Borphis was propped against the windowsill, gazing down at the traffic. “Where is everyone going?” he asked without turning around.

Marcia glanced at the clock on the mantel. “This is sort of the early warm-up for rush hour,” she replied.

Borphis looked at her with a smile. “I like that,” he said. “Rush hour.” He turned back to the window. “Is it some kind of contest?”

“Not exactly,” she said, going into the kitchen. She stopped and stared at the steaming carafe on the counter. “You made coffee?” she called.

“Sure, if you’re making some.”

Marcia looked around uneasily.

“That was fast,” said Borphis when she put the cup down next to him. He took a sip. “This is better than what you made this morning.” He raised the cup to his lips a second time. “A lot better.”

“Thanks.” Marcia scanned the room again before trying the coffee. Borphis followed her eyes.

“Uh-oh. I’ll bet we’re getting ready to leave.” He glanced regretfully toward the window. “I hate to miss rush hour.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to,” said Marcia, peering into the kitchen. “I think we’re staying until tomorrow morning.”

“Suits me,” said the demon, “Can we order pizza again?”

Marcia was still standing at the kitchen door. “You may have just done it,” she said.

When she finished her coffee, Marcia went back to her bedroom and sat herself down on the rocking chair. She put her feet flat on the floor and folded her hands in her lap. This time she did not close her eyes, but stared straight ahead at the wall.

The women were naked. The room was vast and dimly lit with candles. Shadows lay like smoke on the floor of bare tiles. The bed was curtained, wide and white and empty. There were narrow windows set high in the wall. Bright blue sky filled them, but no light entered the chamber.

The women moved like dancers, aimless, rhythmic, like curtains blowing in a breeze. Their laughter was like song. Incense burned in pots of polished brass. From outside came the muted sound of chanting.

Marcia guided her vision from the scene. This was the choreography of her imagination, material for a dream intruding on her search for Father. Maybe she was trying too hard. She would let herself drift, and see where the current carried her.

When the mist came, it surprised her. She rose from the chair without willing it, moved forward as though floating above the ground. It pulled her into it, this mist. She remembered that when she left the Lower Regions, she had been afraid she might break the fragile vapor, the spell that was saving her—that if she lost her concentration it would evaporate. The fog that surrounded her now was not like that. She could see nothing but a blanket of white. In a moment, she decided, she would turn, pull away.

The air felt damp and warm. Marcia turned her head. The fog, definitely wet now, was everywhere. She wrenched her body to the side. She was only testing her powers. She didn’t mean to go anywhere. She wasn’t ready. She would pull back, she told herself. Rise above this sticky fog. And not be carried—she would walk. She fought to get control of her legs. She took a step, then paused and breathed deeply. She was going to remain calm. She would clear her vision—this clinging mist would go away. She would walk into the living room—she took another step—pick up the phone …

She smelled water. Heard it—a gentle, slapping noise. She moved ahead blindly. They could eat early tonight. Borphis was always hungry anyway. She fell water pour into her shoe. She dragged her foot back and stumbled slightly on a hard, uneven surface.

“Wait!” she called out. “I’m not …”

Her voice was swallowed as it left her mouth. The mist felt like wet cotton in her throat. From somewhere nearby she heard a noise, a quiet scraping sound. She raised her hands and pushed desperately at the fog that blinded her.

She could sense the water in front of her. She turned and took a careful step. The ground was rough and seemed to rise. She took another step, and then another, planting each foot carefully, holding her hands stretched in front of her. She continued, climbing a gentle slope. Once or twice she thought she heard the scraping noise following her. As the mist began to thin, she moved more quickly. She could see large angular forms, whether of rocks or buildings or something else, she couldn’t tell. From somewhere ahead, she heard a sound like a distant voice calling.

She stopped and listened. She was greeted, not with silence—for the fog seemed to be filled with speech, a rustle of inarticulate whispers—but with a sense of the surrounding emptiness. A voice in her head wanted to whimper, to whine What have I done? She ignored it and listened behind her for the scraping sound. Hearing nothing, she went on.

In a few minutes she reached the top of the hill. She was on a wide street bounded on one side by a high, windowless wall, and on the other by a jumble of low, dark buildings. Here and there a light flickered. An occasional cry or distant shout could be heard. The mist had given way to a murky twilight in which she could make out few details, but the impression was of a shanty town.

She turned and looked back. The fog was like a sea of filthy clouds. She stared, trying to organize her perceptions. Intuitively, it seemed that somewhere down there Great-grandmother Mibsey’s chair should be waiting for her. She pictured it, empty, but rocking steadily on a beach of cinders at the edge of an encroaching tide.

She turned away. She had no idea what she was going to do, but descending back into the fog was not it. A dozen steps brought her near the end of the high wall. Ahead was a wide street crossing the one she was on. She was about to leave the shadow of the wall when she heard a scratchy high-pitched noise that sounded like rats fighting in a bucket. As she watched, a long two-wheeled cart squeaked into view. It was pulled by a trudging man with a thick short neck who leaned against his burden and stared at the ground in front of his feet.

Marcia waited until he was out of sight, then stepped forward. She kept away from the looming wall, favoring the low structures on the other side of the street. She had nearly reached the corner when she heard the creak of hinges and saw light spilling from an open doorway. Just inside it, bathed in wavering lamplight, a naked couple lay entwined on a pile of ragged cloth that shifted and twisted under them. The man was short and muscular, the woman, tall and thin, but with generous breasts and ample hips. As she watched, they turned to her, licking their lips and making noises in their throats.

Marcia reeled, the image of the rat corpses slamming at her memory. These two were neither so small nor so inhuman, but the resemblance was unmistakable. The man bared his little teeth and rolled from the woman to display himself. As Marcia stared at the glistening hairless flesh, another person, standing in the shadows outside the shack, began to move in her direction.

Marcia heard a quiet laugh. She pulled her eyes from the couple and saw a smiling round face. The man said something she didn’t catch, and reached toward her with a groping hand. A scent of overpowering sweetness assaulted her, catching in her throat.

“No!” She heard her own voice as though it had come from someone else. She took two quick steps backward. Her ring hand hung heavily at her side. She didn’t try to raise it.

“No,” she repeated. Her voice sounded weak. She stared for a moment at the man, almost near enough to touch. Beyond him the lovers were framed in the lighted doorway. For a moment, Marcia stood as though powerless to move, then she turned and walked away quickly.

The air was oppressively warm, and seemed almost too thick to inhale. As soon as she had put some distance between herself and the shack she stopped. She peered into the murky night behind her to make sure the man hadn’t followed her. She saw nothing; the street was quiet.

She was at the crossing. On the far side of the street, a few pedestrians passed, but there was no one nearby. She walked forward, stepping into the larger street that crossed the one bounded by the shanties and the wall. She stood now where the man had passed pulling the cart. There was no other traffic.

She had passed the corner of the wall. It was the blind side of a dark building, massive and ugly. The front was built of heavy block, piled in clumsy detail that gave it the look of an angry face. Shutters hid the rows of windows that started one story above the street.

For a building the size of a cathedral, it had an insignificant entrance. No broad steps swept up to arched doorways, no columns or latticed balconies framed a stately portal. At the level of the street was a single slab of hewn stone, the step to a modest door that might have graced a tenement, or served as the back door of a tavern.

It hung open. From inside came a hint of glowing light. Marcia thought she heard faint music. She looked around again, wary of being taken by surprise. The only movement she saw was across the wide avenue, where quiet figures passed in the night.

This had every earmark of a dream, or nightmare. Everything seemed imbued with symbolic import. She looked down. Except her foot. What could it mean that she was burdened with a sopping shoe?

But everything else. Glistening, lustful bodies writhing in a filthy hovel, beckoning her with empty animal eyes. The threatening shadow-man, the musky stench. Her shrinking weakness, her retreat.

Then there was the ominous wall, the hulking church-mansion, the shuttered windows, blind. The open door. The empty avenue, the passersby, remote and silent.

Again she turned in a watchful pirouette. What was this place she had come to? She did not bother to pinch herself. She was not dreaming, much as she might wish to be. She was wide awake, and had carelessly, foolishly brought herself here. This was worse by far than her other predicaments, because it was so completely pointless. When she had followed the strange old man who had no aura, she had had some semblance of a rationale; watching Father was her … assignment. When she had pursued him again to regain her ring, she was walking paths she had walked before, and for a clear and pressing reason. And when she had followed Father into the Lower Regions, and had Found herself lost and alone, she at least could say why she was there.

And now she was back, she suddenly realized. She sniffed the heavy air, recognizing the stench of the Lower Regions. The day before yesterday she had escaped. Now she had brought herself back by meddling with powers she did not understand and could not control. Powers, she reminded herself, that she possessed only because Father had stolen her ring and worn it for a few days. The ring that she had been told most particularly was never to be removed. Perhaps once the ring had been taken from her, she should not have dared wear it again. It had, almost, been wearing her since she had retrieved it.

She raised her hand and gazed at the ring. If she took it off, would she still be here? She pictured herself removing it from her finger and flinging it into the darkness, then shuddered, clutching the ring to her breast. If she was lost in the Lower Regions, her ring—and she felt it to be hers despite her misadventures—was her only connection to her own place, her own life. And it was her connection to Elyssa. Would she come, this enchantress—or goddess, or mega-witch—and make everything all right? Or was Father here, somewhere?

The street she had climbed, between the wall and the shacks, terminated at the avenue. It was nothing more, it seemed, than a way leading to the water, whether river, lake, ocean. Or mud puddle, for all she knew. She hoped it was not the way back to her apartment, because she could not imagine passing by those hovels again, let alone braving whatever might be waiting in the fog.

After assuring herself there was no one, or nothing, nearby, she moved into the darker shadows by the building. She kept clear of the door, stationing herself several yards away from it.

She brushed her ring with the tips of her fingers and made a conscious effort to compose herself, to concentrate. Surely, she thought she could bring this excursion under control. Given another few moments of peace, and just a little bit of luck, she could be back home in time to send out for pizza.

Chapter 9

Marcia stared into the middle distance, trying to bring her thoughts to a single focus. She closed her eyes. It was a matter of visualizing clearly, of releasing the power of the ring. Then home would lie just a few steps away.

The heat and damp distracted her. She closed her mind to them. She would walk through the bordering haze and leave this dreadful place. She struggled to bring herself to the sense of elevation that was required. Her scalp was wet with perspiration; her sock felt like warm mud. As she fought to exclude her surroundings, she heard a whispered hissing sound.

Her eyes snapped open. She saw no transitory mist, no sign of magical boundaries. Moving not at all, she looked toward the crossing. There, just passing the corner of the wall, were three figures. She could see them with surprising clarity, as though they were actors on a stage, surrounded by theatrical darkness, but picked out by subtle hidden lights.

The shortest was the man she had seen with the woman, dressed now in baggy pantaloons, a blouse with a high collar that came past his ears, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low above his eyes. One hand was at his belt, the other he rested on the woman’s hip, his arm around her waist.

She was attired in a single clinging garment, light in color and nearly transparent. A long filmy scarf bound her head, circled her neck, and fell over her shoulders. She was barefoot.

The third in the party was between the other two in height, dressed in clothes that were dark and nondescript. His cheeks were ruddy, his face animated by an eager smile. As the others walked into the avenue, he stopped and turned from side to side. His glance passed over Marcia, standing motionless in the shadows. When he stepped forward to join them, she silently released her pent-in breath.

The three stopped. As Marcia watched them, she heard again the sound of faint music, a little louder than before. Must be a convention, she thought flippantly, then froze as the group on the avenue turned in her direction. The man’s face was still lit by the smile. The couple merely stared ahead, the light reflecting from their little eyes.

Marcia remained motionless for the space of two rapid heartbeats, then moved with quick steps to the doorway. With one last look at the advancing trio, she went inside and pulled the door closed behind her.

The latch dropped and engaged. She looked to see if there was something she could fasten, a bolt to slam into place. There was nothing but the flimsy brass fixture. She caught a whiff of the sweet unwholesome odor that had enveloped her outside the shack. She turned away from the door, expecting at any second to hear the click of the latch.

She was in a hallway. What illumination there was came from the other end. With a final backward glance, she walked quickly toward the light, trying to make as little noise as possible. Her wet shoe rubbed at her heel and made sucking sounds with every step.

At the end of the hall she turned, half expecting to see the smiling man and the rat couple catching up to her. The gloomy passageway behind her was empty. She stood at the crossing of another hallway, wider and lighted by lamps placed on narrow tables. The music was louder now, and she could hear a steady pulse of low-pitched bumps, as if someone in a far-off room were pounding monotonously on a wall or floor.

She began walking toward the music. By the time she reached the end of the hallway, it sounded like a weekend party upstairs at the dorm. Except for the music. It was loud and insistent, and with a driving propulsive rhythm, but was from the era of the oldest films in her collection. There was a trumpet, and she was quite certain she could hear a clarinet mingling its squeal with the fragile crashing of a hammered cymbal.

Marcia hesitated and looked back. The corridor was empty. At this end there was no place to go but up a flight of stairs, and despite the cheerful sounds from above, she had no desire to join the party. She began to retrace her steps, slowing down cautiously as she approached the place where the two corridors met. She took a deep breath and gathered herself for a rush past the other hallway.

When Marcia heard her name, she didn’t scream. The sound she made was more like a shriek. The voice had come from behind her. She whirled to face it. At the end of the hall, just at the bottom of the stairway, was a man wearing evening clothes.

He called to her again. “We’re down here. Come on. Where have you been?” He took a step in her direction. Marcia looked over her shoulder quickly, then back. The man was standing with his hands at his sides, smiling at her. Who could know her name? Who could transport her in this way? This almost had to have some connection with the Sisterhood. She looked behind her again, then began to walk toward him.

“The band is great,” he said as she reached him. He turned and started up the stairs.

“Wait,” said Marcia. Her heart was pounding. She couldn’t tell if it was from relief or terror. “Who are you?”

He smiled. Marcia tried to remember where she had seen him. He seemed to stand out, to be more real, somehow, than his surroundings. The sensation was like that of unexpectedly seeing someone famous in the flesh.

“I’m Victor.” He started up the stairs again. When she didn’t follow, he turned and beckoned.

“Come on up. You have to meet everyone. The whole gang.” Marcia looked at her clothing, squirmed her foot in her wet shoe, and followed hesitantly. On the landing at the top of the stairs, Victor stopped with his hand on a doorknob. The music was louder here, but the song that was being played was slow and soft. Marcia could imagine multicolored light being reflected from a rotating sphere.

“You can check your ring with the girl.” He opened the door.

The floor was crowded with dancers. From across the room a pretty girl kissed the air with pouting lips and sent a wink in Marcia’s direction. Victor had gone ahead and stood with his back to her.

“I can take your ring for you, hon.” The girl was seated in a booth. She was chewing gum.

Marcia just looked at her, feeling awkward and out of place. All the women were wearing shimmery clothes that glittered. She looked down at her feet. There was a dark spot on the floor under her wet shoe.

“She’s completely reliable.”

Marcia jerked her head up. Victor was beside her. He was very handsome, she thought. About fifty, wavy hair with a touch of gray at the temples. Distinguished, her mother would have said. Sophisticated.

“Huh?”

“Jeannine.” He nodded in the direction of the check girl. “She’ll take good care of it.”

“Oh, I—” Marcia stammered.

“You bet! I’ll make you a ticket.” Jeannine began to rummage in a box behind the counter.

A pair of women in short black dresses squeezed between Marcia and Jeannine. Their heads were together. Marcia heard, “I don’t care, he’s a drip,” pronounced in clipped businesslike tones as they passed.

“Okay; here you are.” Jeannine was holding a beige ticket out for her. Marcia stared at it.

“Ring check,” said Jeannine.

Victor appeared at her side. “Ready?” he asked.

“I can’t take my ring off.”

“Is it stuck?”

Marcia stepped back. She wished she could have a moment to think. “No, but Elyssa said—”

Victor shook his head and laughed softly. “Oh, her,” he said, rolling his eyes and cocking his wrist in a way that gave him an air of charming vulnerability. “She’s a pip. She drives everyone nuts with that stuff. You’ll get used to it.” He peered at Marcia’s puzzled frown. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. She’s swell, it’s just … you know ….” He gave her a patient smile. “No one wears a ring here. You should have been told.”

Marcia hesitated, then grasped her ring and began to pull on it, at the same time looking nervously around the crowded noisy room. No one ever told her anything. It would be a relief, she thought, to take the ring off for a while, to put aside her burden. She imagined the feeling of the thin band slipping over her knuckle. She looked down at her finger, uncomfortably conscious of the fact that she was making Victor wait.

Remove it for no one but me. That is what Elyssa had told her when she put the ring on her finger. And Marcia had obeyed. She had not given the ring to Father; he had taken it from her. And when he returned it, he had put it back on her finger himself.

Marcia raised her eyes to Victor and favored him with a cold smile as she extended her hand. “Want to take it off for me?” She had not meant to sound harsh and mocking, but found she didn’t care.

Victor took a quick step away from her. “Forget it,” he said. “It’s not important. We’ll take care of it later.”

He started off through the crowd. “Come on, I want you to meet the gang.” Marcia looked back toward the door, then followed, favoring her wet foot.

The band began playing to an urgent, pounding beat. The bass drum looked big enough to be used in a marching band. The little drummer was almost hidden behind it. From the floor, Marcia could see only his head, and the blur of drumsticks flailing at a cymbal suspended by a string.

The musicians all were black; the dancers who crowded the floor were white. Marcia stopped and looked around. She felt as though she had wandered onto a film set. What would happen, she wondered, if she shouted Cut!

In fact, what would happen if she said or did anything? It was pointless to say that something strange was going on, as that was now her permanent situation, but this particular strangeness was different from what she had been getting used to. She looked back at the bandstand. There was something decidedly odd about the band.

“Say hey!” It was the girl who had winked at her.

Marcia wondered if she was getting punchy. Yielding to an irrepressible temptation, she said, “Twenty-three skidoo.”

The girl grinned. “I’m Suzy.”

“Lulu,” said Marcia, holding out her hand.

Suzy took a step backwards and giggled, fluttering her hand in front of her face. “I thought you were Marcia,” she said. She bent forward at the waist and stared into Marcia’s face. She had very pretty eyes.

Marcia wondered if she had finally lost her reason. “Marcia’s on vacation,” she said. “I’m filling in for her.” She took a step toward Suzy, “Actually,” she whispered, “she died.”

Marcia noticed that the music had begun to sound very strange. The frantic tempo of the drumming remained the same, but the other instruments began to sound as though they were being played at random, like noisemakers at a party.

The dancers were still cavorting with the same vacuous enthusiasm. They looked, Marcia thought, a lot like puppets being jerked around on invisible wires. She scanned the room. One or two people waved to her gaily. Marcia ignored them.

Evidently she wasn’t meant to examine things too closely here. The music filled the background nicely, was tuneful and lively. But when she focused on it, it started to show signs of disintegration. It was as though the instruments were providing noises that her brain would turn into music. She wondered about the dancers, the snatches of conversation. Was it all just gibbering and jumping that she was then organizing into a semblance of integration and coherence?

And the stuff about the ring. It annoyed her that it was no more subtle than it was, and that, with the real Marcia, it could work anyway. It was simply a matter of getting to the central core of weakness. There was no denying the urge she had felt to hand her ring over to Jeannine—to do what Victor had told her, to be accommodating, and hope that no one would notice her inappropriate clothing, her waterlogged shoe.

Suzy was still looking at her expectantly, her pretty eyes wide and friendly. Marcia looked down at her slippers. They were the same deep red as her lipstick.

Marcia had seen a lot of old movies. She leaned back, cocked her head to one side and tried to sound like a soprano Humphrey Bogart.

“The trouble with you, sweetheart, is both your shoes are dry.” She executed a few dance steps she had learned as a child from the old man across the hall, then sang the punch line from his almost favorite song.

“Lulu’s back in town!”

Victor appeared at her elbow. “Having a good time?”

“You bet!” Marcia sang out. The band ended their song with a crash, then immediately launched into something slow and bluesy. “Suzy is, uh, swell.” Victor was staring at her. Marcia went on. “With it,” she said with exaggerated gaiety. “You know—hep.”

Victor smiled at her uncertainly.

“What’s the matter, honey?” she said. “Aren’t we going to meet the gang?”

His smile disappeared. “Of course,” he said.

Marcia followed him to a table where four women were seated. He gestured to one of the empty chairs, but did not take the other one. He looked pained.

“I don’t think Marcia likes her party,” he said, then left.

Marcia looked at her companions. If you don’t know the rules, she thought, you make up your own. The worst thing is to let the game play you.

“Lulu,” she said.

The chair directly opposite Marcia was empty. The woman seated next to it was wearing a jacket with wide lapels shaped like the feathers on an arrow. With her fingertips she slowly pushed a crystal goblet in Marcia’s direction.

Marcia glanced at it. “Lulu doesn’t drink,” she said. Where, she wondered, was this anger coming from? She could feel, faintly, like the memory of a caress, the demon’s scar next to her eye.

The woman seated to her left leaned forward. “Marcia,” she began.

Marcia shook her head vigorously, imagining her boring straight brown hair as a mass of bouncing auburn curls. “Marcia drank,” she said. “In fact, she was a lush.” She smiled at all of them. “That’s how she died.”

“Marcia, we are your sisters.”

Marcia looked around the table at the four women. “Charmed,” she said. “Listen, I have to go order a pizza.” She started to get up, though not with any clear idea of where she would go.

The woman with the lapels rose quickly. “The Sisterhood commands it!” she spat. “Remove your ring and share the ritual glass with us!”

Marcia dropped back into her chair. The woman sat down with studied grace. She smiled thinly and held out her hand.

“Now,” she said. “First the ring must—”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” said Marcia, almost shouting the names. The Ultimate. Mother had permitted herself this blasphemy precisely twice in all the years Marcia had lived at home.

The woman jerked back in her chair. The first woman leaned across the table and touched the stem of the glass.

“Really, Marcia, you’re overwrought,” she said softly. “Never mind the ring for now. Just take a drink.”

Marcia sat up straight and bent her head over the glass like a person saying grace. The woman waited silently. Finally, she took the glass and lifted it. She looked up, holding the drink at eye level. Her posture and attitude were those of someone about to propose a toast.

“You know, I think you’re right. I am feeling a little overwrought.” She smiled shyly and met the eyes of each woman in turn. “But I thought I explained.” She raised her hand higher. When she spoke again it was in a voice not much above a whisper. “Lulu doesn’t drink,” she said, and smashed the goblet to the table.

Lulu would not jump away from the table, Marcia had decided. Anyway, Lulu was just wearing some old casual things that Marcia didn’t care about, and one of Lulu’s shoes was already wet. She had pictured these sisters of hers squealing and recoiling from the drops and shattering glass, but none of them moved. The woman across from her was bleeding from a tiny cut below her lip. She glared at Marcia silently. Marcia winked at her.

Victor shouldered his way through the dancers. Behind him was a person Marcia couldn’t see, except for a flowing dress with a crowded floral pattern in yellows and faded reds. Marcia watched as Victor produced a napkin and wiped the table clean. The unbroken stem of the goblet was swept onto the floor and bounced out of sight among the feet of the oblivious jitterbugs.

The woman was old, and wore heavy makeup that seemed to accentuate the loops of wrinkles hanging under her eyes, the creases in her forehead, the long emptiness of her hollow cheeks. Victor helped her into the remaining chair, opposite Marcia. The woman’s body was hidden by the shapeless garment she wore, but as she fussed herself into a comfortable position, it seemed too large for her long neck and narrow face.

Marcia watched with a trace of Lulu’s smart-ass smile still on her lips. In the few minutes she had known Lulu, she had grown quite fond of her, besides which, Lulu was certainly handling this situation better than Marcia would be able to. When Lulu turned in the direction of the bandstand and shouted in a brassy voice, she felt like an observer.

“Hey, Sambo!”

Marcia cringed. She sincerely believed that racial epithets were ugly, violent, and only escaped being inexcusable because ignorance was not always voluntary.

“Stop the music. Can’t you see the old dame’s trying to concentrate?”

Marcia gasped. Lulu was being rude.

No one would ever guess you grew up in a tenement.

Marcia had never thought of it as a tenement. It was just inexpensive. A little run down.

And as far as what’s shocking, trust me, you’re no judge. You purse your lips when someone says “flaunt” for “flout.”

Mother pursed her lips, but I don’t, Marcia thought, pursing her lips.

I’m not even going to mention “ekksettra.”

Marcia shook her head. Another form of insanity. An argument with an alter ego.

The band had stopped. The trumpet player was grinning at her, bobbing his head up and down and rolling his eyes. A similar image of a black man being ritually obsequious had distressed and embarrassed her when she saw it in an old movie, and she had been alone in her apartment at the time. Now everyone in the room was looking at her.

Marcia focused on Victor. His face was contorted with a snarl of anger. Both his charm and his good looks had vanished. He spoke between clenched teeth.

“Be silent, you vile bitch!”

Marcia stared blankly at him. You’re on, Lulu, she thought resignedly.

“Hey, Victor.”

He glared at her. She hadn’t noticed before the dark circles around his eyes. It made him look … ominous.

“Go piss up a rope.”

Lulu smiled sweetly.

So did Marcia. She had been secretly waiting for an occasion to say that terrible thing ever since a day thirty years ago when she had heard an older girl in the neighborhood use it to silence a blustering boyfriend.

It worked again. Victor uttered a few strangled noises, but no words. Marcia didn’t know a great deal about vulgarities, but she had always suspected that an adequate retort to that one could not be improvised.

“Why do you work so hard to anger me?” The old lady raised her eyes and gazed across the table. Her aura was thin, and seemed to melt into the ambient light. Marcia realized that there was no visible source for the room’s illumination, just a generalized glow. She, or Lulu, looked unconcernedly around the room. Now that the dancers had stopped, there seemed fewer of them. When the music was going, the dancers all in motion, she would have guessed there were twenty-five or thirty couples. There seemed now to be only a few people on the floor, all staring at her. And the auras, as much as she could see of them, all appeared to be the same, a rudimentary arrangement of simple hues.

The women at the table—her sisters—had individual auras, more complex ones that had a quality of fluidity. Victor’s was like that as well. It might have been composed of flame. This was outside Marcia’s experience, and strangely unsettling. She found herself thinking that this might be a good time for Lulu to keep her mouth shut.

The old woman continued to watch her, not staring, but gazing mildly at her like someone examining a curiosity.

Marcia’s panicky thought, when she found herself alone with the old woman in a cramped room lit by a single candle, was that Lulu had been left behind. There had been no sensation of passing time or change of place. They had been in the dance hall surrounded by a silent crowd. Now they were seated at a small table. The candle stood in no holder or saucer, but was stuck to the rough planks of the table by its own melting wax.

“Lulu is right about the ring, of course.” The old woman glanced toward a slithering sound in the shadows by the wall. “Do you keep pets?” she asked in a tone of polite conversation.

Marcia stared silently. Only with Elyssa had she experienced something like this seamless transition. And even then it had been necessary for them to join hands. This old woman had not touched her, or even made a gesture, and yet in a sliver of time during which Marcia had not blinked, they had been translated from the dance hall to this place.

“The ring? Lulu?”

“I am not ready to take it from you by force. Not yet. Nor should I have to. It is mine.” The woman made a weary gesture. She looked tired and old. “Simple fairness—”

Marcia interrupted. “I’m sorry, you’re wrong. This is Elyssa’s ring.”

For a moment, the old lady was still. Marcia wondered if she had been heard.

The woman said, “Are you so sure?” in a tired voice. “Are you even certain it is the ring you think it is? You take it off, just for a moment, and I will show you how it has been changed.” She looked up at Marcia. The skin around her eyes seemed to droop. “The Sisterhood has rules—laws to govern the rings. You have an obligation to let me look at it if the ownership is questioned.” She extended a wrinkled hand, palm up, across the table.

Marcia felt confused. Far too many things had happened in far too short a time. She knew this was the ring Elyssa gave her. But she also knew that it had been changed, and that it had changed her aura in disturbing ways. As always, there were many questions and no answers. She looked at the old woman’s outstretched hand. It looked passive, almost dead, illuminated only by the watery light of the candle, waiting for the ring.

“You must think I’m nuts.” Lulu always sounded cheerful, Marcia noted. Cheerful and calm.

The woman drew her hand back. “All right,” she said in a tired, patient voice. “Just take it off. I will tell you what to look for.”

Marcia didn’t take her eyes from the ring when she answered. “I am not permitted to take it off.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” said the woman after a silence. “But you did. Another wore the ring you call yours, changed it. Of course, change is the law. Even the sea changes: rises in one age, falls in another; steals kingdoms from their rulers and deeds them to swimming things. And if the sea may change its boundaries, you and I may change a rule. Especially one that has been broken already and no longer matters. Take off the ring. I will show you something that will surprise you.”

“I will not remove the ring.”

There was a moment of utter stillness. In the dim light, Marcia thought she saw a gathering of shadow behind the woman. It seemed almost as though she were growing larger. Marcia watched with mounting apprehension. The silence stretched on.

In a single violent motion, the old lady erupted from the table with a howl of rage. She sprang backward like a gigantic cat, then hurled herself forward and gripped the edge of the table. Her stringy white hair framed her head in the candle’s glow. In the uncertain light, her teeth looked impossibly numerous, and sharp.

“It is mine!” she shrieked, flinging foamy spittle from her lips with every word. With a movement too quick to see, she clamped Marcia’s forearm in a painful grasp and yanked her to her feet. Her furious scream was almost unintelligible.

“I’ll dine on you, and lick your blood from that ring!”

Marcia’s sudden fear was overtaken by a reflexive surge of anger. For an instant, she was intensely conscious of her ring and aware, as well, of the demon’s mark, and even of the scars on her shoulder. She felt a tremor of heavy force shake her. When the woman immediately dropped her arm and cried out again, Marcia couldn’t tell if it was in rage or pain. She watched her pace back and forth like a bear in a cage, just beyond the light of the candle. The woman moaned, or perhaps was muttering or complaining to herself. Marcia was in a situation beyond the guidance of both etiquette and common sense. She dropped silently back into her chair, waiting for whatever might come next. Her arm was numb.

When she took her seat, the woman looked tired and feeble again.

“Now, this ring …” She placed next to the candle a worked gold band set with a large green stone. She took her hand from it as though with reluctance and raised her eyes to meet Marcia’s. Her voice was conversational and just a bit tremulous. “… is a rare wonder. It has a virtue you will appreciate.”

Marcia felt glued to her seat. She met the old woman’s eyes with difficulty and did not speak.

“When we exchange, and you put it on, it will take you back to your home. After that, it will have no properties but its worth in trade, which is great, as you will find.” She dropped her arm onto the table and shifted the ring a little away from the candle. She released it slowly and sat back in her chair.

“Now,” she continued, “take your ring off and put it next to mine.” She pushed herself back from the table. “When you put mine on, you will be back in your own place.”

Marcia peered across the table. From somewhere outside came the sound of a high-pitched call. She raised her ring hand and looked down at the thin circle of gold on her finger. When she raised her other arm, she felt a sharp pain. She took a long, slow breath and reached for her ring, then put her hands together and looked up.

“No.”

Marcia had expected the woman to fly into another rage. Instead, she remained completely still, moving only her eyes, first to the ring on the table, then to Marcia.

“Tziann will not come here.”

Feeling like an idiot, Marcia uttered a polite, “I’m sorry?” What, she wondered, were the conventions of discourse with a monster? This old hag had threatened to make a meal of her, and Marcia was talking to her as though she were her hostess at a garden party.

“The one you serve.”

Marcia began to answer, then stopped and leaned forward. The old woman’s aura was more defined when she was out of the light. In the dance hall, Marcia had seen only a feeble emanation that was swallowed in the surrounding light. Now, in deep shadows, the aura radiated a suffocating murk of evil hues that seemed to extend to the limits of the room. Marcia had to resist an impulse to hold her breath.

“Elyssa?” she said.

The woman smiled. Marcia made an unsuccessful effort not to look at her teeth, then was startled to notice that they were neither sharper nor more numerous than her own. The smile turned to quiet laughter.

“A pretty name,” she laughed. “Is she pretty for you, this Elyssa? Is her appearance pleasing?”

Marcia nodded. In fact, the most noticeable thing about Elyssa, besides her impossible aura, was her eyes, which were deep and cold and somehow wild. It was because of her eyes that Elyssa’s presence was disturbing, even frightening. More frightening, yet, than this frightening hag, which was a comfort, Marcia supposed. If Elyssa would only come, how gladly would she welcome the sight of those cold, wild eyes.

“And who has marked you, marred your pretty skin?”

Marcia wondered if she should refuse to speak. Was there some trickery in this quiet talk? She thought back to the night last summer in the alley. Elyssa had called the monster by name.

“Rassadder? Balder-something?’ she said. “And some other names, I think.”

The old woman nodded. “Yes,” she said, “one of our petty kings.” She pulled her chair closer to the table. “So it is his scar you wear, then? You stood before him, bore the weight of his malice? Was it worth it?”

“What?”

“The strength you gained. Was it worth—?” The old woman glanced at Marcia’s arm, then looked away quickly. She seemed to frown before baring her teeth in a gruesome smile again. Marcia took her eyes from her hostess long enough to look at her forearm. On the underside, just by the bone, were four purple bruises. Three of them were bleeding. More scars, she supposed. She was pretty sure there were veterans of gang wars who bore fewer permanent marks of violence than she did. She had the demon’s mark next to her eye, the traces left by the punctures in her shoulder, and now these wounds.

The dancers were gone. Only Victor and the four women remained. Marcia looked around for Suzy. She was absent, as was the fearsome hag. Again there had been no sensation attendant to the change of place, though the chair she sat in, and the table before her, were different from the ones in the hut.

Had she imagined the old woman, the table with the candle? She turned her arm over. Beneath the tatters of her sleeve, the blood still flowed from her bruises.

She looked up at Victor and the women. All of them were staring at her injuries. She addressed them in Lulu’s voice.

“Some bouncer.”

Victor took one step away as the four women got up slowly from the table. Marcia just watched them wearily. She wondered what time it was. When Victor spoke, it was in a hushed voice.

“She is too—”

He was interrupted by a woman who had not spoken before.

“She has sent her back, that is all. Just wait.”

Victor took another backward step. “But, her arm, she—”

“Where is the dreen?” The old woman, still dressed in her flowered gown, was walking across the empty dance floor.

Marcia found her gaze wandering to the bandstand. The bass drum was all that was left of the band. Above it, the suspended cymbal still moved slightly, like an expiring pendulum. Dreen? she thought. She brought her eyes back to the old woman. There was something different about her. She was walking very slowly, and looked somehow larger than she had before.

“I am here,” said a voice from the shadows. Suzy’s flapper outfit was in disarray, as if she just spent twenty minutes in the backseat of someone’s flivver. Marcia wondered how she could have missed her aura before. She didn’t remember noticing it at all, and yet it was not one that could easily be ignored. And the way she was moving was different. Before, Marcia had seen Suzy perform antique dance steps with the frenzied grace appropriate to them. Now her gait was brisk and purposeful.

The ache in Marcia’s arm was icy cold. Pain reached from her shoulder to her fingertips. With effort, she pulled her attention from it and forced herself to concentrate on the old woman and her allies. She got up slowly from her chair.

The old woman’s stare seemed to bore into her. “I tell you, Tziann will not come here, will not challenge me.” She gestured to the others. Suzy came to stand at her side. “Look around you at the power you think to defy.” Suzy took something from the woman’s hand and began to walk toward the table. Marcia stepped around her chair and backed away, glancing quickly over her shoulder to check behind her. Suzy’s eyes, still pretty, but hard, caught hers. She opened her hand to display the ring the old woman had offered Marcia before. She placed it in the center of the table, then stepped away.

