CHAPTER SEVEN

The Graith Divided

The battle outside the Dome of the Graith grew louder, but it was hard to tell who was winning. Apart from cries of pain, no one spoke: there were no pleas for mercy, no offers of quarter, no boasts or war cries.

“Aloê,” Lernaion began.

“Shut up, and I mean both of you. Any talking you do you can do to the Graith at Station. It sounds like it won’t be long now.”

“You’re very confident your allies will win.”

“Fairly confident. You’d better hope I’m right. If that door opens and your servant Maijarra lets in your band of thugs, then I’ll kill you both and have done.”

Lernaion allowed himself a cold smile. “Very confident. But how will you justify yourself to your peers in the Graith.”

“I have the Graith’s mandate, you old fool! I am the Graith’s vengeancer, and you three are the murderers of a summoner. Your lives are mine whenever I choose to take them.”

Bleys was looking toward the double doors. The sound of the battle was fading, gone. Booted feet came striding up the hallway.

The doors were unbarred from the outside and Maijarra swung them open. Her silver spear was deeply stained with blood.

Aloê tensed and Bleys laughed aloud.

Through the open doors strode Noreê, Jordel, Illion, Styrth Anvri, Sundra, Callion, Keluaê Hendaij—bloody weapons in their hands, grim looks on their faces. The Awkward Bastards were victorious, but not triumphant. Aloê knew how they felt.

“Vocate Maijarra!” cried Bleys. “How could you betray us?”

Maijarra’s milk-pale face was motionless, unmoved. “I am thain to the Graith of Guardians,” she said, “not to you.”

And, at Aloê’s command, she put the summoners in chains and led them away to the lockhouse.

The trial of the summoners had to wait for the healing of the Witness Stone. (Illion and Noreê were taking up that task.) But other strings in the conspiratorial web snapped more easily.

Aloê got a writ of authority from the High Arbitrate and rode on Raudhfax up to Big Rock to apprehend Ulvana. She anticipated some difficulty finding Ulvana: the woman must have heard of Naevros’ exposure, and she had many places to hide in.

But when Aloê arrived at Big Rock House, the householder told her that Ulvana was being held prisoner at the Arbiter’s House . . . by Noreê, who had appeared with a company of thains the night before.

“Thanks, Goodman Parell,” Aloê said.

“Will you be staying with us long, I hope?”

“Only overnight, I think.”

“Are you going to the Arbiter’s House instanter?”

“Yes, goodman, if that means what I think it means.”

Parell hesitated a moment and said, “Will you please tell Vocate Noreê to have her things removed from here? It’s just that—well, if she wants an explanation, I will make one to her.”

“I’ll tell her, Parell.”

“Thanks to you for that. Vocate, I don’t know if I’m too old-fashioned or not old-fashioned enough. . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Which would you rather be, goodman?”

“What? What? Oh, too old-fashioned, I suppose. I’m too decrepit to be taking on modish airs—wearing purple shoes and talking about the latest ballads as if I could tell one note from another anymore. But I tell you, Guardian, in the old days it was not done. Your Graith didn’t ride into a town like they were a conquering army and we were peasants who had to . . . well, do something peasanty. But I suppose I’m talking too much.”

“Not too much for me. Say it loud and say it often, goodman.”

“Have been. Good day to you, Vocate.”

“Good day, Parell.”

Aloê left the inn and walked across the way to the Arbiter’s House. There was a cloud of thains surrounding it, leaning on their spears. There were no townfolk in the street.

A thain held out his spear to prevent Aloê from entering the Arbiter’s House. “You’ll have to wait here, Vocate. And leave your weapon. Vocate Noreê’s orders.”

Aloê always carried her songbow of the runic rose these days, slung over her shoulder. She took it in her hands and struck the thain blocking her to the ground. The others started forward but she ignored them, bending over to rip the gray cape from the fastenings at the fallen man’s shoulders.

“I expel you from the Graith,” she said to him, as he stared vacantly up at her. “Hinder me again, and I’ll expel you from the Wardlands. Resist me, and I’ll banish you from the land of the living. Now get out of my way. Get out of my way, all of you.”

They hesitated.

She grabbed the spear from the ex-thain and said, “By God Avenger, from this moment forward you will give way before a red cloak if it’s only hanging on a clothesline. Clear off!”

The fallen man scrambled to one side and the rest stood back, their eyes resentful. She felt they were yielding to her personally, not to the principle. And that wasn’t enough. But it was a problem for another day. She cast the spear into the dust of the street and walked past them into the Arbiter’s House.

Noreê was walking toward the door, and her pale eyes crossed gazes with Aloê’s in an almost audible clash. “You had some trouble getting in?” asked Noreê.

“Yes. Your private army is a problem, Noreê. For the Guarded—the Guardians—the Guard itself.”

Noreê waved a scarred, ice-pale hand. “A temporary measure. I’ve no longing for kingship, I assure you.”

“What if others long to make you king?” Aloê replied.

“Nonsense. I’m no Ambrose. You came to talk to Ulvana, I guess?”

“I don’t speak nonsense, Noreê. I’m telling you something you need to hear. And, yes, I came to speak to Ulvana. If it suits you to permit it, of course.”

“You have the wrong idea about me, Aloê. I was maintaining the Guard before you were born.”

“As Merlin was before you were born. It is you who has the wrong idea about you, Guardian. Look to it.”

Noreê’s pale eyes looked on her patiently and her pale lips actually smiled. She had heard what Aloê had said; she did not regard it in the least.

“This emergency will be over soon,” she said, patting Aloê on the arm. “Let’s not quarrel about it.”

