XIX

1

Gratillonius drew rein at the grave of Eppillus, saluted, and looked ahead, down the long slope of Point Vanis to Ys.

It stood against the mass of Cape Rach like a dream. A haze of wind-blown spume and low-flying cloud grayed the wall, blurred roofs, made towertops shimmer and flicker as if they would be the pharos flame which could not burn tonight. Ocean raged, almost white save in the abyssal wave-troughs, crests so high that they did not break over most of the reefs, for it had buried them. It erupted against the mainland in bursts that climbed the cliffs, with shocks that Gratillonius thought he could feel through the earth. Wind was an elemental force out of the west. It thrust and clawed; to keep the saddle was a wrestling. The cry and the cold of it filled his bones.

This would be a night to house at home. His men were lucky to have arrived when they did. The blast had been strengthening throughout this day. Soon they would have had no choice but to take what shelter they could find and wait it out.

Gratillonius’s gaze travelled left into the vale. The Wood of the King surged under the storm, a black lake foamed with early green. He supposed that was where he would be. This was the first of those three days when the moon was reckoned full. Having missed his last Watch, and afterward the equinoctial Council, he’d likely be wise to observe immediately the law by which he reigned.

No, first he had other, more real duties. He signalled the command that his legionaries could not have heard if he voiced it, and proceeded along Redonian Way. Wearily but happily, they took formation and followed him on the double. Their pack beasts lurched behind. Favonius snorted, curvetted, shied and then plunged, made wild by the weather. Barely could Gratillonius restrain him. What a grand animal he was!

It would have been quickest to enter at Northbridge, but spray was driving over it. Also, the King’s first errand was to the palace, which lay nearer High Gate. Swinging around the eastern side, the travelers entered the lee of the city wall. Strong and ruddy it stood; Caesar’s builder’s had wrought well for Brennilis. But on the far side the old Gods, the angry Gods came riding from the sea.

Guards at the battlements had seen the party approach. Trumpets defied the wind. Men spilled out of barracks. The King of Ys entered between swords, pikes, and shouts uplifted in his honor.

It was quieter here, possible to talk without yelling, though air brawled and skirled while surf sent a deep drum-roll underneath. Gratillonius halted, brought the stallion around, signed to his legionaries. They clustered close, at ease, yet still bearing themselves in Roman wise. He smiled.

“Boys,” he said, “we’ve had a tough trek, and I thank you for every mile. You are now relieved of duty. Take off your armor, go to your homes, and greet your families from me.” He paused. “Your furlough will be permanent. You are overdue for discharge. I’ve been remiss about that, but your services were invaluable. In large part because of you, Ys is at peace, while prepared to deal with any future foes. Take your honorable retirement. Besides the usual veterans’ benefits, we’ll arrange a worthwhile bonus.”

He was surprised to see Adminius, Cynan, several others stricken. “Sir, we don’t want to quit,” the deputy protested. “We’d sooner march with our centurion till our feet wear out.”

Gratillonius’s eyes stung. He swallowed. “You, you shouldn’t nudge me like that,” he said. “Let me think about this. At the very least, oh, those who want can continue in the honor guard on state occasions. I’ll be proud of that. But you see, there’s no longer any call for more. I don’t think I’ll be leading you away ever again.”

He wheeled the horse and clattered off. At his back he heard, “Hail, centurion! Hail, centurion!” over and over.

The cheers died in the wind. Broken by walls, it whirled and leaped through streets, lanes, the crooked little alleys of Ys. Higher up, it streamed snarling around the towers. Air tasted of salt from the scud it bore along off the sea. The battering waves resounded louder as Gratillonius rode west.

Most folk had sought beneath their roofs. Nevertheless, Lir Way was not deserted. A fair number of people trudged toward the Forum, men, women, children. They were roughly though seldom poorly clad. Many carried bundles, some pushed barrows laden with simple goods. Gratillonius recognized certain among them. They were workers from the shops outside, countryfolk off the heights beyond, fishers out of Scot’s Landing, and their households. They knew him in their turn, stared at the man with the white-shot auburn beard atop his tall steed, sometimes waved and shouted. “The King, the King, the King’s come home!”

Gratillonius lifted an arm in acknowledgment. This was good to see. If the storm got much worse, they would have been in danger. The cottages under Cape Rach might actually be washed away. It had happened in the past. Somebody had had the foresight to organize evacuation of such persons into the city, and they were going to spread their pallets in public buildings. Who had the someone been? Bodilis—no, she’d have thought of the need, but lacked skill in leadership. Lanarvilis, likeliest, quite possibly assisted by Soren. If so, he must thank them. Could that, the concern for Ys they shared with him, begin a healing of the breach?