Marcia fought to keep her concentration. The pain in her arm had the dull insistence of a toothache. It was becoming difficult to push it away.

“I offer you this ring one time more,” said the old woman.

Marcia straightened her back. She wanted to put aside the pain in her arm, to forget it until a more convenient occasion, and yet it seemed to clamor for her attention. On the other side of the table, her enemies were ranged against her. As she watched, they took one step forward, moving in unison like a chorus line or drill team.

She tried to think about her options. There was, of course, the option of trading rings, but one and one had to continue adding up to three, and yielding didn’t fit the pattern. Then there was the matter of her ancestry. Had her straits not been so dire, she might have smiled. Here she was, proving to be a Mibsey woman after all. Stiff-necked and stubborn to the end.

She brushed her thoughts and theories aside. There were, in fact, no options. There was only one thing to be done. As she stepped toward the table, she realized she had to let the pain go. This was no time to divide her energies, such as they were.

She stumbled at her second step, hesitated, then moved on. From the other side of the table, the old woman smiled a very ugly smile. Marcia bent her injured arm and raised it to her chest. The pain seemed more manageable now than when she had tried so hard to manage it. It seemed almost to buoy her, as though pain itself could be a source of strength.

Marcia had stopped hoping that Elyssa would come to rescue her. She was on her own, just as Annie had said. There was no one to rely on but Marcia. She would do what Marcia could.

She stopped at the table, looked down at the ring. She raised her eyes to the old woman.

“What is your name?” she said, listening to her voice crack. She felt very tired.

“Remove your ring and exchange it for mine.”

“I will take nothing without the name,” said Marcia wearily, not knowing why she cared, but feeling it was important to win this one concession.

The old woman stared at her carefully, still with the smile on her lips. She turned to Suzy.

“Take back the ring.”

Suzy was a few paces from the table. At her first step, Marcia raised her ring hand from her side.

“Do not come nearer.” Marcia’s voice was low and dry.

The old woman shifted her weight. “You are ignorant,” she called. “You cannot stand before a dreen.” Victor and the four women laughed. The sound was intimate, almost friendly. Marcia waited for them to stop.

“Give me your name.”

The old woman didn’t answer, but waved Suzy toward the table.

“I will not have you any closer to me,” said Marcia.

“Step back then, Lulu,” said the flapper. The quick look she sent to Marcia was somber, almost sad.

Marcia crowded closer to the table. Suzy took half a step toward her, then looked back at the old woman. There was a long silence. Marcia felt light. The pain was gone from her arm. She wondered if she was going to faint.

“Ulda.” The hag’s voice was flat.

Marcia put her hand on the table. She wondered how much more effort she could put forth. She tipped the table over and kicked it aside. Suzy moved backward out of the way.

Marcia gathered her ring hand into a fist. She had no more ideas and no more patience. Whatever strength, whatever force she had, she would use. She concentrated her thoughts on the ring, trying to put all her energy there. She felt weightless. She raised her eyes and stared at the old woman. “Ulda!” she cried in a hoarse shout, and began to advance across the floor.

She stumbled and looked around her in surprise. She was back in the place where Ulda had attacked her. The candle still burned in its place on the table. The dancing shadows barely reached the walls of the small room. She was alone. The room was as it had been, but for Ulda’s absence. She went to the wall and made a careful circuit of the chamber. The floor seemed to be of packed dirt, the ceiling was low, and there were no windows. In the corner furthest from the table she found a wooden door. She put her hand on the latch, then let it go again. She would take advantage of this respite to gather her thoughts.

She sat down in the chair she had occupied before, as grateful for the rest as if she had spent hours on her feet. Yet she had not been here for long. She had no watch, but guessed it was probably now about the middle of rush hour.

Still plenty of time, she thought, to order a pizza with double sausage. She wondered when Borphis would miss her. If she could manage to get back soon, he’d still be at the window watching the traffic.

And she might get back. Ulda and the others were afraid of her, or of her ring. If she had been more sensible and less aggressive, if she had yielded, or tried to avoid conflict, where would she be now? According to Ulda, safe at home. Marcia shook her head sadly. She was picturing the mutilated corpse of a naive apprentice sorceress. She had learned a valuable lesson tonight. Now she had to try to live long enough to benefit from it,

It took less than an hour to establish that she could not at the moment escape this place by means of magic. She tried repeatedly to reach a state of displacement, abstraction, but the only vision she saw was of her physical surroundings—the only mysterious shadows, the ones that cloaked the room she sat in.

Her arm had begun to hurt again. When she had been injured last week, her puncture wounds had made her ill, despite the protecting power of the ring and the ministrations of the village witch. Now she had been wounded again, and there was no witch to treat her with herbs and potions.

She rose wearily from the table. The room was warm and damp, but Marcia felt hot and dry. She suspected she looked like the consumptive heroine of a tragic opera. That was certainly the way she felt as she shuffled unsteadily to the door.

It opened on protesting hinges to a sight she had not expected. The floor of dirt and blank walls had led her to believe she was in a cellar, perhaps a dungeon. She had thought to find a stairway, or corridors of dripping stone patrolled by rats and spiders.

The light outside was the same as before, but the mist was heavier. Marcia stepped out and closed the door behind her. She peered through the vaporous atmosphere that clothed the landscape of shacks and rubble. She took a few careful paces and looked back at the shapeless hovel she had emerged from. It was the twin of the one the rat people had occupied. All around her were others, only a few yards apart, dark and silent.

She guessed she must be somewhere in the slum she had passed earlier. She saw no sign of any structure larger than the huts around her. The large building with the great blind wall was nowhere to be seen.

There was a stirring nearby. Marcia turned in time to see something big launch itself from one of the neighboring roofs and flap heavily into the mist. From behind her came another sound. She whirled, but saw nothing. Here and there in the distance were lights. She recalled the rat people and their open door.

Marcia felt dizzy. Making sure she wouldn’t lose track of where she was, she made her way around two shacks built close together, staying clear of the deepest shadows. Ahead there seemed to be a narrow lane. She oriented herself again. The vile little shanty she had crept from a moment before was now her only refuge. It would not do to lose it. She studied its ramshackle contours carefully before turning again to the lane. Thinking she might get a better view of her surroundings, she started toward it, but before she had taken her second step, she was halted by a familiar noise.

It was the quiet scraping sound she had heard in the fog when she had first arrived. As she listened, her breath in her throat, it stopped, then started again. It was close, and getting closer. Being exquisitely careful to make not the slightest sound, Marcia moved into the deeper shadows by a leaning wall of scrap wood and rotting cloth.

The man looked gray, like an image in a black-and-white photograph. His clothing was scant and made up of rags. He was tall and muscular. His expression was vacant. His eyes were fixed; unmoving as his head swayed from side to side. He dragged a large sack by a rope. It looked heavy.

Marcia watched him pass. She waited until the sound of the sack had faded into the distance, then retraced her steps to her—as she approached, she tried to think what to call it—bungalow, cottage, cabin, hut, shack, shanty. She thought of the rat people. Whore’s crib? Hi, I’m your new neighbor. What a place for a virgin warrior.

By the time she got inside, she felt almost too weak to cross the room. She collapsed onto the chair and put her head down on her arms. Her skin was hot. She could smell the blood drying on her bruises. She would rest for a few minutes, she decided, then figure out what to do next.

Chapter 10

At dawn the Devlin sea hens boiled from the cliffs and screamed the morning into being like a waiting army that strikes at first light. In the town the bakers and others whose business it was to be about at such an hour left their pillows and their dreams, but the other citizens slept on, no more disturbed by the familiar chorus than a slumbering sexton is by the peal of tower bells. It was only away from home that Devlin hands were early risers, drawn grouchy from their beds by a peaceful sunrise.

Devlin had no wharves or docks; seagoing vessels were piloted through the protecting reefs and anchored well out from the strand in calm deep water. Instead of inns and taverns where the sea met the land, the drawn-up boats and drying nets of Fishermen dominated the waterfront. Next came their dwellings, from huts and shanties of castoff planks to sturdy cottages of stone and painted timbers. Behind them in Fish-Head Alley were the salt shops and smokehouses where the catch not used fresh was prepared for laying by.

Then came the town itself, sprawled out between the forbidding cliffs and the sea. There were tall buildings and squat, broad buildings and narrow, buildings that faced each other, buildings that stood shoulder to shoulder and faced the sea, buildings with their backs to one another, buildings angled toward a neighbor—the architecture of Devlin had as many attitudes and postures as the shoppers in a crowded market square. It looked like a town put up by careless children working in the dark.

On the tenth morning after he had left Ambermere, Breksin entered the city of Devlin by way of the narrow, winding road from the mountain passes. He had risen early and was already on the skirts of the last hill as the sea hens passed. On his back was a satchel, on his shoulder, a small black cat, and hanging from his belt was a heavy battle hammer, old and covered with faded stains.

He had no difficulty locating the fortress residence of Black Jack Flanders, the preeminent criminal in this city of thieves. It sat on the knuckles of the Devlin cliffs, four stories of hewn stone. It looked like the castle of a petty prince and sat apart from its neighbors, bordered on the front and sides by a small park of gnarled seaside trees and unkempt hedges.

With the help of a baker’s boy on whom he bestowed enough pennies to make a week’s wage, Breksin found a quiet, respectable inn, meaning one in which the common room furniture did not have to be put back together every morning. Even pirates, it seemed, grew with advancing years to relish a quiet cup after dinner, and cards or dice unaccompanied by knives and cudgels.

He spent the day getting used to the city, and more importantly, letting the city get used to him. If there was no hope that one so large could be inconspicuous, at least he could become a common sight—an exotic, perhaps, but not a rarity. His hammer he left with his other belongings at the inn and ambled through the lanes and alleys, just another giant with a black cat perched next to his ear.

After stowing his gear, he took a late breakfast in the company of bleary-eyed tars in a waterfront dive, where he concocted a punch of raw eggs and cooked wine, to which he added spices from a pouch he carried. This steaming brew he offered around with the assurance that it would cure those who could keep it down, and make a noticeable improvement in the condition of those who could not. It worked well enough that a number of the sufferers spoke of little else during the day, and numerous schemes were proposed for getting the packet of spices away from him, either by fraud or outright violence.

At midday, he repaired to a cobbled lane where every window had been shuttered till noon. There he enjoyed a fine lunch among a crowd of newly awakened whores. As a son of the high mountain clans, Breksin was an incurable prude, but he tried to enjoy the luscious beauty of the women in spite of their lewd talk and scanty garments, and though he could not bring himself to pronounce the shameful words they used so freely, he left them with the promise that they would “see more of him” on some night very soon. He blushed when he had to lift the faithful kitsey from the ample bosom where he had draped himself. His blush deepened at the parting words whispered in his ear by the girl, who was easily young enough to be his daughter.

By evening he and the cat had seen most of Devlin, and Breksin had spoken to a number of merchants, tradesmen, and artisans, but nowhere did he hear any talk of the royal hostages. An Ambermere ship had stopped yesterday, but only long enough to put a small party ashore. That seemed odd, but he supposed the diplomats had a well-established protocol for the exchange of hostages and ransom. He also learned that Black Jack Flanders had returned to the city four or five days ago, and that he had been seen very little since [hen, having kept to his house more than was his custom ..

“He’s a great one for the taverns, is the cap’n. The taverns and the ladies both,” a wine merchant had told him.

“They’re all divils,” the man’s wife added sourly.

“Who, the … freebooters?” Breksin asked. He had learned that the word pirate was considered unacceptably blunt in Devlin. The woman narrowed her eyes and looked up at him.

“Men,” she said.

After visiting a number of taverns, Breksin was inclined to agree with her. Had he not known better, he would have begun to imagine that it was possible to tell honest men from thieves simply by looking at them. It was certainly undeniable that the majority of the men gathered in the taverns were as scurrilous a bunch of villains as might have been readily assembled this side of Hell. Still, he exerted himself to play the part of a sociable stranger, losing at cards more than he won and buying the odd round of wine without giving the impression of tempting affluence.

Despite his cautious efforts, he heard nothing of ransom or hostages, even though he had met more than one of the pirates who sailed under Jack Flanders. But even the oafish “Jummy Griggs, fresh back with the cap’n,” who was almost too drunk to sit in a chair, breathed no word of the prize they had taken, beyond praising “those Ambermere wines” with passionate incoherence. It was evident that the sailors’ proverbial love of gossip was not shared by those who sailed with Black Jack Flanders.

Still, he went doggedly from tavern to tavern, hoping he would learn something of use. Breksin was a better gambler than anyone he played with. He had always been an avid card player, sometimes even allowing himself to be lured to the tables where the aristocratic gamesters of Ambermere trifled away their days. If he could manage to avoid Reffex and his annoying cronies, it was sometimes possible to pass a pleasant evening there. The court’s ranking duchess, for instance, though it distressed Breksin to see her indulge her inexplicable fancy for adulterating excellent wines with honey and mint, was a canny old bird with a card memory that was simply astonishing. Even Daniel had been impressed with her.

It was from Daniel that Breksin had learned, not so much new things about cards and wagers, as how the individual elements he had deduced over the years fit into a pattern. Not only had the knowledge been gratifying for its own sake, but the resulting increase in his prowess had made him positively unwelcome in the circle of the great Count Reflex. But now Daniel was a prisoner, locked away somewhere in this metropolis of thieves.

Breksin gave up his seat at the card table. He had given up, as well, any thought of hearing news of the captives. He would visit the scandalous girls again tomorrow—buy them another meal. It might well be that gossip not retailed in the taverns had been whispered on a whore’s pillow.

Breksin did not need much information. He wanted to know where the prisoners were being kept, and under what guard. He had reason to hope that in their stronghold, the pirates would be careless. If they were, then a single man, given skill and determination, might free the prisoners in the event that diplomacy failed and the situation became desperate.

But diplomacy, augmented by gold, would not fail, he was nearly certain. His other, more practical concern was for the remainder of the journey. In the many years Breksin had lived at the court of Asbrak the Fat, he had completely ignored the laughable military with their parades and polished buttons. But when the royal journey was continued, it was his firm intention, despite his inbred horror of travel by water, to be a part of the guard that accompanied it. And if they were challenged again, he himself would direct the defense, and even the Ambermere laggards would fight. He frowned. It was hardly more than a fortnight ago that he had stood on the Ambermere quays to see the royal party off. The merchantman had carried a force of armed men sufficient to repel even a pair of the small, fast pirate ships, let alone the single vessel that had taken them.

He made his way back to his lodgings by way of the busiest streets, greeting those he had met during the day. By tomorrow, he thought, there would not be a soul in Devlin who had not seen the giant or at least heard of him. After breakfast, he would minister again to the sufferers in the taverns, and again make a great mystery of the spices he added to the concoction, although be had ground them according to a witches’ formula that was no secret in Ambermere.

It shouldn’t take long for Captain Flanders to hear of the giant and his cure. Breksin hoped that it might be as soon as tomorrow that he would be invited to the house of the pirate who must, if his reputation was deserved, have frequent need of such a medicine.

He made a detour through the street where the girls worked. Here the way was not so well lighted. Instead of the glow of lamps, the air was filled with the music of plucked strings and flutes. Beyond the last houses of joy, the street was given over to more respectable, less profitable enterprises, all of which were shut for the night From these dark windows came no songs or soft laughter.

Breksin slowed his pace. On the pretext of tugging at his boot, he sent a quick sidewise glance behind him. At the next corner he turned away from his destination and back toward the sea. At the next turning, he crossed the empty street, continuing to an unpaved lane that ran behind a row of houses. There he picked up his pace. At the next street he turned away from the sea again, walked more slowly to the nearest corner, turned, walked a few paces, then stopped and stood silently in the shadow of a leafless tree. As he was reaching for the cat, it dropped from his shoulder and faded into the darkness.

Though many walked the streets of Devlin armed with great bare knives in their belts, or carried cutlasses into breakfast,” Breksin thought such behavior affected and childish, besides being stupidly provocative. He would not prowl the city with weapons on his belt. On the other hand, the character of the city and many of its inhabitants urged prudence. Accordingly, he had purchased a heavy staff of seasoned hardwood that he used as a walking stick. As he stood behind the tree, he shifted his grip to the point of balance and held it ready.

He heard a furtive step at the corner; then came a silent pause, followed by the sound of a hurried stride. As the man strode past him, the giant stepped from under the tree and laid his staff lightly on the man’s shoulder.

“Turn slowly,” he commanded in a deep voice that was no less terrifying for being soft.

Instead, the man yelped like a spaniel. In ducking away from the staff, he tripped over his own feet and collapsed backwards, waving his hands in front of him.

Breksin peered down. “Reffex?” he rumbled. “By the gods, man, I might have murdered you!” Reffex got up slowly, brushing his clothing and looking at the ground.

“Damnable cobbles,” he muttered, still on one knee. His voice quavered. “They tripped me up. That was a maneuver, you see.” He got to his feet. “Roll away from the enemy, then come back with force. Element of surprise. Principle of combat—very important in the—”

“Reffex!” Breksin lowered his voice. “Count Reffex … Your Grace. Why in the name of the Blessed Daughters were you following me?”

The count stepped closer to Breksin. “We must speak confidentially. Also, I think I bruised my wrist when I … was maneuvering. Perhaps a glass of wine, though it’s wretched what they serve here.”

Breksin stared over the nobleman’s head into the darkness for a moment. “I’m stopping at an inn where the wine is not wretched. We’ll go there.”

As Reffex fell into step beside him, he said, “Mind those cobbles.”

The count seemed positively astonished at the public room of Breksin’s inn. There were a few affable arguments in progress over cards, but the fiddlers could be heard above the voices and there was no sign of blood or broken furniture.

“I must say,” he murmured in a tone of injured dignity and envy, “Captain Flanders might have put us here. Our inn is entirely overrun by ruffians.”

“You are with the envoy?”

Count Reffex drew himself up in his chair. “I am the envoy.” Had the count been a mind reader, the look of surprise this announcement produced on the giant’s face would have given him no delight.

The tables around them were unoccupied. Still, Breksin lowered his voice when he spoke again. “Rand has sent you here?”

“Not Rand,” said Reffex. He paused before continuing with an air of drama. “I have been sent by … the king.”

Breksin thought for a moment, then nodded. “I see,” he said. “And what of Modesty … I mean, the princess and her party?”

Reffex leaned across the table. “That’s why I was following you,” he said. He looked ruefully at his bruises. “Of course, you are a friend, so I meant you no harm. If I had been following an enemy, I would have struck with—”

“But what of the royal party?”

“What? Oh, they’re fine. They aren’t forced to lodge with scoundrels and ruffians. You know, there’s no sleeping at my inn until nearly—”

“Where are they?”

Reffex gave him a blank look. “Why, everywhere. In the hallways, falling down the stairs—”

“The royal party, you … Your Grace.”

“Oh. In the pirate’s house. They have rooms on the top floor, a view of the city and the harbor, maids to serve them, plenty of—”

“You saw them, then?”

“Yes, of course. But not until today, and just Daniel. He was very surprised to see me there, I can tell you,” said Reffex with a complacent smirk. “Of course, I am not one to dwell on my accomplishments. I am content to go on quietly. My king knows I am available in time of need. You may not be aware, for instance, that the position I occupy at the royal table is of my own choosing. Only a word to His Majesty and I might sit … well, I’ll just say, much higher.” Reffex raised his eyebrows and adjusted his smirk. “Much. Let’s leave it at that.”

Breksin was willing. “You said you were following me because of the royal party?”

“Yes. Well, because of the strange way things are going. Black Jack Flanders seems to have no interest in the king’s offer. He keeps putting me off. I must say, it’s very trying for one of my rank to be treated like a messenger. And now that I have no assistant, I am left to perform every slight chore for myself.”

Breksin looked skeptical. “But, you landed with a party, I heard.”

“Three seamen,” Reffex said with a scowl. “Common fellows. No help at all.” He shook his head. “We shall see when we are back at court. It’s nothing short of mutiny. Old Hebbick, sent to assist me, set me down in this place to make my own way, and ordered—ordered, I tell you—the ship on to Felshalfen.” The count took a long pull at his wine. “And the captain obeyed him. Hebbick. A man of no distinction at all. I will tell you, things have not gone right since the night Rogan was lost.”

“Lost?” said Breksin. “Lost where?”

“At sea. Didn’t I mention it? Washed overboard in a storm.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I was there. No great stroke of luck in that: some oaf of a seaman tried to blame me.” Reffex raised his chin and fixed Breksin with an outraged stare. “I was only trying to calm him, but he must have loosened the ropes, because the wave lifted the boat right over the side. Things were very confused. This sailor, you see, didn’t—”

“He was in a boat, then?” Breksin asked. “He may have been washed ashore.”

Reffex said, “Well, yes, that’s what the captain says, but I would think we’ve heard the last of Rogan the Obscure. A great pity, of course, but he was old, after all. Lived many years.” The fiddlers struck up a lively tune. Reffex looked around the peaceful room, then turned a mournful eye to Breksin. “Do you know if they have a vacancy here?”

While the count arranged for lodging and for the transfer of his belongings, Breksin thought about the royal magician, comforting himself by reasoning that the gods, though known to be capricious, could not conceivably have had Reffex at their mercy on a stormy sea and then chosen to drown someone else instead.

Reffex returned to the table with a fresh pitcher of wine. He was out of sorts because the landlord, when acquainted with his rank and title, had been insufficiently obsequious.

“Insisted that I pay in advance,” said the count. “Only imagine. I am cousin to a duke. Thrice removed,” he added grandly, as though that genealogical detail contributed to the dignity of the connection.

With as much patience as he could muster, Breksin pursued the topic of why the count had followed him.

“Well, you can see,” said Reffex indignantly, “my authority is being flouted by underlings, so when I saw a functionary of the court, I naturally assumed it had something to do with me, and since no ships have called since the one that brought me, that was a great mystery in itself.” He stopped and squinted at the giant. “I still don’t know who it was that sent you.”

“I am here by chance, Your Grace. The wine trade,” he added to make his lie more plausible.

“In Devlin? I assumed all their wine was stolen.”

“Not all of it. Some they purchase,” Breksin replied, knowing but not caring that he had lapsed into truth.

“But,” objected Reffex, “should we supply them with wine while they hold the princess? It seems almost dishonorable, somehow.” He pursed his lips. “I suppose it’s quite a profitable market? If we don’t sell to them, someone else is sure to.”

Breksin stared at Reffex. Surely, he thought, Rogan was not at the bottom of the sea. “Yes,” he said absently. “But I have finished my business, now. I think, Your Grace, that you should appoint me your assistant.”

Reffex looked startled. “But you are a … that is, there are protocols, the matter of diplomatic standing.”

“Well, of course, if you don’t need help—”

“No, no,” Reffex said hastily. “You’re quite right. And unlike many in high positions, I have always been open to suggestions from those in stations of subordinacy. When I next wait on the great pirate, you shall be with me.” Count Reffex favored Breksin, son of a line of kings that extended back to days lost in legend, with a look of generous condescension. “Actually, I’m sure I can pass you off as a soldier—even an officer. And if the conversation should take a military turn, I will keep you from making a fool of yourself. Just you follow my lead and we will make an impressive pair.”

Breksin raised his glass by way of reply. When it occurred to Reffex to ask how he knew he was being followed, Breksin made up a lie about the marvelous alertness of his cat, and then used the pet as an excuse for leaving the count.

“Wouldn’t do to have the faithful kitsey spending the night out of doors,” he said as he rose from his chair. He dropped a few coins on the table and bid the aristocrat good night, promising to be at his disposal the next day.

Outside, the streets were quiet. Breksin walked for an hour or more, keeping to the parts of the city not frequented by carousers. He needed quiet so that he could sort out his worries.

He thought first of Rogan the Obscure. The magician, though advanced in years, had been unchanged for so long that the question of his death had never entered Breksin’s mind. Surely, he thought, a magician in a boat would be able to come up with some spell to keep afloat on a stormy ocean. There was every reason to hope that even now, Rogan was sitting somewhere, perhaps a seaside tavern, drinking local wine and dreaming of the cellars at Ambermere. Breksin vowed to invite the magician to his keg room for a private tasting as soon as they were both safe at home.

The great question, though, was the matter of the prisoners and their ransom. Rand would never have entrusted Reffex with a mission of any importance. Both he and Rogan must have come on the whim of the king. Hebbick, on the other hand, was clearly Rand’s man. And if Hebbick had changed his plans and gone to Felshalfen, that meant the center of the trouble was located there, and not in the pirate stronghold. This could only mean that the question was not one of simple, honest piracy, but of politics. That made it all the more important for him to learn all he could of the prisoners’ situation.

Chapter 11

“I should say you will not! You’ll not breakfast on wine while I have the care of you.”

Rogan looked at the plate of biscuits and bacon with an expression not far removed from horror.

“But I have a delicate stomach,” he explained querulously.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the woman. “I think you may count yourself lucky you have a stomach at all, the way you use it. A diet of pure vinegar, you might as well say, with a piece of bread at bedtime.”

“Oh, your wine is not so bad as all that,” said the magician. “And I ate those potatoes last night. And the chop.”

“Well, this bacon’s from the same pig, so you’re already acquainted.”

Rogan adjusted himself on his pillows. “And what,” he asked as he adjusted the tray on his lap, “does one drink with such a meal?”

“The tea’s brewing. Your Lordship.” The woman curtseyed and disappeared through the door.

Rogan sighed. He picked up a biscuit and nibbled at it. Although this was only his second day in Edorra’s care, he knew she would give him no peace until he ate at least part of the food she had served him. He had already heard her “What do you suppose I cooked that for?” more than enough. It was simpler to make a show of eating, At least the food was good. Even one accustomed to the luxuries of Asbrak’s kitchen could not fault Edorra’s culinary efforts. This biscuit, for instance. Rogan turned it over in his hand like a connoisseur. If it were any lighter, it would float up off the platter. What would Asbrak say, as he started on a second dozen? Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t, but as these are so very excellent, I believe I will permit myself another.

A boy entered carrying a tray with a teapot, a pitcher of cream, and a wide-brimmed mug with two handles. He put his burden carefully on a table next to the bed, and sealed himself in a wooden chair.

Rogan gave him a sidelong look.

“Auntie says I’m to sit with you. She says you’re to make the food disappear in the, uh, customary way, and not by magic.” He grinned. “Could you really make it disappear?”

“Well, ah, yes, I suppose. Not really my line, you see.”

The boy looked disappointed.

Rogan looked at him, then back to the tray on his lap. “There is a spell for hiding … now, how does that go?”

“Hiding?”

“Of course. Technically, it’s hiding. When something disappears, it doesn’t cease to exist, you know.”

“What’s technically?”

“It’s very simple, it’s … Here, shouldn’t you be pouring me some tea?” The magician began to mutter to himself.

“Yes, sir.” The boy filled the mug three-quarters full with the steaming fragrant tea, then topped it off with cream almost too thick to leave the pitcher.

“Where’s the spoon?” he said, feeling behind the teapot.

“Lose something?” said Rogan.

“The spoon. It was on the tray.”

“Evidently you are mistaken.” Rogan muttered briefly again and made a few economical gestures with his free hand. The boy looked at him uneasily.

There was a clink and a splash. The boy stared at the cup, then slowly drew the spoon from it.

Rogan cackled. “Neatly done, if I do say so myself. I could still make my way in a carnival if need be.” He looked at the gawking boy. “You don’t seem to have much to say.”

“Teach me how to do that.”

Rogan looked smug. “Teach you, indeed. It would take an apprentice years to learn to do that.” He smirked and spoke in the sententious manner so delightful to children. “Particularly the skill displayed in getting the spoon in the cup”—he raised his forefinger like a schoolmaster preparing to elucidate—“on the first try.”

“I could do it! I could do it if I knew the words.”

“Indeed, and do you—what is your name again, lad?”

“Chardric, but everyone calls me Rickey. Sir.”

“And how old is Chardric?”

“Eleven. I was eleven a long time ago.”

Rogan picked up the tea mug and sipped, then looked at it as though he had forgotten what he was drinking.

“And you want me to teach you the spell for hiding?”

Rickey nodded eagerly. “For what you did with the spoon, yes sir.”

“Very well,” said Rogan. “You must bring me some things.”

Rickey sprang to his feet.

“I need something to write on.” The magician peered at the boy. “You do read? I am not going to teach this to you word by word.”

“I read. Auntie taught me.” He began to leave the room.

“Wait,” called Rogan. “That’s not all. I need a flask. A flask with a stopper.”

“For writing?”

“Never mind. Just you bring it.” Rickey was nearly out the door when Rogan called him back with a gesture. “Quietly, mind. These things must be done discreetly.”

In about the time it took to eat a biscuit, the boy was back. He delivered the items he had collected to the magician.

“Now,” said Rogan, putting the writing implements aside and handing the flask back to Rickey, “whilst I indite the spell, you just run to the pantry and fill this with—you know the dark wine we had last night?”

“Auntie’s best.”

Rogan nodded with a smile. “That will do.”

Rickey hesitated at the door. “What’s ‘indite’?”

Rogan looked up with the quill suspended over the ink pot. “Why, to write, of course, boy.”

“Then why don’t you just say ‘write’?”

“Not fancy enough,” said Rogan, dipping the pen.

“Is that why you said ‘whilst’?”

“Precisely. Go fetch the wine.”

Later, Rogan was awakened when Edorra entered the room. Although she was a pleasant-enough-looking woman, he had not been able to accustom himself to her scale. She was as tall as any man, had heavy, strong-looking limbs, and was as broad at the shoulder as at the hips. She was not without grace, and a sort of vast femininity, but her appearance was daunting, especially to a man freshly wakened from a nap.

“Not more food?”

“Nothing that will cause you harm. Just some chowder.”

“Fish?”

Edorra did not reply, but fixed him with a somber stare.

Rogan sat up and leaned against a stack of pillows. “All right,” he sighed. He plied his reluctant spoon under the supervision of his hostess.

“I will admit,” he remarked after a number of bites, “that if one must eat at such an hour, he could find a worse cook. In fact”—he raised his eyes to her—“if you kept an inn at the capital, I believe the king would forsake his table for yours.”

“It’s only simple food,” she replied.

“Well,” he said with a melancholy glance at the tray, “it’s true there is no wine.”

Edorra stared at him. “You don’t say you would take wine with soup, Master? Do they dine thus at the great king’s table?”

“No, not exactly, no. But I just thought—”

“I should hope not.” She showed a faint smile. “I do have a fruit wine to go with your fresh cheese. That’s for after you’ve finished your soup.” She peered down at Rogan. “Shall I fetch it now?”

Rogan nodded and raised his spoon to his lips.

“Then you won’t”—she bent over and reached beneath the pillows to retrieve the hidden flask—“be needing this.”

Each time he woke up, Rogan the Obscure had to remember that he was not in his apartments at Ambermere, not aboard ship, or tossed from wave to wave in the longboat, nor sleeping under it with wet sand in his teeth as he had been when Chardric found him. He could still smell the sea, and hear it, but he was dry and warm in Edorra’s cottage.

The afternoon shadows were long when Rogan was awakened by the sound of voices in the next room.

“He is a castaway, Dilmur. Must he be washed ashore with his pockets full of silver?”

“Then I,” the heavy masculine voice lingered on the pronoun, drawing it out in a self-important whine, “I am to have nothing from this?”

Edorra’s voice was low and matter-of-fact. “You are welcome to all that comes from it.”

“Ahah! As I thought. Nothing.”

“Perhaps. It is costing you nothing. I see no great loss in it.”

“Hah! Loss. Don’t speak to me of loss, woman. I provide you with a house. Provisions. Don’t speak to me of charity.”

“A cottage standing empty at the ends of the earth. A half-empty root cellar. Charity, indeed. I’m surprised you can pronounce the word.”

There was the sound of a chair scraping along the floor. “Well! Go back to the city, then, my fine lady, and work for your keep.”

“You know the city is no place for the boy. Would you see your nephew on those streets?”

“No. I would see him prenticed out. He’s old enough, now.”

“You’d sell him for the pennies he’d bring. An orphan. Your brother’s son.”

“He must make his way as best he can. I will not maintain him in an idle life.”

“An idle life? He is a child of eleven years. And he is very apt. He has learned to read.”

“What?” The man’s voice rose in volume and pitch. “I told you he was not to be a scholar. Your meddling will ruin him. He’ll be fit for no labor.”

Rogan heard the front door open.

“When he’s on Jicker’s boat, there’ll be no words for him to read!” The door slammed.

Chapter 12

Rand peered from the window of the king’s chamber to the sun-filled courtyard below. The brightness of the morning matched his mood. Against all reasonable expectations, the king had returned from his absurd errand of last night with useful intelligence. This was, in Rand’s view, as great a miracle as ever he expected to witness, but the king had tired of the subject, and was indulging his penchant for pointless speculation. Rand turned from the window.

“If Your Majesty will permit me to interrupt, I believe we might profitably leave conjectures on the efficacy of witchcraft until just a little later. I think it most important that we establish with precision just what it was Your Royal Highness heard last night.”

“But we have been over this, Rand. First last night, and now again this morning. I was perishing in that place. Trapped, with nothing to eat or drink.” The king sipped from a jeweled goblet. “Did I tell you I had to go up the stairs backwards?”

“Indeed, Your Highness, I am satisfied the circumstances were exceedingly trying, but still we must be certain that we are in possession of all the facts.”

“Facts? What facts? I have told you what I overheard.”

“Ah, but the words. Highness, the words, exactly and without omission.”

“I will not retail this business of the girl again.”

Rand nodded. “Quite right. Your Majesty. Most unseemly. Our interest this morning is not anatomy. What we wish to inquire into is the identity of this mysterious nobleman.”

“But have I not told you of the clothing, the haircut, the mustache? I mean, really. Rand, there is no—Now wait,” said the king. “Did I mention the scar?”

“Ah,” said Rand. “The scar.” He joined his fingertips and peered between his hands to the designs on the carpet. “I am sure Your Highness would not have overlooked such an important element, but if you might repeat the details?”

“Yes, well, you must understand, the man did not see the scar, but the nobleman he referred to had one. Evidently,” said the king with a cunning glance, “it was out of sight.”

“Covered by clothing?”

“Perhaps,” said Asbrak. “No, wait. He said he wished he had run after him to see if he had the scar. It must, therefore, be on his face.”

“I believe Your Highness is correct.”

The king rose slowly from his chair. “But will all this be of use?” he said. He walked to the window.

Rand stared at the king’s back. “Your Highness, owing to your efforts, we have a description of the secret enemy that logic told us existed, but of whom we had no knowledge. We have gone from a position of perfect ignorance to one of illumination.”

“Illumination? Isn’t that a bit optimistic?”

“Not at all,” replied the adviser. “It is impossible to imagine an innocent explanation for a nephew of Finster’s to be in Devlin. When we know which aristocrat of Felshalfen fits this description, we shall be in a position to deliver a crushing blow to this plot.”

“But no one has mentioned Felshalfen.”

“Logic has mentioned Felshalfen since the day we learned of this outrage, Your Highness. And if I may remind my king of the solitary objection he had to the otherwise unexceptionable, not to say heavensent, suitor to his daughter? The one minor flaw in Hilbert the Silent of Felshalfen?”

“Oh, yes. The curls. The man dresses his hair like a musician in a tavern.”

Rand raised a forefinger. “In the style of Felshalfen,” he said.

“Of course,” agreed the king.

“But the courtier in Devlin wore his hair straight.”

Asbrak looked blank, then his eyes cleared. “Not curled to fashion,” he said.

