The Inventory

It's an immense and grand ledger: clasps plated in gold, cut jewels set along the spine, elaborate tooling to ornament the black stuff in which it is bound. All the same, it's a rather unpleasant-looking thing.

You can handle it, if you like, but you won't like the slightly clammy texture of the black stuff; you won't like the weight of the book in your hands, heavier than it ought to be.

You can open it, if you like, and try to read the iron-red text. You won't be able to read it, though, not without your eyes watering, and the disconcerting hieroglyphs will call to mind snakes, whips, thorns, claws. After a few pages you will notice the smell, which will disturb you to the foundation of your consciousness.

It is a slave registry.

It was not made by any crude band of conquerors, if that's your next question; no Riders with knives of bronze could have created anything this carefully made, nor would they have the meticulous patience to cut the point, dip the pen in—ink?—and write the history of each unfortunate soul . . .

———

4th day 3rd week 7th month in the 2 30th year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, flesh salvaged from the eastern face. Initially routed to Larder. Vitality detected; rerouted to Experimental Medicine and registered as Slave 4372301.

———

He opened his eyes to unrelieved blackness. Was he dead? He felt nothing. The last memory was of screaming air and blinding light, and a sense of regret as he'd fallen. He'd come so far up the ice wall, and before that so far through the passes, that it seemed a shame to die from simple clumsiness. But his frozen hands had failed him, and so . . .

Dead, then. Was this the womb of the earth? Not the way he had imagined it. He had thought it would be full of green and shifting lights, warm and humming. Not this, which was nothing. No light, no sound, no sensation of cold or heat.

The bleak thought surfaced: Perhaps the earth would not have you. Gard considered that prospect and resigned himself.

It was something of an anticlimax, then, when the light appeared. It flared, it danced like yellow leaves. He started, and every nerve in his body shrieked to life. He wept in pain as the light grew brighter. It was nearing him. He could hear, now, a clanking sort of noise, echoing, and the echoing of footsteps. Now and again the light paused, but always it came on again.

It resolved into a man. He wore the light in a thing like an openwork basket, mounted on his head. He was carrying a . . . water gourd? He wore a harness and woven stuff, like one of the Riders, but he did not look like a Rider. His skin was the color of a sunset. And now he was within arm's reach, if Gard had been able to move his arm.

He stopped and thrust his head in Gard's direction, in an interrogatory way. When he saw Gard looking back at him, he grinned.

"Hhhhnaaaii!" he said. Something popped into existence at his shoulder, the image of a burning child, and it moved its lips and spoke when he spoke again. "The big icicle is awake!"

Or, at least, that was what Gard understood him to say. Meaningless syllables sounded, but within his ear another voice spoke with meaning. Gard tried to answer him and could only sob.

"Yes, I daresay you would cry! I'd cry too, if I was in your condition. Cheer up, though; Magister Hoptriot thinks he will save your legs. Then you'll be lots of use. Always good to be of use, eh?" The man set down the— gourd? No, but it was like a gourd—and uncoiled a thing like a rope. He hooked its end into a wooden frame that held Gard's arm prisoner, and Gard felt a sting in his arm, a tiny spark out of the flaming pain that consumed him. He looked at himself by the light. All bandages, and stinking salve.

The man set the gourdlike thing down and looked Gard over. "Poor icicle. The medicine hurts, yes? Here's what you need." He pulled from a pouch at his waist a handful of leaves. They were green, nearly fresh, only a little limp with having been in the man's pouch. He thrust them between Gard's teeth. "You chew. Soon, you won't care about the hurt."

Gard did as he was told, rolling the leaves into a quid with his tongue.

Almost at once his tongue went numb, and then his mouth; the numbness spread down from there, merciful as cool water. The man squatted, watching him. He chuckled.

"There, now he's happy. Aren't you happy?"

"Am I dead?" said Gard thickly.

"No, not dead! By the grace of the masters, alive. You came a long way through the snow. What were you doing?"

Gard summoned memory. "Looking for a way through."

"Ahhh! To the cities on the other side?"

Gard looked at the man in incomprehension, wondering what cities might be, and the flaming child at the man's shoulder fretted and danced, and at last a tiny voice spoke in Gard's head: Communities/villages/families of people.

"Too bad. You're here now," said the man. He laughed and shook his head. "It's not so bad. I used to break my heart that I wasn't back there, and then one day I thought, what would I be doing if I was back there? Scrambling to find a crust to eat, a place to sleep. Don't have to do that, here. Food and a bed guaranteed, at least." He smacked his thighs and stood.

"Yes, you'll get better. You're strong. I heard they found you wrapped in a white bear's pelt! Did you kill it yourself?"

Bear? Gard had a hazy memory of the white thing that had come down the slope at him, an avalanche on four legs. He had run his spear down its throat and then leaped on its back and locked his arms about its neck . . . blood steaming on the snow, and how grateful he had been for the warmth of its carcass as he skinned it. A demon of the snows, he had assumed. Had that been a bear? The burning child bounced in place, affirmed the word.

"But of course you must have killed it yourself. Nice! One of the mistresses claimed that pelt, very pleased she was too. I heard that story, I said to myself, 'This is a strong one, he'll make it,'" the man chattered on.

"How are you talking in two voices?" Gard asked.

"Eh?"

"The fire-baby that talks in my head," said Gard, unable to point at it. "What is it?"

"That? Why, that's only a Translator. Clever, eh? Otherwise I shouldn't have any idea what your jungle talk meant, and I'll bet you never learned the speech of the Children of the Sun." The man grinned wide.

"Children of the Sun? Is that what you are?"

"Yes, of course!"

"Is that what the people here are?"

The man's grin faded. "No." He turned and looked over his shoulder into the darkness. "No, only a few of us here. And long, and so long since I've seen the sun. But it's better than dying, eh? Food and a bed, just as well, not so bad. How's your medicine doing, eh? All drained in?"

Too many new things to understand. And why bother to try, when the numbness and the blindness were so pleasant? Gard floated away into darkness and never felt the needle removed from his arm.

He felt nothing until a long while later, when there was brightness in his face again.

The pain returned with the light. He was being hoisted from the place where he lay, someone gripping him around the legs and someone catching him around the shoulders. He gulped for breath and gave a hoarse scream at the pain.

"Easy with him. Poor old icicle, I'll bet that hurt, eh? Can't give you the leaf for the pain, so sorry; Magister Hoptriot wants a look at you, and he wants you conscious. You be good and you'll have some later, eh? Old Triphammer promises you."

Gard looked around frantically as he was swung down to the floor. The man with the light towered above him; so did two dark giants who crouched, one at his head and one at his feet, and lifted him. He was slung between them on a litter, such as people used to drag the sick, the dying. He was carried forward through the darkness, as the man with the light trotted alongside. Triphammer? The burning child showed him a picture of the man with the light. Perhaps that was his name.

Now he could see, in the halo of light that traveled around him, that they were in a long corridor. Now and again they passed grottoes in the rock, shelves upon which other bodies lay. Some were bandaged. Some were unconscious. Some lay watching Gard pass, and their open eyes were glazed, listless, motionless. Others were bound and writhing, turning a restless, furious gaze on Gard as he passed, and they whined in their pain. They were kinds of people he had not seen before.

In his terror and disorientation, Gard opened and closed his hands, clutching for . . . what was there to save him? Not his spear, not his knife: gone down the ice wall forever. Not the strength of his body: melted away. Nothing left but his strength of will. Nothing in his power to do but die bravely. He clenched his fists. He gritted his teeth.

The whole jolting way he made no sound, though he thought his teeth might never unlock again; he endured. At last he was borne into a room that flared with brilliance painful to his eyes, and he closed them. He was raised, set down on something hard and cold.

Deft hands unwound the bandages from his legs and burned like hot iron in their touch. He opened his eyes, not wide, but enough to see Triphammer and two others, the ones who had carried him, standing in a line with their eyes lowered. The bearers were big, their skins the color of slate, their eyes like downcast moons.

His tormentor was robed in skin, the hair scraped off smooth; it was gloved and masked in skin too. The eyes domed out like an insect's. It murmured to itself as it examined him, but no burning child appeared to translate for it.

Gard chanced a look at his body. He saw his legs and feet blackened, shriveled, bent. He closed his eyes again, laid his head back, praying for death. Now the voice spoke in his ear: "Are you conscious?"

He opened his eyes again, saw the mask had turned toward him, with a burning child now dancing at its shoulder. "Yes," he said.

"'Yes, Master,' is what you're supposed to say," Triphammer told him hurriedly.

"Will he kill me if I won't call him Master?" said Gard. Triphammer nodded, emphatic. The two big ones raised their eyes, stared at him.

"Then rot and eat filth, you slave," said Gard, to the masked one. The mask tilted toward him. There was the barest hint of a shrug; then it took a rag and dipped the rag in a bowl and daubed what was in the bowl on Gard's feet. The black skin smoked, peeled back, sloughed away. That was the last Gard saw before the darkness fell in on him again.

———

Four moons, lined up, were shining at him out of the starless night. Gard blinked at them, bewildered. The two at the left grew larger, and he felt hot breath in his face.

"Rahashpa, gotu," said a deep voice, and another of the burning children popped into view and lit the grotto. Drink, brother. The two litter bearers stood over him. One was leaning down to offer him a drinking gourd.

Gard drank, and gasped for breath. More fire. He hadn't thought fire could be liquid. But it warmed, rather than burned, and its aftertaste was pleasant. And the drinking gourd wasn't a gourd at all . . . it was the top of a skull. A laugh bubbled up out of his chest. He hadn't thought he'd ever laugh again.

"You called the master a slave," said the nearer of the two silver-eyed, grinning and showing a mouthful of fearsome teeth. "Your testicles are like two heads."

"The heads of enemies swinging at your belt," added the other.

"How we laughed in our hearts, when we heard your words."

"We said to ourselves, surely he is one of us."

"Are you?"

After a moment of confusion, Gard said, "Am I what?"

"One of our kind. But you must be one of our kind. If you were one of the Earthborn, you'd have died like a lily in the snow."

"But you are strong. We saw the skin of the beast you killed."

"What is Earthborn?" Gard asked.

The two looked at each other, puzzled. They looked at him. "You are a lost child, then."

Gard wondered what that meant. Lost child. . . yes, he had been, hadn't he? A foundling. No one's son. The one silver-eyed set aside the skull and leaned forward, nodding as though he understood.

"Ah, you were abandoned. It happens sometimes. Listen to me, brother: we are born of the Air. But when one of us takes flesh and mates with an Earthborn, or a Fireborn, there are children bred sometimes—"

"Earthborn are the slender things who live among the trees—"

"Triphammer, he's one of the Fireborn—"

"And you look a little like the Earthborn, but too big, too strong, and your heart is like ours. Welcome, lost child. Not to this filthy place; but to your own kind."

"Thank you," said Gard, trying to take in what they were telling him. He remembered the stories of his childhood. Were they demons, then?

The one with the skull bowl lifted it to Gard's lips again and then drew back suddenly, the silver moons blazing with emotion.

"By the Blue Pit! The masters don't know his name!"

The other one came close, leaned down too, spoke in an undertone, with urgency, "Little brother, have you told anyone your name?"

"No," said Gard.

They chortled with laughter, and the one beat his brother's arm so that the liquor in the skull slopped and smoked where it fell.

"Not your true name? But you were born in flesh. It would be the name you were given by the she that bore you," said the one with the skull bowl.

The memory of all that was past swirled by Gard, like a winter wind.

He shuddered and said, "I couldn't tell you the name of she who bore me, let alone the name she gave me, if she bothered." The brothers rocked and hugged themselves.

"Oh, fortunate boy! Then no one knows, and there is no way you can be made a slave!"

"They may chain you. They may beat you. But unless the masters know your true name, they may not own you."

"Even in this cell, you are free. Not like us. We must serve them. Poor old Grattur!"

"Poor old Engrattur! They called us down into flesh with promises of pleasure."

"They gave us food. They made us drunk."

"We were unwise. We told our names."

"Now we are slaves. Now they own our wills."

"Naming calls; naming owns."

"But you they'll never call. You they'll never own!"

"So you are Grattur and Engrattur?" said Gard, and they winced. "Two fools, Grattur and Engrattur. If you could see the spells that bind us round, you would wonder how we even breathe."

"Trapped down here to serve them forever, and we cannot even die."

"They would only body us again, call us back by our names."

"Body you?" Gard asked.

"Make us bodies again, by craft, and lock us in them—," said Grattur. They heard footsteps, and then Triphammer looked into the grotto.

"What are you doing here? Icicle needs his rest. What is this, what is this? Are you making him drunk? Idiots!"

Grattur showed his teeth. Engrattur took a wad of leaves from a pouch and tucked them into Gard's mouth.

"He'll rest now, won't you, brother? Remember us, remember our fates. We're going, hothead!"

They shouldered their way out into the corridor. Triphammer looked after them angrily, then turned to hook the medicine into Gard's arm.

"Stupid demons," he muttered.

Am I a demon? Gard wondered, biting gratefully into the quid. The numbness came again, and the black bliss.

———

It was decided he would live, and so he was moved to a proper chamber; the grottoes, as Triphammer explained delicately, being more convenient to the Larder in case the seriously ill didn't pull through.

"But look what a fine cell you've been given!" said Triphammer, arranging the medicine rack above the new bed. "Dry as a bone. And look at all this fine bedstraw! Sweet as a summer meadow. I'll tell you, the masters must think you have great potential. My other patients would envy you. You don't often see slaves given such care, and that's a fact."

"I'm not a slave," said Gard.

Triphammer grimaced. "No need to be ungrateful. Here you lie, alive, and wasn't that their doing? And all your food and drink is their gift. You owe them service, really. After all. And it's not as though your future is so bleak. See, here's another gift for you!" Triphammer delved into a corner of the cell and held up two sticks, each with one end wrapped in rags. "Crutches! I'm to teach you to walk with them. Think of being able to get about on your own again, eh? Why, you might get a little wheeled cart, if you're diligent at your tasks.

"Perhaps even—" He dropped his voice. "There are special rewards for the best slaves, you know. Clever devices, all worked with spells. How'd you like a pair of silver legs, eh, to replace those poor withered ones? Set with gems, and strong enough to carry you across the world without tiring?"

The burning child had a lot of hopping and gesturing to do before Gard took in all Triphammer's meaning. But when he understood it at last, he looked scornful.

"That's a story for children. No men can make such things."

"Hai! And there you're wrong, my friend," said Triphammer, grinning. He pulled up a stool and sat. "I'll tell you a story, and no children's tale either, but the sacred truth, as I'm my mother's son."

"Long ago, when there were more gods than men, this black mountain rose up out of the earth. It was the tallest mountain in the world. It scraped the stars at night, raked up a plume of silver dust that trailed from its summit. Green lightnings crackled there, power hummed and danced there. And mages—who are drawn to the smell of power the way cats are drawn to stinking fish—went there and tried to find a way to take the power for their own and use it.

"From all corners of the earth they came, a long procession of mages going up hopeful, with their servants and their baggage and beasts; coming down broken, with their fine robes in rags, and their rich goods lost to the ice and snow. Every one of them it defeated. The power could not be taken. It would not be owned."

"And at last, the cleverest mage among them said, 'No one man can defeat the mountain. Yet, if two or three or ten went together, it might be done."

"They came together and worked out a spell they thought would mine power from the mountain, as men mine ore from rock. Twenty of them met, twenty, and do you know how hard it is for so many mages to gather in one place, for one purpose? They're quarrelsome as cats. But the thought of so much power bound them to set aside their disputations, and one fine day they climbed the mountain, with their servants and their baggage and their beasts."

"They pulled themselves over the top, wading in snow, complaining. They drew the circle. They lit the braziers and cast on incense. They spilled blood, whose I don't know, and raised their chant. The power came at their call, it danced around them like green fire, and then—"

"It bound them!"

"It would not be bound, but bound them, all, with their servants and their baggage and their beasts, like a green bowl clamped down. They could not leave. They clawed and screamed at the wall that locked them in, till their fine robes were rags, and their rich goods were no use in the ice and snow. Miserable in the bitter weather they huddled there, and so at last to save their lives they dug into the mountain."

"They made tunnels, with their arts; caves and galleries, grand chambers at last, deeper and deeper always, and so in time made a grand palace under the rock. We are down at the mountain's roots, you and I, but if you went up, you'd see the fine rooms!"

"And so they made the best of a bad bargain. Devised clever ways of growing food, in chambers lit by witchlight. Cut doors in the lower slopes, through which they still could not go, but other folk could be summoned and lured in to ... to bring them things they needed. You have to admire them, don't you? Now they live like kings and queens, in this palace that might have been a prison. They are famed among mages."

Gard thought about this and could still not see so great a difference between mages and Riders. He saw clearly, though, that there was no use arguing with Triphammer. He said only, "And you came to serve them out of admiration, did you?"

Triphammer winced and looked away. "I was traveling. 1 lost myself, just as you did. Their servants found me and ... I made myself useful. All for the best."

"So you came from the place on the other side of the mountains?"

"Long ago. Long ago. No use trying to go back now."

"Are there forests there?"

"Eh?" Triphammer looked up at Gard. "Forests? Big trees? Not where we live. It was open and warm, with good rock, and the blue sea .. . who'd want to live back in the woods? Nobody there but demons. You might walk for days and never see a living soul, just green leaves. Brrrr!"

———

10th day 5th week 4th month in the 231st year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, Slave 4372301 assigned to General Labor Pool, Class 3. Requisitioned by Magister Tagletsit.

———

Magister Tagletsit regretted the loss of the sun. He had come from a far desert country, where the sun was worshiped as a harsh lord, unquestioned master, king of dunes and stones and serpents, who withdrew his presence by night only that his trembling and shivering subjects might the better appreciate his return by morning.

So cruel a father must necessarily breed desperate love in his children. Magister Tagletsit, when he had found himself facing an eternity in stone-bound darkness, could not imagine life anywhere but under the blazing eye of his God. It nearly drove him to self-sacrifice; but then he had devised a means by which his discomfort was eased.

He lived in a great circular chamber, partitioned into rooms, the whole strictly aligned with the unseen points of the compass. All around its outer wall ran a tunnel. The tunnel wall was pierced through with many little windows into the rooms, through which shone the light and heat, at any given moment, of five hundred oil lamps.

The tunnel contained five thousand lamps, ranged in brass along its length, from east to west. One slave's duty was, each day, to consult the astronomical charts to determine at what precise spot on the horizon the unseen sun would rise, and when. He would enter the tunnel in felt slippers and move a golden peg to the corresponding point marked off on the tunnel wall.

Then he would return to his bed, for he was a valued slave with advanced clerical skills. Gard, unskilled cripple, must turn an hourglass and begin the daylong task of lighting each bank of lamps, east to west, one after another, extinguishing the first when the last had been lit. Then he would turn the glass and repeat the process on the next bank of lamps, thus working his way around the tunnel.

Each day he labored so, naked in the tunnel, while the sweat ran from his body, while the muscles in his arms screamed for hatred of his weight, and hatred of his useless legs that dangled between the crutches. Unthinkable to stop; for at each hour-mark a little cistern was mounted in the wall that would only discharge its drinking water for him if all the lamps to that point had been lit, and in the proper sequence too. The sweat of his body kept him faithful. The leather of his tongue in his dry mouth kept him faithful.

And if he was tempted, still, to die and never sweat or thirst again, one thought kept him still faithful: that there really were green forests beyond the mountains, and if he lived to escape, he might go there one day, even as Ranwyr might have gone. He might find a pass through the mountains into the valley and lead a weary people to freedom, even as Ranwyr might have led them.

And Magister Tagletsit was happy within his rooms, watching the angled light change with the passage of hours, basking in the warmth, and was able to pray in praise, "How great thou art, O Sun, whose eye pierces even into the depths of the earth! Truly thou art great, and none can hide from thee."

———

"Not so bad, after all, is it?" said Triphammer, when he would come in to tend to Gard's legs at the end of every shift. "You've got a soft job, eh? Just you think about what they rescued you from. Just you remember that ice, and those banks of snow. That's what I do, when I get to feeling sorry for myself. There I was, lost in drifts over my head, and wasn't I grateful to be let inside here!"

Triphammer said the same thing always, reliable as the circling sun.

"Why weren't your legs frozen, like mine?" Gard asked him, one night.

"Because I had a proper pair of boots on when I ran away, didn't I? Wasn't a naked jungle-boy like you," said Triphammer, not unkindly. He took Gard's foot and bent his leg at the knee. "Here, now: push with your foot, try to straighten out your leg. Hard as you can. Good! Good boy!"

A rumble of wheels came from the corridor outside, the tramp of heavy feet approaching slowly. "Good boy!" a voice mocked them, high and shrill. "Isn't he just the best little cripple that ever was?"

A long-nosed, blind face came around the edge of the doorway, as though peering in. It was followed by the rest of the speaker, bulky body, big long arms, four small thick legs. It pulled a wagon that supported a pair of immense jars.

"Catering," the shrill voice announced. "Where's your bowl, cripple? Where's your pitcher? Going to make me hunt for them?"

"They're right by the door, where they're supposed to be!" said Triphammer in annoyance. "If you'd used your ugly nose instead of eavesdropping on people, you'd have found them straightaway."

"Ugly, is it?" Big leathery hands groped, found Gard's meal dish and water pitcher. "Think I'll leave a big lump of something special in your bowl, hothead." Catering swung his arm backward and dipped the pitcher in one jar. He lifted it out and pretended to urinate in it.

"Just ignore him," said Triphammer to Gard.

Gard leaned up on his elbow to stare a threat, but saw Catering's empty eye-sockets. "Who put out your eyes, slave?"

The blind face grimaced, the head swung to and fro on its long neck.

"I was made without any" said Catering. He dipped Gard's bowl into the other jar and withdrew it brimming with dinner, into which he pretended to spit. "Here's your meal, cripple. May it poison you."

He slammed the bowl and the pitcher down and trudged on down the corridor. "He talks like that to everyone," said Triphammer. "All talk, though. Never you mind him."

Gard wondered what would frighten a creature so immense that it took refuge in threatening like a nasty-minded child.

———

Sometimes, as he struggled along the tunnel of the sun's path, Gard looked through the windows into Magister Tagletsit's rooms. At any hour he might see plump Magister Tagletsit in placid contemplation of a roll of paper covered in tiny black markings, or reclining on a bed covered in rich woven stuff trimmed in gold, or pouring a bloodred drink for himself from a pitcher. The pitcher fascinated Gard. It seemed to be made of clear ice, cut and faceted in patterns, perilous beauty, and yet it never melted in the heat of the lamps. He wondered what it would feel like if he touched it.

One day, when Magister Tagletsit was away and the pitcher had been left on a table near a window, Gard reached through the window and touched it. He was surprised; it was no cooler than anything else in the room.

He paid a price to learn that much. Hobbling back to his cell when lamp-night had fallen, he was overtaken by Triphammer, who was scowling.

"What'd you want to go lose a good job for, eh? Stupid icicle! Now we've both got to go report to Hodrash. No, not that way! Down this turning."

"Why?"

"Because you went and intruded, didn't you? Stuck your big, dirty jungle-paw through the window and left handprints all over the poor magister's nice pitcher!"

"But no one saw me," said Gard, astounded.