It was maddening to Aloê that Noreê didn’t take the issue seriously—as if it were a matter of taste, like a disagreement about after-dinner cheeses. If she would not listen to Aloê now, there would come a time soon when she must be made to listen.

They went together, but not in the same mind, to the Arbiter’s Hall of Audience.

Ulvana was sitting in the Arbiter’s chair. There was no one in the room with her; she was not reading or writing or doing anything—just sitting there with a vacant look on her face.

“Ulvana,” said Aloê, “the Graith of Guardians has a claim of vengeance against you. I have a writ from the Arbitrate deposing you from your rank as Arbiter and waiving vengeance on your behalf. Do you have anyone else who would choose to act for you?”

“No,” said Ulvana in a monotone. “My family has washed their hands of me. My life is yours.”

“The Graith will give you death or exile, on my recommendation. Will you answer my questions?”

“I don’t care. Yes. Ask them.”

“Did you participate in the murders of Summoner Earno and of Necrophor Oluma Cyning?”

“No! Not exactly.”

“Did you participate in any way in those murders? Did you know about them in advance? Did you assist the murderer afterwards?”

Ulvana looked down for a moment, saying nothing. Then she raised her head again and gave each of the Guardians a defiant look. “The murderer. The murderer. Can’t you say his name? Is he nothing more to you than that?”

“Tell me his name. Tell me what you know about this business, and I will exercise the Graith’s mercy. If not, I will execute the Graith’s vengeance.”

“Mercy!” said Ulvana, and laughed sobbingly. “Mercy! What can you do to me that’s worse than what you’ve already done?”

“Why, I don’t know,” said Aloê courteously. “I would ask Earno and Oluma what they think, only they’re dead, you see.”

“It had to be you,” Ulvana moaned. “The both of you. The unattainable ice princesses, white and black. The ones he never felt worthy of, so that he had to grovel in the muck. Muck like me. Like me.”

“Listen, Ulvana, I’m no princess. I work for a living. And I’m not unattainable; just married.”

“To that thing. That Morlock. He’s probably had you both.”

Grim, white-haired Noreê, one of the great seers of the world and one of the three Victors of Kaen, snorted with surprised laughter. She turned away to regain her composure.

“Here’s where it stands with me, Ulvana,” Aloê said. “I am the Graith’s vengeancer. I could kill you now, if I chose, with only the Graith to answer to.”

“Go ahead. I want you to. I’m sick of everything.”

“I could, and I may do the same thing to Naevros syr Tol.”

Ulvana grew very still.

“Or,” Aloê added, “I could exile you both. Strictly speaking, that prerogative rests with the Summoner of the City, but he is in disgrace at the moment and the Graith has delegated his power in this matter to me. I can kill you, and I assure you it will be an easy death. But I would prefer to send you into exile. With Naevros, if possible. But I need a reason to do so, a reason for the Graith to forego vengeance. Tell me what happened. Make me understand.”

“He’d hate me,” Ulvana said, looking at something far beyond the walls of this room. “He’d hate me for the rest of his life.”

Taking a risk, Aloê said, “He hates you now. If he loved you, he would not have put you in this hole. The question is not what he wants for you. The question is what you want for him—and what you still may get from him. If he dies, all hope dies with him. If he lives, someday he may turn to you. Who else would he have?”

Ulvana completely broke down, weeping into her hands for what seemed an endless time. At last, she told Aloê everything she knew.

Naevros had come back into her life a year ago, riding up to Big Rock from A Thousand Towers on some sort of business. He said he had come to respect her for making her own way in the world—that he was sorry for the way he had treated her—that he hoped it could be different now. He deployed as many lies as he needed to seduce her again, and Aloê got them all from Ulvana.

It was about five months ago that he revealed he had an ulterior purpose in resuming the affair. That was when she knew everything he’d said was a lie. And he knew that she knew—smiled to himself as he watched her realize it. But she had already yielded her pride to him, and found that she couldn’t reclaim it—didn’t want it.

Ulvana said, “I could feel again—really feel—surrender myself to it—not have to, to watch myself and correct myself, but be what I was meant to be! I don’t suppose either of you can understand that.”

Aloê wasn’t interested enough in the subject to express a thought on it. What she wanted to know was what Naevros had said and done before the murder. She said placatingly to Ulvana, “We want to understand your experience so that the Graith can judge you fairly. What did Naevros say to you about the plot? What did he want done?”

Ulvana sighed. “He said he and his allies had a plan to save the Wardlands, but that it was risky, and not all of the Graith would be willing to take the risk. He said that he was to eliminate the Summoner Earno, and perhaps others if it came to it. He said—he said—I was the only person he could trust!”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Are you? Are you? I wish I could be. I had timber lodges near the Road, and he knew it. I knew the lands all around here, and he knew it. I was Arbiter of the Peace, charged with investigating murders hereabouts, and he knew it. But I think he trusted me, too. Don’t you think so?”

“He must have, to let you so deeply into his counsels.”

“Yes. Yes, exactly!” Ulvana’s reply was frantic—so frantic that Aloê wondered if she was also worried about the alternative: that Naevros told her so much because he planned to stop her mouth with death when he was done with her.

“What did he tell you about Oluma Cyning?”

“Nothing, except that he had corrupted a necrophor and that she would assist in the investigation of Earno’s murder. Or do you mean afterward? When he. . . . When he. . . .”

“Tell me about all of it.”

“Well—he told me what I told you. When the necrophor—”

“Oluma?”