“Your Majesty has penetrated to the heart of the matter.”

The king lifted his chin and raised his eyebrows. “Why yes, I believe I have.” He clapped his hands together briskly. “But your assistance, Rand, was most helpful. Most helpful.”

“Your Majesty is too kind.” Rand turned again to the window. “If I might be excused, Highness. There are one or two details I must look into.”

“But it is almost time for tea,” said Asbrak.

“Yes, Your Highness, but necessity beckons.”

“And the matter of the witch. I consider this of the highest importance, Rand.”

“Of course, Majesty, but not, perhaps, so very pressing at this moment.”

The king frowned. “Oh, very well,” he said. “But I’d like to see you back here for some nourishment. I won’t have you wasting away.” Rand bowed and strode from the room. “The pastry tray will be here when you return,” called the king as the heels and coattails of his adviser passed from sight.

Upon his return, Rand did indeed find the pastry tray awaiting him, though in a sadly depleted state.

“You know, Rand,” said the king, brushing crumbs from his mouth with a lace napkin, “I believe our bakers are as gifted as any that might be found in the Nine Kingdoms. I am ordinarily quite indifferent to pastries … tarts, crumpets”—the royal eye scanned the tray—“muffins, buns, turnovers, puffs”—he lifted a cloth covering a basket in the corner of the tray—“creams, nut rings, ladyfingers, jamlets.” Asbrak leaned forward in his chair. “Hmmm, what’s this?” he said, lifting a triangle of sugar-glazed dough. He nibbled at it thoughtfully. “Anyway, I was waiting until you returned before I rang for more tea.”

Rand tugged at the bell-pull. The king gestured in the direction of the table where the remains of his “camp breakfast”—the cheeses and cold meats of his customary midmorning snack—lay on a platter.

“The boy can take that with him, too.”

The tea arrived. Asbrak waved Rand off. “I shall pour,” he said, rising ponderously. “You have been in constant motion since dawn. Well, anyway, since I’ve been up. I will see you seated, with your cup in your hand. I,” said the monarch grandly, “will make you up a platter and bring it to you. You need do nothing but chew and swallow.” The king took a small plate of beaten silver and deftly erected on it a pile of pastries that stayed in place in defiance of a number of well-known principles of engineering. He placed it on a table by his adviser, then returned to his own chair.

“Now,” he wheezed, as he recovered from his giddy plunge into the cushions, “we must arrange the work of the day. I want to send for this witch, and—By the way, what do you think of the fellow’s story—about her walking dry in the rainstorm?”

Rand was attempting to remove a muffin from his plate without precipitating an avalanche of crumpets and buns.

“Your Highness, although I say it with deep regret, I must confess I find the story to be completely credible.”

The king looked disappointed. “Really, Rand, you always—” He looked more closely at his adviser. “You say completely credible! That means you believe it.”

“In a word,” replied the older man.

The king beamed. “Rand, you surprise me. Next you will be consulting Remeger.”

“The astrologer? That is not likely, Highness. My skepticism remains unshaken. My opinion in the case of the witch is influenced by the fact that I saw her myself.”

“You? In a tavern?” An expression of puzzlement settled itself on the face of the king. “Were you in disguise?”

“I was here, my liege, at a window that overlooks the avenue. I saw the woman, and although I could not say if she was wet or dry, her actions and altitude accord very well with the tale told by the roaster of meats, unreliable witness though he is.”

“You know him, then?”

“By repute, Your Majesty. Breksin informs me that despite his intemperance, he is unsurpassed at his trade.”

“I am glad to hear it. The man is so erratic and incoherent, I don’t know what other line of work he might aptly pursue.” Asbrak paused and stared abstractedly at the ceiling. “Poetry, perhaps.

“In any event,” he went on, “you and I must interview this witch.”

“That, I fear, is a pleasure I am going to be deprived of, Majesty. With your permission, I plan to sail with the tide.”

The king thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Your metaphor eludes me, Rand. What tide are you talking about? The tide of Fate? Justice? Fortune? The vast eternal ebb and flow of, oh, whatever that song says?” Asbrak pursed his lips. “Odd for that to be sung in the taverns, when you think about it.”

“I was referring to the actual tide, my liege.”

The king shifted on his cushions and assumed an attitude.

“‘The sky above, the helm alee, The vast, damp pulse of the ocean sea.’”

He held his pose for a moment, then settled back in his chair. “Does it strike you our poets used to be better than that?” he asked with a frown.

“Indeed, Your Highness, much better, and there were fewer of them.”

“That’s right,” said the king. “There were. We should take steps.”

“Steps?”

“To reduce the number of poets. What would you suggest?”

“Short of dealing with them as Your Majesty’s ancestor Melbrak is said to have dealt with an overabundance of lawyers, I see no ready answer.”

Asbrak shuddered. “I take your point,” he said. “Let’s get back to the tides. Why were we discussing them again?”

“We were discussing my departure for Felshalfen.”

Asbrak had not shot up from a chair in a generation, nor did he now, but he rose as quickly as he could.

“Why in the name of the several deities would you want to go to Felshalfen? Surely we can dispatch a messenger.”

“I believe if Your Majesty will but consider the gravity of the situation, you will agree that I must be the one to go. I must be there to direct our operatives.”

“Our what? Do we have operatives? What are they, exactly?”

“Spies, Your Majesty.”

The king stared at his chief adviser. “We have spies at the court of Finster the Munificent? Our closest ally? Our kingdoms are united by blood.” He crossed his arms and blinked at Rand. “How is it I know nothing of this? I am the king, after all.”

Rand managed to get out of his chair without upsetting his plate of pastries. “That is why you know nothing of it, Highness. It is but one of an overwhelming mass of burdensome details, and a sensitive and inconvenient detail at that. If you were to concern yourself with such trivial matters, you would scarcely have time for the business of ruling the kingdom.”

Asbrak sank into his chair. “Still,” he said, “spies at the court of a friend.”

“That is precisely where they are most needed, Your Highness.”

“Practically a member of the family,” continued the king.

“Majesty, every drop of blood that unites Felshalfen and Ambermere is currently in the custody of Black Jack Flanders in Devlin.”

The king sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “Very well,” he said. “How soon must you leave?”

“I will leave you at once, my liege, and sail just after noon.”

“But our interview with the witch,” protested Asbrak.

“My assistant will know of her whereabouts by now. He will summon her at Your Majesty’s pleasure.” Rand bowed to the king. “I will of course report for any final instructions before I go to the quays.” He turned and left the room.

Asbrak’s eye fell on Rand’s plate. “Your muffins,” he called hopelessly.

Rand was back before the tea was cold. The king was lifting a pastry from the plate he had made up for his adviser.

“Ah, good,” he said. “I don’t like to see you begin a trip on an empty stomach.” Asbrak looked at Rand’s feet. “Rand, I think you must be better shod than that if you are to go to sea. Don’t you need a well-greased boot? Something that comes above your ankles and will shed water?” He began to raise the pastry to his mouth, then stopped. “Is that something for me to sign?”

Rand unrolled a tightly scrolled vellum. “No, Your Majesty, it is a message from Hebbick that has arrived in time to save me a troublesome journey.”

The king put down the pastry. “But Hebbick is with Reffex,” he protested. “In Devlin. He couldn’t have arrived more than a day ago. There has been no time for a message to reach us.”

“You are quite right, my liege, but this message was dispatched from the ship three days ago—the day before the storm.”

“Does Rogan have such powers?” exclaimed the king. “To send a message from the middle of the ocean?”

“I sincerely doubt it. Your Highness. As it happens, this message was received only a short time ago at the dovecot.”

“The what?”

“The dovecot, Highness. It’s where Your Majesty’s messenger pigeons are housed. On the roof.”

The king began to speak, then shook his head and then motioned for his adviser to continue.

“On the strength of something he learned from a crewman, Hebbick has gone on to Felshalfen. He may be there by now. Once he receives the information Your Majesty gathered last night, he will take the appropriate steps, assuming he has not unraveled the plot already.”

The king looked bewildered. “Old Hebbick?” he said. “I thought you sent him to assist Reflex in his embassy. Is Reffex directing his actions?”

Rand saw no need to offer his private opinion—that Count Reffex could not be trusted to superintend the emptying of a chamber pot. “No, Your Highness. The count will have been put ashore in Devlin to carry out your instructions. Hebbick will be acting without the benefit of his guidance.”

The king sent a speculative look in the direction of his adviser. “So now that Hebbick is in Felshalfen, there is no longer any need for your presence.” He tugged gently at his beard in a thoughtful manner. After a brief silence he said, “No, it is impossible. I cannot imagine old Hebbick as a master spy.”

Rand gave a slight nod accompanied by the merest hint of a smile. “Precisely, Highness. Precisely.”

Chapter 13

It took Alexander two days to trace Marcia to the cave of the giants. As he climbed the massive stairs, he recalled that Marcia had said the place was haunted. Alexander smiled. What more congenial surroundings for a necromancer? The dead, as he had been instructed so many years ago, were the buttress of his trade.

Inside, torches burned in the wall. He stepped quickly across the floor of stone, freshly swept, just as Marcia had described it. Moments passed as he gazed at the upright caskets. This was a place to which he must return. What talk he would have with these ancient giants! But for now, he had more pressing matters to pursue. He listened in the silence, waiting for the drone of pipes. He need make no calling, wake no sleeping king to ask his questions. A watchman trod these reaches, and piped an endless dirge.

When he heard the distant melody, he followed the sound to a wall of blasted rock. He stood silently for a time, listening as the eerie tune grew louder. Finally he spoke. He did not raise his voice above his customary whisper, but it carried in the cave, and echoed from the walls of stone.

“Come! Do not make me call you, bind you to my summons. I only seek one who passed here.”

For a moment the piping went on, pursuing an evolution of solemn melodic intricacies that slowly descended to a drone.

Then followed some moments of silence. Alexander waited patiently, then turned to watch as the torches were extinguished one by one.

Now the chamber was filled with silence and darkness. All sense of space was canceled, the air became an oppressive weight. For a short while the silence was absolute, then was broken by a quiet sigh.

“I am long in these practices,” came Alexander’s patient whisper. “You cannot terrify me, only weary me. And then,” he went on in a voice even softer than before, “when I waken these kings, will they thank you that their rest is broken?”

One by one the torches lit. When the last one burned, a giant stood before the necromancer. He spoke without bow or greeting. The dead do not observe the niceties.

“Two passed. Which do you seek?”

“The woman. Was the other an old man?”

When the giant laughed, Alexander looked up at him sharply. The mirthless noise bounced from the chamber walls.

“An old man? Yes.”

“They were together?”

“No. The woman followed.”

Alexander let his glance travel up the wall they stood in front of. “And to what place?”

“The place? I can conduct you there, necromancer, if you dare to go.”

“The Lower Regions, then?” Alexander fixed the ghost with his gaze. “You are sure the woman went there too, and not some other place?”

“I am sure. She passed me, crossing on the path he took.”

“And you will put me on that same path?”

“The same. But I will not bring you back.”

Alexander smiled sadly to himself and nodded. Now when would he reach his refuge above the ocean? When entertain the young enchantress? When see the roses climb his garden wall?

He looked around the cavern at the tombs, the torches burning on the wall. He took one pace forward.

“I am ready.”

Alexander surveyed the bilious landscape, not certain how to proceed. His trips to the Lower Regions had been infrequent and were far in the past. Never before had he dared to penetrate the boundaries without careful preparation—the erection of a network of spells to keep him secure as he traversed the hostile ways.

Now his only refuge, if he had need of it, was to travel in the wizard’s mode, multiplying the distance covered by his stride and shielding him from all but the most discerning eyes. But to travel in this fashion was to give up the ability to use the spell of tracing.

He stared into the distance where details were masked in the veil of floating mists. He had never before been in the great bare plain of the Lower Regions. When he had visited in the past, it had been to brave the streets of dark cities, or breach the walls of some fortress on a lonely moor.

He thought of those days, and the protection under which he had traveled. How would Marcia fare in this desolate place, unequipped with the knowledge and skills he had brought on his journeys? How would she survive? And if she had not, could he hope to find so much as a trace of whatever end she might have met?

To awaken the spell of tracing took almost no time at all. Her trail was at his feel as the piper had vowed it would be. He followed it for perhaps forty-five minutes, then stopped where the rutted lane topped the crest of a hill.

Ahead, the vista was one of unrelieved bleakness. He imagined Marcia trudging across those hills, facing endless miles and unknown dangers ahead. It was, he realized, almost pointless to try to find her. If she had caught up with the strange old man who possessed such great power, she might now be anywhere. If she had failed to overtake him, how much hope could there be for her?

He turned to survey the ground he had covered. What he saw reminded him of the dangers he himself faced in the hostile place. Among the yellow hillocks to his left were subtle signs of movement, quick yellow flittings against the yellow ground as seen through yellow fog. He was in no position to take risks. Whatever was coming his way was moving fast, and there was more than one. He squinted through the haze. Vermin, more likely than not, but he would not be duped by curiosity.

He drew his attention inward to himself. When, after half a minute, he had gathered his forces, he took a step, and at the same time disappeared from view.

In the cocoon of his magic he became aware of how vulnerable he had unconsciously felt himself to be. Now, moving in a silent vacuum, viewing the landscape through the comforting distortion of his spell, he felt completely secure. When he had settled into his pace, still walking but covering ground now at the rate of a dead run, he glanced over his shoulder.

Little bent things, they were. Naked and grotesque; furless monkeys with fangs and claws and empty eyes. They flowed across the way behind him like blowing leaves, then ran alongside him for a second, unconscious of his presence, before veering off to disappear among the rocks. They numbered a dozen or more. They were vermin, and possessed only their physical power, but how would Marcia deal even with a threat like them?

Alexander was anxious to cover ground, but after an hour he stopped and stripped himself of the spell. The air was acrid, the light unchanged. He cast the spell of tracing like a net. Of Marcia’s trail there was no sign.

He shook his head dejectedly and gazed back along the road. He had probably covered twelve to fifteen miles at the wizard’s pace. Somewhere in those tens of thousands of feet Marcia’s trail had turned. Or stopped.

It took over two hours to find the place where Marcia had left the road, and then the place where all trace of her vanished. When he considered the alternatives, Alexander was grateful to be frustrated. There was, he knew, no sight he could not bear to see if the need arose, but he was glad to find no evidence of Marcia’s downfall. Better what he faced now—evidence either of her disappearance, or of the failure of the tracing spell.

Not far from where he stood, the road curved toward the path he had been following. Now, at least, his purpose was clear. He would continue on the road at speed until he had gone far enough to eliminate any chance that Marcia was wandering lost and alone in these wilds. Then would be time enough to begin the tedious business of engineering his journey across the boundary of the Middle Regions.

For the next few hours, Alexander continued on the road. From time to time he stopped, on the chance he might pick up some hint of Marcia’s passing. Finally he was forced to admit to himself that, traveling at four to five times the speed that Marcia could have maintained, he had come to a point farther than she could have reached. He would rest, he decided, then set about the tedious business of making his way back.

If it wasn’t to be a project of truly grinding difficulty, he would have to find some reasonably level ground. Figuring in substantial changes in altitude tended to locate the chore in the realm of higher mathematics. At that point it would be easier to go on and find a Doorway.

With the arrival of that stray thought, Alexander found his spirits lifting. If a hike through Hell could not be considered a pleasure, how much less disagreeable it sounded than the dry unrewarding exercise that faced him now. In addition, the further he went, the less occasion there would ever be to wonder whether Marcia had somehow been somewhere on the road ahead.

He searched his memory for some scrap of knowledge about the geography of this part of the Lower Regions. He must be approaching the great basin—the desert proper. What had Fildis told him? Pools of water were appearing. Rumors, there were, of the rebirth of the ancient sea. This in itself, he thought with ever-rising spirits, would be a thing worth looking at. For how many millennia had that dirt been dry? Even Rhastopheris had never before seen that land with water standing on it.

He got up from the rock where he had seated himself. That was settled, then. He felt positively invigorated. He would go at least as far as the first lying pools. If they looked promising, he would venture on to lower ground. Then, once he had seen the wonder for himself, he would summon Fildis. The demon could tell him of the nearest Doorway—take him to it, probably. In a few days, he would be back at his refuge, watching in the morning as the sun awakened the flowers climbing on his garden wall.

He reached the edge of the great dry sea by what his stomach told him was suppertime. There he ale the food he had brought with him and gazed across the empty land. It had, almost, a sort of empty beauty, an analog of its complete and utter silence.

He sat on the yellow earth with his back against a rock just at the place where the road began a long descent. The mists and fogs were heavier below, evidence, he hoped, of the rising water he had come to see. How odd that this slender thread of events, this life of his, so long, so strange, should pass this point, and in passing, come to rest here in this odd place where an old, old man might sit and survey wonders not of his own world.

It was some time later that he stood on the bank of a pond that must recently have been a puddle and soon would be a lake. He had decided that he would have to make the effort to return to this place sometime soon. This was the marvel of an age, and not a thing lightly to be missed. Might he, he wondered, strike some bargain with Rhastopheris? When the arch-demon consented to make those midnight visits to Alexander’s seaside refuge, the journey took him only minutes. With the proper assurances and safeguards, Alexander could go back and forth with him, skipping all the inconveniences and annoyances of days of travel.

If this pond were the birthing of a sea, how long, he wondered, would it take for yellow water to replace the yellow mists that filled the air around him? Could he hope to live so long that he might see this valley filled? Or would the wonder of an age take an age to accomplish? He was old, and expected to become much older. But even the greatest necromancer does not measure out his mortality in geologic time.

“Do I dare to eat a peach?” he murmured, smiling. He turned, and paced back from the shore until he found a comfortable rock to perch on.

Calling Fildis presented no obstacles. He was not asking the demon to cross to the Middle Regions. He was not summoning him so much as hailing him. Like shepherds calling to one another from neighboring hilltops, he thought, recalling the days of his innocent youth, so very, very far away.

He spun one light spell to assure himself that the spot was as lonely as it seemed. Any magic announces itself, makes disturbances. Alexander wanted to reveal his presence to no one but the one he called.

When every sign told him he was alone, he proceeded. The spells he used were always simple and direct, bare—skeletons of magic. They were themselves a pleasure, shorn of the complexities he had in former days been too eager to manipulate. As his understanding had deepened, he had come to appreciate the spare, the understated. In many ways, he thought, the tools he used had become to him aesthetic objects, more important in themselves than in the effects they produced. He could not hide from himself the fact that he sometimes put in motion workings that did things he had no particular wish to do, simply to indulge his pleasure in the spells themselves.

He called Fildis with a spell as simple as a shout, then left the thread of magic in place as he turned his attention back to the water. Where would he find it if he came back a month from now? A year? Ten? It seemed so long, ten years. He laughed at his own naiveté. How much empty space was there to fill? A puddle might grow to a pond in a few days. Might stretch, as this one had, until its shallow waters covered an expanse of ground. But to fill the mold left empty by an ocean ….

Fildis did not come.

Alexander rose and turned in a slow circle. He was alone. There were, he sensed, things in the water, but nothing formidable—nothing to fear. Nothing that could interrupt his magic or keep a demon away.

Though he didn’t like to do it, he sent the spell again. It was soft, and subtle, this spell, meant for Fildis and no other. It wouldn’t do to make a general calling here. Even the one that Fildis called lord, though of no vast powers, would be an inconvenience here, where Alexander was enveloped by no prepared spells, wound in no reticule of standing magic.

Nothing. He allowed the spell to die. Again he looked around. What could be wrong? What he was attempting was neither difficult nor complicated. For this summons to go unanswered told him that something was badly awry.

Though he disliked doing it, he quickly wrapped himself again in the wizards’ spell of travel. Within its folds he was secure, but at the same time encumbered by distortions that prevented him from accurately observing the scene around him. This situation was disquieting, and probably contained hidden dangers, but it was deeply interesting as well. He moved off a little way, then stopped to survey the scene as best he could.

He soon tired of hovering like a dervish. With a last glance backward he returned to the path. He would go on as he had planned, seeking lower ground and broader spans of water. Then would be time enough to plot his way back home.

With his first step, his cloak of magic dissipated. He stumbled forward, surprised by the unaugmented speed of his step. At once he tried to reinstate the spell. Failing, he worked a quick spell of rebuff, then began to erect a web of magic, a thicket of protective spells. They hardened around him, making the yellow air dance with energy. He was not where he would choose to be, was not prepared for battle, but he could improvise a fight that would command respect ….

He began to marshal his resources, then stared in disbelief as his hedge of spells collapsed and was overrun by a shadow of impervious blackness.

Chapter 14

Even as she was dreaming, Marcia knew she was locked in a hot dry sleep. Through the dull slumber and the shredding images she could smell her skin, dry and stretched. When a chill shook her, everything turned icy blue, then melted back to a suffocating pink as she sank into the warmth that rose to surround her.

Lulu didn’t drink. Was that why she was so thirsty? Her ring felt heavy on her finger. She saw herself trying to raise an arm burdened with an awful weight, one far too great for her to lift. Ulda was right, she needed a lighter ring. And nicer clothes, with fringes that shook. Dancing slippers, dry and nimble, to teach her feet to be intricate.

She had not seen the rat woman clearly, not done her justice. Her small, squeezed features were fetching, even beautiful. Like a budding flower. She looked like a star from the old movies, except her hair wasn’t molded into puffs of curls. It depends on how you turn your head, Marcia suddenly realized. Beauty is just a trick. She saw herself, three-quarter profile, head tilted, eyebrows raised. She felt her hips pivot in a brazen saunter. Men in shabby clothes were watching her. She was glad—proud—she wasn’t some stuck-up high-priced call girl. If you’re going to be a whore, it’s more generous and democratic to be a cheap one.

Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding about virgin warriors. Temple prostitutes. Boxed in tight hot little rooms. Dried blood and candles. The rat people would prowl with bloody lips, eyes like shiny buttons.

If she could wake and go outside, Father would bathe her head. She would catch the water with her tongue as it coursed down her face. She tried to picture the bridge where she would find him waiting.

Instead, she saw him standing ankle deep in water. His eyes looked inside her dream. Could a sad smile be demented? His lips moved, forming silent words, then he turned and walked away, splashing like a boy tramping through a mud puddle.

She was hemmed in. When would Father cure her fever? When would Elyssa come? She felt the scar next to her eye like a burning teardrop. She pushed the dream images from her, focused on the tiny pain. She seemed to be able to see it, a spot of burning brightness against a wall of black night. She willed herself to waken. This image was the candle in the darkness of the little room. She saw herself get up. Her features were stark and dramatic, lit from beneath by the candle, etched in blacks and grays. She felt apprehensive, and then was overtaken by a feeling of intense relief when she remembered she had been sent here by the president.

When she woke, it was to an oppressive silence. The pain in her arm had contracted to the area of the injury. She got up carefully, steadying herself on the table. The brief wave of dizziness that swept across her left her clear-headed and alert. When she took a few tentative steps the dizziness did not return.

She touched her forehead, her cheeks. Her skin was dry, but not hot. The chills she remembered from her dreams were absent. She was vaguely aware of being hungry. She gazed at the candle’s flame and tried to collect her thoughts. After a few moments she shook her head and began to pick her way through the wavering shadows to the door.

Halfway across the room, she stopped and turned back to stare at the table. Every sense she had told her she had slept for hours—all night, she thought. Great-grandmother’s rocking chair, the rat people, the dance hall, Ulda’s tricks, all these things had happened last night, and now it was morning. And on the table the candle still burned.

She went back to have a closer look. The flame ducked and bowed at her approach. She bent down. The wax at the base of the candle was soft and warm. Marcia tried to force her mind to accommodate the candle’s chronology. If she had slept even a fraction of the time her body said she had, the candle should be no more than a guttering stump.

The candle told her that she had slept for minutes, not hours. Her body said the opposite was true. She looked at the chair that Ulda had occupied as though expecting to find her sitting there.

Despite the testimony of the candle, she went to the door with a sense of keen anticipation. She was anxious to see what this place looked like in the light of day. When she opened it to a shadowy dusk, she blinked. She stepped outside with the eerie feeling that she had made her last foray only minutes before. If she hurried to the lane, would she see the figure of the man with the sack receding in the darkness?

Everything was the same. The air was warm and damp, just as it had been before. The same twilight cast the same shadows. Marcia advanced a few paces, careful to make no sound. She looked around, trying to penetrate the shadows with her gaze. After a half dozen steps she came to a sudden halt. Without bothering to look, she lifted her left foot and reached behind her. She ignored the pain in her arm and touched her shoe, then slid her fingers inside her sock. For a moment she balanced herself on one leg like an ibis in a pond, her smile invisible in the twilight. Her shoe and sock were dry.

She lowered her foot slowly to the ground. Never mind the candle, never mind the unchanging dusk, she had slept the night through.

“Come on, Lulu,” she said, walking back to the hovel. Last night, weak and tired, she had thought of it as a refuge. Now she was grateful to be entering it for the last time.

She came back outside thinking of breakfast. She walked to the lane without any particular caution. The Lulu routine had taught her at least two things last night. It had demonstrated the general principle that just because passivity and caution came naturally to her did not mean they resulted in the best approach to every situation. And specifically, it had shown her that Ulda and the others feared her. No one had dared to confront her directly; even while she slept she had been left alone.

She tried to orient herself. If she could find the big building she would know where she was. Marcia looked around her and began to laugh silently. What would Lulu say? She consulted her memory of old movies. Wisecracks delivered from the side of the mouth by men and women who wore hats. Now I know you’ve flipped your lid.

The lane was narrow. Last night she had walked on a wide street at the edge of the … ghetto? At the intersection, across the street from the dance hall—YWCA, whatever—there had been people walking. Well, pedestrians; it didn’t do to be too specific. The Sisterhood ought to have a taxonomy handout, she thought; a field guide with drawings of the various ogres, trolls, sprites, elves, and other oddities a virgin warrior was likely to encounter.

Right here, right now, though, there was no one in sight. Before, she had seen an occasional light, heard distant shouts, laughter. Now all was still. Were the shanties empty? Occupied by sleeping rat people?

She heard a faint rustling sound and turned quickly. The shadows seemed to be empty. Her eyes wandered to the rooftops around her. On the nearest, a heavy figure squatted. It seemed to have the bulk of a large dog. Marcia recalled the flying creature—she wasn’t prepared to call it a bird—she had seen last night. This thing looked like a mass of folded cloth gathered around a hatchet beak and huge unblinking eyes.

Cousin Ellie was a bird-watcher. This would be something to add to her list. When she had visited she sat at the window with her binoculars hoping to spot an exotic gull or stray ocean bird. Though Marcia had been certain people in neighboring buildings would think she was spying, she had consented to take a look, but almost dropped the binoculars when the magnification had swept her out of her seventh-story window and sent her hurtling through space. Cousin Ellie had gone to the kitchen to start breakfast and hadn’t heard Marcia’s terrified gasp.

Actually, a couple of Cousin Ellie’s patented two-pound pancakes wouldn’t be so bad right now. Or a chili dog. Cold pizza. As Marcia tried to make out details on the nearby roofs, she found herself reviewing various meals she had shared with Breksin. Visions of sausages, smoked hens, and charred rough loaves of bread almost drove the scene before her from her mind. How the condensation from Alexander’s pitcher of iced wine had wet the tablecloth! And that meal! Marcia could practically smell the herbed butter that had basted the capon.

In the darkness, Marcia could make out the silhouettes of other birds hunched on the shacks like gargoyles on a cathedral. They had a predatory look that made Marcia want to return to her refuge, but that, she told herself firmly, would be even more insane than what she was actually going to do. She stepped into the lane and set out.

Her direction she had chosen by whim. With no sense of where she was in relation to the dance hall it didn’t matter whether she went to the right or to the left. What did matter was that she get moving. The Lulu Principle dictated that she not sit around waiting for things to happen. Waiting—letting the game play you—was the Marcia Principle, and discredited. If Ulda wanted her to wait, she should have sent room service around with coffee and juice and a platter of ham, eggs, home fries, and buttered biscuits.

Her imagination provided her with a mental picture almost fattening in its intensity. Could a mirage occur after sunset? Could a mirage be eaten? Marcia stumbled and fell to one knee, catching herself with her sore arm. For a moment she stayed where she was, kneeling like a supplicant. She touched her wounds and brought her fingers away wet with blood that looked black in the dim light.

When she got up, she saw, or thought she saw, a hint of movement next to a building ahead. She took a few steps forward, then stopped and listened. Probably one of the birds. She continued walking. If she could make her way back to the avenue, she would follow the lights she had seen in the distance the night before.

She heard a metallic squeak behind her. When she whirled to face it, she felt lightheaded for a moment, but ignored it. She saw nothing. The dwellings were dark and silent. Her eyes were now completely adjusted to the gloom. She could make out more detail in the shadows, could see the random patterns of the roofs against the background. Here and there the bulk of a roof bird loomed. She watched for a moment, then turned and went on.

When she had been walking for perhaps a quarter of an hour, she began to feel tired. The ache in her arm had grown more insistent. She stopped and let herself go limp. A light chill passed across her shoulder blades and seemed to slide off her back and into the surrounding warmth. She put her hand on her forehead. Despite the humid air, it was dry. It felt almost cool against her palm.

The heal seemed artificial, as though she were walking in a huge greenhouse. Had there been plants, potted palms or something, in the dance hall? She found she couldn’t remember. There had been the band, the jiggling dancers, the table with “the gang.” Shouldn’t there have been other tables? Marcia had an impression there had been, but no actual memory of any. She kept trudging along, gazing more at fugitive pictures of last night than at her present surroundings.

When she had joined the women who called themselves her sisters the dance floor had been crowded, the room alive with talk. Who had occupied the tables on either side? What had been the reaction when she dashed the drink to the table? The music had gone on; so had the dancing. Marcia stopped walking. She tried to picture in her mind the moment the crystal had shattered. She closed her eyes. She saw herself—Lulu—and her sisters. The heads and shoulders of dancers bounced just beyond the table. The atmosphere was one of noise and gaiety. Around them at the edge of the dance floor were crowds of … shadows.

Could it be that there had been only one table? She remembered the music, how it had seemed to sag when she stopped to listen. And the dancers—their shared aura, their jerky puppet motions. Just as she began to open her eyes, a final image rose in her mind. Ulda, draped in rags, towered over a wizened little man. Behind them were four sallow hags who were bent in antic postures like a quartet of arthritic monkeys. At a distance of several yards, a cloaked and hooded person stood pounding a drum monotonously with a heavy stick. Between the drummer and Ulda’s group, naked rat people jumped and turned and waved their arms. Standing apart, on the other side of Ulda, was Suzy, bright and pretty in her lipstick and her red shoes.

Marcia opened her eyes and forced herself to start walking again. She was tired and hot, but mostly she was thirsty. What had the women offered her to drink last night? She had proceeded on the assumption that it was drugged or poisonous. Maybe it had been nothing more than a drink. She tried to remember if the goblet had been cool to the touch. Something, anything, cool would be welcome now.

Marcia stopped again and looked around. The scene had not changed. The lane continued, perhaps forever, between rows of nearly identical structures. It was like being lost in a development in the suburbs, except she couldn’t knock at someone’s door and ask for a glass of water.

In the darkness ahead Marcia saw a momentary block of light. As she was focusing on it, it vanished. She kept her eyes on the spot and started toward it. She had abandoned any idea of being cautious, or even circumspect. Her plan, such as it was, did not entail skulking around these shacks until she dropped. She was looking for a way out. If necessary, she could have Lulu stir things up a bit, but right now, Marcia was perfectly capable of looking into the matter of the light, and if Marcia ran into trouble, well, either she was strong enough to survive here, or she wasn’t. Fine thing, fatalism, when you got right down to it, she thought.

She had no trouble picking out the shack where the light had come from. It sat apart from its neighbors, and light could be seen at the bottom of the door. Marcia stood in the middle of the lane. She was breathing heavily, as if she had sprinted up the slight grade that led to the solitary dwelling. Would this be another whore’s crib? She hoped so; she could imagine much worse possibilities. And the rat people, after all, must drink. Put-ling aside the question of her resolve, she considered going on quietly, but the matter of water was becoming critical. The last thing she had had to drink was coffee in her apartment, as much as sixteen hours ago, besides which she had lost a little blood Liquid had ceased to be a luxury.

She started to straighten up, to square her shoulders, but found it to be too much trouble. She sighed and left the lane. Did people knock here? she asked herself. Besides the field guide, she needed a pamphlet on etiquette and protocol. She was halfway between the lane and the door when she was stopped by a voice from behind her.

“Lulu!”

Marcia didn’t bother to turn quickly. She stopped, paused, then looked back. Suzy, still dressed as she had been at the dance, stood across the lane between two shanties. She was the only spot of color to be seen. The night, the shadows, the silhouetted buildings, even Marcia’s clothing seemed to present to the eye only shades of gray. Lulu looked like a hand-tinted figure in a black-and-white photo. Her matching lipstick and shoes seemed to burn in the darkness.

“Don’t go in there.”

Marcia noticed Suzy’s voice had lost its sprightly lilt.

“What, the band’s no good?”

Suzy smiled. Marcia had no idea what a dreen was, but this one was very pretty. When Suzy took a step toward her, Marcia raised her hand in warning.

“You’ll have trouble there,” said Suzy in a monotone that didn’t go with her appearance. “And Ulda will find you if you exert your power.”

“I’m having trouble everywhere.”

“You are weak now.”

Marcia felt the anger rising in her—the now-predictable tiny throbbing of the mark next to her eye.

“Then stop me, Suzy.” She strode to the door with more confidence than she felt, and knocked briskly.

The face that greeted her seemed to fill the door. “Oh, a vissitor,” it hissed. “How nice. Do step in.”

Marcia took a step backward instead. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Suzy crossing the lane. Her smile had vanished; her face looked grim.

“Don’t be shy,” urged the voice from the door. It was high pitched to come from such a large mouth. The face drew back. It was perhaps not so large as Marcia’s first startled impression had made it seem. It belonged to a man of about her own size, in appearance somewhat older, and with a rim of straight gray hair framing a bald head. Marcia took one more look at Suzy, now a dozen feet away, then stepped into the room.

The impression was that the man was wearing a mask, like some tribal dancer with a body supporting an outsize head.

“See, Mother?” he said, swinging his head in the direction of a woman who looked like his twin, and who was huddled on the floor by an open trapdoor.

Marcia thought she heard faint chittering noises. As she watched, a miniature version of the big heads poked from the opening in the floor. The woman clubbed it with her forearm before looking up.

“My, won’t the children be pleased?” she crowed. She scrambled to her feet with an awkward agility that didn’t fit her appearance. “Where are the hammers?”

Marcia felt uncomfortable. The woman had hardly glanced at her. She began to introduce herself, but was interrupted by the man.

“Right next to you, of course. Where would they be?” His tone was rough. Marcia felt more uncomfortable yet. All she wanted was a glass of water. They could argue later. Hammers?

The man was smiling in her direction. Again Marcia began to say something. The woman put her huge head almost into the hole and shrieked. The sound seemed to continue as she bent to pick up a pair of heavy, short-handled mallets. With a final look at the hole, she joined the man, handing him one of the tools.

For the first time, the woman gave her attention to Marcia. Her look was uncomfortably personal in a very impersonal way. She stepped sideways until she was several feet from the man. They both faced Marcia with alert smiles and wide-eyed stares.

Marcia stepped back to the wall. The man was closer to the door than she was. The woman took another careful step to the side.

As though he had read her mind, the man nodded toward the hammer he held. “Makes it easier for the children,” he said.

The woman nodded and spoke directly to Marcia. “The bones, you know,” she said conversationally.