"You big fool, the magister's spirits saw you! These are mages. Didn't you know, they've got spirits you can't see, watching over all that belongs to them? But I suppose you didn't know, how could you know? I don't seem to have told you. The more blame to me. This way. Hurry! Don't make it worse for us."

Triphammer led him along an unfamiliar corridor in the rock. They turned in at last through a doorway. The chamber beyond was highceilinged, and to one side benches rose in stepped ranks, where a hundred might have sat without crowding. No one sat there now but three of the masters, in their fine robes, with a fourth entering in some haste. He bowed to the others, took his seat, and turned, all expectant, to watch.

On the floor of the chamber crouched a demon, golden-skinned, whose arms were great with muscle. He was amusing himself with a piece of intricately carved wood, a puzzle whose interlinking sections could be shifted to form different pictures. He set it aside when Gard and Triphammer entered and rose to his feet with a sigh. "Malefactors," he intoned in a bored kind of way.

"Reporting," said Triphammer briskly. "We acknowledge our sins and submit ourselves for discipline."

Gard, looking up, saw the masters lean forward in their seats. The demon went to the wall, where scourges of different sizes were hung, and looked over his shoulder at Triphammer. "Which of you is it to be first?"

"Me," said Triphammer, divesting himself of his tunic and hanging it neatly on a hook provided for that purpose. "My fault really, I should have explained better. And it's the boy's first time, Hodrash."

Hodrash nodded and selected a scourge. Triphammer went meanwhile to a post in the center of the floor. He stood on tiptoe to grasp hold of a bar at the top of the post. Gard watched, unbelieving, as Hodrash advanced and swung his big arm, and the scourge bit deep into Triphammer's back.

Triphammer grunted and set his face against the post. Crack, crack, crack, in quick succession the blows fell, businesslike. Gard remembered crouching hidden at the edge of a field, watching as an overseer had beaten a poor failing slave. White anger in his heart, then, and the resolve to die before he might ever be taken as a slave. And now—

"Hai," panted Triphammer, letting go of the bar and stepping back. Bright blood oozed from the stripes on his back. "Over and done, thank all the gods. Come on then, icicle. Your turn."

Icicle indeed; Gard stood frozen in his tracks. Hodrash looked at him in contempt, but there was pity in his face too, and he came to Gard saying loudly, "Not easy to move on those sticks, is it? Come along, boy." He hissed into Gard's ear, "Don't shame old Triphammer. If he endured, you should, a big lout like you."

So Gard let himself be led to the post, as though it were a nightmare and he had no power to resist, and let Hodrash help him to the bar, and Triphammer collected his crutches when they fell clattering to the floor.

———

"You didn't have to bellow like that," said Triphammer aggrievedly, as he washed Gard's back. "Though I suppose if it was your first time, it must have been a nasty surprise. You'll have a bit more self-respect next time, I hope."

"I will never be beaten for their amusement again," said Gard. "That's the spirit! Resolve to be a better boy."

Gard opened one eye to look over his shoulder at Triphammer. He wanted to strike him; but Triphammer's own back was still bleeding, un-tended, and the same pain must still be throbbing in his skin.

"I never thought you'd do a stupid thing like that, else I'd have warned you," Triphammer went on, rubbing salve into Gard's cuts. It burned, though not so badly as the scourge. "But I did tell you they were mages, didn't I?"

"I didn't think they had any real power," said Gard.

"Ah! Thought they were street conjurors, did you? The kind who pull colored scarves out of their fists? No, no, boy."

"There was a man, among my people," said Gard slowly. "Everyone said he was so wonderful, so wise, that he was going to save us all. And he didn't. Things only got worse."

"Very likely, with your jungle shamans. But there is such a thing as real Power, you see? And the masters have it. You won't forget that now, I daresay."

"Never again," said Gard.

———

When Gard's back had healed, Triphammer took him down to his new job.

"It's not so bad, the Pumping Station," Triphammer said, as they approached a cavern mouth that glowed red with firelight. "You'll have lots of company, at least. You'll be off your feet too. And I'd find it a more satisfying kind of work if I were you, because after all, it's more important, isn't it? Keeping the air and water moving and all. If it wasn't for these fellows, we'd all freeze and die of thirst. So that's some compensation, eh? And it could be worse. You could have drawn cesspit duty."

Triphammer rambled on at greater length about how fortunate Gard was, but his voice was drowned out as they entered the cavern. The cavern echoed with noise.

In the center of it a great fire roared; in the roof of it great turning blades of fans were mounted, to send warmed air into the hypocaust. The fans were connected by a series of gears of increasing size to a long mechanism set in the floor, a row of a dozen handles at which eleven figures labored, cranking them, and the laborers sang as they worked, a deep plaintive repetitive chant.

Another bank of gears was at the far side of the cavern, with a dozen slaves laboring there, hard by where a black river emerged from rock and hurried to vanish over a precipice into darkness, from which mist rose. These gears lifted water to a turning screw that vanished into a shaft in the ceiling. The fire was fed by two demons who went back and forth with armfuls of some red stone, a mountain of which was piled at the back of the cavern.

The demons turned and stared as Gard entered with Triphammer.

"It's the free boy," yelled Grattur.

"It's the little brother," yelled Engrattur. They dropped the stones they had been carrying and advanced on Gard, grinning.

"You see?" shouted Triphammer. "You've friends here already. Won't that be nice? Mind you don't learn stupid habits from them, though. They had a nice secure job carrying litters for Magister Hoptriot, and what did they go and do?"

"Stole his elixirs to make ourselves drunk!" said Grattur proudly.

"Stole his powders to get ourselves stoned!" said Engrattur.

"What's he doing here? Not gear duty?"

"Not gear duty, a fine boy like this?"

"Well, you know—the legs," said Triphammer, gesturing at Gard's crutches.

"Ah. But we'd heard he'd pulled duty on the Big Lantern."

"So he did! A nice secure job, and he went and lost it by breaking the rules," said Triphammer. The brothers howled with laughter. "Broke the rules!"

"Broke the rules! Ah, he's one of us!"

"Don't encourage him, you fools," said Triphammer, looking about nervously.

"We say what we like down here, hothead," said Grattur. "As long as the gears keep turning, they don't care what we say," said Engrattur.

"Yes. Well. Maybe so, and maybe not," said Triphammer. He turned to Gard. "I'm off to see to my other patients. Got a poor fellow lost his arm to the Blood Entertainments. No end of work retraining. You take your place now, and work hard. You'll be grateful, come the end of your shift, for a good exercise session with your legs."

Triphammer left the cavern. The brothers pointed to the empty seat in the nearer bank of gears. "That's your place."

"Welcome to the Pumping Station!"

Gard hobbled to the gear bank and took his seat under the massed glare of the other workers. Their song had fallen off—not to say fallen silent, in the unceasing commotion of that place.

"Who's this big prick?" demanded the nearest. Gard scowled at him, then started as he saw the speaker had no legs. His body ended at the hips, in a smooth asexual curve. Looking along the line, Gard could see that most of the others had suffered the same fate.

"What happened to your legs?" blurted Gard.

"I was made without any," said the other. He jerked his head in the direction of his fellow workers. "Them too. No need for legs, in this job. They cheated us."

"Only half-bodied them," said Grattur, leaning down. "But they're just as trapped as we are. That's the masters for you, eh?"

"Lure a poor creature in with promises of fun, and then leave off the most important bits," said Engrattur.

"Grab your damned handle and help us," said the worker. Gard obeyed. Raggedly, from the other end of the line, the song began again.

Grattur and Engrattur took it up, as they kicked bits of dropped fuel into the fire. Gard listened a little while, and then he joined in too.

If I ever get out of here I will drink their blood It will be my wine. If I ever get out of here I will eat their hearts Roasted over slow fire. If I ever get out of here I will rape them all With a thunderbolt. If I ever get out of here I will fly so high On the smoke of their pyres. If I ever get out of here.

Gard learned the song well, over the years, as his arms and shoulders thickened, as his beard grew out full. The shrunken muscles of his legs filled out again too, with Triphammer's patient work. The hour came when he was able to take a few tottering steps around the edges of his cell, leaning on the walls. The hour came when he hobbled to work with the aid of a cane only. The hour came when he walked unaided, but limped.

This caused some slit-eyed resentment among his fellow workers, but only for a little while. They soon had another focus for their dislike.

The hour came when Gard was returning to his cell, walking free, and was met by Triphammer running from the other direction. "Hai, it's you! Hurry, hurry, get under cover!"

"What's happened?" Gard quickened his pace. Triphammer didn't answer, but grabbed him by the arm and hurried him to the cell. They were no sooner inside than Catering came trundling up, and so far as his face was able to express fear, it looked fearful. He didn't even stay for insult, just groped up Gard's pitcher and bowl and slopped them full, spilling half their contents putting them down again before he rushed on.

"We'll just sit in here and stay quiet," said Triphammer in a low voice. Gard, angry that he'd lost half his dinner, was grabbing for the bowl when an impact came that knocked him over. He sprawled on the floor, feeling it heave as though it were breathing. "Oh, oh," moaned Triphammer, hiding his face.

A noise like thunder came from somewhere far up overhead, and a long crack appeared in the rock wall. Then came three or four brief blasts of a sound Gard could not identify. There followed, unmistakably and terribly, the sound of many voices screaming.

Then there was silence. "What's happened?" Gard repeated in a hushed voice.

"A war," said Triphammer. The Translator at his shoulder sent an image into Gard's mind: fighting, chaos, death. "Sometimes the masters battle among themselves. Sometimes . . . but it never lasts long. Probably over now. Very hard on the poor demons, they don't know whose orders to follow, glad I'm not bound that way. Best thing for the likes of you and me to do is hide and take cover, yes, indeed."

Gard sat up cautiously. He pulled his dinner bowl close and shoveled down what little was left in it. There were no further explosions.

"Do you think it's over?"

"Might be," said Triphammer. "Might be. I've seen it over this soon, before. I'll have a lot of work to do, maybe. There'll be some executions. For a few weeks we'll have more meat in the stew than usual."

Gard stared down into his empty bowl. A thin smoke came curling along the corridor outside.

When he reported for his next shift, an uneasy trembling was still in the air. Grattur and Engrattur came and hit him on the shoulder, one after the other.

"Wondered if you'd made it. You're in the Western tunnels, aren't you?"

"That was right under the worst fighting, we heard. Do you know who won?"

"Do you know what it was about?"

Gard could only shake his head and take his place. A demon hurried in, walking on its knuckles. It was Chacker, who worked the station next to his. Chacker swung himself into his seat.

"They put out the fire in Western Level Three," he muttered to his neighbor on the other side.

"Five of them executed, I heard," said the neighbor. This drew smiles from all near enough to hear, and they began their song with an almost lighthearted intonation that morning:

If I ever get out of here I will drink their blood It will he my wine. . .

An hour into the shift, deafened by the song and the roar of the fans, Gard was startled to look up and see a pair of demons standing in the cavern mouth, one on either side of a young girl.

The demons wore armor. They carried spiked clubs and were in every way dreadful to look upon, but they seemed a little fearful, even embarrassed. The girl between them was slender and beautiful, beyond any doubt or conjecture, for she was naked save for the manacles she wore. She stood straight, with perfect composure, and smiled coldly at a point in the air somewhere miles from that place.

"By the Blue Pit," muttered Grattur.

"By the Blue Pit," echoed Engrattur, too astonished to come up with anything original. Gard stared openmouthed, until he felt his flesh rise to the occasion. He leaned forward, hoping to obscure matters. The song died off, all along the line, as the other laborers looked up and noticed the visitors.

"What's all this?" demanded Grattur, carefully addressing the guard on the right. The guard cleared his throat.

"This is the Lady Pirihine, Narcissus of the Void, of the line of Magister Porlilon, lately so unfortunate as to be crushed by the party of Magister Obashon. She has been sentenced to five years' labor here. We have delivered her to you, as we were commanded. We now withdraw."

The guard and his fellow took a step back and made what might have been interpreted as a bow in Lady Pirihine's direction—or perhaps not. They exited swiftly. Grattur and Engrattur exchanged a glance, not a happy one, and Grattur spoke with exquisite care to Lady Pirihine:

"Lady, we are bound creatures and must obey our orders to the letter. We will not exceed our charge. Please remember this, when you walk freely again."

"I will remember," she said, and her words hung in the air with such frost as to make Gard shiver.

He was elbowed sharply by Chacker. "Look at her! Look at those! Oh, oh, wouldn't I love to get my teeth in those! Come here, Princess, come here, high and mighty, I've got two hands for you anyway!"

"What are we going to do?" murmured Grattur.

"They'll tear her to pieces," said Engrattur.

"Here. You! Chacker. Leave your station. You're reassigned."

"Report up to Magister Thratsa. Icicle, you take his place."

Chacker pulled himself up from his seat with an expression of outrage, but he obeyed and went knuckling off, muttering to himself. Gard slid sidelong into Chacker's place. Grattur leaned down to him with an urgent look.

"We've treated you right, haven't we, little brother?"

"Now you do right by old Grattur and Engrattur."

"There'll be another war sometime."

"They fight among themselves all the time."

"She'll be out of here someday."

"Don't want her remembering us with spite, do we now?"

"Don't give her a reason to do that, little brother."

Gard nodded dumbly, wishing more than anything for a rag to cover himself. He did his best to arrange himself in a less conspicuous way, as Grattur and Engrattur turned to Lady Pirihine.

"Your place is here, Lady." They bowed and gestured toward the end-most seat. She stepped into it and sat and took hold of the handle without a word. Her manacles tinkled against the bar.

Gard averted his eyes. She worked away at the handle in silence beside him, and slowly, defiantly, the laborers at the far end took up their song again.

If I ever get out of here. . .

Gard felt the lady's thigh against his own.

"Is that why they call you Icicle?" inquired the Lady Pirihine, sounding amused.

Gard gulped and shook his head. He joined the song.

I will eat their hearts Roasted over slow fire. If I ever get out of here . . .

She joined in the song. Her voice was high and sweet. If frost ferns on frozen lakes had voices, they would sound like Lady Pirihine.

———

Gard now longed for the old days of labor, which, if they ground him to a powder of weariness each evening, were yet blessedly dull. Now, his days and nights were full of torment.

From Triphammer he borrowed a clout of bandage material one day and wound it around his loins, that they might not announce his every thought to the world. This made him the object of intense and hostile scrutiny when he took his place in the gear line, at the next shift.

"What's happened to it, Icicle?" demanded Trokka, who sat next to him these days. "Did it break off?"

"Did you go swimming in the White Pool, and one of Magister Bobna's pets had it off?" demanded Solt of the seat beyond, leaning over to see.

"No!" said Fosha, of the fourth seat down. "He wore it away, comforting himself at night. Now he's one of us, indeed!"

"Shut your muzzles, you lot," said Grattur.

"You're just jealous," said Engrattur.

"Don't you mind them, little brother," said Grattur.

"Ungrateful filth! You wouldn't want his seat," said Engrattur.

"Oh, wouldn't we?" cried several of the demons together.

Gard labored away in silence, thinking of new lyrics to the song, though it still began with If I ever get out of here. Presently came the tramp of boots in the corridor without, and Lady Pirihine was escorted to her seat by the guards. They almost-saluted and withdrew. She took hold of the gear handle and set to work. At once her gaze was drawn to the covering Gard wore. She smiled, but observed without comment awhile, as the song rose around them like a comforting prayer.

At last she leaned back from the handle and raised her hand. Everyone fell silent at once, as though a cord had closed each windpipe; everyone but Gard, and he sang on a verse or two before looking up. Lady Pirihine narrowed her eyes.

"You are not bound," she said in a tone of disapproval. She looked up at Grattur and Engrattur. "Slaves, I am not permitted raiment, not so much as a rag. Who is this piece of dirt to lord it over me?"

Grattur wrung his hands, and Engrattur clutched his head in dismay.

"The boy meant no offense, Lady," said Grattur.

"He'll divest himself at once, won't you, Icicle?" said Engrattur.

There was a strangling noise in the room, which would have been roars of laughter from the other demons, had the lady's gesture not bound them. Still they bared their teeth in merriment, crossed their eyes, and turned different colors. Even the little Translators seemed to burn green and blue.

Gard looked at Lady Pirihine sidelong, then rose in his seat. Turning from her, he unbound himself, letting the others down the line see well what they all lacked; at them he made a gesture that had meant extreme rudeness, among the forest people. Then he turned and sat down and resumed work.

He did not look at Lady Pirihine, but could feel her gaze burning into him. Presently she said, "What are you, slave, that you are not properly bound?"

"I am no slave," said Gard.

"Insolence! See where you are, and what you do. You are a slave. And you shall be a beaten slave when I may order it so."

"I am a prisoner here," said Gard. "If you live to order me beaten, then I will be beaten; but I am no slave."

"Or perhaps I shall order you killed."

Gard shrugged. "I don't care."

"I shall order you killed slowly, then."

"Pain is nothing new to me."

"This pain shall be, I promise you."

"I doubt it."

"You will beg me for permission to die."

"I will die when I choose."

All along the line the others listened to this, stifled in their delight. Grattur and Engrattur paced nervously, taking care they turned well away to grin. But now came another noise from the cavern's mouth, a rumbling of wheels, a heavy tread. The long-nosed face poked through first, sniffing the air with wide nostrils. Catering came in.

"What're you doing here?" said Grattur.

"You've no business here," said Engrattur.

"Got to fill my water tank, don't I?" said Catering. "Thirsty little slaves have drunk it dry."

"Why don't you fill it from the Kitchens cistern, then?"

"That's where you always fill it. What do you want here?"

Catering made a rude gesture at them and trundled his way across to the river's edge. There he filled his tank, with elaborate slowness. He was returning when he stopped short and swung his blind head from side to side. Once, twice, three times he snuffled the air.

"Why, what's this?" he exclaimed in badly acted surprise. "I smell a female down here! That couldn't be right, could it?" He approached Lady Pirihine's seat, groping before him.

"You've filled your tank, now get out," said Grattur.

"We're warning you, brother, don't be stupid," said Engrattur.

"But I'm only a stupid old Kitchen slave, aren't I?" said Catering with a sly smile. "And made without eyes, so I must feel my way about. Before I was a slave, I saw in all directions, like the sun. But now, by the wisdom of the masters, I'm only a poor blind slave."

Blind he may have been, but his hand found Lady Pirihine with no trouble and lingered on her.

"You will remove your hand at once," said Lady Pirihine. Catering obeyed, with pretended surprise. A second later his hand was on her again.

"What's giving me orders, in such a proud voice? It can't be a mistress! They wouldn't send one of their own down here, would they, where a low thing like me could play with her? Could a great lady really fall so far?"

"Remove your hand," said Lady Pirihine.

"I obey! And now I touch you again. How smooth you are."

"Stop it!" said Grattur in agony. Gard, who had looked on in disgust, pitied him.

"You fool!" said Engrattur.

Catering raised his face in their direction and sneered. "What are you afraid of? Didn't the masters send her down here as an example? Let her have a little taste of what we endure. We won't be punished."

"Take your hand away and keep it away," said Lady Pirihine.

"What, this hand? Of course, Lady! A poor slave must obey your exact word." Catering reached out the other hand and fondled her.

"I shall remember that you stood by and did nothing," said Lady Pirihine to Grattur and Engrattur.

"Lady, we are only slaves," they wept.

White anger rose up in Gard. He stood in his seat and grabbed Catering's hand, and wrenched the fingers backward so they broke. Catering screamed with pain, high and shrill as a mouse. He swung his other hand and caught Gard across the ribs, knocked him from his seat and very nearly into the great fire. Gard lay gasping, feeling his heart falter with the force of the blow. Catering clutched his broken hand, weaving his head to and fro, trying to pick up the scent of his enemy.

"Cripple!" he shrieked. "Be glad you'll never eat again!"

He came at Gard, his cart rumbling after him, and Gard rolled aside and staggered to his feet. He ran from the fire's edge. Catering swung around, sensing where he'd gone, and grabbed for him; but in doing so the cart swung into the fire and remained there. The demons began to roar, pounding their fists.

Having snatched Gard's shoulder, Catering clutched and pulled him close, gnashing broad yellow teeth.

Gard writhed out of his grasp. I will kill him or he will kill me, he thought, and became strangely calm, in spite of all the uproar, untroubled as a stone. Shame, guilt, and fear all dropped away. Even his white anger dropped away. There was only the moment. There was only the question: Which of us will die?

He leaped and got his arms around Catering's long neck and gripped close. This was the way he had killed the white demon of the snows. The bear. He hadn't known it was a bear. He hadn't known much of anything, then. How long ago had that been? How many years had gone by, as he labored here under black rock?

Catering choked and fought him, clawing at him with the unbroken hand, and now with a new urgency; for the cart was in flames. He lurched forward and swung the blazing cart from side to side, trying to shake it free. Water was flung out and hissed in the fire, sending up clouds of steam to the ceiling of the cavern. Grattur and Engrattur yelled in dismay and ran for armfuls of fuel lest the fire go out.

Gard released his grip and dropped, catching Catering's other hand as he fell. He twisted it and heard bone snapping. Catering screamed again and waved his arms in the air. "Filth in your drink! Filth in your food! Shit! Vomit! Piss!"

The fire had eaten as far as the traces of the cart now, and Catering danced madly to try to throw it off. The water tank went flying, shattering on the cavern wall. Gard scrambled out of the way and grabbed a potsherd, sharp as a flint blade. Running in under Catering's swung arm, he stabbed upward and cut across the throat.

Catering jerked. He made a clutching motion at his neck. He stumbled and fell sidelong, still kicking at the remains of the cart. Gard grabbed a piece of the broken cart and clubbed him with it, once and twice and ' again until he stopped moving, and thought only regretfully, Now he is free.

Gard dropped the club and staggered back, gulping painfully for breath. His fellow laborers were hooting, applauding, howling abuse at Catering. Lady Pirihine was watching him, rapt. Grattur came close and put a hand on his shoulder, as Engrattur stoked the fire.

"Oh, little brother, this is a bad business," Grattur said. "But it was well done."

"It was well done," said Engrattur. "But he was a useful slave."

"What are you feeling? You never shouted, you never snarled."

"Your face was as calm as though you were dreaming, the whole time."

"You'll be beaten for this, or worse."

"Still"—Engrattur leaned in close, dropping his voice, and jerked a thumb in the direction of Lady Pirihine—"that one will remember."

———

15th day 1st week 11th month in the 243rd year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, Slave 4372301 reassigned to Blood Amusements.

———

"You must be mad," scolded Triphammer. "Raise your arms and take a deep breath. No pain now? . . . Good. The ribs are almost mended, you heal uncommon fast. There you were with that nice safe job, all you had to do was keep your head down and work hard and no one would ever have noticed you. Might have lived for years. Look at you now! You'll see a lot more of me, I can tell you that. Do you know what the life expectancy is, up here? It's measured in months."

"It's a nicer room," said Gard mildly. He had a raised bed on a pallet and had been brought far better food during his convalescence than ever Catering had carried. The air was warmer, for the hypocaust at which he had labored so many years down below was now sending its benefits up to him. He had even been given clothing.

"Nicer? Yes, of course it is, you fool. They want to keep you fit. Not much fun for them to watch a poor invalid stumbling about in the arena! Though to be truthful there are one or two who would . . . Well, it could be worse, I suppose. You might beat the odds. It's been known to happen," said Triphammer, unwinding bandages.