“Yes, her. When she came to town she told me what she knew about the plot, and warned me not to trust the healer—”

“Denynê.”

“Yes, her. The necrophor warned me not to trust the healer, as Naevros had been unable to get at her.”

“Seduce her, you mean?”

“I suppose. I suppose that was what she meant. She laughed when she said it.”

“Oluma herself succeeded at that, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” Ulvana wrinkled her nose in matronly disapproval. “She bragged about it to me—thought it was funny. That’s what the whole business was for her; a grim sort of, of lark.”

“But Oluma didn’t manage to drag Denynê into the conspiracy?”

“As far as I know, she didn’t try. She wasn’t that interested; it was just one more game in all the games she was constantly playing. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Naevros had to kill her.”

“But you were surprised?”

“Yes, it. . . . I was surprised, yes.” And frightened, too, Aloê thought, looking at Ulvana’s face now and remembering it then, when they had found Oluma in the corpse-house. Frightened that Naevros was getting rid of his fellow conspirators: that was Aloê’s guess. Ulvana lived simultaneously with two different versions of Naevros: the hero of her love-romance, and the cold-hearted seducer and murderer.

“What was your role in all this?” Aloê asked. “What did he want you to do?”

“I showed him the . . . the lay of the land, I suppose. He spent some time at my old lumber camps. He wanted me to report to him how the investigation went. And, of course, he stayed with me after it, after the thing.”

“After he had murdered Earno.”

“Yes, that. He could not afford to be seen—there was a simulacrum of himself he had left in the North to give himself an alibi. So he was with me for a number of days. That was. . . . That was a good time.”

Because she’d had her beloved all to herself, Aloê thought. And, of course, he would have been at his most charming; his plan depended on keeping Ulvana happy.

“Did you attempt to mislead me at any time?” Aloê asked.

“Only by omission. Naevros warned me about that in a letter, as soon as he found out that you would be the Graith’s vengeancer. He said I should act as I would if . . . if I were not involved. He said you would know if I did not. He rates your cleverness very highly. More highly than he does mine. And he’s quite right, of course. I still don’t understand what you discovered in our journey together. Was it something you saw in your vision? He said he had a way of concealing his talic imprint from a seer. Did it fail him?”

“No. Tell me, Ulvana, why did Naevros create such an elaborate murder plan? Why not arrange something less spectacular, something that might have passed as an accident?”

“Oh, that wasn’t his idea. His partners—his seniors, he called them—they insisted on it. They said they needed to be sure they put Earno out of the way; he was blocking some important task they had in hand. And if an attempt was made and failed, it might draw suspicion.”

“If you strike at the king, you must kill him,” Noreê said, somewhat blasphemously. Ulvana started a little in her chair: she had forgotten the older vocate was there.

Aloê met Noreê’s cool gaze and they both nodded: they were done here.

“Ulvana,” said Aloê, “I’ll consider your case and consult my peers in the Graith. In the meantime, you must be under guard. The thains here, or some others, will take you to the High Arbitrate in A Thousand Towers.”

“I don’t wish to go there. I don’t want to see those people.”

“You must go somewhere, and you can’t stay here.”

“Yes. I see that. I don’t want to stay here, either. Aloê, I’ve answered your questions; won’t you answer mine? What did you discover that led you to Naevros?”

Aloê hesitated before answering. But there was no obvious reason not to tell her.

“It didn’t mean anything to me at the time,” she admitted. “But there was a scent in one of the beds I slept in at your logging shelters—a sort of sweet musk.”

“Oh,” Ulvana said quietly. Then, “I gave him that scent. It was a present.”

“I noticed it on him later when I met him in the city. That was what helped me guess. The proof came later.” Aloê thought of Denynê and frowned at a painful memory.

“He said he would wear it in the city,” Ulvana said. “But I wasn’t sure. . . . I wasn’t sure whether that was only one of his lies.” She looked sharply at Aloê and seemed to be about to speak. Aloê looked straight into her eyes and she flinched.

“Did you always despise me?” she asked plaintively, as Aloê turned to go.

Aloê considered the question fairly. “No,” she said. “No, when I met you again in Big Rock, I sort of liked you. But that wasn’t really you, was it?”

“It used to be,” Ulvana said sadly. “Until a year or so ago.”

Aloê shook her head and strode away through the door. Noreê followed her out, and the thain outside folded the door shut, closing Ulvana in alone.

“I’ll have some of my thains escort her down, if you like,” Noreê said.

“They’re not your thains, Vocate,” Aloê said.

Noreê smiled and nodded: a mere detail to her. “Ommil,” she said to the thain on guard, “take a couple of the others and escort Ulvana down to the High Arbitrate in the city tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Vocate,” said the thain.

“What did you think of Ulvana?” Noreê asked as they turned away and walked into the street.

“Pitiable. But I didn’t pity her.”

“Yes. My long-dead father would have called her a real woman.”

“Oh? Why?”

Noreê shrugged, a gesture that reminded Aloê oddly of Morlock. “That is easier to know than to explain. She lives through her man; that is part of it. He is everything, and she is content to be nothing, if he only notices her. She is completely selfless.”

“I’d say she’s completely selfish.”

Noreê laughed. “You are contrary today, Vocate. How can she be selfish? She gave up everything for that man.”

“For a price. As long as she got what she wanted, nothing else mattered: Earno’s life; Oluma’s life; Denynê’s life—anyone else’s; her principles as a member of the Arbitrate; the safety of those who trusted in her; her independence and fortune, so proudly won over a century of work. She threw all that away to satisfy an urge.”

“You speak unkindly of love,” Noreê said, not as if she disapproved.