Marcia smiled politely. She felt grateful to the woman for acknowledging her. Baby food. When the woman took a step in her direction, she raised her ring hand.

“Don’t come near me!” It had worked last night with the dreen.

“What’s thisss?” hissed the man.

“I am stronger than you. Move away from the door.” The dizziness Marcia began to feel seemed to be originating in her feet. The crude lamp hanging on the wall appeared to tip slightly. From the region of the trapdoor, the chittering sound rose again.

The woman bounded to the corner and shrieked again, then leapt back while the painful echoes were still in Marcia’s ears. She moved with impossible speed, like some springing insect.

“Well, in that case …,” said the man. For a moment he was silent. The woman had her eyes fixed on him. Her lips were parted in a manic grin. In a blur of motion he cocked his bony arm and launched his hammer at Marcia.

It didn’t rotate in the air like a knife, Marcia noted. She didn’t know if that was because of the way he had thrown it, or because he was standing less then twenty feet from her. Whatever the reason, when the mallet left his grip, it came headfirst, unwavering as an arrow, straight at the middle of her face. It was, she thought, an extremely accurate throw.

She had a moment to think of the mugger in the alley last summer who had tried to hit her with his fist. Then, as now, time had seemed to slow down, to give her a chance to react.

She leaned to one side, shifting her feet beneath her, and watched the hammer punish the wall a few inches from her head. She let the weapon fall to the floor, then snatched it up, and rose to face her attackers.

The woman was jumping up and down in such a way that she only moved below the waist. Her upper body and huge head remained in one position like a hovering bird of prey. Her face was contorted with rage.

“Ours! The hammers are ours! We have the hammers! Us! Us! Give it back!” She darted toward Marcia, coming about halfway, then retreated and continued her furious dance.

The man was staring at Marcia. “She’s as fast as you, Mother. Faster.”

“We’ll see,” said the woman, settling down and sidling in the direction of the trapdoor.

“Be careful,” said the man. He didn’t take his eyes from his guest.

“They can help,” muttered the woman.

The man contorted his mouth and called to the woman in a half-whisper. Marcia saw big blocky teeth set close together.

“Just two or three,” he said.

“I know.”

Marcia waited, bracing herself against the wall. As soon as the dizziness passed she was going to leave here. The woman was bent over the opening making a murmur of soft noises punctuated with short, angry cries.

When Suzy opened the door and walked in, she seemed to bring a blaze of color to the room. Although the dreen was her enemy, Marcia couldn’t help feeling that the situation had improved.

The man jumped, drew in his breath noisily, and scrambled across the room to the woman’s side. He pulled her roughly from the opening and screamed into it. They both turned to face the new arrival.

Suzy sent one glance in Marcia’s direction, then began slowly advancing on the couple in the corner. Again the urgent noises were rising from the opening.

The man backed up until he reached the wall. The woman dropped to a compact crouch, holding her hammer next to her ankle and flexing her knobby fist on the short handle.

“Not the children,” she said grimly. “Not that.”

Suzy advanced at a nonchalant stroll. Marcia closed her eyes for a second, hoping the lightheadedness would leave her. At the woman’s screech she opened them to see what Suzy had done.

But it was the woman who was acting. As the sound of her screech died, she launched herself at Suzy, landing on her like an attacking beast and striking at her with her hammer. Marcia watched numbly as the blows landed on the flapper’s head, shoulders, her face. Even though Marcia knew that Suzy was not what she appeared, the effect was that of watching a defenseless girl being bludgeoned to death.

Marcia had taken three wobbly steps toward them before she realized that Suzy hadn’t stopped. As the woman tried to spring away from her, Suzy reached out with one hand and seized her by the upper arm. The woman cried out as though she had been scalded. The hammer fell to the floor. A moment later the two women disappeared into the opening. The man had not moved. He looked at Marcia with no readable expression on his splayed-out face.

The screams had already started when Suzy pulled herself from the opening. She brushed off her dress and then looked up at Marcia with a faint smile. Her face was unmarked. Marcia’s head had cleared. She took another step forward. Suzy’s dress wasn’t even torn.

When the dreen turned to face the man, he shrank away from her. His big, wide-set eyes were filled with tears. He looked at Marcia.

“Why did you come to usss?” His childish voice was higher now, the hiss more drawn out.

Marcia knew she had entertained more than her share of irrational thoughts and impulses lately. Still, the pity she felt for the creature who had tried to drive her face through the back of her head was perhaps the most eccentric.

Suzy was advancing on the man.

“Suzy!”

The flapper turned to Marcia. The screams from the trapdoor had subsided.

“What are you going to do?”

“Finish feeding the kids.”

“Leave him.”

Suzy didn’t look back at the man. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go.” She walked to the door and stood with her hand on the latch.

Marcia almost started four or five questions, but couldn’t decide which one to ask. As she joined her, Suzy opened the door.

The man called after them. “They know I’m alone. They will come for me,” he said as they stepped into the night.

Suzy looked back. “Yeah, I know. Well, twenty-three skidoo,” she called, and flashed her prettiest smile at Marcia.

Outside, Suzy followed a route that led them between the huts. Marcia trailed behind her and concentrated on walking. For the moment, it didn’t matter where they were going. She was tired and dirty and her throat felt like she had swallowed glue. Her interests were limited to water, breakfast, and a hot shower.

After they had gone a short distance, Marcia heard a series of rapid screams faintly in the distance behind them. They rose in pitch and intensity, then were abruptly cut off. She stopped to listen, but heard nothing more.

They hadn’t gone much farther when they came to the border of the shacks at a wide avenue. Marcia was sure it was the one she had been on briefly last night.

“The castle is that way,” said Suzy, pointing to their left as they crossed the street. When they reached the other side, they turned to the right.

Marcia surmised that the castle was the place with the dance hall. She didn’t care enough to ask. Her throat hurt. The pedestrians they passed were hidden in a murky blur. She noted without interest that there were rat people among them. Everyone seemed to be giving them wide berth, as they would a lady walking a snarling pit bull. Marcia didn’t know, or care, whether it was she or Suzy they feared.

When her guide turned into an alley even darker than the avenue, Marcia followed without question. She had lost her capacity for fear, and suspicion was of no interest to her. If she was confronted with Ulda, or a dragon, or a semi-automatic rifle, she would fight if she could. She was confident that inside her was at least a small final reservoir of strength that she could call on in need.

When the dreen stopped, Marcia jerked as though she had been awakened from a deep sleep. She looked around in confusion. The alley was paved with broken stone. Thirty yards away, a light burned at the top of a pole. As she stared, Marcia saw a rat scuttle from one shadow to another.

They climbed a narrow flight of stairs. They were near the top when Marcia realized that Suzy was holding on to her arm. She opened a door and helped her through. They walked down a short hallway and passed through another door.

The lamplight hurt her eyes. The smells were strong and seemed to strike at her. A man was plucking at a musical instrument that twanged, and singing in a voice to match. Not another dance, a voice inside her pleaded. The room was small, and filled with tables where people—well, bipeds, Marcia thought, not bothering to look too closely—ate and drank.

They seated themselves beside a window with shutters that were partly open and Suzy called out, “Wine!” in a voice that carried.

“Water,” Marcia croaked. Suzy just laughed. You dirty, pardner?

The wine came in a pitcher. The cups were of a soft hammered metal. Marcia was sure they weren’t clean.

As she raised her cup Suzy ordered her to drink slowly, then pulled her arm back to the table before she had managed more than two or three desperate swallows. The flapper’s grip was heavy and insistent. Marcia looked at her in the flickering light. A hammer had struck that face, landing with enough force to crush bone. You cannot stand before a dreen.

When a plate of meat pastries was brought to the table, Marcia looked at it suspiciously.

“Don’t worry, Lulu, it’s all stolen.”

“Huh?”

“It’s from the Middle Regions. It won’t hurt you.”

Marcia looked at the table. “Can’t we get some water?”

“Now, that would hurt you.”

For some reason, the wine seemed to have no effect on her other than quenching her thirst. The little meat pies were heavy and greasy, but Marcia consumed almost three of them before beginning to wonder what they might be made of. A strongly flavored, rather rubbery bacon seemed to be the chief ingredient. Napkins not being among the amenities provided, Marcia was reduced to wiping the wine and fat from her lips with her fingers, which she considered roughly the equivalent of spitting on the floor.

It was only after she had eaten her fill that she noticed the soothing, relaxing properties of the wine. She sat back in her chair and managed to ignore her more or less urgent need for a shower and a change of clothes, not to mention a toothbrush. She glanced around the room. Except for three squat little men with tiny ears, and one tall, impossibly thin man dressed like a frontier parson, the patrons did not look any more bizarre than many folks on the streets at home. The rat-people might inspire some double takes at a bus stop, she supposed. It would depend on the light.

“Well, Lulu, how do you feel?” Suzy still looked like a misplaced show girl in the drab surroundings. Everything about her—her clothing, her makeup, her complexion—was strangely colorful, with an unexpected quality of illumination, like a stained-glass window in a coal bin. She had eaten nothing, and only taken a few dainty sips of her wine. Her fire-engine lipstick remained irreproachably unsmeared.

How she felt was too complicated a question for Marcia to deal with. She leaned across the table toward Suzy and spoke softly. “What would have happened if I had given Ulda the ring?”

“Your troubles would be over.” The expression on Suzy’s face made her meaning clear. “It’s better,” she added quietly, “that you don’t use her name.” Suzy got to her feet. “It’s time for us to go on,” she said.

When they got outside. Suzy took her arm again on the steps.

Marcia said, “I thought you couldn’t touch me.” She looked at the bruises on her arms. “She couldn’t.”

“She was stupid,” Suzy said. “She should never have put her hand on you.”

“She said she was going to kill me.”

“As I said, she was stupid. She knew she couldn’t kill you. Not while you wore the ring. Her only hope was to bully you or trick you, but she has vast powers, and is unused to considering limits. By attacking you, she weakened herself, temporarily. That’s why I was able to escape her. That, and the fact that she was giving her attention to her new captive.”

“You mean me?”

“No. Another one, after you. Even though she knew you would end up gaining strength from her mistake, she hoped you would stay in that hut. She was stupid, and thought I was stupid, too. I was watching. If you hadn’t left on your own, I would have come for you.”

“Why are you helping me?”

Suzy looked at her with a level gaze. “It is you that are helping me. Without the power of your ring, and the energy she gave up to you, I could not hope to escape her web.”

Suzy led them into an alley across from the inn. It passed between broken masonry walls, tumbledown houses with dark windows, and barren little plots of ground that had the melancholy look of long-neglected gardens. They walked in silence, and all was silent around them. The alley brought them finally to a narrow covered passageway between two tall buildings. As Suzy entered ahead of her and was swallowed by the darkness, Marcia hesitated for a moment, then pushed her misgivings aside wearily, and followed.

The lane at the other end traced the contours of a hill. In one direction it rose steeply, in the other dropped quickly enough that Marcia could look down on the rooftops of buildings not far away. The lane itself was deserted, but there were lights at some windows up the hill; below the place they stood not a single candle shone.

Marcia whispered, “What else?” to herself when the dreen started down the hill. It was to be expected, she supposed, that they would seek out the most depressing route. She realized that she was already thinking of the dirty little cafe as an island of cheer.

“Where are we going?”

Suzy answered without taking her eyes from the ground in front of her. “To someone who can help us find the veil of the Middle Regions.”

“You mean we can cross from here?”

“You can. How else did you come here?”

Marcia caught herself, before she said Ulda’s name. “She brought me.”

Suzy said nothing until they came to a place where the lane turned. She stopped and shook her head. “She did not bring you. You wandered too near her. She was watching, and drew you to her.”

“But I can’t get away,” said Marcia. “I’ve already tried. Nothing happens.”

“Her web is strong,” said Suzy. “You have the power to leave but cannot find your way. That is why we must seek help.”

The hill was not so steep beyond the turning. The lane descended gently, almost level in places. When they had walked for perhaps a quarter of an hour, Marcia began to notice that the air had changed. Now it was not the heat that was oppressive so much as the weight of the air. Clots of yellow mist began to appear between houses. Marcia thought she smelled water.

When it began to rain, Suzy stopped and looked around like a person in the grip of sorcery. The drops were big, and slow. Each splashing impact seemed almost to be an individual event. Marcia saw a dozen strike the ground before one found her arm, and then another her forehead. Suzy turned in a clumsy pirouette, bright red lips stretched in an uncertain grin.

“This is not your doing?”

Marcia looked at her in pure astonishment. “What? The rain?” Another drop struck her cheek and traced a path to her chin. “I wish.”

A few more drops fell, then the rain stopped. For a moment, Suzy stood with her hands out and her head tilted back, then she continued down The lane. After they had gone several paces, the air stirred briefly, the ghost of a breeze. Again Marcia caught the scent of water, as well as a faint but pervasive odor of rotting wood.

During the next minutes, the fog got thicker, now lying across their path like strips of dirty muslin. Marcia had begun to hope they didn’t have much farther to go when they were forced to stop.

The dark water was like a mirage. It erased the lane and cut arbitrarily across the houses ahead that were partially submerged. Suzy stared mutely at the barrier. Again the air stirred, this time a light wind that was visible on the surface of the water. The breeze was tugging at patches of stubborn mist, teasing and curling its way erratically, blowing from first one point, then another. At some indeterminate distance beyond the fog, Marcia could see a dull rim of light, as though the water were bounded by a low, smoldering fire.

“What’s that?” asked Marcia, almost too softly to be heard. It was a place that called for whispers.

“The edge of Ulda’s mantle,” came the low reply. “I didn’t think it could be seen. But then”—Suzy waved her hand in the direction of the water—“I didn’t think the water could swell like this, and rise to eat at her holdings.”

“Is it a river?” asked Marcia.

“No. It is a shallow sea. It is said that in limes beyond memory it was vast and deep; this is all that remains.” Suzy stepped to the edge of the lapping water. “It covers the flats,” she said, peering through the hazy dark. “The houses are flooded. Where will we find the little mage now?”

Marcia didn’t know. “Ulda said something about rising water, an ancient sea, but I got the impression she was talking about something far away.”

Suzy’s answer was carried away by a sudden gust of wind. It swept over them in a rapid whisper that seemed to leave the air more still than before. A few more scattered drops of rain fell. Suzy had turned back to the water and was staring at it soberly.

Marcia breathed deeply. The air was strangely fresh, and bore a familiar scent. She was silent for a few moments, then said, “If I were home, I’d say we were about to be caught in a rainstorm.”

Suzy turned to her slowly and said, “Rain does not fall here,” As she spoke, the heavy drops began to fall again, pocking the surface of the water, and penetrating the mist to spatter on the lane. “As you can see,” she added with a sweeping gesture and a smile.

How can she be that pretty? Marcia wondered. Suzy looked for all the world like a New York model dressed in a period outfit. She was about Marcia’s height and weight, but with more graceful curves. The dreen’s appearance had to be some sort of illusion, she was certain. She recalled her dream vision of Ulda and the others: the shriveled little man, the quartet of hags. In it, none of them had matched their outward appearance except Ulda, who was at least recognizable, and Suzy, who had looked exactly as she did this minute.

Suzy brushed a drop of water from her forehead. “This is some sort of working,” she said. “Tell me again it is none of yours.”

Marcia told her.

“Then Ulda has another enemy to deal with. That can only be good for us.” She started back up the lane. “Come, we must find the little mage.”

Chapter 15

The rain continued to fall. Marcia and Suzy made their way up the hill like witches walking between raindrops, staying almost completely dry. It was not until they had passed the turn in the lane, and the hill got steeper, that the rain began to fall in earnest. A concentrated splash struck Marcia from behind like water cast from a pail. One second she was relatively dry, the next her hair and the back of her blouse were thoroughly wet.

For the space of a few dozen steps, no rain fell. Marcia and Suzy trudged up the hill shoulder to shoulder. When she heard the noise, Marcia stopped. Suzy walked on for a few steps, then turned. As she had before, Marcia noted the almost luminous quality that Suzy seemed to project; even the deep black of her dress seemed a colorful contrast to the surrounding gloom.

From behind her, the noise grew louder. Marcia turned her gaze down the hill. The darkness now seemed animated. All was still except for the muted roar that approached. When the first isolated drops of rain struck her, Marcia smiled broadly and peered into the night.

In the absence of any wind, the curtain of rain was absolutely vertical, and approached slowly. Marcia was conscious of Suzy standing next to her, motionless as a statue, her arms straight at her sides. When the rain had nearly reached them it stopped. For what seemed like a long time, they were outside the downpour.

Then suddenly they were engulfed. Marcia was conscious of the passing of time in fractions of seconds; she was aware of the progressive wetting down of her garments, was aware of the instant when she became completely soaked to the skin.

She laughed and looked at Suzy. The flapper was shaking her head and staring around her. She looked at Marcia and said something inaudible. Marcia smiled and nodded, not caring what she had missed. There was, she thought, something good about this unexpected storm. She tilted her head back to let the rain wash her face. After a moment, she felt a lug at her sleeve. She opened her eyes reluctantly and followed Suzy up the hill.

When they came to the covered passageway, Marcia thought they would take shelter there, but Suzy kept going. Marcia glanced at it as they walked by and thought she saw a movement in the shadows—something heavy and dark. As they passed the lighted houses farther up the hill, she caught glimpses of the inhabitants peering from windows or crowded in open doorways to stare at the rain.

By a large house at the top of the hill, a group of burly men and women dressed in tattered clothes were gathered in the shelter of an overhanging roof. As Marcia and Suzy passed, one of the men began shouting at them and gesturing wildly at the rain. When they were just abreast of him, he abandoned his refuge and came toward them at a shambling trot. It wasn’t until he drew near that Marcia realized how big he was, or that his skin looked like leather, or that the teeth exposed by his open mouth were those of a beast.

In a sudden panic, and without any clear idea of what she would be able to do, she began to raise her ring, but immediately felt the weight of Suzy’s restraining hand. The dreen crossed in front of her, her eyes locked on the advancing man, now perhaps ten yards from them. At the sight of her coming his way, he hesitated for a heartbeat, then bellowed something incomprehensible, and bore down on her like an offended ox.

Marcia was watching very closely, and was certain that colliding with the man had not the slightest effect on Suzy’s progress. He might as well have tried to arrest the momentum of a city bus. He bounced away from her in a way that would have been comical had it not been accompanied by his scream of pain and terror. He landed on his side in the mud. Marcia noticed that one arm was bent under him at an unnatural angle. He had scarcely touched the ground before he rolled onto his back and began sculling himself out of Suzy’s path with frantic thrusts of his heels.

Suzy paid him no heed. By the time she reached the house, the others had fled through the door and closed it. When Suzy reached it, she batted it aside with a single blow of her forearm. Marcia heard the clatter of ruptured planks, the squeal of ruined hinges, and watched as Suzy passed from view into the house. At the same moment, a door at the back corner crashed open and the occupants spilled out into the rain. They ignored the first man, who was trying to struggle to his feet. One of his arms dangled like an empty shirtsleeve as he slipped repeatedly on the muddy ground. When Suzy came back through the door, he howled and thrust himself across the ground in a frantic one-armed crawl.

Suzy said, “We don’t like to be challenged,” as she joined Marcia. She was not breathing heavily. “You must not use your ring if we have problems,” she said. “If you do, Ulda will know.”

They had no more problems. As they walked the streets in the downpour, what few folk they saw peering from windows or sheltering under eaves cither paid them no heed or removed themselves from view. Suzy showed no interest in rest or in protection from the weather. She walked on, leading them down wide streets and narrow alleys and twisting lanes awash with mud.

Marcia followed obediently. She couldn’t get any wetter, and the air and the falling rain were both warm. When she remembered how fervently she had been wishing for a shower, she laughed aloud, but the sound was lost in the noise of the weather.

Suzy did pause occasionally to go to a door, always at some small broken-down and out-of-the-way place. Some of them proved to be vacant; at others she spoke with occupants Marcia usually couldn’t see. At one shack in an alley she stood on a decrepit porch and conversed with a gnarled little woman half her size for a few minutes while Marcia stood like a dunce with the rain pouring over her.

After a while it became apparent that this was no ordinary cloudburst. There was something almost mechanical in the unvarying steadiness of the rainfall. Marcia’s sense of time and her state of exhaustion told her they had been walking for something over two hours, and still the rain came straight down as though drawn from an inexhaustible heavenly cistern and distributed by a gigantic shower head.

Some time well after she had decided she could not bear the walking or the rain any longer, they stopped for lunch. The tavern was small and dark and had only a few patrons. At their table in a corner, Marcia stood irresolutely behind her chair. Should she just sit down wringing wet and dripping? It seemed … indecorous. When she finally lowered herself gingerly into the seat, she felt certain she would never be able to get up again.

A little man with nervous lips brought steaming mugs of tea and stood twisting his hands and looking everywhere but at Suzy. The dreen glanced up at him, then turned to Marcia and said, “Well, Lulu, what do you want?”

“Hamburger, fries, and a Coke,” Marcia replied, watching the water stream onto the table from her hair. She lifted the cup in both hands and held it under her nose.

Suzy said, “Bread, cheese. Wine.” The man stammered something Marcia didn’t catch. In a moment he was back with a platter and a stoppered jug.

Marcia, still staring at the table, began to giggle. “Maybe fajitas, and some guacamole.” She put her mug of tea down heavily. “Nachos. With melted cheese and those little hot peppers.”

The man was trembling as he filled her wineglass. Marcia had always been softhearted, yet his obvious fear awakened no pity in her. Instead, she found herself resisting an almost sickening urge to toy with his discomfort, to do something threatening or startling that would completely unnerve him. She looked at the pale hues of his aura, indistinct in the lamplight, and pictured him shrieking in terror and jumping away from her. When he poured for Suzy, the neck of the wine jug chattered against the rim of her glass. The noise it made sounded like a distant jackhammer, and went on until Marcia began to think it would never stop. When it did, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head to the wall to hide her streaming tears.

By the time she had emptied her second glass of wine, the catch in her throat was gone. She forced herself to nibble at the bread and cheese, and discovered that she was hungry. When she had eaten all she wanted, she poured herself more wine.

Suzy’s glass was almost full. Marcia thought of Egri. “Little Egri,” she said aloud, correcting herself.

“What?”

“A friend of mine. He’s sort of like you: takes little sips of wine; doesn’t eat much.” Suzy said nothing. “He’s a familiar,” said Marcia. “You know. Of a witch.” She looked down into her glass. “He’s really a cat. Sometimes, anyway.” She stared frankly at Suzy for a moment, then dropped her eyes.

Suzy said, “It is Ulda’s doing that I have this form, but it is my true form now. I am not a shape changer.”

“But you are not what you appear to be.”

“No.” Suzy raised her glass and drank. “Are you?”

Why was it, Marcia wondered, that lately every question was complicated? Had it always been that way, but she had just been too dull to notice? She let her eyes wander over her companion’s pretty features. Suzy’s hair, evidently, was naturally curly, with the result that her resemblance to a drowned cat was much less faithful than Marcia was certain her own was.

“No, I’m not,” Marcia admitted, “but that woman, I mean, thing—”

“Troll.”

“Okay, troll. Anyway, I saw her attack you with a hammer.”

“And you were not attacked?”

“Well, yes, but …”

“And you had taken the other hammer.” Suzy leaned forward and rested her chin in her hands. “It seems each of us was too strong for them.”

Marcia thought for a moment. “What I did was just a trick, sort of. When he threw the hammer at me, time seemed to go slower while I got out of the way.” Marcia dropped her voice to a whisper. “But you are strong. When that, uh, man—”

“Troll.”

“Troll,” Marcia repeated. “Anyway, when—Really? Another troll?” She took a contemplative sip of wine, then shrugged her shoulders. “They don’t have much luck with you, do they?”

“No,” said Suzy. “And you’re right, of course. I am able to overcome threats with physical force. No mere troll can challenge me; no clumsy weapon can injure me; walls of wood or stone cannot stand against my strength. Meanwhile, all you can manage, poor dear, is to distort the fabric of space and time. I can knock down a troll, smash a door. The best you can do is defy the power of the one who rules here, who made this place, this darkness, who holds a thousand trolls—ten thousand—in the palm of her hand.” Suzy took Marcia’s hand and gently turned her arm to expose the bloody bruises. “Yet when that same hand dares touch you, threaten you, it is forced to withdraw in dire agony. It is only right, only natural, that you envy me my vast powers.”

Marcia stared for a moment at her injured arm. “Are you saying that my power equals hers? Surpasses it?”

“No. I think that is not possible. Hers is a primary power; she has drawn it directly from the wellspring. There are few powers anywhere to equal her.”

“Then what does she need with my ring?”

“You must not come to a dreen for wisdom. I can only guess. It is clear she covets the ring. It is clear that with the ring you are able to resist her.” Suzy gazed at Marcia’s ring. “This, then, is a thing of no ordinary potency. To interest Ulda, it must be vastly powerful. To enable you to resist her, it must come from a source as great as she, or greater. One of those from whom she is sundered.”

Marcia had been staring at her ring. She looked up quickly at her companion. “Sundered? Like who, for instance?”

Suzy returned her look frankly. “This, you must know better than I. I am a simple fighter, a guard. You wear the ring, wield its power. You did not find it in the gutter. It must have been given you by one who knew you could bear its weight.”

Yes. Marcia thought. That was true. Elyssa had put the ring on her finger, and when she had used it well, and had stood up to the fury of the demon, Elyssa had allowed her to keep it, said she seemed “suited to it.” But she had also said that the ring was not to be removed. Yet Father—the crazy old man—had stolen it from her and worn it. And wearing it he had altered it, then put it back on her finger, but with no care or thought of her strength or capabilities. Thinking about it, Marcia began to conclude that she had only survived her encounter with Ulda through the agency of plain dumb luck.

She smiled faintly at Suzy. She had done enough chattering. She nodded as though to acknowledge the accuracy of the dreen’s observation. They seemed, for the moment, to be in league, but it might be better for this armored truck in the form of a Charleston expert to think her stronger and smarter than she really was.

A few minutes later they left the tavern. Outside, the rain was coming down just as before. Though she was already soaked, it still seemed odd to Marcia to walk into a downpour. What would people think? She shook her head as she followed Suzy from the shelter of the door.

A quarter of an hour later the rain stopped abruptly. Su/y was once again in conversation in the candlelight of a doorway. Just as the door closed and Suzy stepped into the lane, the falling water, which had begun to seem permanent, ceased. One moment it was pounding relentlessly, the next it was simply gone. The noise of the rain swallowed itself, vanishing in a quick roar that left other sounds defined in the sudden silence: the trickle of a thousand tiny waterfalls and rivers, the quick splashes of Suzy’s muddy red shoes as she stepped across the lane. Marcia could smell the quiet, the tightening heat of the air.

Suzy stopped and looked around like some inhabitant of a land of perpetual rainfall who had never before seen a break in the weather. She came to Marcia’s side and spoke in a low voice. “I had hoped it might be longer, this rain.”

“Not me,” said Marcia. “I’m wet enough.”

“It occupied her. I think. The rising waters, the storm—she has not caused these things; they are working against—” Suzy peered toward the end of the lane. Marcia followed her eyes and saw nothing but puddles and shadows. Without saying a word, the dreen put her hand on Marcia’s arm and began walking back toward the doorway she had just left. She moved quickly, pulling Marcia along. At the door, she paused, staring again into the darkness and then turning her head slightly as though listening for something. Marcia stood absolutely still and held her breath .. After several Seconds, during which Marcia saw and heard nothing at all, Suzy lifted the latch and pushed the door open.

Inside, the smell of wet bare planks combined inharmoniously with a chorus of other odors. The light of the single lamp seemed dazzling after the darkness of the streets. Marcia looked around guiltily. They hadn’t knocked.

As if to register this breach of etiquette, six pairs of eyes stared at them. Seated against the wall opposite the door on what appeared to be a pile of rags was a woman. She was pale and had curly blond hair. Her shape was pyramidic. Her head was small; her facial features seemed pinched, as though they had been forced into a space too small for them. From her chin down, her body widened—spread out—until it blended with the scraps she sat on.

Next to her, sitting on his heels with his back propped against the wall, was a small, bony man with rough black hair. The expression on his face, though static, was strangely alert. He looked like someone who has been momentarily blinded by a flashbulb. On the other side of the woman were a pair of tall, painfully slender girls with black hair and prominent eyes, a plump, shapeless boy whose stare was vacant, and a small, red, hairless dog that looked like a dyed rat.

Suzy did not say a word. Marcia smiled tentatively and fluttered her hands. A number of inane remarks suggested themselves to her. She felt like a genteel charity volunteer who has suddenly been thrust into the company of poor people.

“Suzy?” she prompted, with a fragile smile.

Suzy raised her hand for silence, then kept it raised as she listened at the door. After a moment, she dropped her hand to her side.

“What?”

Marcia smiled again and glanced pointedly toward the group on the other side of the room. She knew she was being irrational, but her mother’s principles were immutable. When she crossed the threshold, she had become a guest. She could only presume the woman held up by the pile of rags was her hostess, and she had not been introduced.

The man said something that sounded like “bervull,” and got to his feet. The dog whined and did a little dog-dance on its short legs, never taking its eyes from Suzy. The man was taller than Marcia would have thought. He looked vaguely like Abraham Lincoln with a very cheap haircut and no beard. He crossed the room and opened the door. The dog whined again, then rushed across the floor and vanished into the darkness. The man followed and pulled the door closed behind him.

Marcia didn’t know if she had ever been in such an uncomfortable social position. Compared with this, her visit with the trolls had been a gracious event, even though their interest in her had been largely nutritional. She cast a surreptitious glance in the direction of the lady of the house. She sat unmoving, but for a slight chewing motion of her chin and lower lip, and stared straight ahead, paying no attention to her visitors. It was as though there were a television chattering and flickering in the corner.

After a dull interval that seemed like hours but wasn’t, the door opened. Marcia caught a glimpse of the man as Suzy went outside. As she made haste to follow, she glanced one more time at the mute company ranged against the wall. She forced a weak smile and nodded as though in acknowledgment of hospitality offered, then was shocked to hear Lulu’s unmodulated voice come sneaking past her lips.

“Thanks, it’s been swell. Real swell.”

After another hour or more threading their way down the darkest lanes and alleys, Suzy led her to an area that was like the one where she had first encountered the rat people. They stopped in front of a shack that was even smaller and more rickety looking than most. It was surrounded by rubble and hemmed in by its neighbors. Marcia held back. The place was claustrophobic and she had had quite enough socializing.

“How about if I just wait outside? You take all the time you want.”

Suzy shook her head and beckoned. When they reached the door, she tapped lightly, like a church lady arriving for tea at the parson’s cottage. Marcia pictured her earlier in the day, smashing a stout door to splinters.

The person who opened the door was hardly taller than Borphis. He was perhaps the size of an average ten-year-old, but completely bald and deeply wrinkled. He looked up at the two women silently for a few seconds, then stepped back and performed a flourishing gesture of invitation.

“Enter, good ladies, please, and grace my humble parlor. You do me high honor. High honor, indeed.”

Marcia was surprised, on stepping through the door, to find herself in a hallway. The entire shack was not as large as her bedroom and had no need of an entryway—she looked down at her feet—certainly not one with a floor of dirt. She glanced at Suzy. The dreen had a smile on her face that could only be described as smug.

“This way, please, gracious ladies, if you will permit me to conduct you.”

Misgivings had become a permanent feature in Marcia’s state of mind. With practiced ease she suppressed them as she followed the dreen and the strange little man down the hall. At least their host talked. Perhaps he would even be able to offer them a chair.

She did not so easily suppress her feelings as she was ushered through the doorway into the “humble parlor.” At first it didn’t register that the room was larger than it could possibly be, given the dimensions of the shack. Her attention was entirely occupied with the polished wooden floor and the rugs that were scattered here and there. Although the room was windowless, the air was cool and fresh. Marcia stared, blinking, at the divan piled with silk cushions, at the upholstered chairs—four, it seemed, although that wasn’t possible. But then, neither was wainscoting and plaster, fresh air. The aroma of steeping tea. She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“Cream?”

She opened her eyes. “Please,” she replied, then looked around in confusion. “What is this?” she blurted out.

“Your pardon,” said the little man. “Doubtless you would like to freshen up. The facility is through that door.”

Marcia proceeded like a sleepwalker. When she came back to the parlor, the little man was pouring tea for Suzy, who was wearing a long blue robe trimmed in lace.

She jerked her head in the direction of a door in the corner of the room. “You can change in there. Lulu. I laid something out for you.”

The room was large and furnished as opulently as the living room. Suzy’s wet clothing had been tossed carelessly onto the floor. Marcia undressed, folded her clothes, then Suzy’s, before toweling herself off and putting on an elegant robe of red silk that would have looked much better on the flapper. She could not find a mirror. She hesitated at the door, imagining what her freshly toweled hair must look like. As she left the room, she found herself thinking of Albert Einstein.

Suzy looked like someone who has just spent all afternoon at a beauty parlor. She swept up to Marcia like a debutante. The little man hastened along at her elbow.

“Marcia, allow me to present the master magician, Phellep.”

The little mage bowed like a courtier of Louis XIV. “I will never fail to recall your gracious condescension with gratitude and pride, my lady.”

Surprisingly, Marcia was quick-witted enough to squelch Lulu’s brassy “Pleased ta meetcha,” then found that all she could think to say was “Charmed,” which seemed insufficient in the face of Phellep’s euphuistic welcome.

Marcia luxuriated in the embrace of an immense armchair upholstered in a soft, supple leather. The tea bore the faint aroma of smoke and was accompanied by a tray of plain butter cookies that seemed to Marcia at that moment to be the most satisfying food she had ever eaten.

So far, the conversation had been limited to talk of tea and cookies, and a brief discussion of the weather in which Ulda’s name had been studiously avoided. Marcia was determined to speak of more substantive matters. She thought that she had been quite patient enough, even by her standards—meaning her mother’s—but something was bothering her, something she couldn’t define but that had the persistence of an almost-remembered word or thought. She had the definite impression that she was failing to notice something of importance.

She looked around the room again. There was a large mystery there—she was sitting in a room bigger than the building it occupied—but that was not the thing that was nagging at her. Nor was it the clean, fresh air, or the silence. It was something subtle. She closed her eyes and listened. A cup and saucer came together with a small noise. The only other sound was the ticking of the clock.

Marcia opened her eyes. She put her cup down carefully and looked around the room. She didn’t see how she had managed to miss it. The clock was hanging on the wall next to a lamp. Marcia peered at it as she got up from her chair, ignoring the protests of tired muscles in her legs and back. What time was it? she wondered, then amended her question: What time was it here? And what time zone were they in, anyway?

The clock had a brass pendulum with an adjustable weight, an elaborately carved wooden case, a face decorated with curlicues in faded gold paint, and no hands.

Marcia didn’t have enough energy for a fit of giggles. Instead, she stared at the timeless clock. She recalled that a stopped clock is absolutely accurate twice a day. She wondered what the interval of unimpeachability was of a device like this. She turned away from the clock convinced that she had missed the point of something that was either transcendently witty or very profound.

Phellep crossed the room on silent feet. “I still have them,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The hands. I still have them. I’m afraid I’m not very clever with mechanical things. I’ve tried to attach them more than once, but they always fall back off again. Still, it’s a comforting sound, don’t you think?”

The subsequent conversation about time led to questions of place, which Marcia followed, but only with difficulty.

“So we are not in … her domain at all?” She wondered if Regions would ever make sense to her.

“That is correct, dear lady. This is my little place of refuge. It lies in an intermediate area. Reaching it is a trick I stumbled onto quite by accident; I have developed it into something of a specialty.”

“Then we will go from here to the Middle Regions?”