He tapped Gard's sides a few times, frowning. "Remarkable. Never have guessed they'd been broken at all. Magister Hoptriot would be interested to have a look at you, these days. You don't want his attention back on you, though. No, no. He'd only open you up to see what makes you different."

"Who's this Duke Silverpoint I'm to see, then?" said Gard. "Is he another of the masters?"

"The duke? Bless you, no!" Triphammer grinned. "He's one of my people. That is to say, we're not kindred or anything—hai, he's so far above me it makes my nose bleed even to think of it. Went into the mountains searching for an enemy of his noble family, I heard. Tracked the man for days to settle a blood debt, killed the bastard too, but then a blizzard came howling down and the masters found him.

"Now he's their weapons master. Quality just rises, you know. He'll train you. We're good at that, we Children of the Sun. You mind you pay attention to him! He'll have something useful to teach you. Not like those fool demons!"

Halfway along the corridor to the Training Hall, Triphammer looked over his shoulder, cleared his throat, and whispered to Gard, "You, er, should know that he isn't properly called duke down here. The masters don't like it. Took away his title, but they still can't make him a slave like the rest of us, ha ha!"

They emerged into a great hall. It was no raw stone cavern like the Pumping Station; the walls were dressed and finished stone, the ceiling a high barrel-vault. No fire pit, but three dozen oil lamps burned bright. Nor was the floor stone, but smoothed planks of wood, and a thick mat covered the center part of it.

At the far end of the room a man sat, making marks on a scroll. That's writing, thought Gard. He was a learned man, then. Beside him, Triphammer seemed to shrink as they approached the table where the man worked. Triphammer's smile grew ingratiating, he wrung his hands and bent low.

"My lord," he said. The man looked up. Though their skins were the same color Gard would not otherwise have known they were any kind of kindred, so little and wrinkled and grubby did Triphammer seem by comparison. "Here's the big greenie that's been sent up from downstairs, sir. Look at the arms on him, eh? You can do a lot with a promising fellow like this, I daresay. He's a good sort too, minds his manners, not like the demons. You'll like this one."

"Leave us, Triphammer," said Silverpoint.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. And he heals fast, you'll be pleased to know, sir."

"Out, Triphammer."

"Just going, sir."

Gard turned and stared to watch Triphammer backing out of Silver-point's presence, all the way down the hall. When Gard turned around again, Silverpoint was regarding him with a critical eye.

His face was aquiline and stern, smooth as though carved from stone, his gaze cold and thoughtful. When he stood, Gard saw that he was easily a head taller than Triphammer.

He came from behind the table and walked slowly around Gard, looking him over. "Raise your arms," he said. Gard obliged him. He studied Gard's chest a moment, nodding. He looked down at his legs. "These have been rebuilt. What happened to them?"

"They froze," said Gard, thinking that was an odd way to phrase it. "I was lame for a long time."

Silverpoint raised one eyebrow. "Any weakness now?"

"No."

Silverpoint nodded again. He stood back a few paces and studied Gard from that distance, frowning. "What race are you?" Gard shrugged. "I was a foundling."

"Some mongrel, then. You heal like a demon, but you haven't the look in your eyes. Among what people were you raised?" ". . . We lived in the forest."

"I see."

After a pause, Silverpoint walked toward him again. Without warning, he struck Gard full in the face. Gard had him by the wrist before he could draw his hand back. Their gazes locked. "Why did you strike me?"

"To see what you'd do," said Silverpoint. Gard released him. Silver-point withdrew to the table again. Sitting down, he took up his pen. "I was told you killed another slave."

"I did."

"Tell me about it, if you please."

Gard described his fight with Catering. Silverpoint listened closely, only taking his eyes from Gard's face now and then to note something down. When Gard had done, Silverpoint said, "I understand you killed a bear of the snows, also. Is this true?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about that."

Gard told what he could remember of killing the bear.

"And was that the first time you had killed?"

"No."

"Ah. Were you a great hunter among your people?" Silverpoint said with a degree of condescension as he wrote something down.

Gard felt a prickle of irritation, but kept it out of his voice. "Not of beasts, no. I killed men."

"Did you, now?" Silverpoint looked up. "And how did you come to be killing men?"

Gard drew a deep breath as he realized he hadn't thought of the past in years and didn't want to think of it now. But he told the story and did not leave out what he had done to Ranwyr. Silverpoint listened without writing, staring at him the whole while. Gard finished his story and fell silent.

The silence dragged on a moment or two before Silverpoint leaned back in his chair. "Thank you." He took his pen and wrote a little while. Without looking up, he asked, "What weapon did you use the most?"

"My spear."

"What others?"

"Knives. And nets, sometimes."

"No swords?"

Gard blinked. The Translator showed him an image of the long knives he had seen the guards carrying. "No."

"Very well." Silverpoint wrote something more and underscored it; then laid aside the pen and looked up at Gard. "Listen closely, slave."

"Our masters are a mongrel pack drawn from the most degenerate races of the earth. They are cowardly and lazy—as mages tend to be—and, of late, somewhat inbred. Cruel, also. When not fighting amongst themselves for dominion over this wretched anthill, it amuses them to watch their slaves suffer death at one another's hands in the arena."

"Now, you would suppose that they would very shortly run out of slaves, living as they do in this remote spot. And so they would, if the majority of their slaves weren't demons they have bodied and bound to their service."

"A bound demon, cut to pieces, cannot escape its service; the masters merely summon its spirit back from the void and make it a new body. This diminishes the pleasure of the sport, as you might imagine, since a certain element of suspense is lacking."

"The demons, therefore, are given rewards for which they compete: new bodies more powerful, more attractive, better equipped to enjoy physical existence. And so they roar insults at each other as they wade across the sand, and boast of the terrible things they will do, and hack away at each other with something approaching enthusiasm."

"It is all depressingly theatrical and, on the whole, a disgusting way to live. But it is the only life they are permitted.

"And even this palls on our masters, in time."

"Accordingly, they reserve a special stable of fighters. Slaves, such as yourself, whom they did not body and have not bound to their service."

Slaves for whom there is no return to life, if they die in the arena. These have a greater incentive to fight well."

"You have heard all this and haven't so much as turned pale. What are you thinking, slave? Are you afraid?"

Gard thought about it. "No."

"Why not, slave?"

"I don't know."

"Do you wish for death, then? Perhaps for bringing such a death on your brother?"

Gard thought about that too. "No," he said at last. "I never meant to kill him. And if I die, I can never atone. I would rather live to get out of this place."

Silverpoint nodded. "I can train you. Yes, I think I can."

———

Training was as monotonous as working the gears in the Pumping Station, very similar really; Gard found he was expected to hold a weighted stick straight out at arm's length, and lunge, and retreat, in any one of several postures endlessly recited by Duke Silverpoint. Silverpoint sounded bored, almost sleepy the whole time, and no wonder; for the exercises dragged on for hours without change. Gard endured them.

He liked better the times when he was given a spear and permitted to attack a dummy stuffed with dead leaves, though it seemed a little silly. Silverpoint watched him closely at these times, saying little. After a month or so of observation Silverpoint began to request a particular angle of attack, or objective.

"How would you strike to disembowel your enemy? How to blind him? How to kill instantly? How to bring him to his knees in humiliation, but spare his life?"

Gard would oblige, and Silverpoint would nod and look thoughtful. Next he attached colored rags to various vital spots on the dummy and intoned for hour upon weary hour, "Red-green-yellow. Red-yellow Red-yellow-red-green."

And Gard struck, and struck, and endured, though the dummy died a thousand deaths in a week. He thought of it as a Rider.

———

Sometimes other men would come into the great hall to practice, or to lounge and watch Gard as he strove with the dummy.

"Why are you wasting your time on this mongrel?" one of them said to Duke Silverpoint one afternoon. Gard did not turn from his task, which was to bound from a standing start and, vaulting over the dummy, strike down through its shoulder to its heart. As he landed, however, he swung on his heel to regard the speaker.

It was a man of the same race as Silverpoint and Triphammer, bigger and younger than either. Gard had seen him a few times, practicing with a blade or staff.

"He shows promise," said Silverpoint. "You couldn't do so much, when you'd been six months in this hall."

"Is that so?" The fighter grinned at Gard. "But what is he? Some demon of the mountains jumped his mother, eh? I've never seen a greenie in clothes before. Looks damned funny. What, Greenie, you don't like my tone?"

Gard shrugged. He turned and killed the dummy three times in quick succession: through the heart, across the throat, through the kidneys.

"He reasons like a man," said Silverpoint. "And understands you, Quickfire."

"Really? Doesn't look intelligent. I suppose he's a Repeater?"

"No."

"A demon, and no Repeater? Hey, Greenie, are you a onetimer?"

"Am I permitted to talk?" Gard asked of Silverpoint. Silverpoint nodded. "This is only a fighter, no higher in rank than you are."

"I take exception to that," said Quickfire.

"Then, Greenie, I don't like your tone," said Gard.

Quickfire blinked at him. "No, no—you're the greenie. You can't call me one. It isn't a generic insult, it's an ethnic one. If I call you a knuckle-dragging, sister-fucking, leaf-wearing branch-swinger, does that get the message across any more clearly?"

"He is trying to provoke you into fighting with him," said Silverpoint.

"Thank you, I had understood that," said Gard. "May I fight with him?"

"If you wish," said Silverpoint. "But you may not kill him."

Quickfire shouted with laughter at that. He went to a blade rack and selected two sabers and tossed one to Gard. Gard caught it and hefted it; it was an old practice blade. It balanced badly in the hand. A ragged edge on the guard was all too likely to open his knuckles. He shook his head and returned the saber to its place, selecting a better one.

"He has taken your measure, Quickfire," said Silverpoint with only a trace of amusement.

"What? I grabbed it up purely by chance," said Quickfire. "You're a liar, whatever the color of your skin is," said Gard, and lunged at him.

Quickfire beat him back. "Wait for it! You're supposed to wait until the arms master says the fight can commence. What is this? Is he left-handed too, my lord?"

"No; but you are, and so he will fight you left-handed. He fights equally well with either hand," said Silverpoint.

"Or equally badly," said Quickfire, his bravado returning. "Well, come on!"

"You may begin," said Silverpoint, and he backed away a few paces and watched keenly as the fight commenced.

"Null point. Null point. Null point. Good, well done, but null. Point to Quickfire. Null point. Point to Gard! You see, Quickfire, how swiftly he learns?"

"'Gard'?" said Quickfire, panting as he dodged and cut. "What kind of name is that, Gard? It sounds like the noise you'd make choking on a fruit pit."

Gard ignored him and avoided the rain of quick, slicing cuts that followed and wondered if it was his opponent's habit to follow an insult with a sneak attack.

"Null point. Null. Null. Null. Gentlemen, you are welcome to watch, but you must remain beyond the yellow line. Null. Null. Point to Gard. Quickfire, you'll be beaten by a half-breed savage from the forest. Null point."

"If I had you home in Mount Flame City, Gard, you know what I'd do with you?" said Quickfire. "Geld you, so as to make you docile, and then I'd dress you up in servants' livery—just as though you were a man—and keep you in the front hall, to answer my door."

Quickfire stabbed and cut again, a twisting underhand move difficult to parry, and Gard thought, Yes, an insult followed by a trick. Will he do it again?

"Someone else may be gelded today, hothead," said a voice from the crowd that had gathered on the sidelines. It was a bass so deep Gard felt it vibrating in his bones. He did not glance at the speaker, but from the corner of his eye saw that one or two were standing there who towered above the others, and he had an impression of garish color.

"Null point. Null point," said the duke in an emotionless voice. "Gentlemen, remain beyond the yellow line. Null. Null point. Point to Quickfire. Focus or die, Gard."

"What, you mean I get to kill him?" said Quickfire, grinning. "No. Null point. That was general advice. Shotterak, I will not ask you again. Null point, null point, null, null, null—"

"So, Gard, did it take you long to learn to walk on your hind—" He's doing it again, thought Gard, and lunged. "Point to Gard! Match."

There was a roar from the sidelines, general applause. Quickfire saluted with his blade and lowered it, smiling ruefully as he rubbed his shoulder. "He fights like a man, in any case. Clever beastie!"

Gard saluted, but did not put his blade down until Quickfire walked over and returned his own to the rack. "Very well done, really," said Quickfire, pleasantly enough. "Considering. You must have been a fighter before you came here, yes?"

"Yes," said Gard.

"Ah, well, and here I thought you a poor ignorant brute. No wonder my lord duke is investing such time in you! I do apologize. Dendekin Quickfire," he said, thumping Gard on the shoulder. "Where I come from, we have two names, you see? Seriously, what does your name mean?"

"'Death,'" said Gard.

"Nice," said Quickfire. "Come and have a drink with me, Gard."

"He may not," said Silverpoint. "We have not finished here."

"Another time, then," said Quickfire, and thumped Gard once more on the shoulder, rather hard, and walked away.

Shotterak was a Repeater, a bound demon slain and rebodied weekly. Consequently it never mattered how well he fought; consequently he drank a great deal and took as many drugs as he could swallow, or inhale, or (in his case) shove under his carapace to be absorbed through his lubricating glands. Silverpoint had nothing but contempt for him.

Gard heard Shotterak rattling along behind him one day after a training session as Gard was on his way to Triphammer's cell.

"You. Gard. You're the one they used to call Icicle, eh?"

Gard stopped and turned. "Yes."

"I heard about you. Grattur and Engrattur. They said you're one of us. Only, you're not a Repeater? How's that?"

"I'm not bound." Gard watched Shotterak's face work as he tried to reason that through.

"Oh," said Shotterak at last. "Neat trick, that. How'd that happen?"

"No one knows my true name. Not even me."

"Oh." Shotterak lurched along beside Gard a moment, his lips moving in silence, then he broke into a broad grin. "Not even you! So you'll be out of here in one death! Oh, lucky bloody you."

"I hope so."

They were at the door of Triphammer's cell when Shotterak turned to Gard. "What was that trick, again?"

"No one can know my true name."

"Right. Right. Well, you did us proud, beating that little burn-arse. Good for you. Wish I had a few tricks like that."

"I just watched him," said Gard.

"Right. See, if I knew a few tricks, I'd fare better in the arena." Shotterak held up his arm, black blood oozing from the broken carapace. "Old Shotterak, he just goes in swinging, as seems natural, but there's always some bastard with a trick. And then, smash and hurt for old me, and they're all cheering for the bastard."

"What's this?" Triphammer looked up as they came in. "Evening, Icicle. Nine hells, Shotty, what is it this time?"

"Broke arm," said Shotterak, looking shamefaced.

"Nine hells. You can give us a minute, can't you, Icicle, while I paste him back together? Go for a nice soak in the hot pool. Come on, old crab, let's clean it out. You know what this comes of, don't you, Shotterak? This comes of fighting with a jawful of grass. And now I've got to give you another quid for the pain, so you'll never get clean of it, and I'll bet my mother's golden bones you'll be stoned the very next time you step out on the sand again, eh? Eh? And then you'll die again, and the rest of us get to force down crab stew for three weeks."

"Probably," said Shotterak with a guttural giggle.

"Because you'll never learn anything, and you know why? Because you're a stone-headed demon, that's why. No offense, Icicle. Never amount to nothing, Shotterak, because you have no self-control." Triphammer picked bits of broken carapace from the wound, shaking his head.

———

Gard sat in the pit below the arena, watching as sand scattered in kicked-up flurries. The dry sand, at least; the bloody sand stuck to the wall where it was thrown.

"It's easy," Triphammer assured him. "Well, so long as you're fast. And careful. You watch, see? Body part goes flying off, you jump up there, grab it with your hook, and sling it in here. Man goes down, you jump up, hook him by the collar, and same thing. Keep it clear for the fighters so nobody trips up, and they appreciate that. Most of them, anyway."

"Is this a punishment?" said Gard, watching as the two sets of legs circled each other. One pair looked as if they belonged to Shotterak; the other pair were scaly and a disagreeable shade of yellow. From high above them somewhere came a chanting, and a stamping, and an indefinable sound compounded of hunger and eagerness and rage.

"Punishment! No, no. When they punish you for something, you aren't in any doubt about it. No, this is more like interning, see? Your first real chance to get out there in the arena without risking your life. Usually." Triphammer dodged as a foot swept a wave of sand into the pit. "Haaiii! Shotterak, you ass. He's got no science, you see that? None at all. And he's smarter than Pocktuun, that one's got no brain at all hardly, he ought to be able to outthink him. But I'll bet you my next ten dinners Shotterak goes dow—"

There was a sickening crack and Shotterak's arm came spinning across the arena and landed trembling on the edge of the pit. Gard reached up and pulled it in. The stamping and chanting fell silent suddenly.

"What'd I say? Did I speak truth or what?" said Triphammer. "Pitch that in the bin that's going down to the Larder. The rest of him will follow in a minute, you wait and see."

Unpleasant sounds came from above, the most unpleasant being the chanting that rose again, a lustful encouragement. Gard strained on tiptoe to look up into the arena. A great roar from on high, and Shotterak's head came bounding across the sand toward him. Gard caught it and pulled it down.

Triphammer whistled. "Haaiii, poor ninny! What'd I tell him? Look at all that green around the jaws. Wouldn't listen, would you, eh?" he said, addressing the staring head. "Pitch it in the bin, Icicle. Now you'll have to go up and fetch what's left of him."

Gard shoved his hook up through the opening and scrambled after it gingerly. He found himself in stifling heat and blinding light. The sand burned his feet. Thirty paces away, Shotterak's body lay bleeding out black on the sand, twitching as though it too found the sand painfully hot. Beyond it, lumpen Pocktuun was exulting, stamping his feet and lifting his cleaver on high before lowering it to lick the blade.

Gard advanced with the hook held out before him on its long handle. He snagged Shotterak's corpse between the remaining arm and the shoulder and backed away hastily, dragging it toward the pit.

Doing so, he drew Pocktuun's attention. The tiny head turned, the eyes protruded on their stalks to focus on him. The immense lipless mouth grinned crazily. Pocktuun stalked toward Gard, swinging his cleaver. From above the chanting rose again, and laughter, and screams of encouragement.

"Come on, Icicle! Hurry!" cried Triphammer.

Encouraged by the applause, Pocktuun bounded forward, shaking the floor as he came. Gard raised the hook to fend him off. Pocktuun swung, and the cleaver cut the hook clean away, leaving only the long handle with its hewn end sliced on an angle. More laughter, more clapping, and the tight focus of massed attention.

Gard was aware of no fear, strangely, though a moment ago he had been sweating and terrified; only a sense of annoyance, and even that faded away under a crystalline calm. Red-red-yellow-green. He stabbed four times with the sharp point of the long handle, blows almost too quick to see. Pocktuun tottered to a halt, chuckling uncertainly, even as his body began to spurt blood like a slow fountain.

Again, the sudden breathless hush. Pocktuun dropped his cleaver and dabbled his thick fingers in the blood jets, peering down at them in wonder. He toppled slowly, as though going to kneel, and fell on his face in the sand.

Deafening noise. For the first time, Gard looked up beyond the glare of the lights. There in rows going up were people in rich-worked clothes, in colors for which he knew no names, yet, purple and peacock and ruby and midnight hues. Their faces were narrow or heavy, but all unnaturally smooth. Their eyes were glassy, fixed, alight with the curious emotion he had seen only twice before: when he had been beaten for their delectation, and when he had slain Catering before Lady Pirihine. Beyond, in the topmost stalls by the distant ceiling, slaves leaned down to watch, no less avid.

And they were cheering him. They were standing in their seats and shrieking. The masters were tearing things from their garments and flinging them down toward him, and the objects dropped into the glaring sand like rain all around Gard. He looked down in wonder. Buttons, and aglets, and pins and little ornaments, all of some yellow metal.

He looked up again, into the only calm face there. Duke Silverpoint sat alone in a booth on the lower wall, silent. He met Gard's gaze and nodded, only once, and made no sound at all.

———

They want me to do it again?"

"You diverted them," said Silverpoint drily.

"You were a novelty," said Bhetla. He was the clerical slave whose duty it was to schedule the amusements in the arena; he was lean and dour and ancient, of an ancient race nearly gone from the world. "An armored champion taken down by a mere sand cleaner, practically unarmed, without one boast or challenge. Not only will they see it again, they will demand to see it fifteen or fifty times before they weary of the spectacle."

"But. . . does that mean I have to go up against the others with nothing but a broken pole too?"

"It does."

Gard clenched his fists. "I won't die for their amusement. I refuse."

"Then you must kill your opponents. Every time. I think you can," said Silverpoint.

"With respect, my lord, he was outrageous amazing lucky," said Triphammer in a trembling voice, as he kneaded Gard's shoulders. "Never seen the like. You can't ask the gods for luck like that a second time! 'Here, please deliver a pint of luck every third day, payment's under the loose brick next the doorstone.' They'll get affronted. He'll get himself killed and it'll be a sinful waste, if you ask me."

"I didn't," said Silverpoint. "And it wasn't luck. He knows that as well as I do. Don't you, Gard?"

Gard looked down, sullen. "Pocktuun was stupid. He was showing off, and he couldn't see very well. And he made the corpse hook a spear, and I know how to kill with a spear. That's all it was."

"Very good," said Silverpoint. "Very good. You will find it easy to do the same once or twice more. Then they will make it more difficult for you. Accordingly, we will step up your training. Eight hours a day. I will bring in specialists to spar with you."

"I suppose that's all we can do," said Triphammer mournfully. "Up in the Repeaters' dormitories, you should hear the challenges they're inventing for this boy. 'I will crush his skull and eat his liver for the honor of the Repeaters!' 'The Repeaters will avenge this insult! I myself will grind this tiny worm into the dust! He will beg for death by the time I've finished with him!' That sort of thing."

Bhetla made a scornful sound. "All talk and theatrics. The louder they are, the stupider."

"What were all those yellow things the masters threw down at me?"

"'Yellow things'! Hark at him! You big jungle booby, that was gold!" cried Triphammer. "That's the stuff you use to trade for food and drink and a soft bed, down in the cities! They were throwing it to you as an honor, on account of they were so impressed." "Do I get to keep it?"

"Oh, gods, no. It's all been raked up and returned by now," said Triphammer, briskly pummeling Gard's upper back. "You're only a slave, after all."

———

It fell out just as Bhetla had said: fifteen and more times the masters demanded to see Gard venture out with no more than a pointed stick, to face roaring titans. He killed them all, regardless of how loudly they declaimed or how garish the paint on their armor. Yet each time the applause grew a little fainter, ended more quickly. The last time, Gard found himself confronting a hurriedly rebodied Shotterak, who gave a halfhearted wave of recognition before he was slain again.

"I smell a change in the air," said Triphammer gloomily. He was watching from the sidelines as Gard trained. "They're getting bored. You ask me, they're going to want to see something really different, next time."

Gard, circling his practice opponent with a pair of matched blades, paid no attention. Fraitsha, his opponent, was lean and sinewy, with skin black as a grape and blades of differing lengths in each of his four hands. Gard ventured in, attacked, was beaten back.

Silverpoint nodded. "I think we can surprise them."

Fraitsha advanced, whirling his four blades in tight circles. Gard fell back, sprang sideways, flanked him, and nearly scored a hit on Fraitsha's lowermost right arm.

"Something's going to surprise them, if they don't open their eyes and ears," muttered Triphammer, with a curious choice of words, an idiom over which the Translator mopped and mowed before settling on the nearest explanation it could find: secret or coded exchange for private hearing.