“I’m not talking about love at all. Naevros purchased her with a fantasy, the way he might have purchased a meat pie with money. He offered her the pretense of love, which was enough for her. For that she sacrificed everything, not for him.”

“Are you going to talk to him now?”

Aloê nodded.

“Perhaps I should ride with you,” Noreê suggested. “The presence of his two unattainable princesses might unnerve him.”

“What is a princess anyway?”

“A sort of female kinglet, I think. They have them in the unguarded lands. They are much sought after as mates, apparently, and people kill dragons and things to woo them.”

Aloê, who’d had occasion to kill a dragon herself, revolved this notion in her mind. “Odd,” she said. “Yes: let’s try to shake him up.”

They rode down to the city the next morning and arrived at Naevros’ house in the afternoon.

There was a cloud of watch-thains on the street outside Naevros’ little house. Aloê was surprised to see them there. Naevros had been released from the Well of Healing after swearing a self-binding oath to appear before the Graith when summoned. No guards were needed, but here they were.

Plus, they wore different badges, as if they belonged to different graiths. One group had green armbands; another sported red caps; a third wore purple leggings.

She rode Raudhfax through the milling crowd as if they weren’t there, causing a number to jump out of the way. She dismounted and strode toward the front door, ready to throttle anyone who hindered her.

She heard a timid voice say, “Your pardon, Vocate, but you are not allowed to enter.” She turned and prepared to leap at the speaker like a lioness taking down a deer . . . but he wasn’t speaking to her. A herd—no, three distinct herds of thain—were surrounding Noreê, who looked at them curiously with her dark blue eyes.

“Here, you,” Aloê said to them as a body, “get away from her.”

“I’m sorry, Vocate,” said a freckly fellow in purple leggings, “but our orders are that no one shall enter this domicile saving yourself.”

“Ours, too,” supplied a pimply youth with a green armband. “And ours!” chimed in a girl in a red cap, and in general all the cattle mooed the same song.

“Whoever may have given you those orders, and those badges of rank to go with them,” Aloê said, “you can’t suppose that their instructions are binding on us. Stand out of her way.”

“Sorry, Vocate. Orders.”

The herds lowed in unison: orders, orders, orders.

Aloê was about to lay a few of them on the ground using her songbow as a club when another voice spoke, breaking the spell: “Don’t trouble yourselves, vocates. I’ll come down to you.” It was Naevros, standing at the window above his front door.

Neither Aloê nor Noreê responded, but Naevros disappeared, and in a moment the door opened and Naevros stepped out of it.

The thains stood out of his way as if he were carrying a bowlful of plague-infested pus. He was not. He carried nothing: not a sword at his hip, not a cloak on his shoulders against the chill of the summer day. His clothes looked old and ill-matched; there were buttons missing from the shirt and threadbare patches on the trousers. His reattached left hand hung from the end of his arm, barely moving. It had a slightly bluish look to it. He did not offer it, or the other hand, to Aloê or Naevros, but he did acknowledge their presence with a nod and a glance of his green eyes, which is more than he did for the thains.

“Let’s go down to the Benches and have a bite to eat,” he suggested. “I don’t suppose I’ll have many more chances to eat there, one way or the other.”

They agreed and they all walked together down the street to Naevros’ favorite cookshop.

“How’s Verch?” asked Aloê.

“Gone. Forever, this time,” Naevros said. “I fired him. I’d sell the house if I could find a buyer. I’ll need all the money I can get in the unguarded lands. Unless you plan to kill me.”

“You’ll have the option of exile, of course,” Aloê said.

“I’ll take it. Or did you imagine me drowning my sorrows in a pool of my own blood?”

Aloê noted the bitter bantering tone in his voice and chose to ignore it. “No,” she said frankly.

He winced and sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s too late to pretend now that I’m something other than I am.”

They sat in the garden, empty of other patrons as the blue chill of evening approached. Without looking at the server, a young woman with streaked hair who looked at him with sad, sympathetic eyes, Naevros ordered pork seared with cherries and thrummin on the side. Noreê had a plate of jeckfruit and grondil. Aloê ordered chicken and mushrooms, and they shared a carafe of the house wine.

“I suppose you’ve come to break down my resistance,” Naevros said, when they all had a glass. “You want to ask me questions, expecting no answers, just hoping to plant doubts that will soften the real examination on the Witness Stone. Is that it?”

“What if it is?” Aloê replied.

“If it is, to hell with it. Ask me your questions. I’ll answer. I’m not going to put on a defense. I did what I did, and I’ll pay for it without whining.”

Perhaps only a little whining, Aloê thought to herself. Naevros favored her with a green glance, and she wondered if he had understood her unspoken response. It repelled her, but their rapport was as strong as ever. Aloud she said, “I know what you did, and most if not all of your fellow conspirators. What I don’t understand is why you did it.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“A simple reason, for a Guardian. I did it to maintain the Guard.”

She looked at him without speaking.

“No, really!” he insisted.

“You’ll have to put some more lines in the drawing, Naevros. I don’t see what you’re getting at. How did murdering Earno help maintain the Guard?”

“I don’t know all the details. But Lernaion and Bleys had a plan to save the Wardlands from the effects of the dying sun. Earno was planning to interfere with it, or they thought he was. So he had to be killed.”

“Why would you believe them?” Aloê asked.

Naevros seemed genuinely surprised. “Wouldn’t you?”