“Alas, no,” said the little mage. “That is something I have not quite worked out yet. I came upon this place, in fact, while attempting to escape to the Middle Regions. I can only help you on your way.”

Marcia leaned forward in her chair. “Can you come with us? If you want to escape …”

Phellep smiled sadly. “I am indebted to you for your gracious offer; you are most generous. But I must tarry here yet awhile. This”—he looked around his parlor—“has become my work. I want to see it through. I am rather proud, if I must admit it, of being able to continue under her nose. I am like a mouse hidden by the hem of her skirt. She may suspect my presence, but she cannot find me.”

The mage looked up at the clock and stared at it for a moment. “Dear me,” he said, slipping from his chair, “I must see to your clothing.”

When he left the room, Marcia began to speak, but was interrupted by the sound of music. It seemed to be coining from within the room, a simple, slow melody being played on a lone violin, but when she looked around, Marcia could see no one. She peered into the corners. Had she, she wondered, failed to notice a stereo system as well as the clock? She glanced at Suzy, then shrugged and settled back to enjoy the entertainment.

When she woke up, she turned her eyes to the clock, and then to Suzy, who was dressed again in her flapper outfit, no longer wet and muddy, but back to its original glitter and shine. Even the red shoes were spotless and seemed to radiate a light of their own. The dreen flashed a smile and performed a tricky dance step.

“Your stuff’s ready too, Lulu.”

As the little mage bowed her out of the room, Marcia found herself wondering where Suzy kept her makeup. Everyone else seemed to have an unfailing repertoire of tricks. Where were hers? As she stepped out of the robe, she looked down at the thin golden ring on her finger and smiled.

When Marcia came back to the parlor wearing her own clothing, she found that the little mage had put on a different outfit as well. Before, he had been dressed in loose-fitting silk trousers, a ruffled shirt, and a tailored jacket with a velvet collar. Now he was covered in a long, hooded wrap that was overdue for a trip to the dry cleaner.

As they stepped back into the hallway, Marcia was forcibly reminded of the foul air of the Lower Regions. But why would a place between Regions have air at all?

At the end of the hallway, Suzy halted them with a gesture and went outside by herself. Just when Marcia had begun to think something must have gone wrong, the door opened and Suzy beckoned to them.

“Where?” she said to Phellep as he closed the door behind them.

“Any place you like, dear lady, so long as it is lonely and not too near this entrance.”

“The water, then. Everyone has fled.”

“That is good. She is no more likely to be there than elsewhere.”

Marcia looked back and forth between her two companions. “What happens if she finds us?”

“For the two of us,” the magician said, “our fates would not be enviable ones. For you, I cannot tell. It would depend on your strength and her determination. Lacking the power to destroy you, I suppose she would try to reduce you to the state of a wraith, or use the threat to mold you to her will.”

It took more than an hour, by Marcia’s reckoning, to get back to the rising sea. They stayed entirely to alleys and narrow passageways, and saw few others abroad except at a distance on the wider streets. On the occasions that traversing a busy way could not be avoided, they crossed separately, the dreen always first, the little mage last.

Finally they arrived at the water’s edge.

As Marcia gazed somberly at the half-submerged hovels and clots of floating trash, she heard herself say, “I’ve always liked the seashore.”

“Oh, hi there, Lulu,” said Suzy, flashing her a cover-girl smile.

Lulu. Where do virgin warriors go for psychotherapy? Marcia pictured herself reclining on a leather couch. My alter ego’s getting out of hand. Doc. I mean, there I am in a parallel world, struggling against deadly sorcery, and she starts piping up with wisecracks. It’s, like, damaging my credibility with all the demons and mages.

Phellep was looking up at her with a puzzled expression. “Now,” he said, glancing at Suzy, “let us commence.” He walked to the very edge of the lapping water.

“What I am going to do is help you disarrange the network of her web. We must, of course, be circumspect, but she will not notice a small disturbance from this quiet spot, not if you are quick. It is somewhat like lifting a curtain. As soon as you are able to catch the trick of it, you must take it from me and manage it yourself. Then, while holding her force at bay, you simply exert your own and propel yourself through the veil. You must make the passage at good speed, and not walk at a ceremonial pace like an acolyte bearing a chalice. As soon as I see you on your way, I will leave, for I am exposed and must return to my refuge.”

When Marcia and Suzy had arranged themselves according to Phellep’s instructions, he took a position next to them and stood silently. After a silent minute, Marcia whispered, “I don’t—”

“Just attend, my lady. Closely. Follow my eyes, now.”

When she saw it, she wondered why she hadn’t figured it out for herself. It was all part of the same fabric: the darkness, the fell vapors, Ulda’s horrific web. This could all, she thought, be stripped away. Why did not the little mage simply pull it down? Still, she reasoned, she might be missing some detail. Best not to be too ambitious.

She stretched out her hand and began to advance, turning to Phellep just long enough to see him relinquish his hold and fade from her view. She felt Suzy’s grip on her other hand. Remembering Phellep’s urging, she moved forward briskly. Within moments, they were enveloped in the fog that veiled the Middle Regions. Marcia pictured her bedroom and, more specifically, her antique rocking chair. A few more steps, and she saw it through the mist. She had one moment of doubt—a sudden fear that she would find it, not by her bed, but by the encroaching water that Ulda had drawn her to last night. And then they were standing in her bedroom.

Marcia said, “Oh, boy.”

“So to speak,” added Suzy.

Marcia glanced at the clock by her bed, then went to the window and pulled back the drapes. It was evening. Eight o’clock—she stopped to think—Saturday night. She wondered if Borphis had ordered a pizza yet. There was a knock on the bedroom door. Marcia hurried past Suzy and opened it.

Borphis was smiling broadly. “Well,” he said, stepping into the room, “it’s about—” When he saw Suzy, he stopped talking and started backing up. The expression on his face was not an optimistic one.

From behind Marcia, Suzy called softly, “Be at peace, small one. You are safe.”

“Oh, good,” said Borphis without conviction. He looked up at Marcia and spoke in a soft voice.

“Do you know—?”

Suzy stepped to Marcia’s side. Borphis backed through the doorway. “She knows I am a dreen.”

It took several minutes for Marcia to reconcile Borphis to having a dreen on the premises. She thought she would wait for some other, more convenient occasion to mention that she did not have any idea what a dreen was.

“Have you eaten?” she asked, hoping to get off the subject of dreens without getting onto the subject of where she had been.

“No, I was waiting for you.” Borphis slid off his chair with a quick glance at Suzy. “I’ll call out for pizza,” he said smugly. “What’s the biggest one they have?”

Marcia ate more pizza than she ever had before, matched Borphis in the consumption of red wine, and then, as her little mascot began to play the part of the expansive host, joined in the round of cognac he served with a show of proprietary vanity. Marcia had been brought up in a frugal household. As she watched him pour out double portions, she wondered if she should consider stocking a brand that cost less than forty-seven dollars a fifth.

By the time the festivities had subsided, she was ready for a night’s sleep in her own bed. Even the lengthy immersion in hot, sudsy water that she had promised herself could wait until morning, she decided. She began to fret about accommodations for Suzy, but her two demonic companions—she caught herself staring at them in an unexpected rush of renewed wonder—assured her that they could manage without her supervision.

She took a quick shower, brushed her teeth until her gums tingled, and then collapsed into her welcoming bed.

Marcia dreamed of soft music. A person smaller than Borphis sat propped on a pillow at the foot of her bed. He was strumming a very small guitar and singing in a voice that rang clear and bell-like, even though it was hardly louder than a whisper. She sipped cool water from a glass by her bed—one that she had not put there.

If your head is off the pillow, you are awake, she thought, confused that she could still hear the singer. She smiled at him as she let her head sink back and her eyes fall shut. She could feel the melody breathing inside her, feel the soothing harmonies of the strings, the bracing punctuation of the dissonances that arose and were resolved.

She awoke at the midpoint of the night. The glass was still on her nightstand, still full. It was decorated with a faded picture of a young man playing a guitar. She smiled to herself.

She meant to look in on her houseguests, but when she came back from the bathroom, it seemed like too much trouble. Through the drawn curtains she could hear the sound of a truck passing on the street below. As she arranged herself under the blankets she wondered why there was a pillow propped against the footboard.

Her pleasant, serenaded sleep was troubled, finally, by a dream in which she was being threatened by an invisible danger. She could see herself held prisoner in a dark place. She was dressed in colorful clothing that was not hers, yet was strangely familiar. The whole scene she viewed as though at a great distance. It was like looking down from the third balcony at a single actor on a stark, bare stage. But though the scene was remote in space, the sense of dread was intense and intimate.

Chapter 16

It was not until the second day after Edorra and Rickey had brought him from the beach that Rogan got out of bed and into his clothing. He found it very odd to dress in the things he had worn in what almost seemed another life, the one he had lived before the sea had nearly claimed him. Edorra had seen that the sand and salt water were washed from his things; even his shoes were clean and dry. Still he associated them with his maritime mishap.

Rogan had already thanked every god and goddess he could think of for the inestimable blessing of standing alive on solid ground. By some miracle, he had escaped the malice of the sea though he had been adrift in a small open boat for half the night, tossed from the tip of one enormous wave to the next. As he fastened his jacket, he ran through the list of deities again. The fact that he was quite convinced that none of them actually existed made it, he thought, all the more remarkable that they had exerted themselves in his behalf.

He sat on the edge of his bed and got himself into his shoes. It was just the early edge of morning, not at all his customary hour for arising, but two full days of rest had left him anxious to be up and about. After breakfast, he intended to take a stroll out of doors, the better to appreciate the delicious stability of solid ground. He might, he thought, even walk to the edge of the sea, if it wasn’t too far, for the purpose of gloating.

Breakfast. Odd he should think of that. The woman with her relentless feeding was meddling with the settled habits of his life. Rogan cast his mind back across the decades. It was thirty years at least, he thought, since he had taken any meal other than dinner. At home, the sun was always well up in the sky by the time he left his bed. Unlike the balance of humanity, he took no refreshment upon arising beyond the merest sip of pale wine, a supply of which he kept well chilled for the purpose. As the day passed, it was his habit to fortify himself with a few modest goblets as the need arose, progressing from the light wines appropriate to the early hours of the day to the more bracing and manly beverages that enlivened his afternoons. He had found that such a regimen was perfectly adapted to the demands and rigors of a court magician’s life, and enabled him to meet the challenges of his work with a zest and enthusiasm often absent in men of his advanced years.

In the two days he had known her, Edorra had been consistently good-natured, if dictatorial. This morning, it was clear that being pleasant was costing her some effort. Rogan dispatched his morning meal without protest and made haste to leave the woman to herself. He remembered the conversation he had overheard yesterday about the boy’s apprenticeship, but didn’t see that he could do or say anything to help. If the boy was to learn a trade, it was no more than most boys had to face. And as far as the matter of scholarship, Rogan was not prepared to say that a scholar’s inky fate was necessarily better than that of a man who worked with his hands. His years at the royal court had provided him with ample opportunity to compare the life of the idle with that of folk obliged to be industrious. Rogan knew many working people who led more gratifying existences than the titled dandies who lounged around the gaming tables at Asbrak’s palace.

Of course, there were occupations and then there were occupations. His own, for instance, afforded its practitioners a certain flexibility not enjoyed by, say, a porter or pastry baker. But then, magic was not a matter only of scholarship. One had to have talent—flair.

He wondered if the boy had tired of meddling with the spell. Rogan had seen him only once since he had written it out. On that occasion, Rickey had asked him a string of complicated questions that only showed he had no understanding of magic. Which of course made perfect sense. It took more than a knowledge of the words of a spell to master even the simplest of effects, let alone something on the level of hiding. Rogan had been rather surprised that he himself had managed it so handily.

The magician had not walked far from the cottage before he looked back to check his bearings. Although he was unaware that he possessed not the slightest sense of direction, he had noticed over the years that he seemed to have a talent for losing his way, even in the passageways of the palace where he had lived for over two decades. He assumed it was because his mind at some unconscious level was perpetually occupied with the deep workings of his art. Whatever the reason, it was not uncommon for him, if he had to go from one part of the palace to another, to return to the remote tower where his rooms were located so that he could make his way by a familiar route to his next destination.

The sea, quiet now, blended in with the blue-green of the morning sky so that at first Rogan did not notice it. It was only when he saw Rickey ahead among the sand and tangled weeds that he realized that what he had taken for the horizon was in fact the shoreline.

The boy was moving in stops and starts along the beach in the light-footed way children have. No doubt he was occupied with some childish fancy, his magical ambitions forgotten. It was just as well, Rogan thought. What had the boy asked him last night? Which words in the spell were the ones that had the magic? That was one question. And then another, even more irrelevant. Something about making a number of objects disappear one after the other, and then bringing them back in a different order. No wonder children accomplished so little. They were incapable of keeping their minds on the problem at hand. Rogan thought of the titled mob that populated the court of Asbrak the Fat. Maybe children were just natural aristocrats.

When Rickey saw the magician, he ran to meet him. “How far away can you be from something?” he demanded without greeting or preamble. Rogan gazed down on the boy. Rickey was staring intently at the ground. “Or could it be inside of another thing—like a house?”

Rogan had spent little time in the company of children since a very long time ago when he had been one himself. He wondered if it was possible the boy had lost his reason. His raised his eyes to the endless expanse of ocean that lay still as a pond. Had this been the raging sea that had tried to claim him? How melancholy to think that his picked bones might at this moment be lying on the ocean floor, agitated at the will of vagrant tides, the insensate remnants of a once-powerful mage. Well, fairly powerful, as palace magicians go—and not really a mage, precisely, in the strict definition of the term.

When Rogan spoke, it was in a tone of gentle sadness. “What was that again, lad?”

“When you make something disappear. How far away can you be?”

“Not too far,” said Rogan in a distant tone. Really, he supposed, it was foolish to picture the bones together, arranged in the form of a body. They would be scattered, some perhaps crushed in the jaws of giant fish. He winced.

“How about a house?”

Rogan turned to the boy with an incredulous stare. “You want to make a house disappear?”

Rickey laughed. “No. Something inside a house. While you were outside.” His eyes sparkled. “Could you make a house disappear?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, why would anyone want to make a house disappear? Magic is not a game, boy. We don’t do things just because we can.” Rogan’s thoughts strayed to the marvelous impression the disappearance of an entire house would create. “Real magicians work their spells for serious reasons.”

“Well,” Rickey said with a determinedly earnest expression on his face, “what about something inside a house? You know, if you were outside and—”

Rogan cut him off with an abrupt gesture. “No, no, no. You have leapt into the realm of the theoretical, or worse yet, of artistic magic.”

“What’s artistic magic?”

“Magic for its own sake.” Rogan shook his head decisively. “Bunch of meaningless razzle-dazzle.” He fixed the boy with a stern look. “Magicians are not philosophers. We are practical men. Craftsmen.”

“But it’s wonderful, making things disappear, saying the magic words.”

“I will tell you a secret,” Rogan said. “It seems wonderful when you see it happen, but by the time you put in the years of hard work to learn to do it, a lot of the fun gets lost.”

“But I—”

“And as far as magic words, they aren’t, you see, magic themselves. What seems like magic is more of a knack, or a—”

Rickey raised his boyish voice in protest. “But some of the words can move things. All through the spell you wrote—indited—for me are words that are like real things.”

Rogan was not used to being interrupted. He was not, in fact, used to conversation at all. The boy who waited on him at the palace was dull and sluggish and only became animated at mealtimes. He looked at Rickey, who seemed near to bursting with enthusiasm. Perhaps he would petition Asbrak for a servant of a more lively temperament.

“Very well, lad,” he said with an indulgent smile. “The magic words of the spell I gave you are for a seventh-year apprentice, but when you master them, you be sure to tell me.”

“All right. At first I—”

“But just this moment, I want you to point me back to the cottage. I feel a little chilly.” Rogan sent a suspicious glance in the direction of the ocean. “Mind you don’t get too close to the water, now.”

Chapter 17

Marcia awoke to pale winter light at her windows. Of her dream, all that remained was a vague and easily dismissed feeling of unease. She stretched and looked around her familiar surroundings. The drapes had been pulled, the Venetian blinds opened. Evidently elves and fairies were early risers.

It was not until Marcia noticed that snow was falling past her bedroom windows that she got out of bed. She slipped her feet into her slippers and padded to the window to look out.

The snow was heavy enough that she could see no more than the headlights of the few cars passing below. All detail was lost in a featureless blanket of white. Marcia’s reflexive thought was of the state of her refrigerator and cupboard, but since the sprites had moved in, she supposed she didn’t have to worry about supplies.

Would the sprites make pizza? And if so, how? And where? She tried to picture their kitchen, the oven they would bake in, but kept on coming up with an image of the Egyptians who operated the local pizzeria.

In the living room, Borphis was staring out the window at the snow. It was a reasonable guess that he had never seen any. For a moment, Marcia considered the possibility that he might find it unsettling, then she noticed the bag from the doughnut shop.

Suzy was sitting at the table sipping coffee. Marcia was opening her mouth to say good morning when she had an acute attack of bad conscience.

“Where did you sleep?” she asked. “Did you find the blankets? The pillows are in the linen closet.”

Suzy looked the same as she always did. Even her lipstick was fresh. She raised her pretty eyes. “I don’t sleep,” she said quietly.

Marcia almost said “Oh, good,” but caught herself. Instead she asked, “Never?”

“That’s right.”

Her instinct was to find something polite to say, but nothing came readily to mind. Even among all the strange, disquieting, and downright frightening things Marcia had experienced recently, the idea that Suzy was perpetually awake was especially jarring. How long had she been awake? How many years? Suzy looked like a young woman, but she wasn’t, she was something called a dreen. How long did dreens live? Marcia thought of decades of unrelenting wakefulness. Centuries. Her eyes wandered to Suzy’s aura. The colors were all deeply saturated, heavy tints that seemed to melt into one another and form an indistinct nimbus with shifting boundaries.

“Your vills have coffee in the kitchen. I don’t think they’ll bring it to the table for you while I’m here.”

Borphis had slid down from the chair by the window. “I got doughnuts,” he said. He glanced toward the window. “Does this happen often?”

Marcia looked at the heavy snow floating past the window. She recalled the bleak, sterile Christmas season a month ago, skies cloudy out of pure meanness; dry, cold mornings; comfortless early dusks; knifing icy winds.

“Not really,” she said. Vills?

In the kitchen Marcia found not only coffee, but a platter of fruit, a pot of soft fresh cheese, a basket of rolls, and a wineglass full of thick, dark jam that smelled like wildflowers.

Suzy consented to nibble on a roll from Marcia’s breakfast tray. Borphis wanted nothing but his pile of doughnuts. Marcia busied herself with the food that had been provided by the elves or nymphs or fairies or gnomes—whoever they were, they had found a supply of luscious ripe cherries in the middle of a January snowstorm.

She felt very good, in an indolent sort of way. Borphis was looking out the window; Suzy was sitting across from her at the table in a way that made Marcia imagine she had never really seen anyone sit still before. Her impulse was that she had an obligation to start a conversation or provide some other diversion for her guests, but the effort was just too great. For a while she just stared blankly into space, then drifted from the room without a word.

After her bath, which lasted over an hour, she got dressed. By the time she had put on slacks, a blouse and sweater, and a pair of comfortable loafers, she felt that life had almost returned to normal, putting aside the fact that there were two otherworldly beings in her living room, and her kitchen had been taken over by the Keebler elves.

She started to sit in Great-grandmother Mibsey’s rocking chair, then hesitated. Finally she sat down. She refused to think of her heirlooms as snares from Hell. It was true that her great-grandmother had been a rather forbidding old lady. It was even true that the pieces of furniture that had belonged to her seemed to carry the aura of her gloomy mansion with them wherever they went. But this chair, Marcia was certain, had no connection to Ulda or the other world.

Being careful to keep thoughts of crossing Regions from her mind, she sat and tried to sort out her situation. She needed to be in touch with the Sisterhood. She didn’t know where she was supposed to be, or what she was supposed to be doing, but she was sure she was not meant to be lounging around in her apartment or, for that matter, serving as an underground railroad for supernatural undocumented aliens. What would the Department of Immigration and Naturalization think?

What about the one with the lipstick? Is she a demon too?

No, no, not at all, don’t worry. She’s a dreen.

What’s the difference?

Well, let’s see … the demon lives on doughnuts and pizza; the dreen never sleeps, and if someone batters her with a mallet it doesn’t mess up her mascara.

And that, Marcia thought with a sigh, was the extent of her knowledge.

Lunch was provided by unseen hands. Afterwards, Marcia took her guests for an outing in the snow. Suzy managed to continue looking glamorous in galoshes and an overcoat; Borphis looked slightly silly wrapped up in a short jacket of Marcia’s that came to his ankles.

Suzy was no more affected by cold than Borphis was. Neither seemed to be aware of the temperature. When Marcia stopped to buy cognac, grateful for an excuse to escape the cold wind, her companions waited outside the store. She was almost able to talk herself into an adequate but not so exalted brandy, but at the last minute, she thought of Borphis and how he seemed to revel in the intense bouquet and austere refinement of the good stuff. As she took it from the shelf, she noted that the price had gone from forty-seven to fifty-one dollars.

At the checkout counter, Marcia waited for the clerk to notice her. She shook her head ruefully. She should have brought Suzy in. Looks get attention, Marcia knew, if only through hearsay.

She cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, making an effort to speak up.

The clerk was looking out the window, laughing. “Damned if he’s not trying to pick it up.” He glanced at Marcia. “Look at this kid trying to lift that truck out of the ditch.”

By the time Marcia hit the door, Borphis was back on the sidewalk. Behind him, three men were standing behind a loaded pickup truck tilted steeply into an icy rut.

Marcia heard Borphis say, “It’s too heavy.” She sighed with relief and turned back to the store, remembering she had left her handbag on the counter. As the door closed behind her, she heard a shout and a whistle. She got back outside just in time to watch Suzy, curls bouncing, skip across the curb. One of the men said something that the others laughed at, but of which Marcia caught only the word mama!

Conversation fizzled as Suzy lifted the truck out of the ditch and skidded it sideways back onto the street. One profanity, uttered in a reverent baritone, hung in the cold air, but no further comments were offered.

The liquor store employees were emerging from the double glass doors like onlookers rushing to get close to the scene of an accident. Marcia pictured Suzy being interviewed On television. She stepped back into the store, strode to the counter and snatched up her handbag, and was back outside in time to hear a white-haired woman with a pencil behind her ear tell Suzy that stunts like that could damage her reproductive capacity.

“Just think what a shame,” she said. “A shame.”

An overweight man took a hesitant step toward the woman. “For Christ’s sake!” he said in a stage whisper.

The woman faced him. “That’s a nice expression to use with your mother. Very nice.” She turned back to Suzy. “You see?” she said, raising her shoulders in an eloquent shrug.

Marcia found it surprisingly easy to break up the party. She bulldozed her way past the crowd and grabbed Suzy and Borphis each by the arm without slowing down. She was sure she heard the word aliens. As they hurried down the street, someone shouted, “Hey! Thanks a lot!”

They were nearly back to the apartment when Borphis thought to ask her if she had picked up the hooch.

“Hooch? Where did you hear that?”

Borphis looked puzzled. “In your movies,” he said. “And that’s what Suzy calls it.”

Marcia grinned. “Well, Suzy’s from—” She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “My movies? You used the VCR?”

“Sure. It’s easy. It’s just a machine.”

“So’s a piano,” said Marcia.

“I know. Could we get one? And a harp?”

They made it through the lobby, up the elevator, and almost through Marcia’s door without encountering any neighbors. Marcia had her key in the lock when Mrs. Ingram came into the hall.

“Oh, my dear, I’m happy to see you,” she said. “I’d begun to think something was wrong. Have you been away?”

Marcia explained she had been out of town on business. It was the truth, she told herself.

“Not flying, I hope. I wouldn’t trust an airplane. Their wings fall off.”

Marcia smiled sympathetically and tried to think of a way to account for Suzy and Borphis.

“Mrs. Ingram, this is my cousin Suzy and … her husband, Borphis.”

It occurred to Marcia that her inspiration had not been a happy one, but Mrs. Ingram seemed to take the ill-matched couple in stride.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I’ll bet it was the pancakes.” She beamed down at Borphis. “That’s the way to a man’s heart, they say.”

Marcia said, “You’re thinking of Cousin Ellie. That’s who made the pancakes.” Suzy lifts trucks.

“Oh?” Mrs. Ingram sounded skeptical, “Well, you’re a lucky man, Mr. Borphis.” She turned back to Marcia. “Is Cousin Ellie married?”

Lulu almost managed to tell Mrs. Ingram that Cousin Ellie had been sent to prison, but Marcia intervened.

They chatted for a few minutes. Marcia noticed that Borphis sounded a little like Sam Spade, but basically he and Suzy were no more implausible than her actual relatives.

Inside her apartment, everything had been dusted and swept. There were steaming cups of hot chocolate on the coffee table. When Marcia hung up the coats, she found that her closet had been reorganized. She sat next to Borphis on the love seat sipping chocolate and tried to figure out what else was different. It was something about the quality of the light.

“My God, they washed the windows.” Marcia got up to have a closer look, then checked the rest of the apartment. The bathroom sparkled. Marcia was a fastidious housekeeper, but this represented an entirely different stratum of hygiene. She stared into her sink. The rust mark, there since the day she had moved in, was gone.

If her bedroom was neat as a pin when she left it, it was now neater than a pin. Her bed, made that morning, had been made again, and by a more thorough hand. There were no little vagrant creases to be detected beneath the bedspread, no careless tucks or folds at the corners. The water glass that she had left on her nightstand had been replaced by a slender vase that held a single blood red rose.

Marcia glanced at the windows to confirm that they had been washed. The snow, which had stopped while she and her guests were out, had started again. She wondered idly how long it would have to fall before the city was reduced to paralysis. It was now two o’clock in the afternoon; by evening things could be a mess. Not that it mattered to her. The sprites seemed to be taking care of the shopping and cooking, and the only traveling she planned was of a sort not affected by road conditions.

Marcia settled herself comfortably in the rocking chair. She took a half dozen deep breaths and rested her gaze on the wall next to the window. With practiced ease she quieted her mind. It was, she had found, unnecessary and probably impossible to empty her mind. It was needful only to still it or, more accurately, to allow its habitual churning to subside.

She let consciousness of her corporeal being fall away until she felt weightless. Sounds, too, she rose above, stilling at last even the sound of her own breathing. She permitted herself to remain in this volitionless, carefree state for an insensibly expanding instant, her quiet mind divorced from every other thing.

She terminated her restful state with an audible breath and a subtle shift in concentration. But still she stayed within the moment. With great care and very gradually Marcia began to tilt her perceptions. She tried to see how small she could make the increments of change.

The ghost was not present today, nor were there any sprites or fairies to be seen. She pushed her perceptions further along the spectrum, observing the changes in the room. She had raised her ring from her lap, but dropped her hand. This had nothing to do with the position of the ring. There was no need to wave her hand like a conjurer. She moved her perceptions to a new point of alignment. Although she had no intention of doing so, she was confident that she was now at a place from which she could advance to the boundary of her Region.

She got up from the chair with no concern that she would somehow lose the vision she had entered. There was no instability in what she was seeing. Illusion it might be, but it was no more volatile than the set of illusions that made up her everyday reality.

At the boundaries of audibility, she heard, or perhaps imagined, the sound of a bell. Marcia glanced at the door to the living room, then paused and looked more closely. It looked wrong, somehow, as though its position had been shifted slightly. She let her eyes wander around the room. Everything, of course, appeared somewhat out of kilter, and so did the door, but more so. She was sure she was not misunderstanding the process, or failing to control it. Nothing was being changed. Only her perceptions were different. She thought about it for a moment, then opened the door. Instead of her bright living room and sparkling windows, she faced a dimly lit space bounded by narrow walls. She straightened her back and narrowed her eyes, then stepped through.

She was in a corridor. Marcia stopped and looked around in confusion. She brought her hands together and raised her ring to her chest. She felt a deep anger begin to grow inside her. If this was some trick of Ulda’s, the crone was going to curse her cleverness. When Marcia had been waylaid before, she had felt lost and anxious. Now, more conscious of the power she possessed, she felt the self-contained independence of a solitary predator. “Chase a kitten, catch a panther,” Marcia said with a cold smile. “Too bad.”

She pulled the door closed quietly and turned away from it. Whether it would open again onto her bedroom was not a question she thought important at the moment. She would make her way. She was out of patience with interference and threats. She had her own affairs to attend to; she had no time for simulacra and tricks. She clenched her ring hand into a fist and began walking. She was not in a mood to sneak and hide; she was in a mood to hunt.

The corridor did not, however, lead to a confrontation with Ulda, but to the place Marcia had been trying to reach for days. She had only gone a short distance when she came to a spiral staircase descending into a bath of glowing light. She paused for a few moments to relish one of the few pleasant surprises she had encountered recently.

She looked back along the corridor. It was to this place that Annie had brought her almost two weeks ago. They had walked this mysterious hallway when they passed from the old brownstone to this stairway. Below would be the garden and the path to Annie’s cottage.

Marcia descended the stairs and stepped into the garden with the feeling that she had never left. To her left she could just make out the near edge of the garden through the hazy light. There would be the great hedge, and beyond it, Annie’s cottage.

It was there, of course, that she would go. Annie would know what to do about Borphis and Suzy, and about Father. Marcia was surprised to find that her relief was tinged with regret. Perhaps many of them had been poor ones, but she had become fond of making her own decisions. And now she had begun to see inside the power of the ring, had made a start at learning the lessons it could teach.

Still, it would be good to see Annie. She had met her less than two weeks ago, had known her for only twenty-four hours, but she thought of her as an intimate friend, truly as a sister. She thought of the sisters Ulda had tried to foist on her. That petty trick; that hall of mirrors.

She stepped still farther into the garden, breathing deeply and smiling. This was no deception, no montage of stolen images. She stopped, looked back at the stair, the flowers at her feet, the trees in the distance. What lay behind this? she wondered. Could she turn her ring just so and watch the planes shift and shuffle, see the flowers harden to glinting lines and curving boundaries?

She walked on a little, immersing herself in the scents and colors. She knelt to look more closely at a pale flower that had caught her attention. Its long petals were framed by heavy deep green leaves that looked as though they were carved from jade. From beneath one bloom, a beetle crept into view. When it stopped in a patch of light, it looked like an ornament worked in gold; its markings made a burning yellow face with two precise dark eyes and a mouth turned into a miniature frown. Marcia stared at the tiny face in wonder and imagined it was staring back. She lingered in a timeless moment that recalled those summer days of childhood where the minutes hang like hours in the sunlight.

When the beetle flew away, she continued on the path. The silence surrounded the noise of her shoes on the pebbles, the occasional snatch of song from some hidden bird. In the distance she heard the ringing sound again. A chime, she thought, for the tone was pure; it lacked the heavy resonance and brazen overtones of a bell. She followed the sound as it renewed itself against the silence.

The chime was suspended from the roof of a kiosk in the middle of a garden of fragrant orange flowers. Marcia could see a mallet of polished wood hanging on one of the uprights of the building. But who had struck the chime? The gazebo was deserted and there was no one in sight.

She was distracted for a moment from the mystery of the chime by the oddity of seeing her hand without the attending nimbus. Here, in a place where auras could not be seen, she had the same ghostly, denuded look as Father. She wondered, since he had no aura elsewhere, would his be visible here. She had thought of him as the one who had no aura, but that was unreasonable, she realized. It was much less difficult to think that his emanation was only hidden, as hers was at this moment.

She walked at the edge of the garden until she came to a path that led to the gazebo. She followed it to the kiosk through the perfume of the flowers. She was under the roof before she saw the woman.

In her great-grandmother’s house had been a cabinet made of ebony polished to a high gloss. That was the skin color of the woman who stood beyond the chime. When she thought about it later, Marcia could not in honesty say whether the woman’s features, color, and hair had influenced her conclusion that she was a servant whose duties included ringing the chime. The woman stood with downcast eyes. Her attitude seemed, almost, to be one of prayer. Her hands hung at her sides.

The fact that the woman wore no ring made Marcia intensely conscious of her own and of the power it conferred on her. She remembered Annie’s explanation that it made the sprites nervous to be around members of the Sisterhood and their artifacts of force. Might this not be true of any who served there? She waited silently for the woman to notice her and acknowledge her presence. She didn’t want to frighten her. Finally the woman raised her eyes.

“So, little sister, does our garden please you?”

Marcia tried, with no great success, to stammer a reply. She forced herself to meet the woman’s eyes. They were black, and not green like Elyssa’s, but that was the only difference. They held the same disturbing quality of feral intensity.

Suddenly Marcia’s questions all seemed unimportant. She wondered what could have made her trespass in this garden. Why had she not simply followed the path to Annie’s cottage? She tried to gather her wits. She was painfully aware that the most intelligent things she had said so far were “um” and “uh.”

“Um, uh,” she said again. Her eyes had now developed their own feral intensity. She managed to say, “Where is Elyssa?” realizing that it was something of a non sequitur.

“Where is my sister Elyssa?” The woman turned her hands palm up. “Not standing here with us. Elsewhere. Where chance has taken her.”

Marcia found the woman’s sudden unexpected smile alarming.

“Where is Junna?” she continued, still smiling. “She chances to be standing here with you.”

It occasionally occurred to Marcia that the worst thing about the strange life that had overtaken her was not the hazards and inconveniences, but that she seemed forever to be at some sort of social disadvantage. Did Junna know her name? By what title, if any, was the woman to be addressed? Was Marcia supposed to bow?

“But chance,” she said, “I mean, I was told …” This was worse than Lulu. Marcia straightened up and raised her eyes to meet Junna’s. “My name is Marcia,” she said.

“I know. You were of the Sisterhood.” Junna seated herself on a bench and invited Marcia to join her. “Chance? An illusion,” she said, as Marcia perched next to her uncomfortably. “Of course. Chance. Time. Nonetheless, here we are.” She reached out and took Marcia’s hand, raising it to gaze at her ring. After what seemed a long time, she turned her arm to expose the bruises that Ulda had left there.

“And these marks? What chance brought these to you?”

Marcia felt uncomfortable. The smile was no longer on Junna’s face. “Ulda—” she began.

“Uldum? You were in the dark city?”

Marcia nodded. Junna covered the bruises with her hand and closed her eyes. After a moment, she began to laugh. She withdrew her hand and got up from the bench. Marcia stood up with her.

Junna walked across the kiosk, then turned and came back to where Marcia stood. “Where is Elyssa, indeed,” she said. She looked down at Marcia’s ring. “Who has put this on your finger?”

Marcia said, “Elyssa—”

“No. Tziann did not do this. Who has worn this ring, that you visit Uldum? And came out? Were you there alone?”

“Well, there is the dreen.”

Junna sent her a sharp look. “A dreen? Do you know what a dreen is?”

“No, not exactly, but there’s one in my apartment.” Junna was staring at her. She did not look pleased. “And a demon,” Marcia added.

Junna was silent for a moment Marcia noticed that the soreness had left her arm. She glanced down at it. The bruises were gone. All that remained were three small scars.

“Tell me,” said Junna, sitting back down on the bench, “how these things have happened.” She waved Marcia to the bench. “Start with the matter of the ring.”

Marcia related all that had happened to her since she had started following the old man. Father’s theft of the ring. How she had pursued him, first until he returned the ring, then into the Lower Regions.

“And this one you call Father, he put the ring on your finger himself?”

“Yes. He was going to hand it back, but it didn’t seem right to me. I don’t know why.”