Gard wondered what that meant. Silverpoint looked sharply at Triphammer. "That is none of our concern," he said, then added in the same peculiar idiom, "But if it were, we would wish them more blind and deaf, the filth."

"True enough," Triphammer sighed. "Still, it'll disrupt things. Oh, good one, Icicle! Fraitsha, he'll disarm you yet. Dis-arm you, eh?"

"Shut up," said Fraitsha, but Gard had circled him faster that he could turn and laid two quick cuts in succession on the high leather collar of his practice tunic.

"Fraitsha is slain. Well done, Gard," said Silverpoint, as Fraitsha lowered his blades in disgust. "Why were you distracted, Fraitsha? See what comes of eavesdropping on what doesn't concern you?"

"It concerns us all," said Fraitsha, rubbing his throat.

"We will not discuss this," said Silverpoint. Fraitsha shrugged and went to put his blades away. Gard slid the twin swords back into their scabbards, worn crossed on his back, and practiced drawing them again. Out, with a flourish, and back; out again, and thrusting. He was rather pleased with himself.

"Look at him!" said Triphammer. "You keep at it, Icicle. You'll get so you won't turn a hair, no matter what they send you up against. I just hope they don't want to see him fighting a onetimer like himself too soon. Or one of the women."

Gard dropped one of the blades. "Women?" he said, turning to stare.

Silverpoint gave him a keen look. "Ah. I perceive a weakness."

"I can't fight a woman!"

Triphammer got to his feet. "I'll just go up to the Convent and let them know you want one of them, shall I, my lord?" "Madame Balnshik, I think," said Silverpoint.

———

"There aren't any women fighters," said Gard, not exactly stubbornly; he was sweating. "That would be wrong. How could I kill someone with a womb? And breasts? That would be . . . that would be . . . very wrong."

"Perhaps it was wrong in your tribe," said Silverpoint, condescension in his voice once more. "I expect your females were reserved for bearing young. Amongst civilized races, however, females have the right to engage in other careers. Some of them study warcraft."

"But . . . why? They have breasts," said Gard.

"To be sure, they do. Nonetheless, there are those amongst our masters who find the sight of women fighting one another intensely exciting, on some emotional level I do not care to examine in much detail," said Silverpoint, his condescension shading into irony. "Furthermore, there are those amongst our masters who enjoy being soundly beaten by a woman. I did mention they were a decadent collection of inbred cretins, did I not? In any case, you needn't worry about breaking any tribal taboos. In this godforsaken place, all women capable of bearing children are, in fact, forbidden to do much else.

"For the purpose of what I shall refer to as violent delights, however, our masters keep a stable of demonesses in suitable bodies. I think you would benefit from making the acquaintance of Madame Balnshik."

". . . But she has a womb," said Gard.

"In fact, she has not. She was bodied forth to be decorative; her original master was not concerned with breeding her," said Silverpoint. "Here comes the lady now."

Gard looked up in panic as a demoness entered the hall.

Decorative indeed. He had half-hoped she would be hideous, or spotted, or tusked. She was not. Dangerous-looking, yes. Tall and lithe and powerful, and she might have no womb, but she certainly had breasts. Silken skin the color of a thundercloud, and an easy, arrogant upright grace. She wore a fighting harness. And boots.

"Oh," said Gard.

Silverpoint inclined toward her. "Madame, how kind of you to come."

"My lord duke." She acknowledged him with a nod of her head. She swept Gard with a glance and smiled. "This would be your student?"

"It would," said Silverpoint. "I would like him to learn to fight women."

"I can't!" said Gard. "I can't ... do any harm, to one so beautiful," he added, hoping that was the sort of thing she would like to hear. She smiled. Her hand flashed up and slapped him across the face.

"Don't talk nonsense, child. What makes you imagine you can harm me?"

"I shall leave him in your care, madame," said Silverpoint, and exited the hall.

"I am no child," said Gard, glaring at her.

"I have seen seven thousand summers come and go," replied Balnshik serenely. "To me, you are a child. Though a talented one, apparently. We in the Convent have heard of you, young Icicle; our people praise your strength. Come and prove it true." She went to the wall and selected a pair of blades.

"Couldn't I prove it in another way?" said Gard, trying to remember how men had spoken on the dancing green, when they were wooing a mate.

"Certainly not," said Balnshik, making an experimental cut through the air with one blade. "Those services are reserved for my owner, Magister Pread."

"What's he doing keeping you in fighting harness, then?" said Gard, watching the way her breasts moved as she swung the blades to and fro. 'If you were mine, I'd—I'd make you a bed in the long grass and strew it with flowers."

"What a charming thought." Balnshik smiled, showing perfect white teeth. "However, my owner's pleasure is to watch me kill in the arena and then attend on him in his chamber, with whips. Not really very romantic, all things considered, but we do not choose our masters."

Gard blushed. "I would kill him for you."

"If you made any such attempt, I would be obliged to eat your liver," said Balnshik, with a sigh. "Do come on! Positions One through Ten, if you please. Now!"

And so they moved together, and sparks flew from their blades. From the first Gard experienced certain difficulties that made his footwork stiff and gravely impaired his concentration. Balnshik's eyes flashed, her full lips parted in a snarl with each succeeding point she scored; at last she stood back. "Well, really!" she said in exasperation. "Can't you think about anything else?"

"No," said Gard sadly.

"We won't accomplish anything with you in that state, you know."

"That's true," said Gard, daring to hope.

The lady lowered her blades and bowed her head a moment. She seemed to ripple like an image seen in water, and when she raised her eyes to his, they were eyes of flame in an horrific countenance. She bared long fangs, her tongue protruding between, and advanced on him with the speed and hungry purpose of a snake.

Gard shouted and leaped back. He fought for his life. His flesh gave over entirely its fond ambition. Three times Balnshik drove him up and down the hall, pursuing him relentless; she landed blows, but not so many as before. He scored killing points in his desperate defense before she fell back at last and resumed her more pleasing appearance.

"Much better," she said.

"Is that what you really look like?" said Gard, gasping for breath.

"This? Or the other?" said Balnshik. "It depends on what my master requires of me. No accounting for tastes, is there? This is the image I much prefer, of course."

Gard staggered to a bench and sat down. "But. . . what did you look like before?"

"Before I was bound? Ah." She came and sat beside him. "I would look, to your eyes, like a trail of blue smoke in the air. Or a banner in a high wind. Or possibly you'd perceive me as sound instead, and I might seem a run of notes on a harp, high to low. Or I might seem a trace of perfume, something between violets and ripe grapes, I'm told.

"If you were fully a demon, you would perceive more. You're a lost child, though; or so I hear. You were born to this shape, were you not?"

Gard nodded. "Grattur and Engrattur told you that?"

"My dear, we all talk amongst ourselves. They think very highly of you, you'll be pleased to know."

"That's nice," said Gard, daring to look at her sidelong. "Were you tricked into service, like them?"

"I? No! I'm quite old; it would take more than a few barrels of wine to lure me. No, my master's a diviner and got my name by arcane means. It took him years, I'm told." She shrugged. "He's persistent, even if he is a nasty little prick. Speaking of persistence, let us address your flaws in technique."

Gard scowled at the floor.

———

She was, in all, a kinder teacher than Silverpoint.

After the first month of training, Gard no longer flinched or delayed his killing strokes when sparring with her, nor with any other of the demonesses she brought down to assist in her efforts. He found he had but to summon the memory of the way her face had changed to drive any concern for her safety from his mind. He told her as much, one afternoon as they walked from the Training Hall.

"Oh, my dear," she said, looking at him with affection. "How very fortunate for you we're not lovers. You have no idea how one speaks to a woman, have you?"

"But I meant it as a compliment," said Gard. "It's the truth."

"The truth. I see. You haven't known many women, have you?"

"I had a mother. A foster mother, I mean. And a foster sister."

She was silent, staring at him, and he stammered, "And I knew Lady Pirihine, she that was condemned to work down in the Pumping Station when I was there."

Balnshik nodded. An unreadable expression crossed her face. "Yes, I knew about Lady Pirihine. But are you really telling me that before you came to this place, you had no mate? No lady companion of any kind?"

"I suppose I didn't, no," said Gard, irritable.

"The Blue Pit and the Red Dog," said Balnshik. "And his Little Green Tail too! How I wish you were mine to teach."

"But you are teaching me," said Gard, wishing she'd change the subject.

"Not in the way I'd like. This much I can teach you, lost child: truth is a fine wood, but no one appreciates being battered with a club made from it. Lies properly made are charming and wear well; kind lies will open locks and hearts. Illusion is more important still. It will serve you well to seem bigger than you are."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll give you an example," said Balnshik, tossing back her raven hair. "You are not weak; neither am I. But those who are weak love the appearance of power. How they worship it in others! When my lamentable master comes before me, he wishes to see a mistress of iron. If I wore silks and wept for love of him, he'd grumble and grow cold; but, oh, his eyes shine when my boot is on his throat, when I spit on him and flourish the scourge.

"You have amused them for a while, in the role they gave you: naked slave with a broken spear, defeating the pride of the warriors. But you will need to show them you are more than a dumb brute, my dear."

"I can do that, easily. I can kill any champion they send against me."

"And how modest and diffident you are! Yes, I know you can; but it will take more than skill at arms. You need an appearance that exceeds your truth."

"Should I wear painted armor, then, and boast?" said Gard, scornful.

Her eyes sparkled. "No, no," she said softly, looking him up and down. "Something simpler, and understated. That blank stare of yours has such potential; make the calm of your face suggest to them still water, dark water in which they will drown. They haven't noticed the grace of your body though I have; let it suggest to them an animal striking in silence, among the buffoons in the arena.

"The battlers, the big clowns, wear scarlet and gold, they lime their hair into spikes, they scream and thunder and stamp. You be the unspoken threat, the never-raised voice, untouched, unmoved and implacable. The masters won't know what to make of you. They will fear you, without quite being aware they are afraid. Then they will admire you. Then they will desperately love you."

"I don't want their love," said Gard.

"Perfect!" said Balnshik, with a wry smile. "That's the way, my dear. Never need them. But you really do need a new costume. Something in black, I think."

———

She had a robe made for him, a plain garment of black, without the ornamentation he would have liked; dearly he wished he still had his collar of silver skulls. But when next the masters gathered for their fun, he stepped into the arena plain as a stroke of ink on a page, unarmored, with his two swords on his back.

There was applause at his entrance, with a buzz of excited muttering, presumably at his new appearance. He heard the massed intake of breath as one, and all in the seats leaned forward to stare at him, hungrily noting the robe, the two swords.

Gard looked up at them, unable to quite believe anything so trivial could hold their attention that way. For a moment the old anger, the white anger, rose in his heart; then it faded to a kind of impersonal sadness. There they were in their ranks above him, the ancient and the wise, powerful and learned mages all. What a bunch of idiots.

But he kept his face impassive, as Balnshik had advised; stood still as a stone and waited patiently for his opponent to enter the ring.

"Where is this slave? Where is this sand cleaner?" shouted someone from deep in the entry tunnel. With thundering steps he bounded out, a Repeater named Trathegost. His armor was steel enameled in purple, decorated all over with crimson skulls. It was painful to look upon; and for the first time Gard had an inkling of why Balnshik had pursed her lips and shaken her head when he had asked for some skulls, or perhaps a pattern of flames, on his fighting costume.

Trathegost smote the floor of the arena with a spiked mace and pointed his war-gauntleted hand at Gard. "You! Pathetic scavenger! Where's your broken stick? Who will scramble for your corpse when I scatter your entrails across these walls? Come and be punished for your insolence, onetimer!"

Gard said nothing in reply, but drew his blades. Poor old battler, he thought. What kind of life is this? To feed their boredom, and then feed them again.

Trathegost turned his face up to the audience. He roared as in fury, until the foam ran from the corners of his jaws, but desperation was in his eyes as he cried, "Now, do you see his disrespect? You see how he disdains to answer his betters? This is disrespect to you, my masters. Don't you long to see him punished?"

A few shouts of "Punish him!" came from the audience.

He is hungry for their attention, thought Gard. They are hungry for the spectacle. I must not be hungry too.

Trathegost lifted his mace and rushed Gard. Gard, calm, with pity in his heart, stepped up and sliced Trathegost's head from his shoulders, so quickly the blades were hardly seen to move.

———

"I never heard such cheering," said Triphammer, gleeful as he pounded Gard's back. "And, see what comes of giving them a good show? Look at all those presents! They sent those down because they're in love with you, be sure!"

Gard considered the basket of dainties, the bottles of wine, the blanket of purple worked with gold thread, the gold dish. "But they'd been yelling for me to be punished," he said.

"Well, so they were. Nobody loves you until you win, you see? But you're a good slave. You play along, Icicle, and there's nothing you can't have from them."

"Will they set me free?"

"Well, no, of course not! But, you know, women and all—well met, my lord," Triphammer concluded, hastily changing his tone.

Silverpoint surveyed the presents, with a curl of his lip. "Wine. And drugs. You can take those, Triphammer. You're not to touch them, Gard."

"Oh, my lord, that's a bit hard, isn't it? Let him enjoy what he's earned," said Triphammer.

"They'll weaken you, Gard," said Silverpoint. "Keep the blanket and the dish, if you like, but nothing else. You are in training."

"But he's trained now," said Triphammer.

"Training has only begun." Silverpoint looked into Gard's eyes. "You can't read, can you?"

"No," said Gard.

"Then you must learn. Two hours a day with Madame Balnshik."

"She teaches reading?" said Triphammer. "Why?" said Gard.

"Because there are books I want you to study," said Silverpoint. "The masters will want to see if they can break you, now. Do you wish to be broken?"

"Not for them," said Gard.

"Then you won't be." Silverpoint left the room.

"Hardly seems fair," grumbled Triphammer. "Why shouldn't you enjoy a treat or two? That's good stuff they sent you. A cup of wine or a little dream won't do you any harm, I'm sure. I won't tell, if you'd like just a taste before I take it all away."

Gard shook his head. "This is no place to be weak."

———

So Gard met with Balnshik two hours each day, seated beside her at a table in Duke Silverpoint's own rooms, and she taught him the language of the Children of the Sun. Thigh to thigh they sat, and if her nearness and the pressure of her body tormented him with longing, that pain was soon eased by another kind of excitement entirely.

On his day of comprehension, when the little black characters suddenly spoke to him from the parchment, Gard learned that time and space could be stepped around.

He first read from a collection of travel essays by the scholar Copperlimb. The scholar was long dead, and the cities of the Children of the Sun an unimaginable distance away. Yet Gard left his body and walked there, in forgotten sunlight, beside the pleasant elder who opened his dead mouth and spoke with a living voice to describe for him the granaries of Troon, and the great houses of Mount Flame, and the barges moving slow on the river Baranyi. Best of all, he spoke of immense and ancient forests, though he had only seen a little way into their green darkness, for no roads ran through them.

The dead spoke, and Gard knew all these places, though he had never seen a city or any kind of watercraft; he saw them now stored in the characters on the page. To learn that such things were possible filled his heart with delight, surging higher than his old anger had ever risen.

He was given next a history of certain noble families among the Children of the Sun, who had slaughtered one another in great numbers over some deep insult. Gard was unable to understand just who had been insulted, or how, no matter how closely he read and reread the text; but valiant heroes had fought on both sides, and sometimes switched sides after being insulted by their own kinsmen. It was a great epic, full of song and sorrow. Still, the main thing Gard learned from it was that the Children of the Sun were quick to take offense.

After this he was given a book of poems that praised love, occasionally, but more often were about the joys of copulation. In particular the act of lying with another man's mate, without his knowledge or consent, was celebrated. To Gard this seemed shameful and rather silly. Moreover the detailed and repeated descriptions of the act of coupling made it difficult for him to read the poems with any composure, particularly with Balnshik sitting beside him.

He was therefore glad when they progressed to the next book, which was titled The Perfect Warrior. With keen pleasure he read through the chapters on attack and defense by sword and spear and staff, by warham-mer and ax and mace. The diagrams were especially interesting. When he came to the second half of the book, however, Gard read in growing confusion, and then in bafflement, and finally in anger.

"This word, what's this word?" He pushed the open book across to Balnshik and pointed at it.

"That word is meditation," said Balnshik, and the Translator danced and fidgeted until it found a matching concept in Gard's understanding.

Gard drew his black brows together. "Then this part is stupid. Meditation is what fools and cowards do. They sit with their knees drawn up and mutter nonsense and pretend they can't hear you when you ask them to do some work. There's no magicking an enemy away by meditation. You'll end up with your head split."

"How strange, then, that so great an arms master as Prince Firebow devoted half his book to meditation," said Balnshik. "What a pity he didn't have your wisdom. I think you had better read on, all the same. It is just remotely possible the late prince knew a little more than you do."

With an ill grace Gard read on. At first he scowled and made scornful noises, but in time he grew silent and absorbed. Still frowning, he read, and more slowly. At last he closed the book and said, "I still think it's useless. What good will it do me to step outside myself as I fight? And pretending my fist can go through rock won't make it happen."

"You only say that because you don't think you can do it, yourself," said Balnshik.

"Of course I can do it, if it can be done. But this is all make-believe. Baby games. Thinking about a color, or saying a word over and over again. Stupid!"

"What is stupid?" said a voice from behind him, and Gard turned and saw Duke Silverpoint.

"Master Icicle has decided that Prince Firebow is a charlatan and a liar," said Balnshik.

"Has he, now? Why?"

"I didn't say that," said Gard hastily. "I just said that, er, meditation is stupid. And it doesn't belong in this book."

"You think so, do you?" Silverpoint came around the table and faced Gard. "You oblige me to defend the memory of my old teacher. Rise to your feet, please."

"I didn't know he was your teacher," said Gard, but he rose in instant obedience. "I'm sorry."

"Please seat yourself on the floor," said Silverpoint. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes," said Gard, looking up uncertainly. Silverpoint drew a long knife and, leaning down, set its point between Gard's eyes.

"Very good. Be so good as to begin the First Breathing Exercise, as described in chapter six. I have no doubt you recall it with perfect clarity."

"Yes, sir." Gard closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and held it a certain number of heartbeats before he let it out. Then he repeated the process. Then he did it again and continued as he wondered resentfully why so much importance was accorded to a vain and useless pastime.

He decided to hold an image in his mind, as The Perfect Warrior recommended. A star? A flower, opening its petals? A cloud? What possible use was an exercise like this, after all? It could only numb his mind with boredom. If this sort of thing wasn't a fraud, then surely poor Ranwyr, who had worked at it so diligently, who believed, would have gained powers enough to open a door through the mountains.

Gard saw again, so clearly, the valley where he had been born, the blue mountains ringing it round implacably. He felt the warmth of its earth under his bare feet. He tasted again the water of the dark stream, and the bitterness of green melons . . . they had been gathering green melons when the Rider had caught Ran.

He felt the spear in his hand, as he killed the Rider. Its mount stood before him. He knew, now, that it was called a stag. He cut away the cruel harness.

The night was dark. The stag was all he could see, glimmering under the stars. It looked calmly into his face, then turned and walked away from him. It looked once over its shoulder, as though to bid him follow, and so he followed it.

Its hoofprints filled with water, star-reflecting, easy to follow even through the dark wood. The green smell breathed out at Gard. He had forgotten the smell of woods. These were woods in spring. He could smell the little white flowers that had starred the dancing green. He had forgotten their scent too, but then it had been long years since they had bloomed anywhere. . . .

Dancers were on the green. He could hear the drumbeats. He could see their black shadows, now, under the stars. The stag walked straight through the dance and no one looked at Gard as he followed, for which he was grateful.

There at the edge, in the blossoming grove, Ran was just sitting down With a woman. But the woman was not Teliva, and as Gard stared, he saw that the man was not Ran, either. He did not know who they were. The Woman was fair, with skin like the blossoms under the starlight, but she was a big-boned wench and he thought her face rather vacant. He walked past them impatiently, wondering where the stag was leading him.

It seemed to be proceeding up a trail between two steep high walls. They shone like the light of the moon, and at first Gard thought they were the ice walls under the mountains, where he had tried to climb and fallen. As he drew close, however, he could see that they were insubstantial. They were only a mist of starlight. The stag began to climb up through the starlight, and Gard strained to follow it and knew the only way to follow in such a place was to leave his heavy legs behind. He slipped free of them—of all his heaviness—and looked down at his poor limited body in surprise. How clumsy, how stupid he looked.

And how bright was the world around him, when he was not obliged to view it through a feeble lens set in a watery ball! True, he had lost any sensation of touch, he had lost the scent of springtime; but he saw perfectly, in all directions at once, and distance did not dim his perception. He saw that the bright void was filled with clouds of light in varied colors. They flew, they sped or lingered, and it could not be said they moved up or down, for neither of those concepts existed. Now and again they collided, and thunder roared out in the void and something like fire sprayed out.

It was familiar. When had he been here before?

Some other familiar thing pulled at his perception. It was a sound, an insistent call. He looked for its source and saw, far away, a darkness. By an act of will he crossed the distance without needing to travel, and saw . . . unbearable shadow and heaviness, crushing solidity, and yet shifting lights were trapped within it. One of the lights was calling him. It was a cloud of blue-violet. Its voice was beautiful.

Gard sent himself within the darkness without concern, for he knew he could always come out again. He was not bound to it, after all . . .

———

He opened his eyes with a start. He felt keenly the cold, and the pain of his stiff body. He put his hands up, trying to tear away the blinkers that limited his vision to a narrow pair of tunnels straight before him.

"No, no," said a gentle amused voice, as someone caught his wrists with a grip like steel. "You need those eyelids."

He scrambled to his feet and stared at Balnshik, at Duke Silverpoint.

Silverpoint was nodding. "Very good. Perhaps, now, you would be willing to admit that Prince Firebow was not entirely a fool?"

". . . Yes, sir," said Gard dazedly.

"He walked without flesh," said Balnshik. "The lost child caught a glimpse of his home, I think. Are you all right, my dear?"

Gard nodded his head. He felt somehow bigger, in a way he could not put into words. He felt wonder, and shame. More than anything he felt regret at the unfairness of it all: that he should learn, without any effort, what had been so difficult for Ranwyr.

———

"Here's our little pale scholar!" jeered Fraitsha, when Gard returned to the Training Hall. "Had a nice time ruining the sight of your eyes over a heap of books?"

"He did not," said Duke Silverpoint. "Put him through Ketta's Fourth Assault, if you please."

"Right." Fraitsha took down a mace, a spear, an ax, and a sword. He hefted them each, in his four hands, then leaped before Gard, swaying from side to side. "Come at me, Icicle."

Gard, armed with a spear and the two swords on his back, circled Fraitsha warily. Gard rotated the spear before him, trying to advance behind its wheel. Three or four other fighters entered the hall at that moment. He ignored them. Fraitsha thrust out with his spear and spoked the wheel, following swiftly with his mace to send Gard's spear flying into a corner of the hall, useless as a broomstraw. Gard retreated and drew his swords, but not before the ax whirred down and struck him lightly on the top of his head. It hurt.

"I have cloven your skull," Fraitsha announced. "Now I would sit and enjoy feasting on your brains. Clearly, reading did not fill them with anything that would stick in my teeth."

The other fighters laughed and applauded. They were onetimers, the elite, and Quickfire was among them. "Go and fetch your spear and begin again," said Silverpoint.