Aloê looked away instead of answering. She wondered if he had always been this stupid and she hadn’t noticed it, or whether something had happened to him. She marveled that she had ever felt torn between this clever, shallow, pretty man and ugly, powerful, crafty Morlock Ambrosius. She missed him very much at that moment, and there was a shrill, fearful quality to the feeling. She was worried that the loss was permanent, that he would never return from the journey he’d begun.

She pushed the feeling away. The food came then, and she managed to ask Naevros a few more questions through the meal, but she didn’t learn much, and she was increasingly convinced that she never would learn more from Naevros.

After the meal the two vocates parted company with Naevros and rode westward to the lockhouse in Fungustown.

“Would your father say Naevros was a real man?” Aloê said, breaking a long silence.

“Unquestionably. Why?”

“He seems the mirror image of Ulvana. He killed and lied and betrayed every trust so that he could have what he wanted.”

“A hero’s mantle, you mean? Yes, I agree with you there.”

“And what good would it have been to him if he had it?” Aloê asked. She felt the cool pressure of Noreê’s regard and turned toward the older woman. “Do you mean this was really about me? He was trying to impress me?”

Noreê laughed in surprise. “Your insight is sharp, Vocate. That is what I almost said. But I didn’t say it because, on second thought, it seems to me too superficial. Naevros always seems to have a woman against whom he measures himself and whom he tries to impress. If it weren’t you, it would be someone else. If you had ever yielded to his charms he would have despised you the way he does every woman he has seduced, and he would have found some other bitch-goddess to pray to.”

“I don’t like that term applied to me,” Aloê said quietly.

“I don’t, Vocate. I apply it to his idea of you.”

Aloê thought she was right and yet not all right. Still, it was a trivial matter to waste the dying sun’s light on.

They arrived at the lockhouse to see Bleys. He was the last Guardian in the lockup; Lernaion, Naevros, and the thains had all sworn self-binding oaths to appear at Station; only Bleys had refused.

The thains at the lockhouse door were divided among the purple-legging crowd, the red-cap crowd, the green-armband crowd, and some thains who had not yet been branded by their masters.

“Guardians,” said Aloê, “do not hinder me or Noreê or any vocate going about her self-set tasks, and you may remain. If you challenge me, you will curse the day you chose to pledge yourself to the Graith.”

“That is agreeable with our orders, Vocate Aloê,” said one of the green armbanders, and the rest of the gray-caped chickens took up the chorus: orders-squawk-orders-squawk.

Aloê dismounted in their midst, waded through them, leading Raudhfax by the reins, and finally tied up her palfrey outside the lockhouse.

Noreê left her horse in custody of one of the unmarked thains—one of her own, no doubt—and strode through the crowd to follow Aloê inside.

“Some of the other vocates disliked the thought that I had sole mastery of the prisoners,” she explained, “so they recruited their own thains and sent them to assist.”

“You see what you’ve started. Will every vocate now have a personal army of thains to do her bidding?”

“Perhaps they should,” Noreê said good-humoredly. “This is only for the emergency, Aloê.”

“After this one there will be another.”

“Perhaps.” Noreê seemed determined not to fight with her, so Aloê gave up—for the moment.

The entrance to the basement was guarded by thains with an ill-assorted rainbow of badges. Aloê brushed them aside and descended, taking a coldlight from a pocket of her cloak as she descended the crumbling stairs to the basement.

A dizzying wave of stink swept over her. The sting of urine was in her eyes and nose, and it wasn’t the most alarming thread in the reek. . . .

She took the songbow from her shoulder and gripped it in her hand like a club. The hot smell of fresh blood rode the foul air.

The chaos of the basement made no sense to her eye at first. She had stumbled over a bundle of something at her feet before she realized it was a bundle of limbs—a Khnauront, lying on its side, its throat cut from ear to ear.

“Call your thains,” Aloê said over her shoulder.

“Oh, there’s no need for that, Vocate,” said Bleys’ warm voice from across the dim basement.

Aloê lifted the coldlight high to see better and caught sight of the summoner across the floor of the basement, strewn with dead Khnauronts. He was holding a bright piece of metal in one hand and with the other was pulling at the nose of a Khnauront to expose his bare neck. Two quick slashes and the Khnauront was spraying blood, dark in the bluish light. Bleys released him and he fell on his side.

The summoner stepped over to where the last Khnauront was sitting upright, his back against the far wall. He looked at Bleys and his bloody little piece of metal incuriously.

“Don’t!” shouted Aloê.

“With you in a moment, my dears,” called Bleys cheerily. He slashed the throat of the last Khnauront and let him fall. He dropped the piece of metal beside the dying body and then picked his way carefully across the carnage toward the thunderstruck vocates.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Bleys said, as he got nearer. “Although I don’t think it would be a good idea to take my hands.” He held them up: they gleamed with blood. “After a few days of probing their minds, I determined that these objects could be no use to themselves or anyone else, and decided to get rid of them . . . since the Graith, in its usual way, could not decide what to do with them.”

Aloê exhaled, then, more reluctantly, inhaled.

“I assure you, these things were not human—merely machines for turning food into shit, as the saying goes. What can I do for you, my dears?”

Aloê said, “I wanted to urge you to swear a self-binding oath so that you could be released from this hellhole.”

“I’m afraid I can’t, my dear,” said the smiling, blood-stained old man. “Before either of you were born, I had a counterspell against binding spells engraved on my collarbone. That prevents me from swearing a self-binding oath; you can ask Lernaion about it, if you like.”

“Ur. Well, maybe we can find more acceptable quarters for you.”