He left the avenue. As he climbed, the wind grabbed fiercer. His cloak flapped crazily, though he gripped it close. The city revealed itself as pinnacles in a cauldron of blown mist. Behind reddening, ragged clouds, the sun slipped close to worldedge. Its light glimmered off furious whiteness. Sena was hidden.

No guards stood at the palace gate. Well, it would have been useless cruelty to post them. Gratillonius dismounted, worked the bolt, led Favonius through and tethered the stallion to a tree. Its topiary was mangled. The garden lay a ruin, flowerbeds drowned, shrubbery twisted or flattened, shell scattered off paths. Gilt was stripped from the eagle on the dome. Gratillonius couldn’t be sure in the waning light, but he thought a bronze wing had been wrenched out of shape.

Windows were shuttered. However, the staff must be inside. Gratillonius mounted the steps and banged the great knocker. Again and again and again… like a challenger at the Wood who did not know that the King lay dead…. They heard at last. The door opened. Light poured out into the wind.

“My lord!” exclaimed the majordomo. “’Tis you! Come in, sir, do. Welcome home.” He forgot the dignity of his position and whooped: “The King is back!”

Gratillonius passed through. As the door shut, he found himself swaddled in warmth and brightness. The racket outside became an undertone. “I’m here to fetch the Key,” he said, “then I go onward.”

“But, my lord,” the majordomo wailed, “you’ve had such a long journey, and my lady has been anxious—”

Gratillonius brushed past. The atrium spread before him, pillars and panels agleam in a star-field of candles. Across the charioteers in the floor sped Tambilis.

He could only stand and await her. She ran heavily, burdened with the unborn child. Her gown was plain gray wool, her feet merely slippered. The brown hair tumbled from a fillet of carved ivory which had more color than her face. She fell into his arms and wept.

He held her and murmured. “Be at ease, darling, at ease, I’m back safe and sound, everything went well, better than we hoped—” She clutched him painfully hard and shuddered.

After a while, under his strokings, she regained some control. Head still nestled in the curve of his left shoulder, she mumbled through sobs, “I’ve been so frightened… for you, Grallon. I had to w-w-warn you. Mother would have, but she’s… on the island… praying for us all.”

Alarm jangled through him. “What’s this?” he snapped. “Why are you here?”

She disengaged herself. Her hands groped after his until he took them. Blinking, sniffling, she said in a small voice, “I moved hither a few days ago. I knew you’d seek the palace first, so belike I could tell you, put you on your guard, ere something bad happened. If n-n-naught else, while I was here, no more horrible feasts would be. What if you’d come home to one?”

His tone was flat in his hearing. “Well, tell me.”

She gathered her will and cast the news forth: “A Scotic warrior dwells with Dahut. She gave a celebration in his honor, in this your house. They say ’twas as wild a revel as ever Ys has known. She and the man go freely about together. But she’ll speak to none of us, her Sisters, nor does she seek the Temple or any of her duties. We know not what they intend, those two. Thus far he has kept from the Wood. They have claimed he’s a chieftain who’s searching out our markets, for trade. Or Dahut has. Niall japes and tells stories and sings songs but says never a meaningful thing. And he lives in her home.”

Gratillonius had seen men smitten in combat stand moveless a while, trying to comprehend what had happened to them. Likewise did he respond: “Nay, this cannot be. Dahut could not defile herself. She is daughter to Dahilis.”

“Oh, she’s declared the Scotian has a room of his own. Her servants are silent. ’Tis plain to see they’re terrified. She’s taken lodgings for those that used to live in, and sends everybody off at the end of each day’s work. Grallon, I have seen the looks she gives him.”

Momentarily and vaguely, he thought that this was to be expected, that it might even be the answer for which he had yearned. Let the girl be happy with a man she loved. Her father the King could protect them, steer them between the reefs of the law, win her freedom from the Sign of Belisama.

He saw how impossible that was, realized Dahut must know this just as well, and remembered Tommaltach, Carsa, and Budic—Budic.

“What is this fellow like?” he asked in the same dull fashion.

“Tall, strong, beautiful,” Tambilis replied. Steadiness was rising in her. “I think, though, he’s older than you by some years.”

“So if he challenges me, I might well take him? That would not end the trouble, my dear. Only if he took me.”

Terror cried: “You’ll not give in to him!”

Gratillonius shrugged. “Not purposely. I have a strong wish for his blood, I suppose. Still, what if he does not challenge? We shall have to think about this.”

Tears ran anew down the cheeks of Tambilis, but quietly. “Oh, poor hurt beloved. Come with me. I’ll pour you wine till you can rest the night. Tomorrow—”

He shook his head. “I must be on my way. I came only to fetch the Key.”

“The sea gate is already locked. Men carried Lir Captain down. Sea Lord Adruval Tyri helped him close the lock.”