Junna’s lips formed a faint smile. As Marcia went on with her story, she interrupted to ask about Borphis, and then about Suzy, but otherwise remained quiet.

“And that’s all,” Marcia said when she had finished. “Oh, except I have sprites now.” When Junna raised her eyebrows, she went on. “Servants, I mean. Like at the cottage. Cooking, cleaning. Singing me to sleep.”

Junna looked as though she were thinking of something entirely different. Finally she said, “Yes, you would … now.” Again she was silent. After a minute or so, she got to her feet. She extended her hand to Marcia. “Come, we must go to your home.” Marcia hesitated, then reached out.

Being suddenly surrounded by falling snow startled Marcia and made her slightly dizzy. One second ago she had taken Junna’s hand in the garden. Now they were standing on the sidewalk in front of her building in a snowstorm. She turned to her companion.

It had been over half a year since Marcia had seen Elyssa. In that period, her memory of the dazzling aura had dimmed. Now it was before her again. Junna’s aura was the same—like a blazing fire.

Three older women chatting by the mailboxes stopped to stare at Marcia and her companion as they came in from the storm wearing no coats or outdoor clothing of any kind. Marcia, at least, had on a light sweater. Junna was wearing only a thin dress that was not, in the harsh light of the lobby, completely opaque. They were standing in front of the elevators before Marcia noticed that she was also barefoot.

When they reached her door, she tapped on it very lightly. How would she introduce Junna to Mrs. Ingram? Strange as it may seem, Mrs. Ingram, this half-naked black woman is my cousin Junna.

It was Borphis who answered the door. Judging from his horrified stare, he regretted it. As they entered the room, Suzy got up from the couch.

“Lady,” she said, inclining her head in a way that looked both perfunctory and formal.

Borphis had positioned himself partly behind a chair. He imitated Suzy’s bow and murmured something brief and inaudible.

Junna nodded, letting her eyes rest on Suzy for a moment, then Borphis. She turned to Marcia.

“Where were you when you heard the chime?”

“In the bedroom.”

Junna went to the rocking chair. “Yes,” she said, “it was here that I saw you, seated in this chair.” She waited for Marcia to close the door to the living room.

“The dreen and the demon have been of service to you. You must see them rewarded.”

“Rewarded? What can I give them?”

“For the little demon, if you think he is worthy, it is simple. How many names has he?”

“Four, I think he said. No, it was three. He was supposed to have four, he said, but something happened.”

“Well, then, you must give him his fourth name, or more, if you wish.”

“You mean I just make up a name for him?”

Junna laughed. “No, not by any means. He will know the names proper to his status and his clan. Once he tells you the names that call him now, you may give him more. Usually names are added one or three at a time. If he now has but three, and yet has served you as you related, he has outdistanced his rank. You might triple that number, or even quadruple it, but no more. More than a dozen would exceed a proper balance, for now. And, of course, you must remember them all.”

“Oh, no; I’m impossible with names.”

Junna smiled at her. “You will find your capacities … augmented, I think.” She went to the window and pulled the drapes back to look out at the snow. “As for the dreen,” she said, “that is more complicated. Her form, does it please her?”

Marcia thought back to snatches of conversations with Suzy. “She said it’s graceful. And deceptive. But she told me it was her true form now.”

“So it is, but only at the whim of the mistress of Uldum.” Junna let the drapes fall back into place. “So, breaking that link might be a gift she would value.”

Marcia began to wonder if she had been mistaken for someone else. When she had to choose a gift, her thoughts usually turned to boxes of overpriced chocolates. If bestowing names and breaking spells were among her talents, she was not aware of it.

“You do understand,” Junna said, “that you are responsible for your companions? And,” she went on, “that they must remain in your care until they are returned to the Lower Regions?”

“By me?”

“Yes. When you choose, of course.”

Marcia said, “You mean I will still be on my own?”

“Yes. As always.”

“But I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Father—the old man—no one ever told me to follow him, exactly. It just happened.”

“I see,” Junna said. “Chance.”

Marcia was still trying to think of something to say when Junna went on.

“You do seem to have a habit of doing more than might be expected. Evidently that is your path. You did well to follow the old man. Were you to find him again, follow him further, it would not be amiss.”

Marcia felt positively elated. Finally, some answers. She began to think of all the questions she had been wanting to ask. Now these mysteries would be solved. At least some of them. She tried to organize her thoughts. Regions. She definitely wanted to know about Regions. And should she dare to ask Junna who (or what) she and Elyssa were? There were so many questions. Where to start? She lifted her hand.

“This ring I wear,” she began shyly, “I hardly know the powers it has. I’m only starting to learn how to use them.”

Junna walked around the bed and joined her. She look Marcia’s hand in hers. “Well, that, at least, will not be a problem for you now.” She slipped the ring from Marcia’s finger and onto hers. She put her hands on Marcia’s shoulders.

“Good-bye, little sister,” she said in an intimate whisper. She leaned forward to brush Marcia’s cheek with her lips, and then was gone.

Chapter 18

The first thing Breksin noticed upon entering the residence of Black Jack Flanders was the wine stains on the carpets. The foyer was lavishly—too lavishly—laid with carpets from the looms of Baralun, with the inimitable greens and golds characteristic of products of that metropolitan confluence of herdsmen and weavers.

The wine stains looked almost like the result of purposeful destructiveness, as though the rugs had been marred for pleasure. It was said to be one of the beauties of these carpets that even in their errors they achieved a kind of superiority—a species of lofty imperfection. The person who had scattered wine in droplets and poured it by the glass on this worked wool was susceptible to no such rarefied aesthetic.

The pirate chieftain kept them waiting at the bottom of his staircase until Count Reffex was nearly beside himself with the sheer vexation of the thing.

“This is scandalous. I tell you,” he hissed to Breksin. “This is not the way negotiations are conducted. I am the envoy. I bear messages of importance. We could conclude this business at once if everything weren’t so damnably strange,”

The pirate’s descent on the stair of polished wood might have been silent but for his noisy breathing, for his feet were bare. He loitered down the stairs in a dressing gown that gapped open with each step. His face was lined, but curiously youthful. He might have been a twenty-five-year-old actor made up to play a man of fifty. His long gray hair looked as if it had not been combed for days.

He reached the bottom step before he acknowledged his visitors. His eyes slid across Reffex and stopped at the giant. He looked him up and down and nodded.

“Lances and hammers,” he croaked, fixing Breksin with his stare. His eyes were small and black, and seemed to reflect every bit of light from the windows.

“That’s right, Captain.”

Reffex took a step forward and began to speak, but was interrupted by the pirate.

“But no swords?” He made a number of surprisingly quick and graceful motions in the air with his fist, like a man wielding a rapier.

“No. Not in the hills and forests. Heavy two-handed swords sometimes, but usually only for games.”

“Aye, games. What games they must be!”

Breksin nodded solemnly. “They are rough,” he agreed, “and hard.”

Reffex waved his hand at Breksin. “This is my—”

Jack Flanders ignored him. “Did you bring your spices?” he said to Breksin, who told him he had. “Then do me a kindness, Doctor, and come to the kitchen to make up your potion. I have heard news of this remedy.”

They filed down the hallway to the kitchen. As Breksin broke eggs and heated wine, Reffex attempted to engage the captain in conversation, but the man stood in the middle of the room, unmindful of the grease and dirt under his bare feet, and stared at the window like a priest in a holy trance.

“Gods, that’s vile,” said the captain mildly after he had drained the steaming cup. He looked past Reffex, who was attempting again to introduce his assistant, and addressed Breksin. “How is it you come to be with Baron Riffle, here?”

Reffex spoke hastily. “My assistant, Captain Breksin,” he said with a hurried wave at the giant.

Captain Flanders turned his gaze slowly to Reffex. “He’s no captain of an Ambermere guard, Your Worship. That, I will not believe.”

“Well, it’s an honorary title, you see,” Reffex said. “For the purposes of, uh, protocol,” he added lamely.

Breksin said, “I am a merchant of Ambermere. A trader in wines.”

Jack Flanders looked at the giant with a sidewise glance. “But you did not arrive with the Earl of”—he squinted at Reffex—“Piffik, or on any ship, from what I’ve heard.”

“No. I am passing through Devlin on foot. But when Count Reffex told me of his embassy, I offered to help. I am worried about your prisoners.”

“Well,” the pirate drawled with a sour grin, “you say ‘prisoners.’ The duke here calls them ‘guests.’”

“Ah,” Reffex began suavely, “what Breksin means of course is—”

“He means prisoners,” the pirate said in a monotone. He stared into his empty glass. “Are you sure this isn’t a poison?” he asked the giant.

Jack Flanders declined to discuss the ransom or the release of the hostages, but did, upon Breksin’s urging the point, allow a visit. They were taken to the top floor of the house, where Breksin spoke with the princess and her party as Reffex fluttered at his elbow chattering about how vitally important it was, in delicate negotiations of this sort, to have the services of not just a nobleman, but a nobleman of the right sort. He himself, he reminded them, was the cousin of a duke, thrice removed.

By the time they left, Breksin had satisfied himself that the prisoners were being denied nothing required for their well-being but liberty. Reffex had told them of Rogan, and they spoke much of the magician, to the great puzzlement of the count, who had more important things to discuss. On the subject of Rogan, though, there was the matter of the fool of a seaman who said it had been he, Reffex (an aristocrat), who untied the boat. This was an absurd libel, and one that threatened to be compounded by the captain’s confusion about who had been dragging whom when he caught a glimpse of the count and the magician on deck during the height of the storm.

Daniel managed to mollify Reffex by pointing out that his reputation was absolutely secure. “Believe me, no one who knows you is going to change his opinion of you,” he said, and the others all agreed. They agreed, too, that lamentations were premature. “Rogan knows more than fireworks magic,” Daniel said. “If he had a boat, I’ll bet he found a way to stay alive.”

That afternoon, Breksin walked the city again, talking to merchants and whores, fishermen and pirates. Now that he had seen the prisoners, he had less reason to cultivate acquaintances, but there was always a chance that he might hear something of interest.

As he strolled, he turned over in his mind every scheme that occurred to him, none of which offered the slightest hope. Even if there were a way, somehow, to get the prisoners out of the captain’s house, there was no way to get them out of Devlin. The matter was in the hands of the diplomats. Hebbick and the spies certain to be stationed in Felshalfen would get to the bottom of what was doubtless an intrigue concerning the royal succession. In due course, Hebbick would arrive to acquaint Captain Flanders with the latest news from Felshalfen, and to secure the release of the royal party.

It was only if things went badly awry that a giant with a battle hammer might be of use. Breksin decided to keep a night watch for ships from Felshalfen. He could pay a boy to stand a turn in the afternoons while he napped. If Hebbick arrived, he wanted to join his embassy to the pirate king. If any other came to call on Black Jack Flanders, he would have to deal with Breksin on the way.

Chapter 19

After Junna left, Marcia stayed in her bedroom. For a while she lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. Then she stood at the window watching the snow fill up the fading afternoon. Finally, she sat in Great-grandmother Mibsey’s rocking chair for over an hour concentrating on nothing more complicated than the gradual withdrawal of the day and the subtle advance of the early winter dusk.

At last she sighed, looked down at the empty spot on her linger and got up. She stood by the window again and examined her aura in the waning light. It was unchanged. She looked again at the scars on her arm, probed at them with her fingertips. There was no trace of the soreness she had felt before Junna had put her hand on the bruises. The marks on her arm looked no more recent now than the scar next to her eye.

She began to worry her way through the things Junna had said to her, the instructions she had left. One of the things she had said, unnoticed at the time but now significant, was, “You were of the Sisterhood.” Past tense. And yet she had called Marcia “little sister” when she had greeted her and when she had said good-bye.

And Marcia was responsible for Borphis and Suzy—for returning them to the Lower Regions when the time came. When you choose. And she was to reward them. Marcia began walking slowly toward the living room door. Father again. She felt like a metaphysical bounty hunter. It must be that her ring was to be returned to her. Maybe it had to be purified or something. A feeling of relief washed over her. In the morning, she would awaken to find the ring on her finger again.

Except that was not the impression Junna had left when she took it from her finger. What had she said? Not understanding the ring wouldn’t be a problem anymore. What did that mean? Obviously, if Marcia didn’t have the ring, her inability to control it would not be a problem. But it might mean, as well, that Marcia was to receive instruction of some sort. Just because Junna had been enigmatic didn’t mean she wasn’t coming back. After all, with the exception of her friend Breksin the giant, everyone she had talked to lately had been enigmatic.

She paused with her hand on the doorknob. Actually, it was quite clear. She would just have to wait and see what developed. Junna had told her to do things, like visiting the Lower Regions, that she didn’t think she could manage without the ring. She had no choice but to wait for the situation to sort itself out.

She glanced at the clock. Almost five. It would probably make sense for her to worry about things she could be expected to do something about. Dinner, for instance. There would be no pizza delivery in this weather; she would have to figure something else out. She had plenty of wine on hand, so that was not a problem, but Borphis would have to do without his beloved cognac; the bottle was down to a sniff and a swallow, as someone in one of her old movies had said. Of course, there were the sprites, but despite the fact that they had provided breakfast and lunch, she didn’t expect them to whip up a dinner—not while her magic ring was out for repairs.

“It’s so hard to get reliable help these days,” she said to herself. She started to open the door, then closed it quietly and went to the highboy. She slid her fingers under the molding and found the small wooden button that released the hidden drawer. She had never forgotten the dramatic moment when Great-grandmother Mibsey had revealed this marvel to her, though the old lady had done it in a most undramatic, matter-of-fact fashion.

“Here, child. This piece is coming to you, and I don’t like to think of you using it for fifty or sixty years and never finding the little drawer.”

The ring was in a box and wrapped in tissue paper. It was old, and had been worn thin on the fingers of two bona fide Mibsey women before coming to Marcia’s mother by way of circumstance and marriage.

“Mind, that’s not to be buried with your mother, girl.” Great-grandmother Mibsey had evidently thought it undignified to address a child by her name. She alternated between calling Marcia “child” and “girl,” and was so consistent as to refer to her as “the child” or “the girl” on those rare instances when Marcia was, briefly, the topic of conversation. So in awe was Marcia of the old lady, that when she heard herself spoken of as though she weren’t present, she felt flattered and slightly uneasy, as though some honor far beyond her merits had been bestowed upon her.

As Marcia slipped the ring onto her finger, she thought of her last view of her father’s grandmother. At that moment, in the hushed and empty funeral parlor amid the scents of dying flowers, she had learned the dead do not have auras.

By then she had been old enough to resent the fact that beyond a few massive antiques, little had come to her mother. Her mother’s explanation that there had been little to leave had seemed incredible to her. Five years later, she had been incredulous again to learn that the financing of her undergraduate education at the state university had been “seen to” in the old lady’s will.

Marcia closed the little drawer and crossed the room lost in a cloud of memories. In the living room she found herself brought back to the present via one of her old movies.

“This is the one that plays the harp. Watch what he does.” Borphis was seated on the edge of the love seat with the remote control of the VCR clutched in his hands. Next to him, Suzy was squinting at the television like someone trying to make sense of a piece of abstract sculpture. Neither of her guests seemed to notice Marcia’s presence. She watched the antics on the screen for a moment, then strolled in toward the kitchen to see if she had enough spaghetti to iced the three of them.

On the counter were three steaming mugs on a glazed ceramic tray that she didn’t recognize. Marcia had smelled the spirits and spices before she entered the kitchen. This was the same hot punch that she and Annie had found waiting for them that first evening at the cottage. She remembered asking Annie if it took long to get used to having invisible servants. Marcia smiled as she lifted the tray from the counter and repeated Annie’s prompt and cheerful reply.

“‘No,’ what?” said Borphis, freezing the movie with a stab of his thumb. He slid from the love seat. “That smells good,” he said. He bounced toward her on tiptoes trying to see into the mugs, and then followed her to the table like a pet cat at suppertime. Suzy got up lazily from the couch and joined them.

After Borphis had emptied half his drink, he looked at Marcia earnestly and asked, “Do we have any cigars around here?”

Marcia set her cup down and stared at him. “Cigars? No, we do not,” she said, wondering if on her next trip to the kitchen she would find a cedar box fastened with a little brass hasp and a silk ribbon. It was, she supposed, all that Borphis lacked to make his life perfect. She looked at him indulgently. Well, some new clothes wouldn’t hurt, she thought. Her glance strayed to Suzy. At least she could do something about her.

Suzy’s reaction to the offer of a bath and a change of clothes was one of placid indifference. “We didn’t get wet enough yesterday?” Nonetheless she consented to be introduced to the fixtures and soap and shampoo. “Okay. Then what?” she said.

“I’ll leave some fresh things for you on my bed,” Marcia said, and was hurried from the room by the sight of Suzy unconcernedly stepping out of her dress.

Borphis had turned off the television and was looking out the window at the snow. Marcia joined him. The afternoon had turned abruptly to night, the “chance of flurries in the city and western suburbs” had become a blizzard. They watched the weather in silence. Marcia sipped at the remains of her punch and thought about winter storms of her childhood.

Before long, Suzy emerged from the bedroom, scrubbed and brushed and dressed in clothes provided by her hostess, Marcia’s first thought was that she had never realized how drab that outfit was. Suzy looked like a flower wrapped in burlap. All traces of her makeup were gone, but she was just as stunning as before.

Marcia discovered another tray of drinks, but Suzy turned down a refill. She settled herself on the love seat and lapsed into the passive state that made it look as if she had stopped breathing. Marcia dithered, then took another mug of punch, promising herself not to finish it.

She took a comforting sip, then said, “Dinner at seven, please,” as she left the kitchen. She shrugged and giggled. No harm in trying, she thought. She offered to draw a bath for Borphis, who declined politely. Time enough for that, she thought. For all she knew, they might be here for weeks. She supposed new clothes for the little demon would have to come from the boys’ department. She giggled again and gazed deeply into her drink.

When she finished it, she decided that perhaps a shower would be just the thing for her. She lost herself in the steam and beating water and stood in a timeless daze.

Finally she turned off the water and dried herself. Now she was freshly scrubbed, just like Suzy, but instead of bouncing, honey blond curls, a pretty face, and natural color that made makeup superfluous, Marcia came out of her shower with straight brown hair, features regular to the point of being dull, and a complexion that was both unblemished and unremarkable.

She looked at herself in her bedroom mirror. She did look younger, though. And she had put on weight. She turned in front of the mirror, looking over her shoulder to see herself from the side and back. She was no Suzy, but she was no stick figure, either.

And her face, she thought as she began to dress, had definitely been improved by the tiny scar next to her eye. It drew attention from the dull symmetry of her features. She continued to peer at herself under knit brows, then rolled her eyes and let her shoulders slump in a posture of exaggerated despair. Her body could be conceded to be okay, her face, passable. But her hair ….

The living room was filled with the aroma of spices. Marcia realized she was very hungry. Her kitchen counter was crowded with platters and covered dishes. She was about to recruit Suzy to help set the table and carry in the food, but stopped in midsentence. Instead, she took her guests into the bedroom and closed the door.

They came back a few minutes later to find that dinner was on the table. When Marcia saw the mountain of golden rice and the platters of meats and vegetables, she knew that even Borphis would finally have to give up and stop eating while there was still food on the table.

The wine was heavy and dark, and served in a pitcher. When they had emptied it, rather sooner, Marcia thought, than they should have, Borphis took it to the kitchen. He went back a few minutes later and found it was full again.

Marcia tried to remember where she and Breksin and Father had been served a wine similar to this one. She took a long, reflective swallow. It had not been as good as this, of that she was certain. She sipped from her glass and held the wine in her mouth. She wished Breksin were here to enjoy this feast. She could almost see him, looming across the table, his alarming size offset by his warm smile, his sympathetic glance. What would he say about this most excellent wine? Marcia emptied her glass slowly, then watched with a smile as Borphis stood in his chair to pour for her.

After dinner, they found a bowl of macerated fruit in the kitchen. To accompany it were three small glasses of a heavy, sweet pale wine. Marcia found the fruit refreshing. The wine was at first cloying, but upon reflection she thought it a perfect drink with dessert.

Faced with dirty dishes and the remains of dinner, Marcia and her guests retired again to her bedroom. Borphis immediately flopped backwards onto her bed and closed his eyes. Marcia and Suzy went to the window. Marcia listened, but could hear nothing from the living room. She hoped the sprites wouldn’t quit now; she was not in the mood for housework. Besides, she thought with a small surge of indignation, the dishes didn’t even belong to her. She dropped into her chair, then got back up and started for the living room.

The dishes were gone. She checked the kitchen. There was no evidence of the meal. Nor was there anything else. Not even coffee. Marcia felt suddenly discouraged. How sad it would be if her sprites deserted her. She closed her eyes. She pictured herself standing there in her kitchen, all alone. It was really overwhelming, if you stopped to think about it.

“… the kindness of others,” she murmured. Her melancholy musings were interrupted by the sound of Borphis talking in the living room.

“This looks promising,” he said in a loud and enthusiastic voice. Marcia opened her eyes and looked around the kitchen as though surprised to find herself there. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, then stepped through the door into the living room.

On the coffee table in front of the love seat were brandy snifters—her own, she was pretty sure—and a misshapen bottle of heavy brown glass that did not look particularly clean. Borphis watched her as she crossed the room.

“May I pour?” he said.

Marcia nodded and sank to the couch. She wondered if she had eaten too much. Probably, she thought. Some brandy would be good for her.

Borphis pulled the cork gently with his fingertips. Marcia was sort of pleased to note that the bouquet didn’t leap from the bottle as it did with her fifty-dollar cognac. She watched the little demon pour, then took the snifter and warmed it in her hands. The liquor was a pale amber in color. She thought she could detect a faint aroma. It occurred to her that there was such a thing as too much subtlety.

The bouquet was stronger as she raised the glass to her lips. An intense perfume, too heavy to rise, seemed to cling to the surface of the liquor. She breathed it in as she sipped.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered reverently, unmindful of her sin.

“Who?” said Borphis.

Marcia was staring into her glass. “Never mind.” She began to giggle.

It wasn’t until Borphis was performing the chore of refilling everyone’s snifter that Marcia chanced to think of the chores she had been given. Junna had not, she reasoned, given her any cause to think she should put off her duties, and if the sprites were any indication, she retained the powers of her ring. Besides which, it would be fun. She buried her nose in her glass. Anyway, she was feeling guilty about Borphis’s cigars.

The little demon looked astonished when she brought up the subject of names. “Uh, that’s right.” He lowered his voice and sent a quick glance in Suzy’s direction. “Three.” After he had whispered them to her, rather reluctantly, she thought, she sat back and closed her eyes. She was obligated to remember all of his names. Maybe it would be better to just give him one, or three. She opened her eyes. Suzy was watching from her chair. Borphis looked like a child at a surprise party.

Marcia straightened up and put her drink on the table. “Give me the next … nine,” she said solemnly.

Borphis reeled off polysyllables so fast that they seemed to combine into one outrageous name. This was impossible, she thought. Perhaps she shouldn’t have tried this after all the food and drink. She got up and walked to the other side of the room. She thought she would see if she could remember the first three names, but when she closed her eyes, all twelve were there, as familiar as the names of the months. She smiled and pronounced them to herself slowly, feeling their weight and cadence. Names, she realized suddenly, were real things. She went back to Borphis and looked down at him.

“They are yours,” she said.

Borphis looked stunned. He made an awkward bow and gestured aimlessly. When Suzy stood and raised her glass, he looked relieved. They drank to his twelve names. Borphis looked pleased but terribly conscious of the new weight of dignity that had been thrust upon him.

When they had said everything that could be said on the topic, and then a little more, Marcia’s thoughts turned to Suzy. What was Suzy’s real name? she wondered. She seemed to know instinctively that the dreen would have only one, and that it would be a private name known only to herself.

She gazed across the table at her. Without thinking about it consciously, Marcia shifted her view, tilted it so that forms flattened and auras fragmented, colors turned upon themselves and were rendered into shades of gray.

There was no ogre hidden inside Suzy. The form she bore was her true form, but it was … entailed somehow. It carried a piece of Ulda’s darkness, bore the imprint of her hand. But it could be turned. It could be seized and handled, just as boundaries could, just as Regions could. It seemed to Marcia that if she would only look a little deeper, shift the spectrum yet a little further, that she would touch … She shrank away from the vision and focused her attention on the dreen. The form was true, but she could see the force within it as well. Suzy’s strength was not like that possessed by Borphis. Borphis was weight and muscle and leverage. Suzy’s strength was more abstract—and much greater.

When Marcia spoke, she heard her voice as fleshy noises and had to think to make the words. “True but not fixed. Shall I make it yours?”

She disregarded the noises that came back; took the meaning from the thought. Assent. And as she began to think how to fix the form, remove the shadow, she did it. She turned it in her mind and it was done—without thought, like blinking.

“Thank you.” Suzy was standing in front of the chair. Marcia rose and looked around the room, restored now to the shapes and planes of the everyday. Colors and opacities, she thought, blinking in the light. She felt tired and even a little dizzy. What had she been thinking of? She was undeniably tipsy—little wonder!—and had been blithely performing the metaphysical equivalent of open-heart surgery on her friends.

“You are most welcome,” Marcia said with exaggerated care. “But I think the party is over.” She peered at Suzy uncertainly, then shifted her gaze to Borphis. She wondered what chance there was that she would remember his names in the morning. Or her own.

Chapter 20

Each time Marcia woke up, there was a fresh glass of water on her nightstand. She raised herself unsteadily and drank. Why, she asked herself, would she ever drink anything but water? The perfect wine she had drunk with dinner became in her memory a syrupy beverage that left a salty residue in her throat. Even the angelic distillation from the brown bottle had been nothing more than another snare, if one of insidious subtlety.

She glanced down at the little singer propped against his pillow. She smiled, then blinked and scrambled to a sitting position, but he was no longer there. Marcia stared blankly at the pillow propped against the footboard. When she leaned forward to peer through the darkness, she could feel the beginnings of the headache she knew she deserved.

Having gone so far toward getting up, she took herself into the bathroom. On the way back to the bed she considered pulling the drapes to see if the snow had stopped, but didn’t bother. She walked stiffly across the chilly room and rolled back into bed. As she settled her head on the pillow, she heard the singer brush the strings of his guitar and take up his high, clear song again.

She dreamed of Borphis and his names, then of Suzy transformed from the waist down into an amphibious mermaid, hopping alluringly on green legs with tight skin and prominent tendons. Marcia was aware off and on of the pain that spread from the back of her neck to encircle her forehead. For a long while her dreams were random and close to the surface and kept her sleep from being restful, but finally she was visited by the vivid dream of last night.

She was huddled in a cramped room, dressed as before in colorful clothing that glowed against the dun bricks and floor of mud. The dream ground on, troublous images crowding her sleep in a jumble of causeless effects and formless fears. Even when she became conscious of the dream as a dream, she was powerless either to leave it or to force it into a pattern that could be deciphered.

She was awakened, finally, by a cool touch on her cheek. Junna, she thought, and opened her eyes. She sat up, ignoring the ache in her head. She was alone in the room. Even the little singer was absent, his pillow back at the headboard. Marcia raised her hands to massage the back of her neck and tried to recall just how much she had drunk last night.

In the bathroom, she considered taking a therapeutic shower, but settled for cold water on the face and back of the neck. She remembered her college remedy for the effects of late nights and cheap wine in the dorm. She wondered what the chances were that the sprites would be able to serve a breakfast of Texas chili and root beer.

It was only a little after five. She got back into bed. She wondered if her musician would come back. He didn’t, but the dream did. She had barely closed her eyes when the images returned. But now she was not trapped in restless sleep; she was awake. As if to verify it, she opened her eyes and sat up.

This would not do. She got out of bed and put on a warm robe and slippers. She seated herself in the rocking chair. If there was to be no rest in sleep, she might as well indulge her passion for trying to sort out her situation. Just figuring out where she was and where she had been were challenge enough. Then there were her former companions. For instance, what was Breksin doing now?

She counted backward through the recent days. Just eight had passed since she had last seen him. According to what he had told her, he should have easily reached Devlin by now. She could not help feeling that she should be helping him. Not that he was by any means alone. Not only did he have the help of Little Egri, who could certainly be a powerful ally, but Alexander was with him as well. Marcia was not exactly sure what a necromancer was, but she knew the old man had powers. She smiled to herself as she remembered his whispery voice, his eccentric outfit of pastel silks.

Alexander! Her smile disappeared. A cloud of darkness seemed to fall on her. Marcia felt ill as she recalled disconnected fragments of her dream: the feeling of dread, the looming threat. The huddling figure beleaguered by encroaching darkness she had taken to be herself, attired for the dream in strange garments of muted pastel hues. She closed her eyes and pushed her way into her memory. She saw again the person hemmed in by darkness. As it had been in the original dream the night before, the scene was distant. She moved closer, pushing as though against an opposing force. As she slowly drew near, she could see a wall of warding magic that seemed to bleed from the little figure. He was surrounded by the web of his own spells and then, beyond that, a menacing power not expressed in spells, but as a weight of dark malice that Marcia recognized at once.

She pushed the terror away from her, stepped back from her own emotions. She forced herself to gaze into the reality of the vision. It required only a small adjustment, a slight shift of view.

Now she felt divorced from what she saw, removed—an abstraction. What was all this anger, all this fear? Why these clashing emotions, when it amounted, finally, to nothing more than one illusion vying with another? She wanted to move her hand and sweep it all away—the strife, the cunning, the play of forces. And the players, too. Their strivings were an annoying irrelevancy, an inky thumbprint on the vellum of the Law.

The figure stirred. The bowed head rose. Alexander was scarcely to be recognized through the hurt and strain written on his features. Still Marcia looked on coldly. The necromancer looked up, gazed at the spot she occupied. He raised one hand a few inches. A weak smile passed across his face and then was gone as though it had never been. He stared a moment longer, then shook his head slowly and closed his eyes.

When Marcia got up, she staggered and gasped for air. She had been holding her breath, and felt as though she had been trying to lift an impossible load. She looked around her bedroom, surprised at the surfaces, the predictability of the corners and angles, the way one form impinged upon another. The heirloom rocking chair rocked, nodding at the heirloom highboy by the window.

So this was the other prisoner Suzy had mentioned. It was old Alexander they had left there to be assaulted by Ulda’s malice. She thought of herself, armed with power that could bend time and twist space in ribbons, tamely following Suzy, hiding in alleyways, sheltering with the weak and timid, thinking no thoughts but of escape. She narrowed her eyes. If Alexander was trapped in Ulda’s magic, what of Breksin? Was her friend in some trap of Ulda’s devising? Marcia ignored the pain in her head. She felt the tingle of the demon’s scar on her cheek, a twinge from the marks Ulda had left on her arm. Did the hag want her? She would not have long to wait or far to look. She would need no snares or sorcery.

Marcia glanced down at her ring with a thin smile. Here was no circle of power, only an antique wedding band, but if the great ring was gone, much of its potency remained, of that she was certain. She could see it in her aura, feel it animating her quiet anger. Junna had taken her ring, but not her powers. How else had Borphis got his names, or Suzy’s form been fixed and closed?

As the first heat of her anger lessened, she noticed her aching head again. In a reflex of exasperation, she turned her attention inward and willed the pain to cease. It took less than one second for her headache to obediently expire.

“No ring required,” she said aloud. She slipped into her robe and headed for the living room with a determined step.

Suzy looked up from her chair when Marcia turned on the lights. Borphis was curled up on the love seat amid a tangle of bedclothes. He appeared to be dressed except for his shoes, which were on the floor. He looked confused.

“Did I miss breakfast?” he said as he more or less tumbled from the love seat.

“Breakfast has been canceled,” Marcia said. She swept the room with her glance, then started back toward the bedroom. “We’re leaving as soon as I’m dressed.”

“Is something wrong?” Borphis called after her retreating figure. Marcia turned.

“You bet there is,” she said, and disappeared through the door.

They were ready in less than ten minutes. They stood at the table and drank the coffee that had miraculously appeared. Borphis alternated between taking desperate swigs and stuffing biscuits into his pockets. Suzy put on the shoes Marcia had brought her from the bedroom and then waited calmly with a little smile on her face.

When she had drunk half her coffee, Marcia put the cup down. “Okay, let’s go.” As she took the little demon’s hand, Suzy came around the table to stand beside them. Marcia reached out for her hand and pulled her to her side. Borphis looked up at her.

“Where are we going?”

Marcia caught Suzy’s eye before answering. “I am going to Uldum,” she said. Suzy’s expression hardened. At that moment, Marcia had no difficulty imagining the troll-woman’s hammer falling harmlessly on the dreen’s face.

“What’s Uldum?” Borphis asked in a worried voice.

Suzy said, “The Dark Land,” before Marcia could answer.

“That’s a real place? I thought it was a story.”

“It’s real,” Suzy said grimly.

Marcia forced a smile. “Fortunately, you don’t have to go with me,” she told Borphis. “I’m just taking you—”

“Actually, he does,” said Suzy. “The names.” Borphis straightened up—seemed to stand a little taller. Marcia almost jumped. In her anger and hurry, she had forgotten about the names. She consulted her memory. They were at the front of her mind, as clear and ready as if she had known them always. She turned to the dreen, looked into her startling eyes.

Suzy nodded. “Neither am I permitted to accept your gift at night and quit you in the morning.”

Marcia thought of Alexander as she had seen him in the vision. She had no time to argue about the etiquette of obligation. “All right,” she said. “No more talk, then.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and drew her attention inward.

It was so simple. The boundary lay just where it had to. It was unmissable when you turned your view toward it. A little shift was all it took. Then you entered. Chose your path. It required nothing more than concentration. She considered the refuge of the little mage, but saw no reason to burden him. He was clever, and had his powers, but he could do nothing to help her now.

Marcia studied Ulda’s web, the structure of forces that layover her domain. There was no difficulty identifying the place where Alexander was under attack. There were two concentrations of force. The greater lay at the verge of the rising sea where Ulda exerted herself to contend with the will of the elements, as though she thought she could stem a rising tide.

But at another place, removed from the waters, was another gathering of shadows, and beneath it, pulses of flickering light. It was there that Marcia turned. She allowed the mists to embrace them, then stepped forward to pass from the boundary and into the heavier fog that veiled Uldum. Marcia released her companions’ hands and led them forward until they were free of the mist.

Borphis did not look pleased. “We got up early to come here?” He looked up at Marcia, then at Suzy. In neither face did he find cause for cheer.

They were standing in an open field on a hill that overlooked the city. Although Marcia had hiked through miles of its lanes and alleys, this was the first time she had formed a clear idea of its size or layout. She was surprised to see that among the dark expanses were areas that appeared to be well lighted. She scanned the scene below but found it impossible in the general darkness to find the castle or the community of shacks where Ulda had put her.

Just below them on the hill was a shanty. Rut for being isolated, it was like the one Ulda had put Marcia in three nights ago. The hill was dark and quiet; no sound came from the little building. With an ease that she found surprising, Marcia shifted the spectrum enough to perceive the cords of Ulda’s magic.

And Alexander’s. He was there, and holding Ulda’s force at bay, a thing he should not have been able to do. Ulda had spoken as though her power were equal to Elyssa’s. Marcia didn’t think that was true, but neither did she believe that Alexander, a necromancer, meaning some sort of spell worker of the Middle Regions, had strength enough to resist her.

Marcia looked around. This was going to be easy. If she could get to Alexander without attracting Ulda’s attention, the four of them could be back in her apartment in time for breakfast. She started down the hill.

As they got close to the shanty, Suzy said, “There are wardings here.”

Marcia told her about Alexander. Suzy looked confused. “Ulda can overwhelm any mage or necromancer with ease,” she said. “I myself can breach these wardings, though only with great destruction, but his other workings might cause us harm.”