Gard felt irritation as he obeyed, embarrassment and discomfort; yet all these were somehow wrong. The emotions seemed like an outgrown garment, a note of music played off-key. Having retrieved the spear, he returned to his place and regarded grinning Fraitsha. Gard focused . . .

And time slowed. Gard saw himself as from outside, and Fraitsha as from behind; saw the deep red light pulsing through Fraitsha that was his real form, trapped in the four-armed flesh. He saw Duke Silverpoint, in whom a clear straight flame burned, and Quickfire burned indeed with high fleering bravado. The other fighters were likewise abstractions, Points of colored light or pulsing animal forms.

Gard saw the way to defeat Fraitsha. It was simply a matter of being here, and here and here in this precise order, and at this particular speed. No more difficult than the old red-red-yellow game with the spear, the same principle in fact. He needed only to concentrate himself...

And it was done.

Fraitsha stood, blinking in amazement at his weapons, which were scattered before him on the floor. Gard stood behind him, an edged blade pressed to either side of Fraitsha's throat. There was a moment's shocked silence, before Silverpoint collected himself enough to say, "Fraitsha is beheaded."

A roar of applause followed his quiet words, as the elite fighters stormed forward.

"Give me a round with that demon," shouted one named Chint. He was wide and powerful and came of the same desert people as Magister Tagletsit. "How are you with the long blade, son of desolation?"

"He can fight with either hand," said Quickfire. "Take care."

Fraitsha was stepping to the side, looking from Gard to Duke Silver-point. "What have you done?" Fraitsha said to Silverpoint, but quietly.

"Why, forged a more perfect weapon," said Silverpoint, with a thin smile. "Was I not commanded so, by our lords and masters? And so I have. Gard, you may fight a round with Chint. Long blades."

Gard himself had been standing motionless all this while, no less surprised than Fraitsha. He turned to the other fighters, still with the sense of regarding them from some point near the ceiling of the hall. He drew a long blade from the racks and faced off against Chint.

Chint was right-handed. Chint was of a certain height, and a certain width across the shoulders, and his arms of a certain length, and now he was leading with the Shrattin Posture of Attack Number Seven, and so . . . defeating him was a matter of these moves . . .

Gard heard the blades ringing, rather than saw them strike, and then he was inside Chint's reach with the point of his blade at Chint's throat.

"To Gard," said Silverpoint unnecessarily. Another silence, but no cheering this time, and then the fighters all began speaking at once.

"I see how he did it."

"Let me in there, I want to try that."

"Chint, where are your eyes? That's an old trick!"

Chint, still staring into Gard's face, slowly shook his head. Carefully Chint lowered his blade and stepped back. "Lord protect me. I would rather not fight you again, whatever you are."

He put his blade on the rack and walked away. Gard watched him go, a little confused.

"Silverpoint!" Vergoin stepped forward. He was tall, and arrogant; the rumor was he was one of the mages' own offspring, relegated to slave status some three or four civil wars back. "He and I, blade and net. This creature thinks we're brawlers like his idiot kinsmen, doesn't he?"

Silverpoint shrugged. "Blade and net, Gard. If you please."

Wondering, Gard went to the rack and drew the short blade and dragged a net from the barrel provided. The net was not large, but it was weighted, sewn with fluttering stuff to distract the eye. Vergoin drew another net from the barrel, not bothering to speak to Gard.

The work was all done with the net; the blade was merely for scoring the point once the net had fallen and snared one's opponent. Gard went to the center of the floor, turned to Vergoin, and saluted; Vergoin did not salute, but swung the net and brought it down in a high lazy arc.

Gard observed, detached, without anger. He saw himself dodging from under the net; he saw his own net floating up, with no conscious effort on his part, falling over Vergoin's head. It was the same maneuver he had used a hundred times against the Riders. The moment was one with all those other moments.

Now, as then, he dropped and dragged his opponent down . . . not from the back of a mount, but to the floor of the exercise hall. It took a little effort to stop the follow-through, but he saw himself refraining from punching his blade through Vergoin's heart a dozen times in quick succession, and only setting the point there. Vergoin cursed at him. "Get him off me!"

"To Gard," said Silverpoint.

"That was cheating!" said Quickfire. "Did you see his net? That was sorcery! He couldn't possibly have thrown that the way he did! Not overhand!'

"He didn't use sorcery," said Silverpoint.

"He didn't," said Vergoin, scrambling to his feet. He pulled off the net in disgust. "You think I wouldn't know a mage's trick? He's simply very fast. Animal cunning and speed. Not a bad job, Silverpoint. No wonder he's made mincemeat of the Repeaters."

Vergoin swept Gard with what was intended to be a coldly assessing stare. Back in its depths an emotion glinted, however. "Not a bad job," Vergoin repeated, and turned his back on Gard and walked from the hall.

"Do you find it difficult to control?" Silverpoint asked. "This seeing yourself from without? Does it disorient you?"

"No," said Gard. "At least, not much. It only happens if I'm fighting. Was this why you wanted me to learn to meditate?"

"In part." Silverpoint leaned back and studied him. "I wasn't certain you could do it. I hoped, to be sure. You understand what you must do, now?"

"Learn more?"

"Indeed you must. You know my language; now you must learn others, arcane and obscure. You will need them to read the other books I have in mind. They are for advanced students only. No one I have ever taught has got so far."

———

Two days later, Gard arrived at Silverpoint's quarters to find Vergoin and Bhetla there before him, deep in conversation with the duke. "You face less risk than any of us," Bhetla was saying. "You have only to do as you were bid, after all. No one will fault—" They broke off as Gard entered.

"And here's the creature himself," said Vergoin. "We won't keep you, Silverpoint. Just think about it, will you?" Vergoin stood and, with an ironical smile, bowed to Gard, and so took his leave. Bhetla nodded to Silverpoint and hurried after.

"Why were they speaking of me?" asked Gard.

"They admire your skill." Silverpoint pushed a book across the table to Gard. "Cutfile's Use of the Hooked Blade. Please give it your full attention, particularly chapter six."

———

When next he stepped into the arena, Gard found himself confronted by no less than three grinning champions among the Repeaters. Pocktuun had been rebodied, and Trathegost likewise, and a rangy warrior who carried a flail.

"Yes," bellowed Trathegost, "it is I, puny shadow! You thought you'd vanquished me, didn't you? But I am come here to tell you that I will extract my revenge! And I am not alone! See who has come along for sweet spite's sake! None other than Pocktuun the Earth-Shaker!" The masters applauded and cheered wildly. Pocktuun turned in the lights, holding up his cleaver.

"But I will drink your blood first!" announced the newcomer. "I, Hrakfafa, the Bitterness of Death!" He lashed out with the flail and so cut his applause, for the audience immediately leaned forward to see what would happen.

Gard sighed. A simple step back was enough to avoid the flail. Three fighters, three different weapons. He focused and saw the series of steps it would take to kill each of them. He took the necessary steps and watched himself sprinting forward, seizing Hrakfafa by the shoulders and somersaulting over him to pass between Pocktuun and Trathegost. Trathegost turned and swung with his mace, but missed Gard, striking Pocktuun instead. Pocktuun screamed in anger and went after Trathegost with his cleaver. Hrakfafa turned to see where Gard had got to, but Gard was behind him, beheading him at a stroke. Gard saw the red light that was Hrakfafa's true form flying free, vanishing upward.

Hrakfafa's body staggered forward between Pocktuun and Trathegost, straight into the swing of Trathegost's mace, and the corpse was hurled high up and struck the top of the arena wall, where it hung bleeding. Pocktuun got in a cleaver blow under Trathegost's lifted arm and half-severed his leg at the thigh.

Trathegost fell backward; as Pocktuun was bending over him with cleaver raised, Gard sprang to Pocktuun's back and beheaded him. A yellow light fountained out with the blood, rose, and was gone. Jumping clear from the body before it collapsed, Gard likewise beheaded Trathegost, who winked at him before his head rolled away and the twilight-colored essence soared free.

Gard looked up at the howling, cackling faces. Sweating and screaming, the masters shook their fists, leaped up and down in their seats. Some of the mistresses present had so far forgotten themselves as to tear open their bodices and expose their breasts to him. Some of them had black nipples. He had never seen black nipples before.

There in his customary place sat Duke Silverpoint. Vergoin sat beside him. They were not looking at Gard. They were looking up at the rest of the audience. Silverpoint was nodding his head.

———

It seems wrong," Gard said to Balnshik, as they bent over a grammar for an ancient and nearly forgotten language. "The Repeaters aren't my enemies. They're poor, and stupid, and they don't have a chance."

"They know that, my dear," said Balnshik. "They do not aspire to win. Only to amuse by dying as spectacularly as they may. For all the boasting and the insults, they are rather proud of you."

"I can see their spirits fly away, now, when I kill them."

"That is because you have learned to see as a demon sees. You have brought the two halves of yourself together, and so you are stronger. When you step outside yourself—when you float free of the shackles of time and space—then you are living as we live. When we are permitted to live."

"But . . . can't the others do that too? If Pocktuun or Shotterak can see outside themselves, as I can—it should be easy for them to win."

Balnshik sighed. "You have the advantage of a certain coherence they haven't got. You learned to live in a body of flesh. You are more, shall we say, organized.

"And, to be honest, they really are idiots."

———

"Another basketful of treats," said Triphammer cheerily. "Look at this! Fresh fruit! This is the stuff we poor slaves never get, you know."

"I got another golden bowl," said Gard. "It's inscribed. It says, 'For an esteemed slave.'"

"And aren't you glad you've got a good education now, so you can read it? That's someone of the mistresses sent you that, I daresay. They're mad for you. I can see it, peering up through the grate at them. Shouldn't think it'll be long before you're called on to perform some private services, eh?"

"What kind of services?"

"You know! Like for instance some fine lady will give you one of those hot-blooded stares, as who should say, 'Slave, I've got a loose bolt in my sedan chair; come and tighten it,' or maybe, 'Slave, come and put a fresh candle in my candlestick, and light my way to bed,' or maybe, 'Slave, I've got an itch that wants scratching, and it's where I simply cannot reach!'"

"Why should they do that?"

"He means they will invite you to copulate with them," said Duke Silverpoint.

"Oh."

The duke then said something further to Triphammer, which the Translator, after a bit of arm-waving, rendered as archaic form of encoded speech. Gard, however, was now fluent in the language of the Children of the Sun, and what he heard was "Thou art a rogue and a fool to tempt him thus. Desist, or it shall go hard with thee. He hath a great virtue in his present state, and look thou see it wasteth not."

"Worshipful duke, this slave meant no offense," Triphammer replied, with the same peculiar inflection. "Yet wherefore? Is not his flesh and all that to it pertaineth their property, and at their pleasure?"

"And canst thou say what their pleasure or their purpose may be? No? Therefore be mute, thou."

"Yes. Well," said Triphammer, and sniffed.

———

Now Gard learned what it was to become a hero. Bhetla was sending him out last at each entertainment. Deafening applause greeted his entrance into the arena; the tiers of seats were more packed than he had ever seen them. He wondered, gazing up past the lights, whether the whole population of the mountain stronghold were not crammed in this single stifling chamber. Surely all but the poor wretches who lay in darkness along the lowest corridors were here, and the laborers in the Pumping Station.

Night after night Gard went out and dispatched whole troops of armored brawlers with ridiculous ease. He found that with a very slight shift in concentration he could make his opponents' bodies betray themselves: a slip of the foot, a sudden weakness in a limb. A green corona hummed around his body at such times, hard to see, but he thought Duke Silverpoint noticed it.

Yet Gard despised his victories, that seemed no more than a child pushing over toys of clay and sticks.

Clay and sticks indeed; he was told that Magister Prazza, who oversaw the rebodying of captive demons, had had to call in more workers to sculpt replacement bodies, so pressed he was to supply them for the arena. Monotonous as the slaughter was, the masters had an infinite appetite for it.

Gard found he could now distinguish between certain families of the masters. Some groups had recognizable shared features: for example, the line of Magister Obashon, who had won in the last war, tended toward hooked noses and protruding eyes. Some family lines wore a predominant color, such as that of Magister Imriudeth, all sea green trimmed with scarlet. The black nipples, he learned, were done with paint and were an affectation of mistresses of a certain age, regardless of family allegiance.

The very young mistresses, and some of the younger masters too, had taken of late to wearing green tunics, crudely daubed with the likeness of a swart-bearded face. When Balnshik explained to Gard that the face was intended to be his own, his response was incredulous laughter.

"And is this not what I foretold?" she said. "You have made them love you."

"Love!" said Gard. "I don't want their love. I want to get out of here. You're trapped here, too; don't you want to be free?"

She smiled at him. "It's a question of patience, child. My master is a cobweb, a bubble, a troublesome minute in my long day. Seven thousand years passed before him, and seven thousand will pass after he is gone, and I will not so much as remember his name. But you . . . you, I think, could make good use of freedom. Let us hope for the best."

———

When the change came, it came swiftly.

Gard was standing ankle deep in blood, before a mountain of corpses, and looking wearily up at the audience when he heard an echo of tramping feet in the tunnel. He looked over and saw a party of men coming into the arena. They were, all, onetimers, decked out in their ceremonial armor. Quickfire led them.

A hush fell over the audience, and then an excited murmur. Quickfire drew his long blade and saluted the masters, turning under the lights, flashing a wide smile. There was some applause. The other fighters took up formal poses in a line to the right of him. Neither Chint nor Vergoin was among them.

Quickfire turned to Gard then and set his blade point-down in the mush of bloody sand.

"Gard, half-demon! Quite a name you've made for yourself in the arena," he shouted. "What hosts of the dead you've sent wailing from this pit! The mightiest of the mighty . . . such as they are ... all laid low by you, and you haven't sustained so much as a scratch. Truly you are a famous slaughterer ... of Repeaters.

"When such a mortal has proven himself with such distinction, it is customary to welcome him into our ranks. We, the elite, who have but one glorious death to offer the masters! We who truly risk our lives for their entertainment!"

More murmuring, and some anticipatory applause. Quickfire held up his gauntleted hand. "But," he said, in a voice like a brazen trumpet, "we will not welcome you, Gard!"

Dead silence, and then gasps of excitement from the audience. Gard, who had heard Quickfire out in silence, felt a certain chill. He kept his face impassive, however.

"Who is this trained savage, that he should enter our honored fraternity?" cried Quickfire. "That he has done so well, so far, is truly a credit to our esteemed weapons master." Quickfire bowed toward Duke Silver-point. "But we weary of this farce and will end it. We challenge you,

Gard, to combat with your betters, in three days' time. Do you dare accept?"

Gard looked up at Silverpoint, who was in his customary seat, staring across the arena with a face of stone. He was gazing at Bhetla, who was in turn looking up at the audience, gauging its reaction. Bhetla was smiling.

Silverpoint hadn't known about this.

"I do accept," said Gard, and the breathless silence ended in tremendous cheers from the audience, but some catcalls too. Quickfire grinned. He stepped back and swept his hand at the row of fighters beside him.

"Then choose. Moktace the Chabian! Falma Hanidor! The elder Kamaton! Three fearless combatants, and all have sworn to take you down."

Gard spared not a glance at the sneering champions. He raised his hand, which wore no gauntlet, pointed straight at Quickfire, and looked straight into Quickfire's eyes. "I will fight you."

There was tumult from above them, and a certain frozen quality to Quickfire's grin. "Then it will be my pleasure to kill you," he said. "Go, Gard, and spend these three days praying to your forest gods."

"I have no gods," said Gard.

———

He went wearily down to his cell after the fight and found his chamber empty. He was pouring water to wash himself when Bhetla looked in at the door.

"There you are! You know, you should stay awhile in the arena, after the fighting. The masters would enjoy a better look at you. And they're always generous, after a good fight."

"I want nothing they can give me," said Gard.

"Is it so?" Bhetla grinned. "But you do hold their attention, these days. They speak of nothing else."

Gard shrugged. Bhetla stepped inside the cell, looking around. "Some presents, already, I see. You can expect more, over the next three days. I'd advise against eating or drinking anything you're sent, of course. There will be people betting on Quickfire."

"Will there?" Gard sluiced blood from his arms.

"Oh, yes. All the Children of the Sun, of course. Tell me, why did you pick that one? He's not the best of the onetimers, but now you'll have to do without a trainer."

"Why's that?"

"Akkati's Divine Mother, didn't you know?" Bhetla blinked at him.

"The only time the Children of the Sun stop killing one another is when a member of some other race attacks one of them. Then they all band together. Nobody likes Quickfire, but he's one of theirs, you see. Odd people. The rest of us aren't quite real, as far as they're concerned."

Duke Silverpoint was not in the exercise hall, next morning, when Gard went in to practice. He put himself through the steps for working away stiffness, and when no one had shown up after two hours, he walked back to his cell. In the corridor he encountered Triphammer, carrying bandages to an injured fighter. Triphammer avoided his gaze, but shook his head and made sorrowful noises.

"What is it?" demanded Gard. Triphammer almost walked on; but he stopped and half-turned, not meeting Gard's eyes.

"Trouble, trouble. Oh, Icicle, what bad god possessed you? After all our hard work. As if I didn't have enough else to worry about! You might have won all kinds of favors. I'll weep, so I will, when they drag you away."

"Don't you think I'll win?"

Triphammer looked up at Gard in surprised pity. "You? Win against Quickfire? Don't be ridiculous. You're a fine fighter in your way, but you're . . . well, you're not a Child of the Sun. It stands to reason he'll beat you."

———

Balnshik was in Gard's cell when he returned to it, setting up a folding cot.

"Hello," she said, looking up at him with a brief smile. "Would you be so kind as to hand me that bag?"

Gard gave her the bag. She withdrew a blanket and pillow and arranged her bed in a businesslike manner. He stood in the doorway, staring at her.

"Perhaps you're wondering why I'm here."

"I am, yes," said Gard.

"My master has been persuaded to bet that you will not be murdered before you step into the arena. Therefore I am sent to attend you, lest he lose his wager."

Gard scowled, feeling his face grow hot. "I don't need anyone to protect me."

"No, dear, of course not." Balnshik straightened up and shook back her long hair. "Though I did just think I'd remove the venomous serpent I found in your bed. And the poisoned pins stuck in the collar of your robe, and the plate of sweetmeats with broken glass in their centers some admirer sent you."

Gard stepped across his threshold carefully, sat slowly on the edge of his bed. "Yesterday I was their hero," he said in wonder. "Why do they hate me now?"

"It's a matter of looks, as far as I've ever been able to discern," said Balnshik. "As long as you were fighting warriors who were uglier than you were, you were the hero. But now you've challenged Quickfire, who is young and handsome and—perhaps most important—does not have a black beard. By all the rules of spectator sports, that makes you the villain. An audience has no brain, you see."

"I wasn't fighting to be their hero anyway. Will they still love Quickfire, once I've killed him?"

"I'm afraid so, my dear. To die, young and handsome, in the arena? The mistresses will weep over him and remember him. All fighters long for such glory."

"How stupid."

"Whyever did you pick him, over Moktace and the others? If you don't mind my asking?"

"Because he's my enemy. I don't know the others, but Quickfire will put thorns in my path if he can. And I know how he fights. I'll kill him." Gard looked up at Balnshik. "I don't suppose you'd lie with me, lady?" She sighed. "No, my dear. Only sleep with you."

———

She attended him faithfully, accompanied him to the exercise hall, and was in every respect a graceful and witty companion, cheering his heart as well as disposing of a couple of would-be assassins by night, discreetly, with no more than a muffled scream and a few telltale drops of blood by the door. But Gard's other need went unmet.

Now and again, as they walked from his room to the hall, they passed other slaves hurrying on errands. The demons among them grinned at Gard and made a curious gesture as they passed, as though they were lifting something to their mouths between finger and thumb.

"It's a good-luck sign," replied Balnshik, when Gard inquired what the gesture meant. "They wish you joy in eating the liver of your enemy."

"You mean someone actually hopes I'll win?"

"My dear, all your people will be cheering for you. We have never had a real champion before this." Balnshik hummed a phrase of music: If I ever get out of here. . .

My people, thought Gard. The idea felt strange, after so long.

———

He meditated the day of the fight, walking outside himself through the same country of stars, following the stag over the green lawn of his childhood. He saw again the couple he did not know, lying down together at the edge of the dance: the man he had thought was his father, and the unknown woman.

This time the stag led him past them and into dark tunnels, and he walked bodiless in his prison, saw Magister Tagletsit basking in the light of his false sun. Duke Silverpoint was writing, alone, in his chamber; Quickfire, cheered on by the other onetimers, was sweating as he practiced in the exercise hall. There was the Pumping Station, with its great central fire burning high, and sweat gleaming on the bodies of. . . all the folk who crowded into the cavern.

Why was there a crowd there? Why were they excited? Grattur and Engrattur were leaning down to listen intently to a man. Gard whirled his incorporeal point of view around to look into the man's face—and saw Vergoin.

But the stag walked on, and he was drawn to follow it. It went into a place he took at first to be the arena. No sand was on the floor; it was polished stone, inlaid with arcane designs. The stag struck fire there with its hooves; it put its antlers down and charged the black wall.

The wall exploded outward, fell with a roar. Sunlight streamed in, blinding, with a blue-green glimpse of ice, and white-flaring snow. The stag stood in the opening and turned to look at him.

But he was being called. Someone was pulling him by the hands. He had hands, again. He opened his eyes and peered at Balnshik, who was leaning down to him with a tender smile. "It's your hour, my dear," she said.

———

The halls were deserted, but she stayed with Gard all the way to the arena. She had put on her fighting gear too, harness and mail, as elegant as black velvet on her body.

"Are you planning on avenging my death?" he asked.

"I may do a little fighting today," she said lightly. "But I'm quite certain you won't die."

"What's that?" Gard nodded at a ribbon she had strung through a link of mail, a loop of vivid green.

She flicked it with her gloved finger. "Only a little token."

"Are you wearing it for me?"

"It looks that way, doesn't it?" said Balnshik. "You may see one or two others, tonight."

But when Gard stepped into the arena, to massed cheers and denunciation, he looked up and saw many green ribbons. The masters and mistresses who wore them sat huddled in groups together, at the far end from the main entrance to the tiers. Up in the slaves' gallery, some who wore nothing else wore green ribbons: around their necks, or from nose rings, or looped around tusks in quite a holiday fashion. They roared and hooted their approval of Gard. He gave them a wan smile and thought again, My people.

He swept the house with a long stare. Not a single seat was empty. With a start, he recognized Magister Hoptriot, of all people, wearing a green ribbon strung through his facial wrappings. And there in his customary place was Duke Silverpoint, and he too wore the ribbon, though he gazed straight before him and never looked once at Gard.

Again the echoing fanfare from the tunnel. Gard turned and faced its mouth, expecting the parade of champions once again; but only Quickfire walked forth.

There were cheers for him, applause loud as driving rain, and he held up his fists and flashed a grin at them. His grin faded a moment as he saw Silverpoint's green ribbon. He looked at Gard with keen hate. When the applause had died, he spoke loudly.

"Why, what a crowd has turned out to see you butchered, Gard! I was going to finish the job quickly, but it seems a shame not to put on a show for them, don't you think?"

Gard kept his silence, but, looking steadfastly at Quickfire, he drew his two blades. The crowd muttered gleefully, and some applauded.