“These quarters are perfectly acceptable to me. I’m not particular about things. Perhaps you’re thinking about the nightmares from the decaying fungus, but really I don’t mind them. If you ever get to be my age, which I do not wholeheartedly recommend, you’ll understand how pleasant it is to have a vivid dream, even a nightmare, awake or asleep.”

“If some of the upper floors are intact, I’m sure you can have your nightmares and cleaner air to go with them. We must have you alive to testify, Bleys.”

“I’ll drink to that, as your husband might say, my dear. Yes, I can’t wait to testify. The sooner young Illion is done with healing the Witness Stone, the better I’ll like it. Shouldn’t you be helping him, Noreê, instead of playing chief jailor to an old man?”

“I intend to,” Noreê said quietly.

“Wonderful.”

“You could tell us something of what you have to say now,” Aloê observed.

“But would you believe it? Should you believe it? I would not recommend it, if I were some third person with your best interests at heart (as I am not, of course). No, you will have to wait. Because it’s very important that you believe what I have to say.” Bleys absentmindedly wiped his hands on his white mantle of office. “I wonder what’s for supper?” he said wistfully. “Could one of you ask about it for me on your way out?”

Bleys got his wish a pair of months later. They were very long months from Aloê’s point of view. Most of the vocates started recruiting personal forces of thains, and many had companies of them marching through the streets.

Aloê and Jordel watched them pass by one day from the second floor of his house.

“I suppose they all have to swing their feet at the same time,” Jordel said, “if they’re going to walk so close with everybody’s elbow up everybody else’s ass. But I tell you, Aloê. . . .”

“Tell me, J.”

“I think that they’re doing it to threaten people.”

“I think they’re doing it because they’re afraid.”

“I think that we’re saying the same thing.”

Fear was in the eyes of the thains marching, and fear was in the eyes of the Guarded, watching from the windows in their houses and towers, and fear was in the eyes of the vocates marching at the head of their companies on the long-awaited day of Station.

Since Lernaion, the Summoner of the City, had been charged with Impairment of the Guard, it fell to the vocates to summon themselves to Station. But when Illion gave word that the Witness Stone was healed, Noreê sent her thains as messengers to summon the members of the Graith. Whether they loved Noreê or hated her, the vocates obeyed. Many whispered to each other that she would be chosen as the new summoner, to fill the place left vacant by Earno’s murder.

On the chilly summer day of the Station, Aloê rose before dawn. She was staying with Jordel again because the empty ancientness of Tower Ambrose distressed her. They walked together, without a single thain-attendant, to the Chamber of the Graith. They met Illion, also walking without a thain, and Styrth Anvri, Sundra, Callion, and Keluaê Hendaij, who contented themselves with a single thain-attendant each.

But the streets adjoining the Dome were a solid mass of gray capes and clashing badges. Aloê was idly considering the possibility of making her way through the crowd on stilts when Jordel began to shout, in a shocking stentorian roar, “Make way for the Graith’s vengeancer! Make way!”

The thains-come-lately looked over their shoulders aghast and pressed back against those nearest them. Cracks opened up in the wall of gray capes, and the vocates plunged into them. Jordel continued his shouting, and soon they could hear his brother Baran doing the same in another part of the crowd, and Illion began shouting it, too, and no one in recorded history had ever heard Illion shout anything, and eventually they were on the other side of the crowd, climbing the stairs into the Chamber.

A few vocates were standing before the open double doors to the Chamber proper: Rild of Eastwall, resplendent in purple leggings; Gnython the Rememberer, wearing a green armband on both arms; Kothala of Sandport, sporting a red cap, and a few others.

“Fine ladies and gentlemen,” Jordel rasped (his voice still ragged from shouting), “perhaps you could tell your underlings not to block the streets. There’s more than one way to impair the Guard,” he added.

That spurred them to action; it takes fear to motivate the frightened, Aloê thought. They rushed away to give orders to their disorderly followers.

The pale sun had climbed more than half way up the cool blue sky before the vocates were assembled at Station, and the Guardians accused of Impairing the Guard stood, with folded hands, awaiting the Graith’s judgment. Aloê was obscurely pleased that Naevros had rallied for the occasion. If his clothes were not new, they looked it. His wounded hand looked almost healthy, except for the angry red line where it had been reattached to his arm. He held himself like a person who mattered. But he did not wear the red cloak of his office, and neither did Bavro wear his gray cape.

Lernaion did wear his white mantle of office, however, and Bleys presumably did, too, but it was hard to tell whether the oldest Guardian’s cloak was actually white. His clothes were filthy; his person was filthy; Aloê could smell him from where she stood at the Long Table, halfway across the great Chamber of the Graith. If he was at all embarrassed by his condition, he didn’t show it.

Since the Summoner of the City was among the accused, Noreê stood forward to convene the Station. No one objected to this—at least not out loud. But Aloê could not have been the only vocate who thought their peer was taking too much on herself.

“Vocates,” she said, actually rapping the Long Table with the silver staff of exile, “stand to order! We are come here to settle the fates of our members, accused of Impairment of the Guard and murder of the Guarded. I called you here because the Summoner of the City is among the accused and may not speak here, except in his own defense. If you prefer that someone else preside here, I will stand back.”

Silence.

“Go ahead, Noreê,” suggested Gyrla.

“Thank you, Guardians,” Noreê said. “I call on our vengeancer, Aloê Oaij.”

All faces in the room turned to Aloê. She’d thought much about this moment. It was a chance to wax rhetorical, to magnify herself in the minds of those who are impressed by torrents of well-chosen words. The last trial for Impairment had happened around the time she was being born, but she had read about that case and many others.