Once again Marcia shifted herself to an altered plane. She studied the vision of lines and force for a moment, then dropped the view. She turned back to Suzy. “I can pass through this magic,” she said. “Wait here, and I will get the necromancer.”

“No,” Suzy replied at once. “It is only standing with you that we have any security at all.” She looked down at her feet. “You do not know how very long I was here,” she said, “or what Ulda will do if I come under her power again. You must not leave us unprotected.” She raised her eyes. “To me, perhaps, you have no obligation, but to one who bears names by your gift, you do.”

Moving past the magic was simple. It was like traveling between Regions, but with fewer dimensional complications to keep track of. Marcia took her companions’ hands and ushered them through the wardings and around the projections of force. When they reached the shanty, Suzy pushed the flimsy door open. They entered, still hand in hand, and Marcia guided them until they were safely inside the magic of the necromancer.

Alexander was huddled against a wall, exactly as he had been in Marcia’s dream. He at first appeared not to notice them. He stared straight ahead, his lips moving soundlessly, his fingers working in spasms of tiny movements. Just as Marcia was about to speak, he raised his eyes and caught her in his febrile gaze.

“My girl,” he whispered, “I could see you. I tried to warn you not to come.” His eyes strayed to her companions. “What’s this? A dreen? A demon of the dry lands? You have wandered far, my dear. Very far.” He squinted up at Marcia. “But have you such power? A dreen.” His eyes appeared to lose their focus. “I have always wanted to talk to a dreen.” For a moment he was silent, then he shook his head.

“I don’t understand,” he croaked. “How do you come to be in such a place? You had no such force when I saw you last.” He nodded to himself. “The vampires. You were overcome. Now you transcend Regions; travel in the company of a dreen.” He looked at Suzy, then turned his glance to Borphis. “And a demon, of course,” he added apologetically. Alexander shifted his position, then leaned away from the wall and pulled himself to his feet with the help of the arm Borphis extended.

He breathed as though with great effort. “And,” he said after a few moments, “my spells, I see, cause you no difficulty.”

Marcia fell uncomfortable, as though she had been guilty of some breach of protocol. “It’s just that I was able to avoid them,” she said.

Alexander whispered, “That is what I just said.” He smiled weakly. “I don’t know why I’m bothering with them, really. Habit, I suppose. This witch, or whatever she is, is much too strong for me. I tricked her at first. Got away long enough to cause some trouble with the weather.” His laughter was silent. “It look her quite a while to deal with the rain.” He looked around the shanty as though he were seeing it for the first time. “I don’t know why she has let me continue. I don’t even know who,, or what, she is. Or what this dark place is.”

Suzy said, “This is Uldum. She is Ulda.”

Alexander was silent for a moment. He looked very tired. “Then this is all hopeless,” he said.

“It is not hopeless,” said Marcia. “I left here with Suzy—”

“Suzy?”

“The dreen. We left here two days ago. This time we will lake you with us.” She smiled at Borphis. “If we leave now, we’ll be back in time for breakfast,” she added. She wondered if the sprites would make doughnuts. “Why don’t we go outside?” she said. “Then we won’t be cramped.”

Alexander said, “I must make the adjustment. I had resigned myself …. It will take just a few minutes to dismantle the spells.”

Marcia watched him as he stood muttering and making small motions with his hands. He looked pale and drawn. She decided she would put him in her bed as soon as they got back. No doubt the sprites would cook him up something nourishing to help him regain his strength. Perhaps a medicine.

“All right,” he said. “I’ve closed down the show.”

Marcia noted that although Alexander was making an effort to sound cheerful, he looked worried. She could tell that when she had time to ponder the matter, it was going to bother her greatly that she had not rescued him sooner. After the necromancer had taken one last look around, they left the shanty. Suzy and Borphis led the way through the door, with Marcia and Alexander following.

Marcia had taken Alexander’s arm, and felt him stiffen at the unexpected scene that greeted them. The door of the shanty opened, not onto the lonely hill, but a large empty room. Marcia recognized the dance hall immediately. As before, the source of the room’s illumination could not be detected. There was an ambient glow like that of the Lower Regions outside of Ulda’s mask of darkness.

The door they had passed through was the one she had used before, but now there was no music or dancers. A few rough tables and chairs were pushed against the near wall. The ceiling was high, lost in shadows, but the room actually looked smaller empty than it had when it seemed crowded and full of life.

A single table, draped in a ragged cloth, stood in the center of the room. Ulda was seated behind it. Standing next to her chair was the wizened midget Marcia had seen in her brief vision. The rat people and the crones were not present.

“My, you are foolish,” Ulda said in the weary voice of one whose patience has been not only exhausted, but forgotten. She put her hands on the table and leaned forward. “But I see you have returned my dreen. And what’s this? A sturdy little demon.” Her smile was quick and ugly. “You do well to bring gifts, little witch.”

“I have brought no gifts, old woman. I have come for the necromancer.”

Ulda glowered at Marcia and her companions. She turned her eyes to Suzy. “Dreen! I give you this one chance, for the sake of our long … association. Come stand with me against these fools. And bring the little desert thing with you. Then I will deal with the stupid witch and her doddering mage.”

Suzy did not answer. Borphis was as still as a ceramic garden gnome. Ulda waited in silence, then turned slowly to her single companion. The little man looked at her. Marcia noticed an almost imperceptible darkening in the air around him. It came to her that this was a summoning, a calling of some sort. Without conscious thought, she shifted the plane of her perspective so that she could view the workings of Ulda’s power and see what was gathering there.

She watched with fascination as the little man—Victor, clearly—was indued with energies of Ulda’s summoning, a distillation of lines of force that seemed to enter the room from all directions and converge on the hag. The forming shadow congealed and settled over him, an immense black fog that hid him from sight.

Marcia turned her view further, shifting until her gaze could pierce the cloud and see the midget wrapped in Ulda’s cloaking spell. Was this some trick? she wondered. Was Ulda hiding Victor so that he could do some mischief? Marcia’s arm was still linked with Alexander’s. She felt his urgent grip, heard him say her name. She adjusted her view—let the spectrum settle into its habitual mode.

The thing was immense. It towered over Ulda; the floor seemed to sink beneath its weight. It would have looked like a bear, if bears had horns and long, protruding fangs and stood twelve feet tall. Its tiny yellow eyes glared down on Marcia and her friends.

Ulda ignored the horror by her side. All her attention was on the companions. “So,” she said. “My dreen?” Her mouth turned into a cruel parody of a smile. “Suzy?” she called in a mocking, drawn-out whine.

The beast was forty feet away, but Marcia could hear its breathing. An unwholesome odor slowly filled the room. She thought of rotting flesh and drying blood. She seized the fear that began to shake her and thrust it away. In its place she felt the now-familiar icy touch of deadly anger. Hate, she thought in a strangely detached way, would be a better, more honest word. Without taking her eyes from Ulda, she removed Alexander’s hand from her arm.

Suzy said no word. She turned to Marcia with a somber expression, then returned Ulda’s stare.

“You know to keep your pet away from me,” she said quietly.

Ulda looked down at the table. “Now where,” she said quietly, as though talking to herself, “shall I find another dreen?” she raised her eyes to meet Suzy’s. “I have not forgotten your strength,” she said patiently. “Surely you have not forgotten mine.” She got up from her chair and stood beside the looming horror. “I will see that you do not interfere. None of you. You will be crushed by this ‘pet’ of mine. Crushed and chewed and swallowed.”

With its first step, the monster seemed to move much closer. Marcia felt Ulda’s eyes on her, felt the cold stare seize her and hold her where she stood. The gigantic thing took another step, then another. Its breath fell on her like a foul wind.

Marcia thought of Elyssa, of Junna, and finally, of her stolen ring. Then her mind seemed to wander, to pursue irrelevancies. Odd, she thought calmly, how the floor sagged and splintered when struck by the advancing foot of the beast.

The scar on her cheek was like a tiny glowing coal. On her arm, the marks that Ulda had made there throbbed and ached. The forward step she took was involuntary. From somewhere she heard a shout, followed closely by a roar that shook the air. With a violent motion of her consciousness, she swept herself across views, dimensions, with a giddy haste. She plunged ahead into a curtain of black fog like a hound in pursuit of a hare.

The shrunken little man stared up at her in astonished terror. Marcia bore down on him in an irresistible rush until he stumbled and fell to the floor. He lay before her screaming and hiding his face behind his flailing arms. His legs kicked spasmodically a few times, then began to tremble. As Marcia stretched out her hand against him, he seemed to shrink beneath her, to wither like a dying leaf.

Marcia felt a force gather inside her. One that she could hurl at the hateful creature to destroy it. She could feel it, knew that she need only release it with a thought, a gesture, to see it smash him where he lay.

It was not out of pity that she refrained, but out of malice. She was too cruel to release him, and she knew it, and it gave her a deep and satisfying pleasure. She turned from him coldly. She pulled at the fabric of time and stepped across the dimensions she had rushed past in pursuit of the beast. She noted them as she made the passage, seeing them with greater clarity than ever she had before. Finally, she took a breath—her first since she had willed her force to rise—and let her eyes fall shut momentarily as she exhaled.

All eyes were fixed on her, but for those of the midget, who lay unmoving on the floor. Marcia looked at her friends without feeling, almost without recognition, then turned to Ulda. The hag stood gripping her chair.

The stench of the beast lingered in the room. Marcia took one step toward Ulda. When she spoke, it was in a flat voice almost too soft to hear. “If you try to touch me again—try to grip my mind—I will bring everything down, though it destroy us all.”

There was a long silence. Finally Ulda spoke. “I concede your strength. I marvel at it, as it is unlooked for.” She dropped her hands from the chair and walked around the table. Marcia did not move. “And,” continued the old woman, waving her hand in the direction of the midget, “I am willing to grant your cruelty; it is something I can understand, something I can trust. But do not,” she went on, “do not think you comprehend my power.” The hag lowered her voice to an intimate whisper. “You know not, little sister. And know not that you know not.”

Marcia kept her attention focused, not so much on the witch as on herself. She took a step back, glanced at her companions. Little sister? “We are leaving,” she said. “If you try to interfere, I will use against you all the power I can find.”

“And when it is done,” said Ulda, “I alone will stand. But we need not contend in this way. I have no use for this worker of spells and callings. I give you leave to take him and go in peace. Only leave these others. The dreen is mine in any event. The little one”—she peered at Borphis, then glanced in the direction of the fallen midget—“you owe me for the hurt you have done my servant.”

Marcia shook her head. “I will leave no one,” she said quietly.

Ulda took a slow step toward Marcia, then a second. “You are strong, but ignorant. Ask the dreen. Ask the old mage. To overcome my things is not to overcome me. I tell you, this is a lesson you must learn now, at this moment, for without it, you will never learn another. My power is not like yours; it is not derived.” Ulda drew herself up, seemed to become taller, to amplify. “I am—” She stopped and bared her teeth again, whether to smile or to sneer, Marcia could not tell.

“The demon is nothing,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I present him to you as a gift. I forgive you the injury—make you free of it. Only return my property. Little Suzy—her I will not forgo.”

Marcia forced her mind into cold logic. Now it was necessary that she see clearly. Not all that Ulda said was false. Her aura alone showed that the force she could call on was great beyond Marcia’s ability to reckon. She gazed at the old woman, then slowly, imperceptibly, forced herself to look beyond the strange aura, beyond the rags and wrinkles.

Was everything always a trick? There were other faces there, other forms. Was there one that was more real, more true than others? No matter. Ulda would let her see none of them clearly. But what she could see was force. And force to bolster force. And then more force, half-seen, behind the force in view.

Marcia pulled her vision back to herself, pulled her own strength to a focus, gathered it, as she had seen Ulda’s gathered within her. She was strong. Stronger than she would have imagined. This was something she had not known she could do. With her eyes still on Ulda, she polled the precincts of her power; glimpsed, however imperfectly, the force she could bring to bear on her enemy.

It was not enough. She was not the equal of the hag. She looked around at her companions. Old Alexander looked drawn and weary. He belonged to the Middle Regions and would be returned there. Borphis. Marcia almost smiled. The devotee of doughnuts and of pizza. The connoisseur of cognac. He was to be returned to the Lower Regions, but at a time of her choosing. And Suzy. She was to be returned as well. But returned where? What was a dreen? Marcia still did not know. Suzy stood in Marcia’s casual clothes and sensible shoes. Though she was with the others, she looked isolated. A faint bleak smile played at the corners of her mouth.

Marcia turned away from her and approached the old woman. “Very well,” she said. Ulda’s lips turned into a tight grin as she began to walk toward Suzy. Marcia stopped and held up her hand. “As the price of leaving without interference”—she paused and Ulda nodded curtly—“I will give you my ring.”

Ulda had stopped walking when Marcia did. Her eyes shifted from Marcia to the others and then back. “I am content to have the dreen. I have no need to rob you.” She Hashed her teeth unpleasantly at Marcia. “—You know, my dear, that we shall meet again, you and I.”

Marcia said, “I will not give up the dreen. I offer you this ring.”

“You will give me your ring?”

Marcia heard the rustle of silk as Alexander stepped to her side. The necromancer regarded the hag, perhaps a dozen feet away, with a glance both calm and curious. When he spoke, his whispery voice rustled like his clothing. “Marcia,” he began.

“You must not interfere,” she replied, cutting him off. She turned to Ulda.

“I will give you my ring; you will not hinder us in any way.”

Ulda sighed like a used car salesman. “Very well,” she said, and held out her hand.

Marcia was closing her fingers on her ring when she was interrupted by Suzy’s voice. The dreen passed behind her. She went to the midget and nudged him with her foot. The little man stirred, then gave a shriek and sat up on the floor.

“Wine,” Suzy said. He stared at her for a minute, then got up and limped into the shadows. When he brought the wine, Suzy filled two glasses. One she handed to Marcia, the other to Ulda. The old woman took it without moving her eyes from the dreen’s face. Suzy did not meet her gaze. She stepped away with her eyes lowered.

“Repeat your offer,” she said to Marcia. Marcia said the words again.

Ulda said, “I accept.” The two women sipped. Suzy took their glasses, looked at them for a moment, then tossed them away without watching where they fell. Ulda glared at Suzy, who simply nodded to Marcia and went to stand next to Borphis.

Marcia removed her ring and held it out to Ulda. The old woman approached and extended her hand, keeping her eyes locked on Marcia’s.

Marcia looked down at the ring. How long would it take Ulda to discover she had been tricked? Surely she could sense already that this was not the ring she had so coveted. If not, then when she took it she would know that this was no ring of power, no talisman with a lengthy pedigree of enchantment. Marcia hesitated before putting it in the witch’s hand. What would her reaction be when she saw she had been cheated? She raised her eyes to meet Ulda’s, then handed her the ring.

The old woman kept her eyes on Marcia for a moment. When she glanced down at the ring, it was seemingly with scant interest. Marcia realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled slowly as Ulda slipped the ring onto a bony finger and then let her hand drop to her side. Her eyes sought Marcia’s once more and then she went back to the table and sat down.

Marcia joined her friends in a state of mild confusion mixed with relief. She had expected Ulda to fly into a rage. Instead, she had acted exactly as though the ring she got was the ring she expected. Still, Marcia would not be completely comfortable until the four of them were sitting around her table having breakfast. She reached down to pull Borphis close to her.

“Just one more thing,” said Ulda. Though she was in the middle of the room, she did not raise her voice. Marcia turned to face her.

Ulda sent a hard stare at Suzy and continued, “The matter of your form, O treacherous one.”

Suzy took a half dozen paces in the direction of the table. She turned herself slowly, like a model, Marcia thought, except that models were rarely seen in the fashions from her closet. Ulda narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. For perhaps a full minute, she was silent and still, then she sat back and began to laugh, at the same time waving her hand at Suzy in a gesture of dismissal.

Marcia found herself wishing that Ulda would not be so good-natured about her reverses. Again she began to reach out, shepherding Borphis and Suzy into position next to Alexander, who stood a few feet away watching the hag attentively.

“How,” called Ulda, “did you know to do that? To close her form? Who has coached you, touched you since you were here before?” Her gaze seemed to knife into Marcia’s eyes. “Taken your ring?”

Marcia was too impatient to be coy. She felt she was aware not only of her weaknesses but of her strengths.

She said simply, “Junna,” and turned again to her friends.

“Ah, Dunai,” said Ulda, nodding. “Your acquaintance widens. You know Tziann and Dunai.” She raised her hand to her throat. Marcia could see the glint of gold from her ring. “And, of course, Ulda.” She paused for a moment. “Not to mention—”

Marcia had turned to face her again. She waited to hear what Ulda had to say. As she did she took Suzy’s hand.

“And you have been so clever”—Ulda began again to laugh softly—“with your travels, your allies, your rings …. But here is a conundrum for you, a riddle: Which of your companions will you leave behind? Which abandon to my attentions?”

Before Marcia could answer, Suzy spoke up. “You have pledged the glass, old one. Even you—”

Ulda’s howl of glee cut off her words. “Pledged the glass. Why, yes; so I did. You have always been so quick, Suzy. For a dreen.”

Marcia said, “I will leave no one behind. We will all leave, as you agreed.”

“I did not. Our agreement is that I will not hinder your departure. And so I shan’t. But you will not take three companions with you,” Marcia began to protest, but Ulda went on. “I could allow you to depart in ignorance, but like you, I am cruel. I want to see you make the painful decision.”

Marcia said, “I am listening.”

“Little fool! You have but two hands; you will make your crossing with but two companions. If you had the great ring, the one you were so clever about, you might do more. Might—I am not certain. As you are now, with everything you can muster, you will perforce leave one of your precious friends behind. I will be … interested to see which one it is to be.”

Alexander continued to watch Ulda, his eyes narrowed as though he searched his memory.

Maida leaned close to him to whisper. “You believe this—what Ulda says?”

The old necromancer nodded sadly. “It sounds quite plausible to me, I’m afraid. It fits all the patterns.”

Marcia looked at Borphis and Suzy, then turned back to Alexander. “I will leave no one,” she said softly.

“I fear you have no choice,” he replied. “I think—”

“How strong are you?”

Alexander shook his head. “We cannot overcome her. You may cause her some hurt, some injury—even some loss—but she will prevail. It is as she said, in the end only she will stand.”

“No,” said Marcia, “physically. How far can you walk?”

“I don’t know. Some way. I am not yet spent.”

“Good.” Marcia turned once more to face the sorceress. “We are leaving,” she said. “We will walk for a while before we decide.”

“Very well,” said Ulda carelessly. “Protract your misery, if that is to your taste. I will even offer a suggestion: If you walk the mage to death, that will end your dilemma. I care not how you seek your pain; only that you find it. And I will know. I will watch and I will know when you leave the Lower Regions.”

Marcia did not expect to find the hillside when she opened the door, and she did not. She led her troop down the stairs and through the hallways she had walked less than one week before. Alexander faltered on the stairs, and had to rely on Borphis’s shoulder to make the descent. Even so, in less than two minutes, they were on the broad avenue in front of Ulda’s castle. Marcia had vivid memories of standing there, of being pursued by the rat people, of her bizarre evening in the dance hall.

She brought her mind to the present. Her companions were looking at her expectantly.

Borphis rubbed his hands and looked up at Marcia with an expression that was almost shy. “That,” he said, “what you did—that was even better than the gorgle. When you started toward that thing, I thought it was real—”

Suzy broke in. “It was real; as real as you, or I, or Lulu here.”

Alexander looked puzzled. “Lulu?” he whispered.

“My alter ego,” said Marcia. “You’ll probably meet her. If we live long enough.”

“Ah,” said Alexander, “that brings up my next question. What are we to do?”

Marcia shifted her eyes to Suzy. “I hoped we might go far enough that we could make two trips.”

Suzy shook her head.

Alexander said, “But, a portal? Might we reach a portal?”

Suzy’s response was the same. “I know this place, and all the lands around.”

“And the little mage?” said Marcia softly.

“Not now,” Suzy said. “You would only lead her to him.”

For a moment everyone was silent. Borphis looked up at Marcia.

“What about your friend, the great lord?”

Marcia looked at him with no sign of comprehension.

Borphis sighed. “You know. Rhastopheris. You told the gorgle you were looking for him.”

“Oh, that was just a name I heard.” Marcia looked at the necromancer. “From Alexander.” She glanced down at her bare hand. Divorced. “You told me I should meet him.”

Alexander looked around at the empty darkness that enveloped them. Finally, he turned and smiled at Marcia. “‘Yes. That was before. It seems like a long time ago. You are much changed. Such a meeting would now be … more difficult. Still, Rhastopheris is ancient. There is much to be learned from him, if only he will teach it.” The mage seemed to sag. He put his hand on Borphis as though to steady himself. “But Rhastopheris is far from this place, I think. Farther, surely, than I shall ever travel.”

Suzy said, “Not so far, necromaunt. Not with this rising sea. We might reach him. But can he be a friend of yours?”

Alexander smiled at Suzy, and peered at her through the gloom. “A dreen,” he said wonderingly, then seemed to recollect himself. “Your pardon,” he said. “No, not a friend, of course. But so old an enemy that the difference blurs, sometimes. Still, I would not dare face him unprotected.”

Suzy replied impatiently. “I know you are of the Middle Regions, but you are not blind. You saw Marcia with the beast. Why did Ulda not crush her, as surely she could? Because the price would be so great.” Suzy reached out and touched Marcia’s arm. “Show the necromancer your scratches,” she suggested. Marcia turned her arm to expose her scars.

“Ulda herself made those marks, meaning to do much worse,” Suzy said. “I think we need not fear Rhastopheris.”

“Yes,” said Marcia, “but what can he offer us?”

“Refuge?” said Alexander. “Respite?”

“At least that,” Suzy replied. “The greatest lords are sovereign by long usage. Ulda will not insult him with a trespass.”

“And you know where to find him?” said Marcia.

Suzy nodded.

Marcia turned to the necromancer. “Then we must leave it to you.”

Alexander said, “I see no other hope at all. This, I believe is best. It even follows Ulda’s logic, for if we do not reach him, you may walk me to death, though I do not—”

Suzy interrupted. “We will not walk,” she said.

Chapter 21

They walked down the hill to the water, which seemed to Marcia to have risen in the days since she had first come to Uldum. Suzy led them on a pathless trek among the huts until they came to a boat drawn up just above the debris-choked water. She ignored the knot of men nearby and started to push the craft from the bank.

The boatmen were profoundly unhappy until they got a good look at Suzy. Then they were profoundly afraid. They moved away, casting worried glances over their shoulders. One, bolder than the rest, or more stupid, called out. “You’ll bring her back, then?”

Suzy stood beside the craft, “No,” she replied matter-of-factly. “You must build another. This one is lost.”

It seemed to Marcia that there should be some sort of preparation, a discussion of water safety, at least, before setting out in a vessel that was little more than an oversize rowboat. But as soon as Borphis took water and food from supplies piled nearby, Suzy dragged the surprisingly heavy craft off the shore and held it while first Marcia, then Alexander, supported by Borphis, stepped in. Suzy gave a push, then leapt lightly across the stern and settled herself by the tiller.

In the darkness, they were, out of sight of land in no time at all. Marcia looked up at the crude piece of canvas attached to the even cruder mast. She knew nothing at all about sailing, but had the impression that sails, to be effective, had to be numerous, and used in association with complicated arrangements of ropes and pulleys, all operated by swarms of shouting men wearing eye patches and cutlasses. This nautical venture seemed to be more along the lines of the one undertaken by the owl and the pussycat.

“How,” she said after they had been at sea for less than five minutes, “do we know where to go?”

Suzy answered. “All we need to do,” she said, “is get out from under Ulda’s darkness. By then we will be able to see the mountain peaks in the distance. I know them all.” She was silent for a moment. “It is from the mountains that I come.”

“There’s not much of a breeze,” Borphis said.

Marcia had thought Alexander might be asleep. His eyes were closed and he was slumped against the mast. But he answered Borphis in a whisper. “Just give me a minute. Weather is a hobby of mine. We shall have a breeze. Or a gale, if you prefer.”

“No, thanks,” said the little demon. He was huddled in the absolute center of the boat. “I’m from the desert. I’m already having enough fun.”

Alexander’s breeze materialized as promised. It was no more than an hour, Marcia was certain, before the little craft slipped from under the cloud of darkness and into the eerie light of the Lower Regions. Having nothing better to do, Marcia tried to figure out what time it was in her apartment. She had completely accepted the curious idea that time here meant, if anything at all, something different from what it did at home.

She thought they had probably left the apartment no more than three hours ago. It was when she got that far in her reckoning that she remembered how Borphis had stuffed his pockets with biscuits. It hadn’t seemed appetizing at the time, but now, compared with the greasy packet he had tossed next to the ewer of water, she found that the biscuits had become much more palatable.

The sea had the placidity of a stagnant pond. Nothing disturbed the surface of the yellow water but the passage of their boat and the edges of the necromancer’s breeze. Far in the distance, the mountains were visible. They seemed to hang in the indistinguishable merging of the yellow sea, the yellow light, and the pervasive yellow mists. And as the sea was, to Marcia’s eye, more properly a lake, so the mountains were hills; low, dark masses at the edge of visibility.

It was difficult, with no sun overhead, to mark the passage of the hours, but the biscuits Borphis had smuggled had been eaten, and Marcia was casting increasingly less skeptical glances in the direction of the other food that he had brought on board, and still the mountains seemed to be no closer. Despite Marcia’s urgings, Alexander had eaten very little—part of a biscuit, a morsel of the oily cheese in the packet, and a mouthful or two of water. He sat motionless against the mast with his eyes closed.

After they had been sailing for what Marcia estimated at very close to four hours, the breeze failed. Marcia waited, reluctant to disturb the necromancer, but finally she called his name. His response was no more than a fluttering of the eyelids. Marcia moved to his side and tried to wake him, but without success. At last she leaned away from him and examined him from an altered perspective. She stared for more than a minute, then turned to the others.

“He is wandering,” she said. “I am afraid he is slipping away. In any event, he is very weak.” She looked at the limp sail. “I will try to raise a wind.” She shrugged. “I’ve never done anything like that, but—”

“Wait,” said Suzy urgently. “A wind at sea is no small matter. You may call upon a zephyr and summon a howling gale. You must let Borphis and me deal with this matter.”

Borphis said, “Huh? My last good idea was the biscuits. All I know about boats and water is that I don’t care for either of them.”

Suzy stood up and walked lightly past them to pick up a pair of heavy oars that were wedged behind the ewer. She dragged them back and gave one to the little demon. “It gets fastened to that groove with the pin,” she said, demonstrating with her oar.

Borphis remained where he was. “You don’t mean I’m supposed to sit right next to the water there? What if I fall in?”

“So you want Marcia to row?”

Borphis moved himself with infinite care into an ultraconserv-ative rowing position. He fitted his oar into the lock with the deftness of a salt. Marcia wondered if all demons shared his talent for things mechanical.

Suzy pointed out politely that it would be necessary for Marcia to man the tiller.

“Me? What do you do?”

“Steer,” said the dreen. “Not in circles. Just keep us pointed at the second-tallest mountain.”

They consulted briefly to be sure they agreed which hill was the second tallest, then Suzy and Borphis began to row. Borphis was clumsy for two strokes, tentative for half a dozen more, and then settled smoothly into the work as though he had never been ashore. Marcia found the tiller to be more rebellious than she would have expected, but was able to hold the course and keep a worried eye on Alexander as well.

The rowers did not tire. Little Borphis rowed with an easy swinging motion of his upper body, moving the oar in its path with the inevitability of a machine that happened to be dressed in badly cut clothing and a battered hat. Suzy moved only her arms, and seemed to be expending approximately the amount of energy required for a good strenuous session with an emery board.

By the time they stopped so Borphis could have a drink, the hills on the horizon had moved noticeably closer. Marcia was able to waken Alexander just enough to get him to swallow some water. At one point he opened his eyes for half a second and whispered something she could not hear, then fell back into a state that was more like a trance than a slumber.

Before long they came to a place where the water seemed to clear to a less murky yellow. It was possible, in the depths below, occasionally to see a passing shadow, the bulk of some swimming thing. Soon afterward, the sea became less calm; the boat rocked a bit and tipped gently from side to side. At the same time, the temperature began to drop, first to a zone of comfort, and then quickly to temperatures that made Marcia wish she had packed a sweater.

They paused again, this time for Borphis to give up his jacket to cover Alexander. It was when Marcia was about to call another halt so that she and Suzy could contribute their blouses to the mage’s coverings that they ran into the wall of heat and moisture. One moment Marcia was shivering lightly and beginning to envy her companions their warm work, the next she felt as if they had entered a hothouse or a tropical garden.

And as suddenly as the atmosphere had changed, so had their distance from the mountains. Marcia was shocked when she looked up to find them filling her view. Even through the heavy air, she thought she could see a distant shoreline, catch the occasional vagrant whiff of vegetation.

Marcia had begun to think they would never land. They had been afloat for hours. By now the streetlights were probably on at home. She wondered what the sprites did when she was away. Would they make themselves hot rum punches and lounge around watching Marx Brothers movies? She herself did not find the thought of hot punch appealing at the moment, but she did think she could eat a couple of hamburgers and a quart or so of french fries. Even the cheese Borphis had commandeered would have made an acceptable snack. Unfortunately, it had all been eaten.

When she stepped ashore, Marcia felt wobbly. Her body had grown accustomed to the rocking of the boat, and solid ground seemed positively treacherous at first. Suzy had pulled the boat well up onto the shore. They had landed at a place where bare cliff descended to the water. Marcia had steered according to Suzy’s directions, wondering how they were to land on a wall of sheer rock. When they got close enough, however, she could see the vertical seam that ran from far up the rock wall and plunged into the water.

It turned out, when they reached it, to be wide enough to admit a larger vessel than theirs. Marcia felt a twinge of fear as they drifted into the embrace of the mountain, but before she had much time to worry, the bow was scraping a shelf of rock. Suzy sprang from the boat and pulled it completely out of the water as Borphis sat gripping his shipped oar with an expression of profound relief on his face.

Marcia went to Alexander and was surprised to find his eyes open. “I must apologize,” he said, speaking almost too softly to be heard. “I could not hold the breeze.” With Marcia’s help, he got unsteadily to his feet.

“This is excellent,” he said. “I am only sorry I was not present for most of the journey. To think we have sailed a birthing sea. And these,” he asked Suzy as she and Marcia helped him from the boat, “these are the cliffs where Rhastopheris makes his home?” He looked around. “He has told me often that we have chosen similar surroundings for our refuges.”

Alexander sat down with his back to the rock wall. “How far is it, then, to my enemy’s castle?” he asked Suzy. “I fear I cannot walk any great distance in my current state.”

“It is high above us, necromaunt, but you need do no climbing.” She pointed to the boat. Borphis had climbed the mast and was tearing the sail from the spar. When he left the boat, he brought the sail and the oars with him, as well as a length of waxed twine from the locker in the bow.

It seemed to Marcia that they had traveled so far from Ulda’s darkness that they might now traverse Regions safely, even if they could not all travel at once.

Suzy began to answer, but Alexander spoke sooner. His voice, though barely audible, was earnest. “Only imagine your feelings when you come back here and find the one you left has been lost irretrievably. Dare you take such a risk?”

“The mage is right,” Suzy said. “Except that where he speaks of risk, I would speak of certainty. We dare do nothing except from a place of refuge.”

As they talked, Borphis sat apart working with the things he had brought from the boat. When he finished, he had a serviceable stretcher. Alexander was persuaded to lie in it—“lacking the power of flight, I suppose I must,” was his comment—and the four began to make their way up a rocky slope strewn with pebbles and gravel that rolled alarmingly underfoot in the case of Marcia, and seemed to trouble Suzy and Borphis not at all.

A quarter of an hour brought them to a narrow opening in the near wall, where a broad stair hewn of stone climbed until it passed from sight.

“Have you heard, necromancer, of the place where the magic failed?”

Alexander turned his head on the stretcher to look at Suzy. He nodded once.

Suzy shifted her position so that he could see the stairs. “This is the place,” she said solemnly. “Here on this last step those ancient ones gave up their sea—found they could pursue the falling waters no farmer, could cut into the rock no more.” The dreen turned her head to look back over the round they had crossed. “Now it seems the sea pursues the stairs. Who will stand here when next the waters drop?”

Alexander waved his hand at Marcia. “Let me up,” he said when she bent near. “Help me to my feet so that I might stand on that final step, that I might walk this ancient ground.” Borphis joined him to serve as a crutch and support as the mage shuffled to the step, then turned to gaze across the land that had once been ocean in another age, and now would be again.

After a few minutes, Alexander lay again on the stretcher. At Suzy’s direction, Borphis took his end and climbed the first few stairs. As he did, Suzy kept the stretcher level by raising her end until the oars lay across her shoulders.

“Okay,” said the dreen, “now Lulu steadies the oars on my shoulders.”

Marcia stared at Suzy. “Isn’t that going to be a bit awkward? I’ll be tripping on your heels.” She thought about it for a moment. “Anyway, what are you going to be doing with your hands?”

“Holding you on my back.”

“What? You’re going to carry me? That’s impossible.”

Suzy faced her with a smile. “You don’t know how far these stairs go. What’s impossible is that you could climb them, especially as fast as we are going to go.” She nodded toward the little demon. “Even Borphis may have to stop for a rest before we reach the top.”

Borphis spoke without turning around. “I’ll be all right,” he said brusquely. “You just tell me when you’re ready.”

As Marcia climbed onto Suzy’s back, she tried to remember if she had ever felt this ridiculous. She clasped her arms around the oars and tried to rid her mind of the picture of a skinny woman whose hair was a mess being carried piggyback by a gorgeous cover girl.

“Go ahead,” Suzy called to Borphis.

Borphis stared up the steps. “How fast?” he said.

“As fast as you can manage, little one.”

From time to time in her adult life, Marcia had flirted with the idea of taking up horseback riding. By the time Borphis and Suzy settled into their stride, she had banished the thought forever.

It turned out to be no small trick to manage a pair of oars while riding on the back of a 120-pound girl who was running up an endless flight of stairs. Keeping track of time was out of the question, but it was not long before Marcia was panting with exertion and feeling the strain in her arms and her legs.

Borphis looked exhausted but smug when they reached the top without having stopped for rest. Suzy was breathing deeply and her skin showed a ladylike film of perspiration, rather as though she had just carried six loads of groceries in from the station wagon. “You surprise me,” she said to Borphis when they had put the stretcher down. “You are stronger than I thought.” Borphis smiled, and breathed, but did not speak. Suzy looked closely at Marcia.

“You are all right?” she asked.

Although Marcia was in fact trying to figure out why she felt as if she had just run up the stairway with Suzy on her back, she didn’t say so. “I’m fine,” she replied in a breezy, if somewhat breathless voice. She paused, then cleared her throat with a dainty cough. “How much farther to the castle?” she asked casually.

Instead of answering, Suzy raised her arm and pointed across Marcia’s left shoulder. Marcia peered off into the mist. Still there was the damnable yellow mist, she thought. Even on the top of a mountain.

She had been searching the distance for the castle. When she saw it she started, for it was much closer than she had expected. The squat, featureless building that Suzy referred to as Ulda’s castle had all the charm of an abandoned penitentiary. The castle of Lord Rhastopheris resembled an illustration from a nineteenth-century book of fairy tales. It lay less than a mile away and stood like a black hand raised in the yellow mist. Marcia could make out towers and spires and turrets in the changeless ambient glow. She tried to guess how many stories high it was, which led her to thoughts of how exalted its proprietor might be. And how powerful.