“Good.” Adruval had always been a trusty friend. “Nonetheless, I want to see for myself. Afterward I have my Watch to stand in the Wood, for the next three nights and what’s left of their days. For I am the King.”

“I’ll meet you there,” she said with a ghost of eagerness.

Once more he shook his head. “Nay, I’d liefer be alone.” Sensing the pain in her, he added: “Tomorrow also. Besides, you ought not carry our little princess out into this weather. It should have slacked off by the third day. Come to me then.”

She tried to laugh. “’Twould need the Gods Themselves to keep me away.”

He kissed her, tasting salt, and went onward. The Key was in a casket in his bedroom. By the light of a candle he had brought along, he stared down at its iron length. Why was he taking it? The gate was properly shut.

But this was the emblem and embodiment of his Kingship. He hung it around his neck, letting it dangle from the chain on the breast of his Roman mail. It felt heavy as the world.

Tambilis stood mute, fists clenched, and watched him go out the door. Favonius whickered and stamped. The sun was set and dusk blowing in against the wind. Gratillonius loosened the tether and swung to the saddle. Hoofbeats clopped.

At a ring in the wall beneath the Raven Tower, he resecured his mount before he climbed those stairs. The storm screamed and smote. Surf bellowed. Here he could indeed feel its impact, up the stones and his body to the skull. Through a bitter haze of spindrift he made out the water, livid, and the western sky, the hue of a bruise.

Light gleamed weakly from a slit window. The sentries had taken refuge in the turret. Gratillonius passed by unseen, on along the top of the wall. War engine housings crouched, blurred to his sight, in the salt rain that drenched his clothes.

The harbor basin sheened uneasy. Metal-sheathed timber trembled to the battering of waves as he picked his way down the stair to the walk. Often he heard a boom louder yet, when a float dashed against the rampart. Yon spheres might want replacement later, he thought. The huge timber that was the bar creaked in its bracket. But the chain held it firm, and the lock held the chain. The sea gate of Ys stood fast.

Gratillonius wondered why he had come, when Tambilis had assured him there was no need. Something to fill an hour? He’d better be off. Darkness was deepening and the wind rising further.

On his return, a monster billow nearly came over the parapet. Water spurted across him. He stumbled, and recovered by slapping hands onto the tower. It too stood fast, above the crypt of Mithras. Should he descend and offer a prayer? No, if nothing else, that would be unkind to Favonius; and Mithras seemed remote, almost unreal, on this night.

Did Dahut sleep gladly at the side of her man?

Gratillonius hastened back to the pomoerium. He urged Favonius to a trot, and a gallop once they were on Lir Way. It was wholly deserted now. The buildings around the Forum loomed like giant dolmens—though did a window shine in the Christian church? The Fire Fountain brimmed with water, which the wind ruffled.

The moon had cleared the eastern hills. Towertop glass shone blank. Gratillonius fled on through the phantom city.

Out High Gate he went, onto Aquilonian Way, thence to Processional Way. The canal bridge rang beneath hoofs. The stream ran thickly, white with moonlight. The road bent eastward from the sea, toward the Wood. Nearing, Gratillonius heard boughs grind as the gale rushed among them. Like a second moon, the Shield swayed from the Challenge Oak, above dappled flagstones. It toned when the Hammer clashed on it.

Gratillonius dismounted and beat on the door of the Red Lodge till the staff roused. He himself led Favonius to the stable, unsaddled the stallion, rubbed him down; but he let the men bring hay, grain, and water. When they spoke of preparing a meal for him he said curtly that he wanted nothing but a crock of wine to take to his bedchamber.

There, after an hour alone, he could weep.

2

Still the wind mounted. By dawn it was like none that chronicles remembered. And still it mounted.

No one went forth. Even in the streets, air rammed to cast a man down, stun him with its roar as of the sky breaking asunder, choke and blind him in the spume that filled it. Glass and tiles fell from above, shattered, ripped loose, flung far before they struck. About the unseen noontide, upper levels of the tower called Polaris came apart. Metal, timbers, goods, and some human bodies flew hideously down to smash against whatever was below. The rest of the city endured, however strained and scarred. Oaken doors and shutters mostly clung to their hinges. Close-fitted dry masonry went unscathed. But the violence thrummed through, until every interior was a cavern of noise.

Northbridge Gate and Aurochs Gate were barred, for on those sides the sea thrust between rampart and headlands—higher yet, in those narrow clefts, than the billows from the west. Overrun again and again, the span on the north finally disintegrated. Water surged beneath the wall and broke into the canal, whose banks it gouged out to make a catchbasin for itself. The rock on the south side which shouldered against the wall of Ys was a barrier more solid, across which only the tops of the hugest breakers leaped. Nonetheless that portal also must stay shut; and because it had never been meant for this kind of attack, enough water got around it and under it that Goose Fair lay inches-deep submerged and Taranis Way became a shivering estuary for yards beyond.