Quickfire reached over his head and just as slowly drew a pair of blades. He grinned again. "Not a word for your fond followers? You surly misbegotten thing. Speech doesn't come easily for you, does it?" He began to circle Gard. Gard turned with him, eyeing him. Next would come the provocation . . .

"But then, your mother must have been silent too. Hard to talk, eh, through a muzzle and fangs?" Quickfire leaped in and swung at him, a round head cut with a right block.

Gard beat him back. The same pattern, then. But not quite the same style . . . what was wrong? It felt as though a layer of something, feltlike, was hanging in the air before Quickfire. It delayed Gard's impact, very slightly, but it did. He focused.

He saw from all directions, and it was as though Quickfire wore a wheel of flame on his chest. Under his cuirass was an amulet for protection. Gard watched himself swing for Quickfire's head and saw the spell in motion; yes, it did look like a cloth flung out, to snare and slow Gard's blade.

He saw, rather than felt, the white anger surge up, a distant thing. He resisted the urge to let it pull him down to that fighting floor.

The amulet must come off, therefore the cuirass must come off. And Quickfire was left-handed. Therefore . . .

Gard feinted and fell back, feinted and fell back, working himself around to Quickfire's right. Quickfire moved like his name, but he could not overcome his body's habit; all the attacks were staged from the left, with the right arm used only to block, the sword used like a shield.

Gard lunged forward, fighting through the barrier, driving the point deep into Quickfire's upper right arm and piercing the sinew there. Only one cut, but just where it needed to be. Quickfire dropped the sword, and he might have cried out, but the audience outcried him; their roar sent dust floating down from the ceiling, made the very sand underfoot vibrate.

Gard kicked the sword across the sand. It spun into the gutter and the edge, teetered there for a moment, and dropped into the salvager's pit. Was Triphammer in there, wringing his hands? Would he throw it back? Or was he wearing a green ribbon too?

Quickfire recovered himself and turned edge-on, presenting his left, and came at Gard with furious speed, with slashing head cuts. Gard beat them away, dancing to the left, always to the left, circling and circling to come at Quickfire's right side. Quickfire's right arm hung useless, but the small wound was hardly bleeding. Round and round Gard turned him, and then, without any signal, bounded away to the right and dropped low.

As Quickfire raised his blade for a head cut, Gard came in beneath and sliced upward, cutting through the side strap on the cuirass. It came at the price of a slash down Gard's cheek, slowed as he was by the amulet; he bounded away and circled again, disregarding the blood that welled at once and ran down, disregarding the yells of the crowd. They were shouting for Quickfire, young and handsome and brave, who showed no fear even when wounded.

"Oh, well done, Gard," shouted Quickfire, and gasped for breath. "You've wounded my armor. And I've spoiled your good looks, haven't I? So sorry. Shouldn't be a problem, though, should it? Don't you hump your females from behind? Not as though they have to look at you!" The audience shouted with laughter.

Gard let him talk, circling, evaluating. How did the shoulder of the cuirass fasten? How strong was the protection the amulet generated? He focused, went out of himself, and watched as he feinted toward Quickfire's heart. A veil of flame appeared, catching, delaying his blade point. Almost impossible to strike with a mortal wound there, then. He darted in toward the right side once more, aimed a scratch at the useless arm, and found the veil was not nearly so quick to materialize where the wound was not likely to be mortal.

It was all he needed to know. Gard circled again, parried an attack, then launched himself at Quickfire in the killing leap, bounding straight up. He struck downward with his left-hand blade, and the spell veil formed instantly over the vulnerable throat and neck. His blade's point slid away, struck instead his true target, the strap that closed the left shoulder of the cuirass.

It punched through, going into Quickfire's shoulder no more than an inch, nor was the wound deep. But it bit with painful force; Quickfire shouted and brought his fist up as Gard came down, and his blade stabbed upward through Gard's billowing robe and cut a trench in Gard's side from waist to shoulder. The point stopped just short of Gard's chin.

Gard hurled himself backward, ignoring this wound too. He watched Quickfire intently. Quickfire, enraged, started forward, flinging up his arm for a last head cut—

And his cuirass opened like a book and fell off him.

Gard sprang forward and knocked him down. Quickfire went sprawling, and how the crowd screamed and moaned in sympathy! There was a buzzing roar of wrath, like a disturbed hive, as Gard set his foot on Quickfire's chest. He leaned down and grabbed the amulet, breaking the cord from which it had hung. He held it up for the crowd to see.

Breath indrawn in a thousand throats. Gard felt the compass needle of their regard swing slowly round, as they recognized what it was he held, and what it meant.

Now they hated Quickfire. Howling, hooting, the audience sent their scorn on him in immense waves of sound, and he lay drowning in disgust with Gard's right blade an inch from his heart.

Gard looked down into his eyes. "I defeated you fairly. I am a better fighter than you are, and you knew it. You cheated because you were afraid of me, didn't you?"

"Oh, shut up and kill me," said Quickfire. Above them the audience was screaming, pounding their seats, and every pair of eyes was fixed on the point of Gard's sword.

"Should I kill you?" said Gard. "That would earn me the enmity of your kinsmen, wouldn't it? And then I'd need to look over my shoulder always, and wonder if the food or drink set before me had been poisoned. I don't think you're worth it."

"No!" Quickfire tried to rise, his eyes starting from his head in horror. "Don't do this to me! Give me a decent death!"

"No." Gard bore down on him with his foot. "Why should I, when your life was all talk and spite? I will be merciful and pardon you. Watch me."

Gard looked up at the audience and weighed the amulet in his hand; then he cast it into the sand cleaners' pit, in a gesture wide enough for all to see. A moan of anticipation came from the crowd. He turned and was just raising the point of his sword, and the moan was fading to a breathless silence—

Then, with a hollow boom, all four doors to the arena were flung open at once.

Armed figures ran in, dozens of them, and began to kill members of the audience. Gard looked up, astonished to see that those masters who had worn green ribbons were drawing weapons and joining in the massacre. Magister Obashon's family was slaughtered around him where he sat, and though he raised his arms and summoned explosions in red and blue and green to blind and blast his assailants, Balnshik herself leaped through the fires and cut away both his hands.

Vergoin was mercilessly dispatching some family group in cloth of gold livery. Magister Tagletsit, adorned with green ribbon, had prudently withdrawn to a seat against a pillar and waved an athalme in a threatening manner whenever the tide of the massacre drew too near for his comfort. Duke Silverpoint was on his feet and killing with efficiency the entire party of Magister Imriudeth, so that those he had not got to yet were shedding the colorful livery that marked them and running for the doors. Even so, none made it out alive.

A percussive shock, scattering flower petals, threw Gard to the sand. Lying there, he saw that Quickfire had rolled over and hidden his face.

Gard followed his example. There were more explosions, and much screaming. A fine mist of blood drifted down into the arena.

Gard rose cautiously when the screams had all but stopped. Quickfire remained on his face, sobbing.

All through the tiers of seats, bodies were slumped, though a crew of slaves were being directed in their removal by Magister Hoptriot. The living, most of whom wore the green ribbon, were moving among the dead stripping them of ornaments. Balnshik seemed to be kissing one of the masters; she rose with a languid motion and Gard saw the gaping wound in the master's throat, the white face with its eyes rolled back.

He was still staring at it when he heard the tunnel doors flung open. Someone was coming up the fighters' entrance. Gard turned to see who it was.

Lady Pirihine strode forth under the lights, naked as when he had seen her last, save for a green ribbon tied in a bow around her neck. Grattur and Engrattur flanked her, grinning. They, and she, carried blades no less naked and were splashed with blood in several colors. Lady Pirihine's eyes shone with cold triumph.

She raised her hand and pointed at Gard:

"I want him."

———

12th day 2nd week loth month in the 246th year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, Slave 4372301 reassigned to Personal Service: allocated to Lady Pirihine, most puissant Narcissus of the Void, of the exalted line of Magister Porlilon.

———

"Bet you weren't expecting this," said Grattur.

"Bet you never imagined you'd be so lucky!" said Engrattur.

"You see? We said she wouldn't forget you!"

"Oh, you'll lead a sweet life now. Lucky bastard!"

Gard looked around them, slightly dazed. They had brought him to a suite of rooms up a long staircase. The rooms were splendid, all black and gold, draped and ornamented and rich beyond measure—and scrupulously clean, save for a long smear of blood where some faithful retainer's corpse had been dragged out.

"What is this place?"

"It was Magister Obashon's own chamber," said Grattur. "Was. It'll be our lady's, now. Look at this!" Engrattur stuck his head through a doorway. "A bath, all polished stone and scented salts!"

"Look at this bed, all black silk and eiderdown!"

"Ooooh, lucky Icicle!" they chorused.

"I'll draw you a bath, she said you were to be washed."

"Look at this, you just open this bit and water runs out!"

"Bet you've never seen the like of this!"

"Bet you've never lain in such a bed!"

"Where is he? You big fools, there's a trail of blood all the way up here," said Triphammer, peering through the doorway. "It's not from me," said Gard.

"That's something, anyway," said Triphammer, entering cautiously. He avoided Gard's gaze. "I've been sent to patch him up. All right are you, Icicle?"

"What's happened?" Gard sat on a padded bench—unbelievable softness—and let Triphammer come and inspect his hurts.

"Another war, what do you think?" said Triphammer.

"Surprise!" said Grattur.

"What fun we had!" said Engrattur.

"Idiots! It's a serious business!" said Triphammer. "Never good for the masters to fight amongst themselves. Always fewer of them, every time they have one of these little spats, and the bloodlines are getting thinned out. And it may have been all fun and games for you, but what about the poor devils who had to abide by their binding spells?"

"But that was the beauty of it," said Grattur.

"Our lady worked out a way around the spells," said Engrattur.

"She's clever with words, that one."

"We just had to obey exactly what she said."

"She put it in such a way we weren't technically disobeying the Great Order."

"We carried messages for her."

"We let the demons know, and her secret friends."

"But that's the end of the line of Magister Obashon," said Triphammer, dabbing something that stung on Gard's cheek. "Every last child of his, you slaughtered. And he was great and wise."

"Not wise enough," said Grattur cheerily.

"Should have killed our lady when he might," said Engrattur.

"Well, you two won something, anyway," said Triphammer. "Stand up, Icicle, let me see that long cut. Sssssst! But it's only bad here, and here. You'll need me to stitch those bits, and the cheek. She won't want your looks spoiled, eh?"

Triphammer rummaged in his kit for needle and thread and set to stitching Gard's cuts while Grattur filled a bath and scented it with perfumes. Engrattur, singing, flung back the silk sheets of the bed, scattered them with flower petals.

"That was a dishonor, what Quickfire did," Triphammer murmured softly, as he worked. "Wouldn't have thought it of him. Coward. You did right not to kill him. Sorry I couldn't. . . well, it's over and done now, eh? Lovely days ahead for you, that's certain. And you got to retire from the arena undefeated, do you realize that? They may even breed you, wouldn't that be fun?"

"What?" Gard thought with horror of raising children in that place.

"Don't be humble! They could use a little strong hybrid blood, especially now. It all works out for the best, see? It's like I always say to myself. 'Triphammer,' I say, 'what's so terrible, really, about being a slave? What were you when you were free but a beggar, a thief, never knowing where your next meal was coming from? Here, at least, you amount to something! You have a place!'

"And you, Icicle, where'd you be, if they hadn't rescued you from the snows? Worse still, what if you'd stayed in your jungle? You'd never have seen a beautiful room like this one, that's for certain. Or got to meet the likes of her ladyship, so refined and lovely. Or learned manners and reading and all from the duke. Know a stroke of good fortune when you see one, my friend."

"And now you'll be Mistress Pirihine's plaything!" said Grattur.

"You'll enjoy her. We can tell you, we have had the pleasure!"

"Lightning in a girl's skin, that one, hot snow, cool fire."

"Give it to me, you big animals,' she said, and we had to obey."

They pounded each other, chortling. Gard watched them bleakly, wincing as Triphammer stitched his cheek closed. He was exhausted— and shaken by the slaughter he'd seen; but the prospect of easing his lusts after so long was beginning to glimmer through to him, like a hopeful dawn. He wondered if he might come to love Lady Pirihine, as a man ought to love a wife.

Triphammer remained until after Gard had bathed, that he might bandage the cuts. "Here's a set of clean clothes that I brought from your old room," he told Gard, pulling them from his bag. "She'll want you to wear her livery, of course, but you'll need something until then. And here's a quid for you, because you'll feel these hurts tomorrow, you know. But don't have a chew tonight, whatever you do! Her ladyship will be sore disappointed."

"She doesn't like being disappointed," said Grattur, chuckling.

"Hits you with her tiny little fists and screams abuse," said Engrattur, shaking his head with a fond smile.

"Let's hope she'll have a bit of patience with a weary fighter, eh? But you're strong, Icicle, you'll rise to the occasion." Triphammer gathered up his bag. "Cheer up, now! Just remember how lucky you are. Not such a bad life. Best thing, really."

Triphammer left; Grattur and Engrattur took their leave too, though only to stand outside the door with drawn blades. Gard sat alone, looking around at the fine things in the room. It was a warmer place, more ornamented than Duke Silverpoint's apartments. There were few books, and those immense and black, with jewels set in their spines.

He got up once, to follow the blood trail, and found that it led into a small spare antechamber with a narrow bed. Scattered on the floor were a jar of some oily stuff and a rag, and one ornamented boot with a curled toe. The luckless slave had been cleaning Magister Obashon's boots when they had come for him. Gard wondered where the other boot was.

He went back into the bedchamber and pulled down one of the books, to see if it was about weaponry. Written in one of the ancient tongues he had studied only briefly, it did not seem to be. Sounding out the characters (for he still moved his lips as he read), Gard felt the book begin to move in his hands, as though restless. He held it tighter and opened it to another section.

To kill at a distance: this requires the sacrifice of a child of the same gender as the intended victim, dressed in every respect in the victim's habit, and in one of his or her garments if possible. Feed the child for three days and three nights on the following mixture . . .

Gard threw the book down in disgust. It snapped shut, seemed to shake itself, and began to crawl, batlike, to the shelf from which it had been taken. He heard the door open behind him and turned to see Lady Pirihine enter.

She was still naked, though her green ribbon was gone. She took in the grand room in a long traveling stare, smiling wide, nodded cursorily at Gard, and strode to Magister Obashon's jewel chest. It was locked; she uttered a word painful to hear and it sprang open. For some few minutes she amused herself by trying on such rings and necklaces as would fit her.

"Well, Icicle," she said at last, "here we are. Do you remember when I said I'd have you killed slowly?"

"I remember," said Gard.

"Perhaps I won't, after all. It was well done, to kill the beast that had laid hands on me against my will. And I owe you thanks, that you so held the attention of Obashon and all his party; they were much too caught up in the spectacle to pay attention to a little backstairs conspiracy." She dimpled as she found a great somber red stone, pendant from a chain of gold, and slipped it on so it hung between her breasts. "How nice I look! Don't you think I look nice?"

"You are beautiful, lady," said Gard, his body already testifying to that.

She turned to look at him and clapped her hands. "Ah, what a glorious monster you are! I'll have you right now." She hopped up on the bed and crouched, turning her hindquarters to him. "Do it! Do it exactly as you would with a she-creature in your forest tribe, do you understand?"

Gard was eager to oblige, though a little bewildered that she wanted no soft talk, no gentle touches first. He cleared his throat and began, hesitantly, to sing the Virgin's Song.

"What on earth are you doing?" She turned her head to look at him, scowling.

'This is how it was done with my people. I remember watching, when I was a boy. The song is for a virgin, and the man sings to the woman—"

"Imbecile! Do you really think I'm a virgin?"

Gard blushed, grimaced, and looked away. "Not you—I had no chances, where I lived—and then—"

But she had jumped from the bed and held her hand out in a commanding gesture. The red stone flashed. Her eyes widened. "Tulit's bones! You're a virgin!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," said Gard wretchedly. He watched a new expression come into her face, a new kind of lust entirely, and it made her look older, and hungrier, than did the simple desire to be pleasured.

She glanced down at his body with only fleeting regret. "Oh, what a fortunate day. I will have you, Icicle, but not like this; I won't waste such a gift. Go to the door; tell Grattur to send for Lord Vergoin. Draw me a bath, and see it's well scented."

So Gard spent the night of his victory in the narrow bed of the slave who had cleaned boots, listening as Vergoin and Lady Pirihine coupled in the next room.

———

When he was allowed to lie with her at last, it was not at all as he had thought it would be. There was no singing. No soft talk, no gentle touches either, and not even the gorgeous bed of black silk.

He was led, naked, into the chamber he had seen in his meditation, the high room with arcane designs set into its polished floor. Lady Pirihine bid him lie down in the circle at its center, flat on his back, and reach his arms and legs out to its edge. He felt his hands and feet gripped by something unseen. He fought back terror, thinking that he would be slain.

Lady Pirihine only smiled, and cast handfuls of incense on a brazier and chanted something in her sweet high voice. She moved around the edges of the room, lighting torches; only then did he see the robed and hooded figures massed in the shadows.

She knelt to anoint him with something that burned. Then she did what could not be described as love, not by any stretch of the truth.

It did not hurt him. It was rather wonderful, in respect to his long-pent-up desires. But when he looked up, in the throes of his fulfillment, he saw the masters all watching, with faces no less avid than when he had fought for his life in the arena.

Gard closed his eyes to shut them out. He tried, desperately, to summon the memory of the dancing green of his childhood, the tender couples kissing and murmuring together under the flowering trees. Here, again, he saw the couple at the edge: the man who resembled Ran, but was not, and the woman he did not know. . . .

The image stayed before him, even as the brazier exploded with green fire, even as the walls and floor ran with green and silver fire, so that the masters backed hurriedly away, and Lady Pirihine's triumphant laughter faltered as she drank in the power his initiation had generated.

He was weary and sore when he returned, at last, to his narrow bed in the antechamber. Lady Pirihine had summoned Vergoin once more, and Gard could hear them deep in conversation in the other room.

Something was on his pillow. He sat down and picked it up. A rose, perhaps from the masters' cavern gardens, dark red and sweetly perfumed. A small square of parchment was folded around its stem. Gard opened it and recognized Balnshik's handwriting.

My dear, I wish it had been me.

———

His service to the Narcissus of the Void was not, in most respects, unpleasant. Gard must wear her livery and sleep in her apartments on the narrow bed, though he was also bid to service her lusts when her lover Vergoin was otherwise occupied. His duties included tending to her wardrobe, locking away her jewels each night, and waiting her pleasure at table. He learned to carve and to pour without spilling, and how to fold napery into amusing shapes.

But he must also serve as her bodyguard, walking before her when she ventured forth to councils or amusements, with Grattur and Engrattur walking behind. They all three wore her livery of black and green, though Gard was also decked with a green-and-gold baldric, to remind all who saw him that Lady Pirihine's slave was an undefeated champion. He was given his two blades to wear, to underline the point.

Now Gard saw more of the masters' world, the Upper Tunnels and the great central cavern where they promenaded daily, in their finest robes, attended by other liveried slaves. Anyone seeing the Upper Tunnels might indeed think their builders were magnificent, for the floors were set with intricate mosaics, polished smooth, and the ceilings set with tiny glowing lamps to emulate stars. Opening off the tunnels were chambers cut into the living rock. Here were libraries, concert rooms, places where loot from the outside world was displayed for sale: jewelry, fine fabrics, carpets, wines and sweetmeats, musical instruments. These places were brilliantly lit, with a glamour of need sparkling on each least bauble.

Gard was struck with wonder at first, stopping to stare so often that Lady Pirihine took to carrying a small switch of braided leather, and with this she would strike him smartly to make him move on. As the weeks and months went by, however, and he learned Lady Pirihine's favorite progresses well enough to walk them blindfolded, Gard wearied of the place. Now he longed to seize the switch and goad on the Narcissus of the Void when she would stop in the great central cavern to gossip, or flirt with admirers, or listen to the petitions of those begging favors.

And all the while, below the elaborate artifice, the stifling warmth and glittering lamps, were the black passageways where half-bodied slaves toiled, and the sick and the dying lay in darkness. Gard remembered them well.

He was grateful to be released from the perfumed world a few hours each day, to the sanctuary of the training hall. Lady Pirihine desired her slave should not lose his fighting edge, and so he had the freedom of violence. Duke Silverpoint welcomed him back, with a courteous nod.

"You were one of Lady Pirihine's men?" Gard asked him.

"No. I merely kept silent about what I knew. And lent my hand in the final hour, of course."

"Why?"

Silverpoint gave one of his infrequent smiles. "There are now seven empty seats in the council chamber. With every quarrel, our masters diminish in numbers and strength. One must do what one can to help the process along."

Occasionally, now, Silverpoint did Gard the honor of sparring with him. By the third or fourth match, Gard realized that Silverpoint was still training him, though much more subtly. It was possible to strike Silver-point; it was possible to defeat him. But Gard found that oftener than not blows did not connect, for the duke was inexplicably not where he had been when Gard had calculated the stroke and begun his follow-through; and yet Silverpoint had not dodged.

After one such match, Gard stepped back and lowered the point of his blade. "You're not using a spell. I'd see it, if you were. What are you doing?"

"It is a spell, if you like. But it involves no magic. What is the greatest danger to an accomplished fighter?" "Overconfidence."

"And force of habit. You watch a particular opening and assume you know what I will do next. You have now fought so long, and so often, that your assumptions aren't even conscious; they're instinctive. I am tricking your instincts."

"How?"

"I refer you to Prince Firebow," said the duke, setting his blade back on the wall. "His last work, The Fighting Mind. He left it uncompleted at his death; I have the only copy and paid dearly for it. You may borrow it, however."

Gard pored over the manuscript in such late hours as he could keep a candle burning in his alcove. While magic was not involved in the techniques discussed, still a demon's power of sight was needed to make the most use of them; for an even greater degree of minute observation was called for, and swifter reflexes, and manipulation of the opponent. Methodically, Gard learned the mental tricks. Soon, in the training hall, he had mastered them.

It was a pity, he thought, that he would have no chance to use them in his new career.

———

"I shall attend a dinner party tonight," said the Narcissus of the Void, regarding her reflection in her mirror. "You will attend me, and taste each dish I am offered."

"Thank you, lady," said Gard.

She knit her brows in annoyance. "You big fool, you'll taste my food to see whether it's been poisoned. Really, sometimes I wonder whether we'll ever be able to wash the stink of the forest off you."

"Who would poison you, lady?"

"Nearly anyone on the council," she said with a sigh. "It is good to win the highest seat, but after that, it's nothing but a struggle to stay there. Now, I'll be dining with Magister Naryath, and I wish to impress him. Gatta's has a bottle of Sulemian wine in its window, just one; go down and buy it, and have it ready when I come back this afternoon. Have my black gown with the pearls laid out, and the green slippers. And a bath drawn; I like a bath when I've been to Blood Entertainments."

"I will not be required to escort you, lady?"

"No. Lord Vergoin's taking me. We'll use Grattur and Engrattur. I can't send them for the wine, of course. Imbecile demons. You do have that much in your favor, Icicle, you aren't quite as stupid as the others. Something to do with being a hybrid, no doubt. Ah! There's Vergoin."

They heard Grattur and Engrattur roaring forth the ceremonial challenge, with a great clashing of blades, and Vergoin's easy reply. A moment later he entered the bedchamber, smiling.