Marcia was tired. She did not feel strong enough to drink a cup of tea, let alone vie with some supernatural heavyweight. “How much do we have to fear from this Rhastopheris?”

Suzy glanced at her, and said simply, “You are stronger.” Marcia wanted to ask more, but found she was too tired.

Borphis had helped Alexander to sit up; the mage was gazing in the direction of the castle. Marcia went and sat next to him on the stretcher. After a long look at the castle, the necromancer turned and spoke to her.

“How strange that I should come here thus,” he whispered. “It was only to be at my uttermost moment that I was to visit this place, if even then. Yet, here I am. Weak, perhaps, but not yet fled the body, and perhaps not soon to fly. I expect yet in this life to show you the roses that climb my garden wall.”

Suzy said, “This may be the garden of Lord Rhastopheris, but I would rather see his wine cellar.” Marcia looked up at this unprecedented interest in food or drink. She remembered Alexander at tables she had shared with him. He and Suzy would be a good pair, sipping and nibbling, and handling their napkins more than their forks.

Borphis scrambled to his feet. “It’s not me holding you up,” he told Suzy. “You’re no more interested in this lord’s cellar than I am.”

Alexander reached out for Borphis’s arm. “Let me but stand and stretch my legs,” he said, “and I will be ready.”

A few minutes later, the procession was in motion again. Now Borphis held the oars on his shoulders. At Suzy’s direction, Marcia walked in front with the demon. “This is not a place that is free of dangers,” the dreen said. “You must go first now.”

As they advanced, the character of the landscape changed rapidly. They had been traversing bare rock, but as they drew closer to the castle, they began to find weeds, shrubs, and small trees. The air was now heavy with the smell of overripe vegetation. The ground became softer, until they were walking on a carpet of moss interspersed with tenacious little grasses. When Marcia came upon a flowering vine snaking around a spindly tree trunk, she was so surprised she brought them to a halt. The heavy, drooping flowers looked overbred and decadent. Even indecent, she thought, feeling foolish. The petals were burdened with a deep red that might have tinted the emblem of one of the fleshly sins.

Marcia led her party forward, wondering if moral reactions to vegetation were as uncommon as she suspected. The flowers became more plentiful. Some were delicate little innocents with fragile blue petals, others were sultry and looked as though they were the product of some unspeakable excess. As they neared the castle itself, Alexander insisted on walking.

“I will not be carried to his door. I will manage myself well enough, I think.”

Borphis rolled the stretcher neatly around the oars and pushed them beneath a bush of thorns and dark red flowers that were almost black. They continued, Alexander supported by Borphis, and soon reached the castle.

Marcia realized she had expected a moat. There was none. A path with a look of long disuse led directly to a tall and narrow door of dark wood.

Suzy glanced at Marcia, then raised the clapper that dangled from a cord of braided leather and struck the bell three times. Alexander straightened his back and walked, still leaning heavily on Borphis, to station himself in front of the door.

When it opened, Marcia was surprised. She wasn’t able to say what she had expected, but it wasn’t this dapper man in black, no larger than Alexander, with pale skin and, except for his heavy jaw, delicate features. And yet this was no demonic butler, she was certain. This could only be Lord Rhastopheris.

The demon stared at Alexander, his eye straying to no one else. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice that, though soft, clawed at the ear.

“I see no spells of sealing, no workings, yet you stand at my door. How can you put yourself here? You have presumed much, old one, on our long … association. How can you know—” Rhastopheris was silent for ten seconds. Still he stared at the mage. His eye moved to Borphis, who bowed as well as he could without toppling Alexander.

Rhastopheris frowned. “A demon of the plains.” He turned his eye to Suzy. “A dreen?” He nodded in her direction. “Most impressive,” he said, turning back to Alexander. “But still, how can you, knowing me, come to the seat of all my power in this way?”

Marcia stepped forward to stand between Suzy and Alexander. Rhastopheris held her eye for one second, then bowed before turning again to the necromancer.

“I withdraw my question,” he said slowly. “What trouble have you brought to my keep?”

Suzy said, “Only uninvited guests, Lord Rhastopheris, nothing more.”

Rhastopheris stood in his doorway for a few seconds longer, then stepped back and waved them in. He conducted them through gloomy hallways to a cavernous room. The walls were covered with tapestries, the floor was black stone polished to a gloss. Alexander settled himself carefully onto a divan piled with cushions. He looked up at his host with a weak smile and whispered, “Eh bien, mon prince,” then began to cough.

Marcia wondered if her life was to be measured out in obscure rituals. It seemed to her that there were a number of really quite pressing questions to be addressed, but the aristocratic demon was absorbed in the niceties of hospitality, and most particularly in the minute details of the serving of a welcoming drink.

It was, it seemed, to be a ceremony. Rhastopheris took a slender bottle from a cabinet and carried it to the divan, where he displayed it to Alexander.

“We were to break this seal,” he said, “on that ultimate day—the day when every dire fury is to be released. Now we drink on a quiet occasion.”

Alexander looked at the bottle, then at his host. “But the sea,” he said, “this is a momentous time, the turning of an age.”

Rhastopheris nodded. “Indeed. But not the turning I had looked for, though I had not looked for that one so soon, nor for this one at all.” He returned to the cabinet and took five tiny crystal glasses like stemmed phials from a shelf. These he filled from the bottle with a clear liquid, each precisely to the brim. He served them from a silver tray, the first to Marcia, then Suzy, Borphis, who was rigid with formality, like a plowman at a genteel tea, Alexander, and himself.

Marcia was prepared to sit through a lengthy toast, but Rastopheris merely nodded and raised his glass to his guests. The drink was strong and initially bitter, but resolved itself into an appealing complexity that lingered on the palate most agreeably, and in a way that Marcia was sure even Breksin would have trouble putting words to.

Rhastopheris remained silent while Suzy explained the reason for their sudden appearance. The mention of Ulda made no change in his expression that Marcia could detect. When she finished her recitation, he turned to Marcia.

“You are fortunate; you defy Ulda when she is distracted—perhaps unhinged. The rising waters eat at her domain. They threaten to engulf all that she has exerted herself to build and to perpetuate. She has invested Uldum with a great network of force—made it the seat of her power. She cannot bear to see it lost.”

“She would lose her power?”

“She would have to remove herself and everything she has in place. She would lose, if not force, at least much labor, and for a time she would not be the power she was.” Rhastopheris moved to a window that looked out toward the cliffs. “If the water rises to its former limits, Uldum will be nothing but another crumbling city crushed beneath the weight of the sea.”

Marcia said, “She told me her power was not derived. Can you tell me what that means?”

The demon glanced in Alexander’s direction before answering. “Thai, I fear, is a question you must ask of one who gives himself to the study of the old books.” He left the window and returned to the center of the room. “Or we may perhaps speak of these things together in the necromancer’s house, which rests above another ocean, one that is more stable than ours—or thought to be. It will be … easier there than here to have such a discussion.”

When Marcia spoke, it was in the manner of one who thinks aloud. “She called me ‘little sister.’” Rhastopheris caught her eye for an instant, then turned again to the necromancer.

“You are tired, old one, and this is no place for you to rest, to recover your strength, not when you might be so easily in your own home.”

“You are right, of course,” said Alexander. “We must all go.” He started to get up, but fell back against the cushions. “We will have a party,” he whispered, and began to cough.

“The lady should not go,” Rhastopheris said. “Ulda’s promise to watch her is one she will keep, at least while Marcia has more companions than she can protect, and you do not want Ulda to know where you make your home. I can return you to your keep with no help. I have trod that path a hundred times by your invitation. Invite me again, now, and we shall tread it together.”

Alexander nodded. Rhastopheris helped him to his feet. “Who else?” he asked. “The mage lives in solitude, as I do. I think he must have a companion for a time.”

Marcia pulled her thoughts from the multitude of unanswered questions she was accumulating, and concentrated instead on Alexander’s problem. When she asked him, Borphis agreed to go with the necromancer and stay until she found her way to him.

“In that, you will have no difficulty,” said Rhastopheris, “for you hold his names.”

Alexander said, “But you, dear girl, where will you go from here?”

“Home, I suppose,” said Marcia. “And then I have to find—”

“That would be not be wise,”—Rhastopheris said. “If Ulda watches you still, you should not lead her to your home.”

I just rent, Marcia smiled. “Too late, I’m afraid. It was in my home that she first found me.”

Suzy shook her head. “No. I was with her. You were wandering and the ring caught her attention.”

Rhastopheris smiled. Marcia wished he wouldn’t; his heavy, sharp teeth matched his air of refinement very poorly. “And this, old one,” he said to Alexander, “you will describe as chance, I suppose?”

Alexander gave a tired smile. “Lacking deeper understanding, yes, but I am willing to concede your point.” He brought his gaze back to Marcia. “Better somewhere else, dear girl …. I suppose I should not be so informal, now. Might you not rejoin the giant? Perhaps Father has turned up.”

“I had thought of that, but I don’t even know if I can find Breksin. I’ve never been to—what is it?—Devlin.”

Again Rhastopheris smiled his disquieting smile. “I don’t have a deep understanding of your methods.”

“That’s the problem,” Marcia said. “Neither do I.”

“Still,” the demon went on, “I believe if you focus your concentration on the one you seek, you will find him. One caution: Do not travel to another place within the Lower Regions. Once you do, Ulda may then say that the bargain has been satisfied, leaving her free to harry you if she wishes.”

“I understand. But what about Suzy?” She turned to the necromancer. “Can she stay with you as well?”

Alexander looked as delighted as his condition would permit. “A dreen? Of course. I have always—”

Suzy broke in on his enthusiastic whisper to address Marcia. “You might have left me to Ulda. Should have, I would say. You closed my form; that was ample recompense for my small service to you, which in any event I performed to effect my own release. Now I will stay with you until you no longer wish it.” She looked at the others one by one. “This I say in the presence of the mage of the Middle Regions and the little one of twelve names, and in the presence of the great lord of names unnumbered.”

“In any event,” Rhastopheris said to Marcia, “like you, I can travel with no more than two others.”

That left little else to be said, and in a few minutes, having made their good-byes, Marcia and Suzy were alone in the castle of Rhastopheris.

Suzy was silent briefly, then said, “Lulu, let’s do something. This place is dull.”

“Creepy, too,” said Marcia.

She took Suzy’s hand and began to allow the shift to occur. Together they moved forward into the gathering mist She saw the path that the others had taken, and saw as well that they had traveled on a different level than she used. When Rhastopheris had spoken of treading the path across the boundary, he had been speaking literally. They had walked an unearthly terrain, traversing the same realm in which, somewhere, the little mage of Uldum had his secret refuge.

Marcia found that when she focused her thoughts on Breksin, the path they traveled brought her closer to him. She could not see him, but only knew that he was nearby. When it seemed right to do so, she stepped forward, leading Suzy from the mist that surrounded them. Now she was in a … place from which she could survey her destination, just as she had when she had gone in search of Alexander.

But here there was no network of magical powers, no cage of force. Only in one area, at the edge of her view, were there workings to be seen—small flickerings of a lively, darting spell. Marcia moved closer. This was a strange, naive magic. She thought of witches, perhaps one of no great powers, like the woman who had treated her after the adventure with the little bloodsuckers.

But even that did not seem right. This magic was being deployed. The spells fluttered to and fro like cavorting wrens. Marcia moved closer yet, still with Suzy’s hand firmly in hers. She looked at her companion, then stepped forward through the final barrier of fog.

The boy was nearly hidden in the evening shadows. He was sitting by a large tree and staring intently in the direction of the nearest house. Marcia could just catch the sound of his boyish voice droning on as though he were singing the rhythm of a song but not the melody. With one hand he seemed to be keeping time with the tuneless music.

When he heard the sound of their approach, the boy jumped to his feet, snatching something from the ground beside him and holding it behind his back. He watched the two women take another step, then turned and started to run.

It took Suzy three strides to catch him. She snatched him off the ground. The boy didn’t make a sound as she carried him. Suzy put him down in front of Marcia.

Marcia peered at him in the darkness. “What are you doing?” she said.

“Nothing,” the boy whispered. “Just playing. Who are you?”

Marcia told him their names and asked his.

“Rickey. Chardric, really, but—”

“Well, Chardric the magician, what spells were you working?”

Rickey looked at the ground. “Just practicing,” he muttered.

“Oh? And what do you have in your hand?”

“Nothing.” He knit his brows in concentration, then smiled up at Marcia.

The magic was transparent. It involved a slight manipulation of the same fabric that Marcia passed through when she traveled between Regions, except that what the boy did seemed needlessly complicated to achieve such a trivial result. Marcia reached out her hand and pulled the coins from where he had hidden them. It looked like a stage magician’s trick, snatching things out of the air. Rickey stared at her with his mouth open.

“How did you do that?” he demanded. “Anyway, that’s my money.”

“I doubt that,” said Marcia. “I think it came from that house.”

“Are you a magician?”

Marcia thought for a moment. “I’m a witch,” she said.

“I thought witches did things with potions or something.”

“That’s not the kind of witch I am. Why are you stealing money?”

“I’m not! That’s my father’s house, except he’s dead, and now my uncle is going to make me work on the fishing boats, so I took some money to pay Jicker when he comes to get me in the morning, and that’ll make up for the money he has to give my uncle for me.”

Marcia looked down at Rickey. “Where is your mother?”

“With my father.” He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “I’m not going to stay here,” he said defiantly. “I’m going to be an apprentice to a great magician. He’s staying with my aunt and me. I found him on the beach.”

“A magician?”

“He was washed overboard in a storm. I found him and I’m going to get him to teach me magic. He already showed me this one spell.”

“A spell for stealing money?”

“No, no. It’s for hiding. He wrote—indited it for me and I learned it. Then I just changed it around a little. When I get it better, I’m going to show him.” He paused for a moment. “He says whilst.”

Marcia said, “Ah.”

“He’s from a great city and he lives in a palace and he works for a king. He’s real fat.”

“The magician?”

Rickey laughed. “No, the king. Rogan is kind of skinny. He doesn’t like food.”

“Rogan? Rogan the Obscure?”

“You know him? I told Aunt Edorra he was famous. Just like he said.”

The house was by itself, beyond the village in the direction of the sea. The woman who got up when they entered was a head taller than Suzy. Rickey introduced Marcia and Suzy and went skipping through an inner door before his aunt could stop him.

“Well,” said Edorra as she put water on for tea, “this is an odd place for travelers, miss. I don’t have much room, but I’ll work out some bedding for you here in the parlor. There’s grander houses in the village, but it’s a sour sort of place and I wouldn’t like to send you on.” She looked over her shoulder at them. “Have you eaten?” she asked.

“Not that you’d notice,” said Marcia earnestly, before she remembered herself. “Oh, but we don’t want to inconvenience you.” She noticed Suzy looking at her strangely.

At that moment, Rogan entered the room, shepherded by Rickey.

“Greetings, ladies,” he said guardedly. “Chardric tells me we are acquainted.”

“We haven’t met,” said Marcia. “But you know my friend Hannah, I believe?”

Rogan looked surprised and glanced down at Rickey. “Why, ah, yes. We are, that is, she—”

“And Daniel,” Marcia went on. “He and I are from the same city.”

“Felshalfen?” said Rogan hopefully.

“No. The other place.”

“Ah. I see.”

Marcia was distracted by Edorra, who was putting bread and cheese on the table. From the expression on Suzy’s face, Marcia doubted she would see much dabbing and nibbling from her friend tonight.

As they ate, Rogan told the story of how he came to be lost at sea.

“It was that idiot. Reffex,” Rogan said. “Completely lost his head. I can hardly wait to see him; I’m going to turn him into a frog.”

“Really?” said Rickey with a wide-eyed stare.

“What? No. That’s a joke.” Rogan looked at the ceiling. “I wish I could, though.”

Edorra said, “And I wish you could turn Dilmur into a frog.” She began to clear the table. “Or a man with a conscience. You might as well say he’s selling the boy, his own brother’s son.”

“He’s unpleasant, I admit,” said Rogan. “But if he would put Rickey out at a better trade than fishing, that would not be so bad.”

“I’m going to be a magician,” Rickey said in a fervent voice.

“Now, lad, I’ve tried to explain to you the matter of aptitude—talent.”

“He seems pretty talented to me,” said Marcia. She took the coins from her pocket. Rickey turned away from his aunt and kept his eyes on the floor as. Marcia described the magic he had wielded.

“But that’s impossible,” said Rogan indignantly.

Marcia fell a surge of impatience, almost anger. “I saw it, magician,” she said evenly. She raised one of the coins, holding it lightly by the tips of her fingers. She tilted the spectrum just enough to catch the fabric and dropped the coin out of sight.

Rogan stared at her. “Witches don’t do that,” he protested.

Marcia reached out and opened her hand. The coin dropped into her palm.

There ensued a lengthy discussion of just exactly what it was Rickey had done, followed by some demonstrations.

Rogan was flabbergasted. “My boy, you have learned seven years’ magic in a few days,” he said in a shaky voice. “It’s unheard of.”

“This is going to mean trouble,” Edorra said.

“No. Not at all,” said Rogan. “The only danger is if the talent isn’t disciplined.” He sent a stern look in Rickey’s direction. “The stronger the talent, the more volatile it is.”

“What’s that?”

Rogan said, “It means if your talent isn’t controlled, it could burn up. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean it isn’t beyond you. You must master all the details, all the simple things.”

“That is not what I meant,” Edorra said. “I’m talking about the money. Dilmur is a great one for keeping up his books—counts his money every night before he goes to bed, he docs. And don’t think he doesn’t know every penny that’s there.”

“But why,” asked Rogan. “should that be trouble for you?”

“Because Dilmur keeps his money well tucked away. But Rickey grew up in that house, and knows the hiding places, that’s one thing. The other is, it would take a magician to get at those coins, and we,” she said with a level gaze at Rogan, “have the only magician in the village.”

“Surely.” said Rogan, “a few coins—”

From outside came the sound of a distant shout. Edorra looked up. “He’s bringing Jicker and the men with him,” she said. In a moment, voices could be heard approaching.

“I can hide the coins,” Rickey said. “They’ll never find them.”

“They won’t care, Rickey. Their minds are made up. Remember Wincie and those nets and lines. Look how he was punished for that, and punished harshly, when they all knew he didn’t do it. It makes them feel important to shout and rumble around.” Edorra looked at Rogan. He was making gestures and mumbling. “By the Daughters, man, what are you up to?”

“Rebuffs,” he said, looking startled. “They won’t just come striding in here.”

Marcia said, “Don’t bother.” She glanced at the lines of the spell and dismantled them with a thought.

“Hey!” Rogan looked helplessly down at his hands.

Moments later the door burst open. The first man through was tall with unruly dark hair, like Rickey’s, Marcia noticed, as Edorra swept the boy behind her.

“Dilmur!” she shouted. “What do—”

Dilmur’s face was dark with anger. Four or five men piled into the room behind him. “All right, boys. We know what we’re looking for. If anyone gets in your way, just give them a kick.” His eye fell on Suzy, “Except for this one, of course.” The men’s laughter rattled against the walls. Dilmur pointed at Rickey. “And Jicker, there’s your prentice. You’ll take him tonight and we’ll settle in the morning.”

Marcia stood up. She felt oddly removed, as one might who was observing events rather than participating in them.

“Don’t get in the way, girlie,” Dilmur shouted.

How simple to stop his heart. How his mouth would work, his eyes go wide with stupid terror.

“How far is it to Devlin?” she asked in a quiet voice.

Dilmur flashed an ugly grin. “Well, boys, I think we have a pair of Devlin whores come to visit. We’ll have to make them welcome.”

He would expire in a flood of pain and fear.

“But how far is it?” Marcia asked again.

The man called Jicker spoke up. “Even with the poor winds, less than a full day.” He looked around at his companions with a foolish smile. “If you want to arrange a passage, I’ll be glad to oblige.”

Marcia looked at him calmly. “You will be taking us tonight.” She turned to the magician. “You are accepting the boy as an apprentice?”

Dilmur had been looking on with a befuddled grin. At this, he and the others began shouting angrily. Rogan was able to quiet them with a gesture. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I believe you are in the process of making a profound error.”

“Well, let’s see your magic, then. Granddad,” Dilmur shouted, then laughed as the others raised a din.

Marcia leaned toward Suzy and whispered something, pointing at Dilmur and Jicker. Suzy nodded. She walked around the two men. There were four others behind them. With a sudden motion, Suzy reached out, bundled them together, and dragged them roughly through the door.

Dilmur and Jicker stared after them, then turned to face Marcia.

She said, “Let’s arrange that passage now, shall we?”

Chapter 22

It was not much after dawn when Jicker’s boat arrived at Devlin and put its passengers down on a beach of broken shells. Edorra protested when Suzy shouldered their hastily prepared bundles of clothing and other belongings. She seemed determined to pretend she had not seen the pretty young woman handle four angry ruffians as though they had been unruly children.

“I can manage,” was Suzy’s reply.

They scuffed their way across the shells and sand. As Rickey came fully awake and stopped stumbling, his excitement mounted. He had never been to a city and had listened with awe to Edorra’s tales of the paved streets and grand buildings. Now he gazed at them in wonder.

It was just as they reached the first street beyond the salt shops that they heard a booming voice hail them.

“Rogan!” Marcia saw Breksin emerge from the door of an inn. He came toward them at a lumbering trot, his eyes fixed on the magician, an expression of pure delight on his face. It wasn’t until he was near that he noticed Marcia. He stopped. “Marcia?” he said. “How, I mean, Rogan is …”

They sorted it out, more or less, over breakfast. Rogan told the talc of his nautical mishap without drama or embellishment, noting only that he and the giant had been right about ships all along.

“So, Rogan was washed ashore near the village,” Breksin said. “But how on earth,” he asked, turning to Marcia, “did you come to be there?”

“She’s a great witch,” Rickey piped up. He shifted his gaze to the dreen. “And Suzy lifted four men right up off their feet and carried them out our cottage door.” He giggled merrily. “Binnick got knocked silly on the post. His eyes went—” Rickey rolled his eyes, then crossed them and let his tongue hang from the corner of his mouth. Edorra began to scold him, then gave up and joined the laughter.

Though he laughed with the others, Breksin looked troubled as he glanced from Suzy to Marcia, but he did not pursue the topics of witchcraft or magic. Instead, he described his visits to the royal prisoners and explained what he knew or had guessed of the politics surrounding their abduction, as well as his hopes for their release. Then he inquired after Alexander, and looked relieved when he learned that the mage, at least, was safe at home.

Rogan looked up from his breakfast with a startled expression.

“Alexander?” he said. “The nec—that is, the gentleman who dresses in rich clothing? Pale blue jacket, scarf knotted under his chin? Talks in a whisper?’

“That’s the one,” said Breksin.

“That’s odd. He visited me, let’s see, eleven days ago, looking for the shrine of the goddess, what’s-her-name, Elyssana.”

Marcia began to ask for details, but she was interrupted by the arrival of Egri. Suzy noticed him first. “Here is your Free One,” she whispered to Marcia.

“My what?” Marcia said, but was drowned out by Breksin’s shout.

“Egri,” he boomed. He sounded like the Breksin she had first met, the giant who shouted his way through quiet chats imagining he was speaking just above a whisper.

Egri walked toward them slowly. He kept his eyes fixed on Suzy as he sat down next to Breksin. Marcia put her hand on the dreen’s shoulder. “Egri, this is Suzy. She is with me.”

Suzy said, “Little Egri,” and accompanied the words with a slight nod and a mocking smile.

Marcia introduced Edorra and Rickey.

“Little Rickey,” the boy said with a grin. It occurred to Marcia that Egri’s answering smile was perhaps the first she had ever seen on his lips. Of all the unusual acquaintances she had made. Egri was in some ways the strangest of all.

After breakfast, Breksin went off with Edorra and Rickey to find quiet lodgings for them, and to look in on Count Reffex. Rogan, unused to rising so early, retired to Breksin’s room for a restorative nap.

As soon as he was alone with Marcia and Suzy, Egri began speaking without preface or pleasantries.

“When we were together before,” he said to Marcia, “you could not prevail against the little monsters, despite your ring. Now the ring is gone and you travel with … Suzy.”

Marcia thought back to the vampires. How had they overcome her? They could be brushed aside with a thought. She looked across the table at Egri and thought of their days traveling with Breksin. They seemed to inhabit some realm of distant memories, those days of little more than a week ago. But since then, she had changed. Her ring had been stolen, returned, then taken from her again. She looked down at her hand. When she thought of the family wedding band she had given to Ulda, a sense of disquiet passed over her.

“What did Rogan say about a shrine?” she asked. “Did he mean in Ambermere?”

“Yes. Just outside the city is a small chapel dedicated to the goddess.”

“Elyssana? You are certain?”

“I am certain,” Egri replied. “The one who cares for the altar is a friend of my mistress.”

Marcia looked surprised. “Your mistress? You live in Ambermere?”

When Egri nodded, Marcia began to say something, then paused. After a moment, she said, “Hannah. You were sent by Hannah.”

“Of course.”

“But, I know her. I was her adept.”

“Yes,” Egri said. “She has spoken of you.”

“Spoken of me? You mean you knew who I was? All this time?”

“Certainly. Your name, the ring—there was no doubt.”

Marcia stared at the young man. “Why didn’t … oh, never mind.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Is Hannah in Ambermere now?”

Instead of answering her, Egri was staring through the window. Marcia turned and followed his gaze. Out beyond the Devlin reefs, a dark schooner had come to anchor and was lowering a boat.

“This is what Breksin has been watching for,” Egri said. “He is afraid that those who plot against the heirs will come to do mischief before the diplomats can complete their work.” He narrowed his eyes and peered across the water. “The longboat holds armed men wearing the colors of Felshalfen. There are eight of them. Hebbick is not with them.”

Marcia squinted in the morning light. The longboat was no more than a lilting spot of darkness against the water. “Hebbick is the diplomat Breksin is waiting for?”

“Yes. And a boat from Felshalfen without Hebbick is what he fears.”

“I see,” Marcia said. For a while she was silent, then she lay her hand on Egri’s arm. “Take me to this Black Jack Flanders who is causing so much trouble for my friends.”

“I cannot,” said Egri. “I must guard the giant. If he comes upon this company of soldiers—”

“Can you do more than the dreen?”

“No, by no means, but—”

“Suzy, I want you to see that Breksin comes to no harm. If he does not return before the soldiers come ashore, follow them. If he comes upon them, do whatever you must to keep the giant safe.”

Egri looked at the dreen. “You are sure she will do your bidding?”

Suzy said, “I am bound to her, Little Egri. Sworn before a great lord. You need have no fear for your charge.”

“What lord?”

“You will not know his name, Free One. He is of the Lower Regions.”

“It is Rhastopheris,” said Marcia impatiently. “Are you satisfied?”

Egri looked at the two women. “It seems I must be.”

According to Marcia’s guess, it took twenty minutes to reach the great house at the base of the cliff. Behind them, the city stretched to the harbor. Egri gazed across the rooftops.

“Soon they will be ashore,” he remarked.

Marcia looked, but could not make out the longboat against the water.

There were armed men outside the pirate’s door. As they approached, one bawled at them, “Too skinny.” The others laughed.

Marcia walked up to the noisy one. “Take us to Jack Flanders.”

“Naw, he likes ‘em with more meat. Bounce, he calls it.” The man bared his teeth at her and winked. “She’ll do better in the town,” he said to Egri.

“Thank you for your kind advice,” Marcia said, speaking in a lilting voice. When the man leered at her, she trapped his gaze in hers. “Now,” she said in a voice greatly altered, “take us to Jack Flanders.”

The man turned meekly and began to lead them to the door. His comrades raised a laughing protest, but fell silent under Marcia’s stare.

“The cap’n? He’s asleep,” said the disheveled man who opened the door. “Hell, I’m asleep. Come back in the afternoon.” He began to close the door, but Egri held it open. The man gave him a kindly look and rested his hand on the knife at his belt.

“Laddie,” he said in a voice of mild affability, “trifle with me and I’ll slit you crotch to crown.” He gazed at Egri with the air of a master craftsman appraising a piece of material. “Open you right up,” he said.

The man jumped when Marcia put her hand on his shoulder. He stepped back from the door and watched with a look of dumb shock as she and Egri entered and closed the door behind them. On Marcia’s command, he led them to a room at the end of a hallway on the second floor.

Their knock at the pirate’s bedroom door was greeted at first with silence, then with a shouted profanity, and finally with the impact of something heavy and breakable striking the other side of the doorframe.

Marcia waited, then knocked again. After a moment, the door was opened by a rather fleshy naked woman who stood blinking at them stupidly. Behind her in the darkened room, the pirate was sitting up in his bed glaring at the open door.

The woman began, “Jackie says—”

Marcia interrupted her. “Go with him,” she said, pointing to the man who had brought them to the room. The woman stepped obediently into the hall and joined the staring man. Marcia looked at him for a moment, then at the naked woman that filled his eyes.

“Go to bed with him,” she said, waving them away.

“And they say women aren’t good tippers,” she said to Egri. He answered her with an expressionless gaze. Like a cat, she thought. “The truth is. Little One, all this begins to weary me.” From the bedroom came a querulous shout.

Egri said, “What do you mean to do?”

“I mean to have a discussion with the pirate king. He is going to follow my suggestions, or he is going to”—she paused and peered into the bedroom—“drown in the air he breathes. In other words,” she laughed, “I am going to make Jackie an offer he can’t refuse.”

When Breksin saw the ship in the harbor, he hurried back to the inn.

“Nay, Master Breksin,” said the innkeeper. “You’ve missed them. Half a dozen or more Felshalfen soldiers went right up the avenue, they did.”

“And was there an older man, gray, a bit stooped, with them?”

“Nup. Just soldiers. And led by the nobleman with the scarred cheek. I know him from seeing him pass this way before.”

On his way out, Breksin called, “Did Egri—the dark-haired boy—did he follow them?”

The innkeeper’s answer stopped him, “He went off with the one girlie, he did. Then the other, the little beauty, she took off behind the troop.”

Breksin took the stairs to his chamber two at a time. When he clumped back down seconds later, his hammer was at his belt.

After covering four blocks at his longest stride, Breksin was relieved to see the men just at the next crossing. As he drew near, he counted eight in the squad. He might manage them all, he thought, but the important thing was the nobleman. That enemy dispatched, he could think about the luxury of survival.

When he got near enough, he hailed the troop with a shout. At that moment, he saw Suzy standing in the shadow of a building. A pleasant enough last sight, he thought in a quiet corner of his mind.

When the men turned and saw a giant with a battle hammer, they unsheathed their swords without waiting for an order.

“Where do you go?” he called.

The leader stepped forward. “Where we will,” he spat. “Must we cut you down on our way? They say hill men bleed a long time.”

“I only ask where you go.”

The man with the scar looked toward the harbor. “We have no time to chat,” he said. “There are meddlers enough behind us without you. Move away or die.”

Breksin put his hand on his hammer. “I protect the heirs of Ambermere and Felshalfen,” he said.

Again the man glanced to the harbor. “Heirs?” he laughed. “You are mistaken. I serve the heir to both those crowns. If you serve the pretenders, you are my enemy. On my command!” he called over his shoulder.

As Breksin snatched his hammer from his belt, he noticed Suzy from the corner of his eye.

“Keep back!” he called to her without taking his eyes from the soldiers. The nobleman was stepping out of the way. Breksin noted the arrangement of the other men, plotting out the shortest path of corpses by which he could be reached.

“Strike!” came the call from behind the squad.

As the men surged forward, Suzy skipped into their path. They hesitated for an instant as the pretty girl came toward them. When Breksin thought about it later, he remembered the moment as sad and almost touching.

Suzy struck them like an avalanche, driving the troop to the ground with crushing force. By the time Breksin had taken two strides, the street was littered with battered, groaning men.

Breksin was still trying to conquer his astonishment and confusion when he was surprised by the arrival of a squad of the Felshalfen Royal Guard. He raised his hammer and shouted a warning to Suzy, then heaved an oceanic sigh when he recognized Hebbick.

The diplomat greeted Breksin and surveyed the scene. “My, my,” he said with a calm smile. “My, my.”

Breksin, Suzy, and Hebbick left the nobleman and his troop in the care of the royal guard and followed the avenue to the cliffs. Outside the mansion of Black Jack Flanders, men were beginning to load a wagon with trunks. Just inside the door they found the pirate king bidding farewell to his royal guests in a tremulous whisper.

Hebbick surveyed the scene. “It seems I was not needed,” he remarked. He bowed to the prince and princess, then looked more closely at Jack Flanders. “Captain,” he said, stepping to his side, “I hope we do not find you ill. You are pale as death.”

The pirate turned to him slowly. “I have had a difficult morning,” he whispered.

“Oh, dear,” murmured the diplomat. “How unsatisfactory for you. Perhaps we should have our little talk later when you are more yourself.”

When the royal party and the others left his house, strolling beside the squeaking wagon, Black Jack Flanders watched them from the open door like a host reluctant to see his guests depart.

“What did you do to him?” Daniel asked Marcia the first time he got a chance to talk to her alone. They had all gathered in a quiet tavern.

Marcia’s expression was somber. “More than I should have,” she said as they were joined by Modesty.

“Breksin will not come with us,” Modesty reported to Daniel. “He says he is satisfied that the Felshalfen troops that guard us are real soldiers.” She turned to Marcia. “And you,” she said, “the mysterious friend from my husband’s mysterious home, has he changed your mind?”

“He has made it most attractive,” Marcia replied, “but I have other duties that will not wait.”

When Modesty left Breksin, he made his way to where Suzy stood alone by a window. “I must thank you properly,” he rumbled, “for saving my life.”

Suzy smiled up at him. “I think the lives I saved were those of your enemies. There were no such battlers among them as you.”

“Or you,” Breksin replied with a troubled frown. He hesitated, then went on as though with reluctance. “I saw a sword strike you,” he said in a voice just above a whisper. “Square and heavy, there.” He pointed to her shoulder.

“It troubles you, then,” said Suzy, “that I am not what I seem.”

He looked down at her. “You are a girl. Pretty. Soft. And then you …”

“And you, giant, are known as the royal cellarer. The sampler of wines, turner of cheeses. Guardian of sausages.” Suzy stepped closer to Breksin. “And yet,” she went on in a soft voice, “I saw in you a warrior, a killer. I saw your eyes change as you turned your mind to murder. If you had crushed those men today, their blood would not have been the first to stain your conscience.”

Breksin looked relieved when his conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Edorra and Rickey, and just behind them, Rogan the Obscure.

When they were presented to Iris and Hilbert, Edorra was calm and dignified, but it dazzled Rickey to be introduced to a real prince and princess. A few moments later, he looked up at Rogan as if he had never seen him before.

That afternoon the royal party set sail for Felshalfen. Rogan had declined the invitation to accompany them. Hearing of this, Count Reffex decided that his “duties” included a trip to Felshalfen. He managed to avoid the magician entirely by boarding the ship several hours in advance of its departure.

Rogan declined as well a cabin on the ship that would return Hebbick to Ambermere in a few days. “Breksin and I shall walk,” he said, adding that he didn’t care if it took a hundred years. Rickey was determined not to leave the side of his new master, and Edorra was willing to permit it as long as she went with them. Breksin began to tell her of the hardships they might meet, but she cut him off. “I can walk, sir,” she said. At that, Breksin said no more, but watched her stride off as though he had just noticed her for the first time.

To avoid worrying her friends with an inexplicable disappearance, Marcia delayed her departure until Breksin and his company set out for Ambermere in the morning. She and Suzy walked with them to the mountain road at the edge of the city, then watched them until they passed from view over the crest of the first hill.

When they were alone, the two women joined hands, and were gone.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22