Ebb brought scant relief, when the seas had such a wind behind them. At high tide, crests smashed just below the western battlements; jets sprang white above, like fingers crooked in agony; at once they shredded into spray and blew over Ys.

Yet the gate held.

Dahut and Niall were alone in her house. None of the servants she dismissed the evening before had dared return. It was cold; fires were out, and he cautionea against lighting any. It was dark; a single candle flame smoked in the bedchamber, where they had sought the refuge of blankets. It was drumful of tumult.

Dahut trembled close against the man. “Hold me,” she begged. “If we must die, I want it to be in your arms.”

He kissed her. “Be of good heart, darling,” he said, his own voice level. “Your wall stands.”

“For how long?”

“Long enough, I do believe. A wind like this cannot go on as a breeze might. It will soon be dropping, you mark my words.”

“Will it die down at once?”

Niall frowned above her head. “It will not that, either. It will remain a gale through this night, surely. And the waves it has raised, they will be slower than it to dwindle. But if rath and doors have withstood thus far, they should last until the end.”

“Thank you, beloved,” Dahut breathed. She sat up, cast off the covers, knelt on the mattress. Her hair and her nakedness shone in the dimness. She looked to the niche where stood her Belisama image, the lustful huntress that she alone of the Nine cared to have watching over her. “And thank you, Maiden, Mother, and Witch,” she called softly. “For Your mercies and Your promise that You will fulfill—through us twain here before You—our thanks, our prayers, our sacrifice.”

She glanced at Niall, who had stayed reclining, pillow-propped against the headboard. “Won’t you give thanks too?” she asked. “At least to Lir and Taranis.”

Through the dusk she saw his visage grim. “For our deliverance? The Three have brought Grallon back just at this time. Is the tempest also Their work? Does Ys stand off the Gods Themselves?”

She lifted her hands. Horror keened: “Say never so! Ys does abide.” She caught her breath. “And, and soon we’ll restore the law. Soon you, the new King, will give Them Their honor. They foresee it. They must!”

He likewise got to his knees. His bulk loomed over her, blocking sight of the candle. “I have been thinking on that, and more than thinking,” he told her slowly. “Dreams have I sought by night and omens by day. For I am fosterling of a poet, stepson of a witch, patron of druids, and myself descended from the Gods of Ériu. Much have I seen and much have I learned. Insights are mine that no lesser King may know. In me is fate.”

She stared. “What? You n-never said this. Oh, beloved, I could feel in my heart you… were more than you pretended—But what are you?”

“I am Niall of the Nine Hostages, King at Temir, conqueror of half the Scoti, scourge of Rome, and he whom your father most bitterly wronged ere ever you were born.”

Dahut cast herself down before him. “Glorious, glorious!” she cried brokenly. “Lir Himself brought you to me!”

Niall laid a hand on her head. “Now you have heard.”

“It whelms me, lord of mine—oh—”

“It could be the death of me, did news get about too soon.”

“My tongue is locked like the sea gate.” Dahut rose to a crouch. Hair had tumbled over her eyes. She gazed through it, up at his massive murkiness. “But once you’re King in Ys, we’re safe, we’re free.” Joy stormed through her voice. “You’ll be sacred! Together we’ll beget the new Age—the Empire of the North—”

“Hold,” he commanded.

Again she knelt, arms crossed over bosom against the cold, and waited. The wind wuthered, the sea thundered.

“Sure, and that’s a vaunting vision,” he said, stern as a centurion. “But ofttimes have the Gods given men their finest hopes, then dashed them to shards on the ground. Grallon follows his soldier God; and who shall foreknow whether Mithras proves stronger than the Mórrigu? Grallon is a Roman, living out of his proper time, a Roman of the old iron breed that carried its eagles from end to end of the world. He and his like cast me bloodily back at the Wall in Britannia. He and his schemes wrecked my fleet, slaughtered my men, and killed my son at the wall of Ys. Well could it happen that his sword fells myself in the Wood.”

“Nay, Niall, heart of mine, nay!” She groped for him.

He pushed her back. “Your earlier lovers came to grief. Will you be sending me to the same?”

She flinched. He pursued: “You’ll get no further chance after I am dead. You’ve made your desire all too clear. Grallon can be fond and foolish no longer. What do they do in Ys with unchaste Queens? Throw them off the cliffs?”

Dahut straightened. “But you will win! And then naught else will count. Because you’ll be the King of Ys.”

“Your wish spoke there,” he said bleakly. “My insight has told me otherwise.”