"Dread beauty, I have arrived," he said. "You won't want to miss the first match; Agoleth is going up against three fighters from the Convent."

"No!" exclaimed Lady Pirihine. "Icicle, fasten this clasp. Agoleth? Oh, they'll cut him to ribbons! We must see. The Sulemian wine, Icicle; forget it at your peril."

She departed with Vergoin, and Grattur and Engrattur marched proudly behind them.

Gard, a little sullenly, took gold from her household store and went down through the tunnels to the wine merchant's stall. There he purchased the bottle of Sulemian wine, with its lead seals and golden lettering. He wondered whether the wine had come from any land the scholar Copperlimb had visited, and whether he might taste the sunlight of a long-ago autumn, if he were to drink it.

Useless to wonder; useless to look thoughtfully at the mouths of certain tunnels as he passed them. He had learned enough to know that they led upward, and opened in sunlight on a trail that wound down between glaciers. But they were guarded at their far ends by bound demons, who suffered none to pass save those who were equally bound and so trusted to come back. Some three or four times each year a caravan went out, to return with luxuries for the masters.

It was by no means useless to plan, however. Gard had begun to compile a list in his head, of needful things he might acquire without arousing suspicion: thick boots proof against the snows, and warm clothing. Weapons he had in plenty but he lacked knowledge. He meant, in time, to get acquainted with the caravan leaders and learn what paths led down to the lands below, where cities were. He meant, in time, to strike up a friendship with the demons who guarded the tunnels, and to see if he might make them unconscious with gifts of drugs or drink. If ever get out of here.. .

Just now there was nothing to do but return to Lady Pirihine's apartments and do his best to get the jam spots out of her morning gown, and lay out the dinner gown she had requested, with her pearls and her green slippers.

He sat and meditated afterward. In his deep concentration Gard saw again the stag, leading him through the deep wood, and across the dancing green. The music had fallen silent. It seemed to Gard that this time, as he passed the couple on the edge, that the woman turned her face to him, seeming to see him.

He had not been long in the place of soaring lights when there came a flash, red light broken and shattered, and a sense of alarm. His attention was drawn down to a knot of darkness, where a white thing sped; a worm, screaming and spitting fire as it came, trailing a long ribbon of bloodstained silk. It was closely pursued by a second worm, and by a pair of blue lights moaning and lamenting. . . .

Coming back to himself, Gard heard the door flung open. He jumped to his feet and looked into the bedchamber as the Narcissus of the Void entered, and her afternoon gown had indeed been splattered with blood. Vergoin followed her, his face dark with anger.

"I don't care!" Lady Pirihine was saying. "This was a brand-new gown! Look where the lace is stained! Those stains will never come out."

"There will be talk, madam," said Vergoin. "It will be wondered whether one so unable to govern her temper is worthy of governing at all. He was a useful slave!"

"A slave is a slave," said Lady Pirihine. "How dare you! Icicle! What do you think you're doing, lurking there? You'd better have got me that wine!"

"I did, lady. Shall I draw the bath, now?"

"Do it!"

He attended her in her bath, marveling how the ugly look in her eyes was able to render quite charmless the beauty of her little pointed breasts and lush flanks. He helped her from the tub and into her black gown,

clasped the pearls about her throat, and eased the green slippers on her feet, as Vergoin paced to and fro muttering.

They were still in a foul temper when, carefully bearing the Sulemian wine, he followed them out into the corridor. Grattur and Engrattur stood to attention to either side of the door. Gard was amazed to see their silver eyes streamed with tears.

There was little time to wonder about this, for Lady Pirihine minced away down the hall, refusing Vergoin's arm. He strode after her angrily. Gard must hurry after them, an awkward third to their party. Everyone was out of breath, and Lady Pirihine somewhat red-faced, when they arrived at last at the apartments of Magister Naryath.

Magister Naryath was tall, and portly, and affected a golden mask and the tone of an indulgent father.

"Little Pirihine! You are adorable, as always, but never more so than when you wear your hair in that charming fashion. Lord Vergoin, you are well met. I trust my poor table will not too gravely disappoint you."

"You must be joking," said Lady Pirihine. "Vergoin's been a slave, after all. I should imagine he's grateful for any scrap he gets."

Vergoin looked at her with venom.

Magister Naryath fluttered his hands. "Sweet Pirihine, we are all your slaves. Come now, children, don't quarrel. See where my table is set in your honor, with lilies of gold! Pray be seated."

"As you wish. I have brought a gift, dear Uncle Naryath," said Lady Pirihine.

Gard bowed and offered the Sulemian wine. Magister Naryath waved a hand and his demoness, a lithe creature who communicated by signing, came forth in silence. She received the bottle, gestured her thanks, and took it to the sideboard.

"How very kind of you, my child," said Magister Naryath.

"Oh, it's only a bottle of Sulemian," said Lady Pirihine, as Gard seated her. "Perhaps we'll just drink it ourselves, you and I, and not let Vergoin have any. Shall we? He's been so rude and cross with me, he really doesn't deserve better."

"So is good counsel rewarded," said Vergoin.

"I'm certain good fare will restore your customary affability," said Magister Naryath, as the demoness set the first of the dishes on the table. "Do try these, both of you! The eggs of sea dragons, gathered from the cliffs in far Salesh and pickled in wine of Dalith. I have found the flavor exquisite."

The Narcissus of the Void clapped her hands. She dipped up a spoonful.

"How delightful! Where's my big faithful Icicle? He shall have some. He never gets cross with me, do you, Icicle?"

Gard bent and allowed her to feed him from her spoon. The sea-dragon eggs looked like grapes. They tasted like fish, which startled him, but did not seem poisoned. Magister Naryath gestured with his little finger, and the demoness brought another spoon and carried away the one from which Gard had tasted.

"Let Uncle Naryath make peace between you, my dears," said the mage. "What causes little Pirihine to frown so?"

"A stupid slave got blood on my dress," said Lady Pirihine, pouting in what she imagined was an enchanting manner. "We had been to the Blood Entertainments, you know, and we had just the loveliest time—it was Agoleth the Unlucky, and he was pitted against three of the deadliest bitches from the Convent."

"Oh, how amusing that must have been!" said Magister Naryath. "It was. They killed him by inches and then tossed his head back and forth like a ball. We laughed and laughed. I really was having the best time," said Lady Pirihine, allowing a little tremble into her voice, at the unfairness of it all. "And after it was over, of course I wanted to go down and claim his testicles. That's traditional, after all."

"An old and honored custom," agreed Magister Naryath. "And we went down to that pit under the arena, and Vergoin should have held my train up off the sand, but he didn't, not that it mattered much because the stupid slave carrying away Agoleth's arms and legs tripped in the sand and all the parts went flying, and Agoleth's nasty old hand struck me right in the face, and his nasty old stumps got blood all over my best afternoon gown!"

"And so she had the slave killed on the spot," said Vergoin sourly. "Well, I would have too," said Magister Naryath, leaning forward to pat Lady Pirihine's hand.

"He was a useful slave," said Vergoin, raising his voice. "He was Magister Hoptriot's assistant. Hoptriot will be offended, and, by the way, do you think he's going to lower himself to stitch up the fighters now? Triphammer won't be easy to replace."

"Oh, who cares?" said Lady Pirihine, with a toss of her head. "Nobody but you. Let's have some wine. Icicle, open the bottle."

Gard looked at her blankly. Triphammer had been killed? Not such a bad life. Best thing, really. Food and a bed, just as well, not so bad. What's so terrible, really, about being a slave?

"Slave, your mistress has given you a command!" said Magister Naryath, and, hoping to distract his guests from their quarrel, rose in his seat and struck Gard in the face.

He could not strike back, he could not roar his wrath and sorrow; Gard only looked at Magister Naryath and wished him dead.

Magister Naryath gasped and shrank back; sweat boiled and ran from under his golden mask. A wine goblet shattered on the table. The Sulemian wine burst its seals, spurted like blood on the cloth. Pirihine's eyes were round with astonishment.

Vergoin was on his feet at once. "Peace! Gard, this is sad news for you, I know. Go into the kitchen, calm your mind a moment."

Gard turned from the table and went. The kitchen was small and dark, with Magister Naryath's demoness finding her way principally by touch. She was readying the main course as he entered, and looked at him in wonder. She pointed at him, ran her fingers down her cheeks as though following tear tracks, then turned her palms out in inquiry. Why do you weep? No Translator appeared for her, strangely.

"My friend has been killed," said Gard. "For nothing."

She put her arms around him. He leaned his face into her shoulder and wept out his sorrow and his wrath. All the while, quiet, urgent conversation was coming from the outer room. Gard caught the words "natural ability" and "stupid as a brick, but what power! If we could train him to work elementary spells . . ."

At last he lifted his face. "Thank you."

She signed, That's all right.

"Can't you speak?"

A negation, a gesture at her throat: I was made without a voice. He likes silent women.

Gard shook his head. He looked at the dish she was preparing. "Is your master planning on poisoning my mistress?" She shook her head. "What a pity."

She laughed at that. He had never seen anyone sign laughter before and was diverted.

———

"I have made a decision, dear Icicle," said the Narcissus of the Void. She looked up at him in her mirror, and her eyes were wide and her expression was one of childlike gravity. These past few days, in fact, she had played the little girl: all gaiety, laughter, and lisping talk, and many times she had asked for his assistance in opening some perfume vial or buttoning up some garment.

He only looked at her, now, and waited for her to speak. "I have never known a slave like you," she said, as though shyly. "You are so big, and strong, and yet so very clever! And Lord Vergoin feels that you might have it in you—if you were carefully trained, of course—to become a mage! Yes, just like one of us! Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

"Yes, lady." Gard waited to hear what else she would say.

"And so I said at once that I thought that was a wonderful idea. It has made me so proud to have an undefeated champion in my service, and if it turned out you were a natural mage too—why, I just think I'd scream, I'd be so very, very pleased with you." She turned and gave him a winsome smile.

"Really, lady?" said Gard, his face as blank as a wall.

"Yes." Lady Pirihine turned all the way around on her dressing-table stool and drew her legs up, and leaned forward conspiratorially. "Now, I'm going to tell you a secret. You mustn't tell the slaves, because—well, if everything goes as we hope, you won't be a slave anymore, will you? And they'd all be jealous of you.

"You must have heard the story, haven't you, of how the great families came to live here under the mountain?" She put her hand on his arm. Gard thought of telling her that he had heard the story from Triphammer, but he held his tongue and only nodded.

"And you may have heard that we're all trapped here—the mages and their children, and their children's children, forever. But it's not exactly true."

"No, lady?"

"No. You see, my own grandfather was the greatest mage of them all. Grand Magister Porlilon, that was his title. All the other mages were jealous of his power; that was why they so traitorously murdered him. But, just before he was killed, he was working on a spell of terrific power. It would have broken the mountain and freed us all, if he had lived to perform it.

"All this while, my family have preserved his workbook, with his last great spell written therein. Alas! We were none of us his equal. I'm a weak little thing on my own, the last of my great line. The other mages have studied it and thrown their hands up in despair. It would take a truly great mage to make that spell work. They know they haven't such power.

"But you—you, dear Icicle, have such strength! So you will be trained. You will become a mage. If you are good enough, you will be made free!

And perhaps you will be able to work Porlilon's last spell. Oh, such power you might have! Wouldn't you like that?" "Yes, lady. I would like power very much."

———

3rd day 3rd week 9th month in the 248th year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, Slave 4372301 registered as an adept-in-training at the request of Lady Pirihine.

———

On a certain day, Gard was given a white loincloth to wear, and blindfolded, and led by Vergoin along several dank and echoing corridors. The tunnels slanted at first up and then down. In some parts the air was warm and steamy, and in others quite cold. At last they came into a place where echoes fell silent. Gard was stopped and felt Vergoin's hand drop from his shoulder.

There was a long, long silence then. Gard, annoyed with all the pretense, focused his attention and slipped out of himself a little. He perceived that he stood in a low and wide chamber in pitch-blackness. Along one wall was a long bench. Here were seated several hooded figures, and by each stood a slave robed and masked all in black, holding a dark lantern.

One of the hooded figures gestured in silence for his slave, who obligingly opened the lamp's shutter just far enough to allow a finger of light to glimmer out. By its illumination the hooded figure was able to peer at an hourglass, watching as the last grains ran out. He nodded and gestured an order at the slave. The slave closed the shutter once more, then reached up into the gloom and struck a gong.

When its single note died away, the nearest of the figures threw back his hood, just as his attendant slave opened his lantern's shutter. It bathed the master's face in an ominous and bloody light; his head seemed to be floating in fathomless darkness. A Translator popped up and added its light to the chamber.

"Unveil your eyes, slave," intoned the master. Gard pulled away his blindfold gladly and blinked a moment in the darkness. The effect of the floating head looked even sillier when seen through eyes of flesh.

Their power has dwindled, thought Gard. Else they wouldn't need tricks with colored lanterns.

"Is this the slave who calls himself Gard?"

Vergoin spoke, from somewhere behind Gard. "He is, master and mage."

"And he is brought before us as a candidate for initiation into our mysteries?"

"He is, master and mage."

"And who will speak for him? Who will testify that he is worthy?"

"I will, master and mage."

"And I," said another voice, hushed and trembling; Gard recognized it as Magister Naryath's.

"And I," said a woman's voice, Lady Pirihine's.

The red lantern was extinguished. A master on the far side of the room jabbed his lamp bearer rather impatiently, and a moment later the master's bald head appeared to be swimming forward in a pool of golden light.

"Three have spoken for you, candidate. Now you will be tested."

A slave hurried forward with his lantern, opening its shutter to throw light on a squat stone column that had been placed in the middle of the room.

"Bring water forth from the stone!"

Gard knit his brows. He looked for tricks, for hidden pipes, and saw none. He focused once again, went out of himself, and saw that the solid stone was no more than a mass of spinning lights. They moved in a certain pattern that made them appear as stone.

But... if they moved in a different pattern . . .

He surveyed the room, spotted a cup of water at the elbow of a palsied old master, who sipped from it frequently. The cup was a thin shell of lights flying in one pattern, but the lights it contained had their own dance. That was water.

He studied the dance, then turned his attention back to the stone. Could he make the lights change their pattern of movement? Only some of them . . . some of the lights would have to be discarded.

Gard reached out with his spirit self and, in a gesture that was like raking his hand through the lights but did not involve a hand or an arm, changed the lights' pattern.

The stone crumbled. Water rose from it in a jet, glittering in the light from the lamp. "He has done it!" murmured the palsied master, and there were indrawn breaths from the other masters, but one spoke with firm, raised voice:

"Now from the water and stone, bring forth earth."

That much would be easy, for the trick was obviously in the play of lights. Gard sent the water jet spurting up to the ceiling of the cavern, where it splattered and rained down. Of the stone, nothing was left but a handful of dry, sandy earth.

He saw the masters' concentration sharpen, now, and the bald-headed mage's eyes bulged with . . . fear? Eagerness?

"From the earth, now bring forth fire," the mage commanded.

Easier still to do. Gard looked on the mazy lights that were the discarded residue of the stone. He made them dance, and dance more quickly still. There was air, there was fuel, and in the friction of their dance now a spark. A little tongue of flame arose from the powdered earth.

Gard looked with contempt on the mages in their theatrical darkness, their concealed lamps. He made the flame seek out different elements in the powder; he divided the flames and sent them shooting out above the heads of the masters, balls of fire in red, in gold, in blue and green. There they hung burning, as the slaves exclaimed and the old men and women gasped for air. Gard heard Lady Pirihine clap her hands, he heard Vergoin murmur triumphantly, "I told you!"

And a voice murmured in his inner ear, gently mocking, Show-off. He turned, startled, and saw that one of the black-swathed slaves stood directly behind him. Black robes were not enough to disguise Balnshik's figure.

He let the lights burn out. There was a moment of silence. At last the bald mage said, "It is the judgment of this board that the slave is acceptable and will be trained."

———

Now his life became arduous once more, not least because the Narcissus of the Void seemed to desire his body's service more than ever. She invited rather than commanded, she prattled and teased and showered him with sweetmeats and trinkets. Even so, as he coupled with her in grim silence, he hated her, and the song ran again in his head: If lever get out of here. . .

It ran in his head as Gard followed the course of study he had been set, for in all ways his work was monotonous as striking air with a pointed stick. He must learn to grind and compound incense; he must learn to cut and prepare herbs, and press oils, and distill waters and essences and attars.

He was apprenticed in turn to each of the masters, learning to detest each of them: Paglatha, the bald one, irritable and given to striking him across the knuckles when he made an error in General Thaumic Theory. Hoptriot, cold and enigmatic behind his skin mask, who taught him the dissection of corpses for the harvest of certain necessary parts. Flaktrey, blue-lipped, ancient and breathless, who was prone to stroking Card's face as he taught him the correct pronunciation of certain spells. Pread, he who bore the mark of Balnshik's lash with smug content, who oversaw as Gard learned sums, then geometry, then algebra arcane, and at last Ipsissimal Calculus.

Sometime in these months, as he added to his store of languages arcane and modern, the Translators stopped appearing. He learned that they were drawn to ignorance and confusion, as fish are drawn to crumbs scattered on a pool, and he was no longer providing them with much of either.

He was granted, still, his two hours in the day for honing his skills in the fighters' hall, and was grateful. There Gard vented his sullen anger in violent exercise. All rage burned away, he was the better able to concentrate on his studies until day's end. Then, alone in his alcove once more, he meditated and let any residual anger drift away like vapor. So Gard heated and cooled, a tempering sword.

———

"And how is the young wonder of the world?" said a lazy voice behind him, one day when he had just run a practice dummy through the heart. He turned and saw Balnshik taking down a practice blade. "You're looking fit; I had expected you to be pale and nearsighted by this time."

"They aren't letting me near their books yet," he said, grinning at her. "Will you strive with me, madame?"

"I should love to," she said, and went on the attack. He blocked and beat back, focusing, and went out of himself. To his delight, she did the same. She appeared to him as a drift of blue smoke, shot through with violet sparkles. They circled slowly above their vaulting bodies, and no onlooker could have told their attention was anywhere but on the play of blade on blade.

My, my, you have learned. He heard her voice clearly, though it had not emanated from her throat.

Can you hear me? he inquired. Of course I can, dear. Can you see me, like this? Oh, yes.

What do I look like?

Like leaf shadows and the light through leaves at high summer. If one subtracted the trees. And the sun. Quite nice, really. Couple with me! Like this!

He felt rather than heard her laughter. My dear child, one requires flesh for that particular act.

Oh.

You see, now, why our people can he tempted into flesh and trapped there? I hear that you're getting a great deal of pleasure out of Lady Pirihine.

She's getting pleasure out of me. I hate her. She had Triphammer killed! Poor little Triphammer. Yes, I saw that. But he's free now, at least. Would I he able to see him again, like this?

No, dear. The Children of the Sun go on to another place when they disembody. Only we—which is to say demons—inhabit this place naturally. You, being what you are, may walk in both worlds. Only one of the qualities that make you so valuable to our masters, I suspect.

How did I come to be? Do you know?

How should I, dear? Other than the rather obvious fact that some demon found a man or maid of the Earthborn fair and took flesh to lie with them. Tell me, how were you found? Wrapped in a blanket and left where you'd be noticed quickly?

No. I was just—dropped. Like an animal. They found me by my crying.

Ah. Then I would say your father was the Earthborn, and your mother was the demon. Don't think the less of her for abandoning you, it would have taken all the flesh she could manifest to make you, and she'd have disembodied the moment you came into the world.

Couldn't she have taken on flesh again?

Only by eating you, dear.

Oh.

And now you are to become a mighty mage! Very unusual for our masters to share their knowledge, you know. They have never admitted a slave to their august ranks before. Don't you find that a little strange?

I am more powerful than they are. The learning is easy! I can see the spells, I can see the lights moving in things when the magic works, and they can't see them. Worn-out old fools, all of them.

And so concerned that you stay in the prime of physical health. Remarkable, isn't it? ...

Is it?

I would have said so, yes. Of course, I'm not in the habit of giving advice to such powerful and clever fellows as famous Gard the Icicle. . . but if I were, I might be inclined to tell him never to reveal to anyone that he can see spell structures. And to study any propositions made to him very, very carefully indeed.

Would you really?

I would. But I have not done so, for, if I did, I should disobey the command of silence laid on me by my master. And I never disobey his commands. And why should you need a warning from me? Doubtless you will rise to a seat on the high council one day, if you continue your astonishing progress.

I don't want a seat on their council. When I'm powerful enough, I'll escape from this place. I'll go hack to the valley where I was born and I'll slaughter the Riders, all of them, at a blow, with fires of retribution! I won't leave a stone of their houses standing. My— my brother's people can live there in peace again.

Impressive. What will you do then?

I. . . perhaps they will welcome me, if I free them.

Perhaps they will.

A silence, while they beat back and forth, and lunged, and parried, and the bright steel rang like bells.

I will consider the warning you didn't give me.

Spoken like a wise child.

———

Gard progressed, over the months and following years, to ordeals by no means boring. In one trial, he must stay awake for seven days and nights together, watching a seething kettle the whole time, waiting for the seven-second interval in which the mixture turned a suspicious and livid blue, in order that he might plunge in his hand without hurt and draw forth a lump of blue ointment, and drop it at once in a basin of cold water and present the same to Magister Tagletsit. What Magister Tagletsit wanted with it, Gard was not told.

In his apprenticeship to Magister Karane, Gard was to memorize spells of a thousand words, then a thousand lines, then a thousand pages. Three mistakes Gard was permitted, but on the fourth Magister Karane seized a blade and cropped Gard's ears, as a punishment for not hearing better. Gard bore it without a word, though Lady Pirihine raged at his disfigurement. Gard mastered the trick of deep memory at last. The week after, Magister Karane most unwisely ate of a gift of sugared violets he had been sent by an unknown admirer and died in agony within minutes. The Narcissus of the Void was seen to smile, but did not notice that Gard's ears had already begun to grow back.

He mentioned it to Balnshik, the next time he met her in the Training Hall. She inspected his ears and smiled. "You're surprised? I thought you knew you were one of the Changeless. Surely the fact that you walk without crutches now gave you some idea?"

"No," said Gard. "What does Changeless mean?"

Balnshik gestured at her own body. "I am one. We wear this flesh by default; but as long as we wear it, it neither fades nor withers. The very oldest demons are Changeless, and I'm quite old. Half-breeds are all Changeless, for some reason. Rather lucky, given all their other disadvantages."

But Gard thought of Teliva's curse: Long life to him indeed, so long, too long. . .

Magister Hohnduhl taught him spells that were chanted or sung and congratulated him on his strong voice and perfect pitch. Gard wove complex nets of music that lit fires, that created illusions or broke targets.

He was proud of himself until the night he realized that this was what Ranwyr had striven so hard to learn, without success; and the truth had been simply that Ranwyr was tone-deaf. All the holiness in the world would not have made him an effective disciple of the Star's. The unfairness of this, and the growing awareness that the Star had not been entirely false after all, drowned Gard deep in black anger and sorrow.

Magister Paglatha taught him the spells that required sacrifices and led him down to the pens from which suitable victims were chosen. Now Gard must in horror choose between manacled slaves condemned to death and idiot children kept penned like animals. No demons were here, for only a true death imparted any virtue to a spell; and Magister Paglatha explained that careful discernment was required in the choice of a victim.