In the end, she eschewed any attempt to soothe or startle her listeners with rhetoric. She stated plainly what the conspirators had done and how she had discovered it. She concluded by saying, “The only witness I see who is not present is Ulvana, late of the Order of Arbiters. She was under guard at the High Arbitrate; perhaps she could be sent for.”

“That won’t be possible, I’m afraid,” Noreê said. “I received word from the High Arbitrate last night that Ulvana had committed suicide.”

Aloê felt a sudden stab of grief and pain at this. She was also angry: that the message had come to Noreê and not her; that Noreê had not bothered to tell her until now. The pale cold Guardian loomed over them all these days, sole ruler of the Wardlands. It would have to be stopped somehow.

“Did she jump or was she pushed?” Aloê snapped back.

“If I understand you, Vocate Aloê, you are suggesting that the High Arbitrate may have killed Ulvana in secret to prevent her testimony today.”

“It seems possible, at least.”

“It seems irrelevant, at best. Unless her testimony is key to your case.”

“No. I have stated my case. It is time for the witnesses to ascend to the Witness Stone.”

“May I speak?” Naevros called up from the floor.

“You may speak in your defense after you testify on the Stone,” Noreê said.

“That’s just it. I don’t intend to present a defense. Neither does my junior colleague. We will accept death or exile at the Graith’s choosing, or your vengeancer’s alone.”

“Hm.” Noreê allowed herself a cold smile and turned to Aloê. “What do you say, Vengeancer?”

“I’ll abide by the Graith’s decision, or exercise the prerogative if we can’t come to an agreement. But I think the accused should stand together in punishment; they are all equally guilty.”

“We can save part of a day if the summoners also waive their defense,” Noreê said, without much sign of hope. “Lernaion, what say you? Do you admit your guilt?”

“I defer to the judgement of my elder peer,” said Lernaion.

“Bleys: will you admit your guilt?”

This was the moment that horrible old man had waited for. He did not speak at first, but pretended to consider. Then he lifted his head high and cried out, “Waive my defense? I might do so for the good the Graith and the Guard, to which I have devoted the entirety of my very long life. But I will not waive, for the convenience of you, my fellow Guardians, or for the well-being of anyone in the world, my defense of the Wardlands. Everything, everything that the dedicated young vengeancer has told you is true. And it is not all. I have many secret deeds of blood and fear to my credit. I have killed—extorted—threatened—seduced—corrupted—stolen. These are crimes, if you please, if we stood in one of the courts of the unguarded lands. But we do not. All that I have done, all that I have ever done, was done to maintain the Guard.”

“Summoner Earno,” said Noreê coldly, “you may speak in your defense after you testify on the Stone—”

“Is that a threat?” shouted the red-faced old summoner. “I tell you, young Noreê, that I have come here expressly to testify on the Stone! I will speak, not in my defense, but in the defense of the Wardlands and in defense of my colleagues too shamed and bemused to speak for themselves. I have suffered; I have been beaten; I have endured night and day the torments of nightmares in that hellhole you consigned me to; I have kept the thin, fragile thread of life unbroken in my ancient body for this, and this alone: to speak and be heard where I could not be silenced! Lead me to your Witness Stone and let the Graith read the truths written in my heart!”

His voice broke on the last word. Aloê, glancing around the Long Table, saw that many of her peers were visibly moved at Bleys’ performance. That was the first time she suspected that the murderers of Earno would escape exile.

“The Stone is in its usual place,” Illion pointed out mildly. There were a few laughs at this, but most of the vocates still seemed taken with Bleys’ dramatic performance. He strode over to the dais of the Witness Stone and laboriously climbed the steps to reach it.

“You will wait for us to establish rapport with the Stone first, Summoner Bleys,” Noreê called down the Long Table.

“Take your time,” replied the great seer calmly.

Illion was standing next to the Stone: he placed a hand on it, and his eyes began to glow with rapture. He held out his other hand to Baran, who stood by him. Baran took the hand and closed his eyes. In time, he too showed the signs of visionary ascent.

It did take time, but one by one the vocates, of varying levels of skill, joined the rapport with the Stone. The only exception was Gyrla, who jumped down contemptuously without saying a word.

They were one, in the end, though all were different, and Noreê spoke in them and through them, saying, “Put your hands on the Stone, Bleys, and accept rapport.”

Bleys smiled—they felt rather than saw it—and placed one finger on the stone. Rapport was instantaneous; he was already in the visionary state.

Bleys said with his mouth, “I am innocent of Impairing the Guard. All I have done, all I have enlisted others to do, I have done to defend the Wardlands.”

They heard the words only vaguely with their ears. They knew them for truth in their hearts.

All stood separate in their shared mind for meditation then. Aloê had time to think: What he believes is true is different from what we may know to be true. He may have Impaired the Guard without intent. But she also knew that most of her case against him was already undone, irrelevant in the face of his shocking admission.

“Why did you murder Summoner Earno?” she finally found the strength to ask.

The great seer turned his attention toward her, and it seemed that she was alone with him.

“I have been waiting for someone to ask me that, my dear. Thank you. Once when I was walking the long roads in the empty lands east of the Sea of Stones, I met an odd entity, a sort of unbeing. . . .”

Aloê later learned that others had asked the same question, or a similar one, and that all the vocates had been drawn into Bleys’ meditation as if each alone was in rapport with him.

It seemed to her that she could see with his eyes, that she ached with his feet, grew short of breath and chill as shadows rose from the dusty earth of the empty lands. She knew somehow that it had been many years ago—shortly after the death of the Two Powers in Tychar.