“Nay—”

He reached to lay a palm over her mouth. “Quiet, lass. I know what you’d say. If I despair, I can still escape. Sure, and ’tis dear of you. But could I be leaving my love to a cruel death, and name myself a man?

“Hark’ee. There is a hope. I have seen it in the flash of a blade, I have heard it in the croak of a raven, I have understood it in the depths of a dream.

“The King of Ys bears on his breast the Key of Ys. It is more than a sigil. It is the Kingship’s very self. Behold how Heaven and Ocean cannot open the sea gate. That power lies with him.”

“But Kings die,” she quavered.

He nodded. “They do. And the power passes onward. It is mostly small. How often must the gate be barred and locked? A few times a year, for caution’s sake. Sailors who ken wind and tide spend no great strength at their work. Nor do the Gods, keeping the world on its course—most of the time.

“Tonight, though, the sea beleaguers Ys. It hammers on the shield of the city. Power must needs blaze within the Key, the Key that stands for the life of your people.

“While this is true, the bearer is invincible. Were I or any man to go now against Grallon, he would prevail.

“Hush. Bide a moment. I cannot wait till the need is past and the power that is in the Key has faded. Tremendous seas will be crashing on wall and gate for days to come. Meanwhile the wind will have slacked and folk can move abroad. Grallon will seek me out. He must. Think. If I do not challenge him, he will challenge me. He is the King; he may do this, the more so if he claims he’s exacting justice. And there will be no stopping him. For ’twill not be for his own peace or safety. ’Twill be on your account, Dahut, you, his daughter. He’ll hope that having killed me, he can win clemency for you—blame the dead man for leading you astray—though because he is not really a fool, Dahut, never again will you have the liberty to work for his death.

“So it is.”

She shook her head, bewildered. “The Sisters never taught me this.”

“Did they teach you everything the Gods might ever reveal?”

She was mute, until: “What can we do?”

Teeth gleamed in the night-mask of his face. “If I bore the Key, the power would be mine. I could call him forth ere his Watch is ended, and slay him in the Wood.”

“But—”

He leaned forward and took her by the shoulders. “You can do it for me, Dahut,” he said. “You’ve told me how you can cast a sleep spell, how you did at the Red Lodge itself. This time you need not rouse him. Only steal in, lift the chain of the Key from off his neck, and carry the thing to me.”

“Oh, nay,” she pleaded.

“Would you liefer I die at his hands?”

“The Gallicenae have a second Key. They’ll lend it to him.”

Niall laughed. “Then at worst, we meet on equal ground, Grallon and I. Gladly will I that. Even so, puzzlement and surprise ought to have shaken him.”

Dahut covered her face. “Sacrilege.”

“When you are the Chosen of the Chosen?”

She cowered.

His sigh was as cold as the wind: “Very well. I thought you loved me, Emer to my Cú Culanni. I thought you had the faith and the courage to fare beside your man. Since you do not, I may honorably go from Ys in the morning. Meanwhile I shan’t trouble you.”

He swung his legs around and stood up.

“Niall, nay!” she screamed, and scrambled after him. He caught her before she went to the floor. “I will, I will!”

3

By sunset the wind had indeed lessened. It was still such as few could travel in, but along the Armorican seaboard it had wrought the harm of its full rage. There remained its malevolence.

Clouds blew thicker. Guards had resumed their posts, with frequent relief; but the moonlight was so fitful that the night watch did not see the two who slipped out through High Gate.

The going was treacherous at first. Workshops and stables beyond the wall had littered ruin over Aquilonian Way. Nails and splinters lurked for those who must climb across. More than once, Niall’s strong hand saved Dahut from falling.

After they reached Processional Way they had a clear path save for torn-off boughs. The bridge across the canal survived. To the left, light flickered across water that chopped a foot or more deep under the rampart. It had not drained back into the sea, for even at ebb, waves boomed in through the gap between city and headland. On the right the amphitheater glimmered ghostly, the Wood of the King hulked altogether black. Farther on were gulfs of darkness. The moon hurtled among clouds which it touched with ice. When the road turned east and the walkers left the lee of Ys behind them, they felt the wind on their backs as an oncoming assault. It hooted and yammered. Louder, now, was the roar of Ocean.

Near the Wood, that sound was matched by the storm through the trees. Their groans were an undertone to its wails. Some along the edge lay uprooted, limbs clawing at heaven. Pieces broken off the Challenge Oak bestrewed the court. The Shield tolled insanely to the swinging of the Hammer. When a moonbeam reached earth, the metal shone dulled by the dents beaten into it.

Otherwise the Sacred Precinct had protection. The three buildings squatted intact, lightless. As Dahut came between them, a neigh burst from one, and again and again.

“Be quick ere that brute wakes the whole house,” Niall snapped.