Magic, he explained, as any other endeavor, required certain expenditures. A fire must have fuel to burn, a child must have food to grow; so any spell must feed on thaumic energy. Energy might be generated in several ways, but the most reliable was by sacrifice. An object might be sacrificed. A virtue might be sacrificed. Best of all, in terms of the power it generated, a life might be sacrificed.

The slaves might be more robust, but brought only the crudest energy to spell work. The imbeciles, on the other hand, being of the masters' own noble blood, made a more perfect and poignant sacrifice. Moreover, said Magister Paglatha, their use in this way made for excellent thrift.

Gard could not bring himself to reach in among the children, where they mewled and rocked themselves to and fro. He pointed instead at the condemned slaves, and one was hauled forth for his use.

He was relieved when they apprenticed him at last to Magister Prazza, whose specialty was the summoning and embodiment of demons.

In Magister Prazza's casting chamber, a great book contained all the true names of demons bound to the mountain, with colored ribbons beside those that had lately been slain in the arena. Magister Prazza, who was small and bent and scarcely able to speak above a whisper, taught Gard the formulas for calling them back from their brief freedom.

Demons must be lured; they must be caught and held by certain signs. The more powerful ones must be cajoled and promised pleasures.

Before any such negotiation, bodies must be made ready for them, out of a certain dense clay brought up from the depths in great tubs. Gard learned to sculpt bone and sinew, organs and flesh, and was now grateful for what he had learned in Magister Hoptriot's dissecting chamber. Carefully he gave his figures strong limbs, eyes and tongues, anything he would not want to lack himself; bitterly he regretted his mistakes, when the clay transmuted and a new-bodied demon would limp away from him on legs of unequal length or gasp openmouthed for want of nostrils.

Overall, however, Gard showed great aptitude in this field. Magister Prazza grew cordial with so promising a student, and loaned him scrolls on the subject of advanced divination techniques for learning the true names of demons. By this means Balnshik, far too old and wise to be tricked into telling her name, had nonetheless been caught by her master, though her name was not in the Slave Inventory; Magister Pread jealously kept it secret. Gard took the scrolls back to his rooms—for he had now been granted a suite of his own, adjoining Lady Pirihine's—and studied them closely.

———

Late one night he retreated to his inmost room and improvised a casting chamber, muffling the walls with black drapes. Certain circles within circles he chalked on the floor; certain incense he cast on coals, prudently setting the brazier under a vent lest he die like a fool of asphyxiation. An offering of wine Gard set out. Last of all he took an athalme and gashed his arm, and let the blood drops fall on certain characters he had chalked within the circle.

He sat without the circle, focused, and went out of himself. Rising above, he called. Out across the void of light, he called, and the shifting star clouds heard him. Some echoed him. He called, insistent. At last one across the infinite distance turned, as though curious. Gard had no name for her, but he called with his shed blood, and that was enough to pull her to him; for the blood had once run in her own veins.

Gard opened his eyes. He saw the veiled light trapped within his chalked circle, spinning, shifting, a blur the color of blossoms and flesh. Now and again some of it coalesced into images: a hand, a hundred hands, an eye, teeth, a pair of legs, a profile. Gard caught his breath as he recognized the face. It resembled that of the woman he had seen, lying down with the man at the edge of the dancing green, at the start of his every meditation.

A deep-throated growling filled the room, though she had no throat with which to make the sound.

No, no, no, I don't want. . . how did you catch me? Who are you? What? What is it you want?

Gard mastered himself. What is your name?

A sparkle in the whirling lights suggested scornful laughter. You think I'll tell you? Conjure away, little thing.

No. Listen to me! You lay with an Earthborn man once.

Oooooohhhh, pleasure. . . no, I didn't. Wait, yes, I did. Pretty man. All alone where they danced. I saw what he wanted and I became her, ha ha, I made myself flesh out of the apple blossoms, wasn't I clever?

Yes, yes, you were clever.

And the lilies and the little, white, starry ones and the soft flesh of a doe carrying young and melons and the dew on the grasses. All sorts of things. I made a very nice body. We had delight. We had it for hours. I left him sleeping.

Who was he?

Who?

The man!

Some man, I don't know. An Earthborn. You had a child by him.

What? No, of course I didn't. Oh! Wait. There was young. It kicked a lot. I was glad when it dropped. I was that child.

You? No, silly, that was a baby. You're a man.

Time has passed. I grew. I am your son.

Son?. . . What's this wine for? Can I have some?

Gard looked at her, despairing. He tried again: You are my mother.

Mother?. . . What nice-looking wine.

Did you give me a name, Mother?

I don't remember. Maybe if I had some wine, I'd remember.

Gard sat back, exhaled. Take the wine. But don't remember.

The wine in the offering bowl smoked, it bubbled and hissed away into scented steam. Gard had been going to ask her to give him a name, if she had not done so in the hour of his birth; but he saw now what folly this would be.

When the wine was gone, the demoness seemed to sigh; she took more of a woman's shape, of beautiful hues like a meadow in spring.

Ahhh. I liked that. So you are the child I bore?

I am.

All grown-up now. You're handsome.

Thank you.

Well, what do you want?

Nothing, now.

I can kill someone for you, if you like. Fetch you something.

Thank you. Perhaps another time.

You are one of us. How are you able to do this? With the trapping circle?

I was born in flesh. I walk in both worlds.

How interesting. Well. Can I go now?

Yes.

Gard released her from his will, and she soared away, like a bird from his hand, like a fish into the river's current.

When he told Balnshik about it later, she patted his shoulder in sympathy, but shrugged. "I think she must be rather young," she said, tactful as ever.

———

9th day 4th week 5th month in the 250th year from the Ascent of the Mountain. This day, Slave 4372301 granted right of person. Assigned the name Gard, of the house of Magister Porlilon through affiliation. Registered as Adept, Magister-in-Training.

———

Gard stood again before the council of mages, but this time there was no business with colored lights or darkness; only full colorless light on a council of greedy-looking old men and women, gazing at him intently. He wore the red loincloth now. As he stood before them, Grattur came, bearing a red robe, and draped it across his shoulders.

"You have proven yourself able, Gard of Porlilon's house," said Magister Paglatha. "Worthy of your liberty, worthy of the great house that has lifted you from the dust. And, perhaps, worthy of our noble company. There remains but one test."

The Narcissus of the Void nodded. Engrattur stepped forth, looking rather nervous. He knelt before Gard, presenting him with a great book. It was blackened, as though it had been scorched, plain and battered-looking; no jewels set here, nor any letters of gold. But when Gard took it in his hands, he felt the power crackling and humming through it.

"This is the workbook of Most Exalted Magister Porlilon," said Magister Paglatha. "Study it well. Within you will find the notes for his last great composition, which is the spell that would have released us all from our captivity within this mountain, had he lived to perform it. Many great mages have attempted it; none have succeeded. If you are able to succeed where so many have failed, then you will indeed be worthy, not only of a seat on this council, but the seat, and you shall rule us all. Do you dare attempt this, Gard of Porlilon's house?"

Gard looked up at them, with the same quiet stare with which he had faced his opponents in the arena. His eyes were blank. One or two of them smiled in their sleeves, to think what a simple great beast he was, for all his power.

"Yes," he said.

———

"I think perhaps I should like to marry you, Gard," said Lady Pirihine, lounging back on his bed. Grattur and Engrattur, standing to attention to either side of her, exchanged uneasy glances.

"I am unworthy of such honor, lady," said Gard, not looking up from his work.

"Not before, but certainly now, don't you think? We ought at least to have a child together."

Gard remembered the imbecile children penned for sacrifice. "I do not think that is possible, lady."

"You never know. You're so splendidly vigorous, I'm sure I'd have a great lusty son. You've been practically adopted, as it is; we might make another Porlilon the Great. He'd grow up a prince, you know, because you'll rule the council after you work the Great Spell."

"What does Lord Vergoin think of this, lady?"

Lady Pirihine tossed her head. "He loves me like a brother and has always wanted what was best for me. And he has always wished you well. He'd be happy for us."

"Unfortunately, lady, the Great Spell requires that its practitioner remain celibate beforehand," Gard lied.

"It does?" Lady Pirihine sat up. "For how long?"

"As long as possible. The greater the period of abstinence, the stronger the chances of success," said Gard solemnly.

Oh." Lady Pirihine looked at him, seemingly with genuine regret. Then I really ought to leave you to your studies, oughtn't I?" 'It would aid my concentration, lady."

"And you must be able to concentrate, after all." The Narcissus of the Void rose from his bed with a sigh. "Slaves, attend me in my private chamber."

Grattur and Engrattur grinned at each other, as they followed her out.

Whatever his descendants might be, Porlilon had been a great mage. His book was wound through with spells that rose above the open pages like fretwork of red and golden light, invisible to anyone else, but Gard saw them clearly; the more so when he went out of himself, to regard them with a demon's eye. Then the mage's whole intent stood forth in solid detail, a living design, magnificent.

Porlilon had written commentary in the margins, detailed notes on each spell, as though talking to himself, and all in a code that took Gard weeks to decipher. Gard worked through the simpler spells first, learning what thaumic energy was required to shatter a wall with a wave of his hand, or to deflect the flight of arrows.

He formed a grudging respect for the dead mage; for though he himself found the mechanism of the magic transparently obvious, no such insight had been granted to Porlilon. The old man had done every step of his spells blind, by calculation, with an exactitude that approached art. Gard discovered rows of figures in the margins too, carefully worked out to the last tiny fraction of energy expenditure.

———

In a late hour, though all hours looked the same under the mountain, Gard peered down at the last page of the Great Spell. He scowled; he rose from his chair to fetch a pair of candlesticks and set them by the guttering lamp beside which he had been reading, and ignited both with a gesture. By fresh white light he reread the last column of Magister Porlilon's figures.

"But that's wrong," he murmured to himself. He took paper and ink, and dipped his pen and copied the figures at the top of the column. He worked the sum through on his own, expecting any moment to find the decimal-point error that would make sense of what he had just read. Yet the result was unchanged. There was no error in the figures. The mistake must be greater, more fundamental, a flaw in the spell's very conception.

So accustomed had Gard grown to the precision and perfection of the old mage's work, he felt now the sort of dismay he might feel watching a dignified elder roll, drunk as a demon, in the dust.

The Great Spell could not possibly have worked. The energy it would require would be greater by a factor of ten than the amount stated in the opening conjecture.

Gard rose and paced, attempting to control his panic. Had Porlilon been a fraud? Or had his Great Spell been incomplete, at his murder?

He went to the book once more. No, the spell had been completed; for here underneath its last line was the mage's glyph, as he drew it under each completed spell, a bird of prey gripping a rose of five leaves in either foot.

But the right-hand rose was oddly truncated. . . .

The truth struck home. Gard snapped his pen in two pieces.

He concentrated, went out of himself, and saw the second spell laid over the page, the cloud that obscured the rose and what was written in the margin beside it and below. It had not been placed there by Magister Porlilon. Sweeping it back was as arduous as moving coiled chain, but it gave way to Gard's will, and he read thereunder what had been concealed from him.

Who among us would be willing? Anyone so great a fool as to miss the obvious would, alas, be incapable of the skill required to perform it. And they are selfish and fearful.

Perhaps our best hope is in the distillation of our blood through intermarriage. It may be that a few generations may produce some prodigy capable of working this with success. If the child is detected early and persuaded, from his earliest years, how glorious and necessary his self-sacrifice and death would be . . . indeed, persuaded that any other destiny were unthinkable for such a hero . . . perhaps promised a paradisal afterlife?

But it must be done in the very first bloom of his power, before said child is wise enough to sense the deception.

The room was, suddenly, much brighter. Gard looked up and saw that the force of his wrath had made the candle flames huge, so the wax was nearly all consumed. The fire was roaring high in the hearth, green and silver. He watched as, one by one, his lamp and then every drinking vessel in the room shattered.

His white anger subsided, froze into ice adamantine. Calmly he rose, fetched fresh candles, and lit them. He swept up the broken glass. Only then did Gard seat himself again, and turn the pages back to look once more at the opening prescription. Yes; here was the second spell, subtly altering the original figures for thaumic expenditure.

Gard sat a while in thought, his black brows knitted.

At last he found another pen. He opened his own workbook and placed it beside the one he had been studying all this while. He began to write.

Now and again he referred to the old book, copying out whole passages with exact faithfulness. Now and again he copied other passages and made significant alterations in them.

Duke Silverpoint was extinguishing the lamps in the Training Hall when Gard entered. He turned, surveyed Gard, and raised his eyebrows.

"How might an old slave serve the redoubtable Gard, of the house of Magister Porlilon?"

Gard scowled in embarrassment. He held up the bottle of wine he had brought. "This is a vintage from the lands of your people. I would like to drink it with you."

"Would you?" Silverpoint took the bottle and looked at it. "Ah. Rare vintage, indeed. It's from the islands; some of them are nothing but stepped terraces of vineyards. At harvesttime the boats are decked with vine leaves, the black grapes are piled to the oarlocks, and the rowers sing as they ply the waters to and fro.

"You don't mean to get drunk, I hope. Those of your race lose all discretion, when they become drunk."

"I will not get drunk," said Gard, following the duke into his chambers.

Silverpoint nodded. He took down matched goblets, opened the wine, and poured. He offered one to Gard, with a slight ceremonial bow. They sat to either side of Silverpoint's hearth, speaking awhile of trivial things, and then:

"Did I ever tell you how much I enjoyed The Fighting Mind?" said Gard.

"You did not. I am gratified. It seemed to me that you, of all people, might make use of it."

"It is a shame the prince did not live to complete it."

"He had not written it out in full, at the time of his death, but he had indeed completed it. I sat with him, as I am sitting with you now, over a bottle of this same wine. He laid out for me the final chapter. We talked until nightfall, but I left him early, for my father disliked my late rising and would lock the house gate after the seventh hour.

"The next morning the prince went out on some matter of business and was set upon by retainers of House Beatbrass—they were old enemies, the Firebows and the Beatbrasses, you know. Four against one, and he took his death wound, but he slew them first.

"I can still recite his last chapter, so well I remember that night."

"Perhaps," said Gard, "in that case, you would explain something to me."

"And what would that be?"

Gard set his wine aside. "I noticed that the prince referred to a discipline he called the Second Mind. He implied that it could disguise a man's intention even from himself, misleading anyone who might see into his thoughts. It sounded as though it would have been explained in the last chapter."

"Yes."

"Did he teach you the Second Mind?"

Silverpoint swirled his wine in its goblet and tilted it up to drink deep. He set the empty goblet down. "At this moment, I must ask myself two questions. The first is, do you truly need to know?"

"I think I do. What's the second question?"

"Do I truly need for you to know?"

Gard looked into Silverpoint's eyes, then spoke to him in the language of the Children of the Sun, in the archaic form used for coded speech. "Thou hast prepared a weapon, all these years. Art thou now prepared to draw it and kill with it?"

Silverpoint smiled. "My son, it is thine hour. I have one last lesson for thee."

There at the table, he taught Gard the discipline of the Second Mind.

———

On the day he was to perform the Great Spell, Gard was awakened by a torrent of spiced fortified wine, dashed in his face. He sat bolt upright, sputtering, wiping his eyes.

"You clumsy fool!" he heard Grattur wailing.

"My lord Icicle, I'm sorry!" cried Engrattur.

"Wake him with a nice drink, our lady told you!"

"And here I've gone and drowned you with it! Oh, I'm sorry!"

"Jackass, fetch him a basin of water!"

"Here's water, my lord, here's soap and a towel!"

"It's all right," Gard told them. He felt curiously lighthearted, even disposed to laugh as he rose and washed sugared wine from his hair and beard. Grattur and Engrattur hovered close, wringing their hands.

"May we lay out your robes?"

"May we change your sheets and pillowcase?"

"I wouldn't bother about the bed," Gard said. "This is the day we go free, remember?"

"Oh! Never to sweep these floors again!" said Grattur joyously. "Never to make these beds!" said Engrattur, recovering a little from his mortification.

"But you might lay out my clothes." Gard shivered as he dried himself. "Strange! I'm chilled through. Is something the matter with the hypocaust, do you think?"

Grattur and Engrattur looked at each other. "It seems all right to us."

"The Pumping Station crew are hard at work."

"Here are warm clothes in your wardrobe, my lord, trousers and boots."

"Here's a long shirt and a jerkin with a hood."

"He can't wear those under his robe, dolt, he'll be too warm!"

"He said he was chilled through, didn't he?"

"I'll wear them," said Gard. "The robe is light stuff, only made for show. Lay them out."

They dressed him, solicitous and ceremonial, and their fussing did not dispel his good mood. "Madame Balnshik sends her love, my lord."

"She told us to wish you luck."

"She isn't coming to watch?" Gard felt wistful a moment, before the sun of his happiness shone out again.

"She sends her regrets, but she has duties," said Grattur.

"Says she has to see to her master's goods," added Engrattur, and snorted with laughter.

"I'm sure I'll see her afterward," said Gard.

"Yes, she said you would."

"You're our hero, after all, you're our boy!"

He let them drape him in the magister's robe, to which he had been given only provisional right; but Gard felt confident of success. "What's the stick for, my lord?"

"What's the bag for? It's heavy!"

"The stick's for the spell," said Gard, taking it from Grattur. He tilted it down and showed them the lump of chalk at its end, bound there with leather strips. "See? I won't have to crouch on the floor to inscribe the circles and lines."

"Clever!"

"You always were a bright lad."

"And the bag is heavy with my casting apparatus, and the book of the Great Spell."

"Oh, that was a heavy book, I remember!"

"Shall we carry it for you?"

"No, no," said Gard, though as he took the bag, it was heavier than he had thought it would be. He shouldered it anyway, and took the chalking stick with his free hand. "Now, in the cupboard there you'll find eight bottles of good Sulemian wine. That's my gift, for faithful friends. Go drink to my success."

They wept their gratitude and prostrated themselves. As Gard strode forth, he heard the first of the bottles being opened.

He saw no one in the corridors, all the way to the great casting chamber, and when he entered it by the lower door, he saw why: half the population of the mountain was ranked upon the high seats above. All the surviving council, every scion of the great houses, the very cream of the mountain's society were all there, dressed in their heraldic colors. There was applause at his entrance, and he slung down his heavy bag and bowed to them all.

Their eyes glittered like diamonds. Gard remembered his time in the arena, when they had watched him like this. He felt proud, and happy, to think that he had progressed so far, risen so high.

He lit the braziers. He opened his bag. There on top was the box of incense, and just under it the book. He drew them forth. The incense to the braziers, the book to the lectern. He opened the book, noted well the necessary circles and inscriptions, and, taking up his chalk stick, marked them out on the floor.

A thoughtful mutter came from the galleries above. This inlaid floor was the very same where he had been deflowered, where the Narcissus of the Void had delighted in the power it had generated. He marveled, now, that it had so embittered him at the time. He looked up sidelong and spotted her, seated next to Vergoin. She gave him a nervous little smile. He smiled back.

Setting the chalk stick by the bag, Gard turned to the lectern and read for the preliminary incantation.

At once a green light appeared around him, ran from him like syrup and spread out across the floor. His audience gasped in admiration, leaned forward to see more clearly. With the first of the invocations, a spiral of red light came slowly down from the ceiling, a vortex of blood and fire, and hummed slowly as it spun above the floor.

One or two of those present applauded. They were struck to silence by their elders. Magister Paglatha had clenched his fists into boxes of bone; Magister Naryath was sweating again, so much his silent attendant took a kerchief and tucked it into his collar to catch the drops. He waved her away unseeing, intent on what was happening below.

With the second invocation a second vortex was formed, golden as the painful light of dawn, rotating about the other. There were no sounds in the chamber, now, but their droning song, and Gard's resonant voice as he read from his book.

He turned the page and saw at its top the four words he had written there:

You will awaken now.

His pleasant fog vanished instantly. He glanced up and saw what he had done so far; saw the massed gaze of his audience fixed on the whirling lights. With a cold and black satisfaction in his heart, he read aloud the next invocation, the one that he himself had written.

At first it seemed that nothing followed his words. There were little, flickering shadows high up; then they came streaming down, snakelike, and darkened. The droning noise changed. It took on a note of menace, of hunger.

"No, no," said Magister Tagletsit aloud. "That's wrong, surely—" He was drowned out by the other mages, who began to shout. "Idiot! You mispronounced something!"

"It's going wrong!"

"Gard! Break it off! Karrabant's Third Dismissal spell, quickly!"

Gard read on, only raising his voice as the howling began, and the bright colors faded and the vortex became a black wind full of knives. There were screams. Green lightning shot up from the floor and struck Magister Paglatha, and Magister Pread, and Magister Hoptriot, and last of all Magister Naryath, flicking aside his slave. Her flesh it ripped away and a plume of rose-colored light sped forth from the shell, shouting for joy that it was free.

The four mages could not shout, as their lives were devoured by the spell. There was plenty of noise from everyone else, but Gard outcried them all.

"My masters all, pray keep your seats! You all knew it would take blood to break the mountain!"

And this was the last they heard, for there was an explosion then. Light streamed into the chamber, blinding bright. The roar of the black wind faded, but a thunder swelled louder still, made up all of the sound of stone cracking, tunnels falling in, galleries and chambers collapsing, and in a moment more nothing could be seen for the roiling cloud of black dust.

By that time Gard was gone, having grabbed up his chalk stick and his bag in the moment the chamber had broken open. He sprinted for the broken wall, leaped through, and kept running.

His boots were well-made, caravanner's boots that gripped the rocks and ice as he scrambled on. When he could no longer hear the sound of the mountain collapsing, he stopped long enough to open his bag. There, where he had hidden them away, were heavy gauntlets and a pair of snow goggles. Below was a warm cloak. At the bottom of the bag were packets of bread and dried meat.

Gard drew the clothing on, closed up the bag. Tilting the stick, he unwound the leather strip and the lump of chalk fell away, revealing the spear point glinting underneath.

Shouldering the bag once more, he ran on.

———

Low gray stubble in the fields of the strangers, raw earth littered with dead yellow leaves, a greening sickle hanging on a fence; birdcall, the lines of marshfowl streaming off slowly, deserting.

It was thunder weather and the sky was lead, no breath of air in the silent valley when he came down, the man; cloak as dark as a thundercloud, eyes as dark as death or stone. Retribution and death he brought with him, a gift in either hand, as he came though fields grown high with weeds.

No sound now, even the birdcry fallen silent. Beneath his boot a white skull turned. He kicked it from his path, to shatter on the steps of what had once seemed so high a hall; he saw it now for a miserable hut of piled stones. The great black door was standing open wide.

He mounted the steps, he looked in through the door, and there he saw the strangers fallen in their revelry. Bones, white bones lay in the banquet hall, still clutching cups. There upon a sagging couch bones coupled, the ribs a puzzle made of ivory.

He stepped over one who lay across the threshold, one whose skull was broken open by a mattock still in the hole, corroding and green. He descended the stairway to the pit and found it empty. Nothing was in the dark but dust, and smells. He left it by the gate where slaves went out to labor in the fields. No one labored there now. Only the wind cried there.

He crossed the fields, he walked across the land, and all he saw was sere and crumbling, derelict and old, empty, echoing; even the mountain caves. No bones there, nothing at all to reproach him or welcome him home.

Gard stood alone there, a long while.