The unbeing came upon Bleys as he was making a fire to warm himself. He sensed it with his insight. It tried to kill him with a weapon that had no name—but she recognized it. It was a kind of mist that came from nowhere and everywhere. It began to break down Bleys into his component selves, as acid breaks down a piece of meat.

But Bleys was not a piece of meat. He stepped outside of his body into vision and let his body dissolve and reform itself in the presence of the deadly fog, unconcerned with its fleshly agony.

In vision, Bleys saw-without-seeing the unbeing who attacked him.

He wove a path of vision around it in fifteen dimensions so that the unbeing was bewildered and could not dispel his mind as it was trying to dispel his body.

For a timeless time he meditated on the unbeing and its nature. Then he struck back, causing a little fog to condense in the locus where the unbeing presented itself.

The presence of physical matter distressed and excited the unbeing very much.

Bleys realized that the unbeing was the same type of entity that Aloê and Ambrosia had encountered in those same lands. (There was a side corridor of memory in Bleys’ meditation where Aloê saw herself as he saw her, and the cool, ironic lechery of his regard made her feel greasy.)

They duelled that way for a long time with weapons of being and unbeing, of making and unmaking. But eventually their duel became a kind of conversation, where actions bore symbolic meaning.

Bleys learned that the unbeing was only one element in a class of unbeings beyond the northern edge of the world. They had once been in it, but the advent of sun and of material life had driven them out in repugnance and hatred for the new-made world. The Two Powers had been fashioned as an experiment in destroying material life, but had failed because the unbeing sent to keep them in balance had succumbed to materiality.

Bleys revealed that he was a member of a class of beings, some of which had defeated the Two Powers.

The unbeing reiterated its urgent need, shared by all of its cohort, to wipe the slate of the world clean of physical life. Because it had no thought that information should be withheld, it shared various scenarios of world-cleansing.

Bleys was curious about the domain of the unbeings in the far north. Apparently it was a fragment of this world that they had managed to sever free, redrawing the borders of the sky so that it would not be tainted with light and life. So it persisted, a fragment of a world drifting alongside its former home in the Sea of Worlds.

A thought came to Bleys that shocked even him. But he tested it over and over, and there was no flaw that he could see.

He asked the unbeing if it could teach him the skills to redraw the border of the sky and separate a part of the world into its own world.

The unbeing knew part of that knowledge and shared that with him, but the knowledge was too great for any single element of the unbeings to contain its entirety.

Bleys told the unbeing that if he and his fellow beings could know those skills, they would no longer resist, would even assist the project of the unbeings.

That was when the great collaboration began. Bleys and the unbeing fashioned an un-object of many dimensions. With it, he could communicate with the unbeing wherever he was, wherever it was.

Aloê never found the words to explain the un-object to anyone else, but she didn’t need it explained to her: it hung in lightless luminescence at the center of her own mind.

With shock, Aloê realized that Bleys had incorporated the un-object into the Witness Stone itself. Even now, even now. . . .

As she let her awareness expand she became aware of many listeners, the class of unbeings in the far north beyond the wide world’s end, the Sunkillers.

And over the years Bleys, with increasing single-mindedness, pursued his collaboration with the unbeings. His plan was simple: the ultimate protection for the Wardlands was to remove the adjoining lands from existence entirely. Then the Wardlands could persist as an island in the Sea of Worlds, perhaps with an artificial sun and other conveniences, and the Sunkillers could have the rest of their world to themselves.

Of course that meant that everyone and everything in the world that lived and felt and was a being would die. That was what had shocked Bleys about his own plan . . . at first.

But only at first. He was not a purveyor of justice or an avatar of mercy. He did not judge; he defended, and this was the ultimate defense, a final solution to the problem of the unguarded lands.

He enlisted others in his project: Lernaion, who took a long time to convince. Lernaion took upon himself the task of enlisting Earno, but he had bungled it somehow. Aloê sensed Bleys’ rage more clearly than the details of the failure. But probably Earno was hopeless anyway. He had travelled too much in the world to sacrifice it willingly. He seemed to think he had some obligation to it, or to the people in it, that rivalled his obligation to the Guarded.

Lernaion and Bleys enlisted Naevros to do their knifework. Bleys had long ago noted Naevros’ susceptibility, and the whirlwind of thoughts surrounding the vocate’s seduction were tinged with cold pleasure in Bleys’ mind.

Now the unbeings, the Sunkillers, were concerned. They knew from their allies in the Wardlands that beings had been sent to investigate the sun’s death and that some of them were those who had destroyed the Two Powers. The unbeings did not understand and would not understand independent agency and free will. They looked on the actions of the beings approaching them as a betrayal by their allies. The unbeings would be angry, extremely resentful, if those others were not stopped somehow.

To save the Wardlands they must recall their colleagues from the edge of the world and make plans for life after the death of the sun.

Aloê felt the insidious, inevitable pull of the logic. It vibrated in her mind—in the pattern of the un-object that was party to and basis of their rapport. Aloê resisted it, rejected it. Suddenly she became aware of others doing the same. She fought harder, fought free, was alone in her own mind at last, not subject to rapport.

She descended from the visionary state.

As soon as she had pulled the world of matter and energy around her like a blanket, she shouted at Bleys: “Bleys! Break the rapport and let the vocates go or I’ll smash your Stone for you again!”

“If you like, my dear,” said Bleys warmly, and the light in his eyes died. His smile, however, lived on. The vocates, as they returned to full awareness, began to shout and question and argue, and that went on for hours. But Bleys had already won: he knew it, and Aloê did, too. The vocates were frightened, and the way to drive frightened people was with more fear.