Dahut raised her arms. The moon saw her attired in the blue gown and high white headdress of the Gallicenae. Her chant cut through soughing and creaking. “Ya Am-Ishtar, ya Baalim, ga’a vi khuwa—”

Niall felt for the sword scabbarded across his back. At once aware of what he did, he dropped his hand. Its fingers closed on the haft of his knife.

“Aus-t ur-t-Mut-Resi, am ‘m user-t—”

Niall made a wolf-grin.

“Belisama, Mother of Dreams, bring sleep unto them, send Your blind son to darken their minds and Your daughter whose feet are the feet of a cat to lead forth their spirits—”

The horse had fallen silent.

Presently Dahut did also. She turned to Niall. Moonlit, her face was as pale as the windings above it. He barely heard her amidst the noise: “They will slumber till dawn, unless powerfully roused. But come, best we be swift.”

“We?” he answered. “Nay, go you in alone. I might blunder and make that awakening racket. You know your way about your father’s lair.”

She shivered, caught her lip between her teeth, but moved ahead. He accompanied her onto the porch. At the entrance he drew blade and took stance.

Dahut opened the door enough to get through. It was never barred, in token of the King’s readiness to kill or be killed. She entered, closed it behind her, poised breathless.

Coals banked in the fire-trenches gave some warmth; shelter from the wind meant more. That sullen glow revealed little, but a lamp burned lonely. It had served two men slumped at a table, heads on arms. Other must already have been asleep on the benches along the walls. The light straggled forth, discovering among glooms only the ragged lower ends of battle banners, the scorn on two of the idol-pillars upholding the roof.

Dahut straightened and glided forward to the interior partition. Seeing its door ajar, she peered around the jamb. The corridor beyond was not quite a blindness. Windows were shuttered, and the moon would have given scant help anyhow, but a dim luminance, reflected off tile floor and plaster walls of this Roman half of the building, sufficed. She moved on, smoke-silent, though the storm would surely have covered any footfalls.

The door to Gratillonius’s room stood open. Thence came the radiance of seven candles in a brass holder on a table at his bedside. He had been reading; a book lay on the blankets. She knew not whether her spell had ended that or he had earlier fallen into a sleep which she made profound. Between his grief at learning of her conduct—he must have heard, with Tambilis waiting meddlesome in the palace—and the tumult this day, he could have had scant rest or none until now.

Dahut stalked to the bedside and regarded him. She recognized his book. Bodilis had forced her to study it: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in Latin translation. An arm and both shoulders were bare outside the King’s blankets. Doubtless he was naked, as he had been the night she came here to deceive him into making her his.

She sighed.

He did not appear helpless as most sleepers do. His features were too rugged. The mouth had not softened, nor the brow eased. But how weary he seemed, weary beyond uttering, furrows plowed deep, gray sprinkled over the ruddiness of his hair and streaked down his beard.

His neck remained a column smooth and thick, firmly rooted in heavy shoulders and barrel chest. Around it sparkled a fine golden chain. Blankets hid the lower part.

Dahut’s breath quickened. She clenched fists and teeth.

Resolution returned. She bent above the King. Gently as a mother with a babe, she slipped a hand beneath his head and raised it off the pillow. Her other hand went under the covers, over the rising and falling shagginess to the iron shank. She slid the Key forth into her sight. The chain she passed above his head until it encircled her supporting arm. She lowered him back onto the pillow and waited tensely.

His eyes moved beneath the lids. His lips formed a whisper. He mumbled and stirred. Dahut waved her free hand over him. He quieted. She saw him breathe, but the wind smothered the sound.

She gave him a brief archaic smile and departed.

Through the hall she went, with a gait that grew confident until it was a stride. She passed out the door and shut it behind her as if she struck down an enemy. Niall backed off, startled in the gloom. She pursued, swung the Key, made it ring against his sword.

“You have it?” he asked hoarsely. “Let’s away.”

They stopped when they got to the road and could see better. The moon threw harried light upon them and the thing she reached to hang around his neck. Her arms followed.

He made her end the kiss. “Back we go, at once,” he declared.

Dahut’s laughter pealed. “Aye. Make haste. I’m afire!”

—In her bed, after their first fierce passage of love, she asked, “Tomorrow morning will you challenge him?”

“That might be shrewd,” Niall said into the warmth and silkiness and musk of her.

“Catch him amazed, uncertain.” She squirmed and burrowed against him. “Tomorrow night will be our wedding night.”

“Grant me some hours of rest first,” he requested with a leer.

“Not yet,” she purred. Her lips and fingers moved greedily. “I want your weight on me again. I want to feel the Key cold between my breasts while you are a torch between my thighs. Oh, Niall, death itself cannot quench my wanting of you.”

The wind keened, the sea rumbled.

4

Corentinus woke.

For a moment he lay motionless. His room was savagely cold. Through a smokehole knocked out of the wall under the ceiling for his cookfire, he heard the storm. A nightlight, tallow candle in a wooden holder, guttered and stank. He did not ordinarily keep such a thing, but at a time when woe might fall on his people without warning, he must be ready. It barely revealed his few rough articles of furniture. The depths of the chamber were lost in night. Once the temple treasury, it was much too big for a servant of Christ.

Corentinus’s eyes bulged upward. Air went jagged between his teeth. It came back out in an animal moan.

“O dear God, no!” he begged. “Mercy, mercy! Let this be a nightmare. Let it be only Satan’s work.”

Decision came. He tossed off his one blanket and rose from his pallet on the floor. Snatching a robe from a peg, he pulled it over his lanky frame. Without pausing to bind on sandals, he took the candle, tucked his staff under an arm, and left.

The hallway led to the vestibule. Another small flame showed it crowded. Folk sprawled asleep, refugees from outside the city. Corentinus had admitted any who could not find better quarters, without inquiring as to their beliefs, and arranged for food and water and chamber pots. He made his way among the bodies to the inner door, opened it, and entered the sanctuary.

When he closed it off, he found himself in still more of an emptiness than his room. This section occupied a good half of what had been the temple of Mars, before Roman pressure brought conversion to the sole church in Ys. Little was in it other than the canopied altar block and a couple of seats. The cross on the altar glimmered athwart shadows. The pagan reliefs along the walls were lost to sight.

Corentinus lowered candle and staff, raised his arms before the cross, and chanted the Lord’s prayer. It echoed hollowly. He laid himself prostrate on the floor. “Almighty God,” he said against its hardness, “forgive a thick-headed old sailor man. I wouldn’t question Your word. Never. But was that dream from You? It was so terrible. And so darkling. I don’t understand it, I honestly don’t.”

Here within the stone, silence abided.

Corentinus climbed back onto his feet. He lifted his arms anew. “Well, maybe You’ll tell me more when I’ve obeyed Your first order,” he said. “If it did come from You. A dunderhead like me can’t be sure. But I’ll do what the angel bade me, supposing it was a true angel. Doesn’t seem too likely it was a devil like the one that tried to trick Bishop Martinus, because I don’t see any real harm in this deed. Forgive me my wonderment, Lord. I’ll do my best.”

He gathered staff and candle. As he reached the door, he shuddered. With an effort, he opened it and re-entered the vestibule.

A woman had roused to nurse her infant. She saw the tall form and called softly, anxiously, “Is aught wrong, master?”

Corentinus halted.

“Please tell me, master,” the woman said. “We don’t serve your God, but we are in His house and ours are wrathful.”

Thoughts tumbled through him. He could wake these people and bring them, at least, with him. But no. It wasn’t that they were heathen, his small flock being scattered about the city. They were nonetheless God’s wayward children. But they were the merest handful among unreachable thousands. Worse, he did not know what it was that would stalk them this night.

“Peace, my daughter,” he said. “Calm your fears. You are the guest of Christ.”

He blew his candle out. The wind would immediately have killed it. As poor as his congregation was, he economized wherever he could. He went out the main door, over the portico, down the stairs, across the Forum.

Wind still howled and smote. Air was still bitter with salt and cold. The gale had, though, dwindled enough that the crashing of the sea against the city wall came louder. Clouds flew low, blackening heaven, hooding towertops. The moon streamed just above western roofs. By its flickery pallor Corentinus hastened, up Lir Way toward High Gate and the Wood of the King.

5

After Dahut was sunken in sleep, Niall left her bed. Cautiously he put on the warm clothes he had worn earlier and flung aside when he and she returned here. The sword he hung across his back. At his left hip he belted a purse of coins, thinking wryly that it balanced the dagger on the right in more ways than one. Gesocribate was about two days distant for an active man afoot. Could he not buy food along the way he’d arrive hungry, unless he came upon a sheep or something like that and butchered it. However, if need be he could turn a deaf ear to the growls in his belly. There would be celebration at journey’s end!

Or would there? His scheme might fail; he might himself perish—if the Gods of Ys were, in truth, less than death-angry with Their worshippers.

Niall bared teeth. Whatever came, his Gods would know he had ventured that which Cú Culanni might not have dared.

On an impulse he stepped to the bedside and looked down. Candlelight lost itself in the amber of Dahut’s tousled hair. She lay on her back, arms widespread. A young breast rose out of the blankets. From the rosiness at its peak a vein ran blue, spiderweb-fine, down an ivory curve marred by a beginning bruise where he had caressed it too strongly. Wild, she had never noticed. Now the pulse at the base of her throat beat slow and gentle. Her lips were slightly parted. How long were the lashes reaching toward those high cheekbones. When he bent low, he sensed warmth radiating from her. She smelled of sweat and sweetness. The crescent of the Goddess glowed.

Almost, he kissed her. A stirring went through his loins. He pulled himself back barely in time, straightened, but did not go at once.

Gazing at her, he said very low in the tongue of Ériu:

“It’s sad I am to be leaving you, my darling, for darling you were, a woman like none other, and you loved me as never I was loved before nor hope ever to be again. I think you will haunt me until I join you in death.

“But it must be, Dahut. I came here sworn to vengeance. I may not break my oath, nor would I; for Ys killed the son that Ethniu gave me, long and long ago. Yet sad I am that your Gods chose you for the instrument.

“How could you believe I would make myself King of Ys? Oh, it’s mad with love you were, to believe that. I am the King at Temir, and I will go home to my own.

“Should I bind myself to this city I hate? Sure, and I would first have slain Grallon. But he was not alone in bringing doom on my good men. All Ys did, foremost its nine witch-Queens.

“Let me become its King, and I doubt such a chance as is mine tonight would ever wing its way back. In the end I too would fall, not grandly among my warriors, but alone in the Wood of slaughter; and From my blood Ys would suck new life. It shall not happen, not to me nor ever again to anyone else.

“I too will seek Grallon, where he lies in the slumber you cast upon him. I stayed my hand then, for you might have screamed. My first duty is against Ys. Afterward, if the Gods spare me—oh, it will go hard to kill a man in his sleep. I thought of waking him. But that would make a challenge fight, and though Ys be gone, what hold might its Gods yet keep on me? Let me go free.

“You wish to be my wife, Dahut. It’s glorious you are; but so in her youth was Mongfind. Should I take for wife a woman who plotted the death of her father?

“As for the rest, two are also comely, though second and third behind you. But the second would bear a horror of me; when I embraced her, she would lie like a corpse and send her soul afar. The third is a sorceress who helped bring death to dear Breccan. Should I take to me the murderess of my son? So are the rest, apart from the cripple; and they are crones.

“Let them die, let the Sign come on fresh maidens, and still the Nine would be the only women I could have; and not a one of them would be giving me another son.

“Your Ys, all Ys is the enemy I am vowed to destroy. This night, the lady at my side is the Mórrigu.

“Farewell, Dahut.”

He lifted the Key that hung on his breast and kissed its iron.

He departed.

Wind struck him with blades that sang. Seen from the doorway, the city was a well of blackness out of which lifted barely glimpsed spears, its towers. The horns of land hunched brutal. Beyond ramped the sea, white under the sinking, cloud-hunted moon.

When he loped downward, houses soon blocked that sight from him. He was a tracker, though, who had quickly learned every trail he wanted and had scant need of light.

The streets twisted to Lir Way. Crossing the empty Forum, he saw the Fire Fountain brimful of shivery water, flung off waves whose hammering resounded louder for each pace he took. He threw a gibe at the stately buildings of the Romans, at the church of Christ.

When he left the avenue, the streets grew more narrow and mazed than those where the wealthy dwelt. He was in Lowtown, ancestral Ys which Brennilis had saved. Behind the sheerness of a tower—clouds raced moon-tinged, making it seem to topple on him—he found the moldering houses of the Fishtail. The life that throbbed in them had drawn into itself, the quarter lay lightless, none save he and the wind ran through its lanes. He glimpsed a cat in a doorway. Its baleful gaze followed him out of sight.

Nearing the rampart, he entered a quarter likewise ancient and poor, but a place for working folk. Among these dwellings he came by the Shrine of Ishtar. Awed in spite of himself, he stopped for an instant and lifted the Key before the dolmenlike mass. Let Her within see that he went to wreak justice.

A little farther, he had the Cornmarket on his right. Its paving sheened wet. On his left a row of warehouses fronted on the harbor. Between them he spied the basin. Ahead reared the city wall. Self-shadowed, the monstrous bulk stood like a piece cut out of heaven. Over and over, sheets of foam spurted to limn its battlements. The rush and crash trampled the sounds of gale.

Niall advanced. At the inside edge of the pomoerium stood the Temple of Lir, small, dark, deserted, but the rudeness and mass of its stones bespeaking a strength implacable. Again Niall halted and raised the Key. “Though this house of Yours fall, You will abide,” he said into the roaring. “Come seek me in Ériu. You shall have Your honors in overflowing measure, blood, fire, wine, gold, praise; for we are kindred, You and I.”

Just the same, he dared not enter the unlocked fane. Besides, he should hasten. Dawn was not far off.

Drawing his sword, knife in his left hand, he slipped up the staircase to the wall top. The Gull Tower reared ahead. Moonlight came and went over its battlements and the parapet beneath. Each time a wave broke against the rampart, spray sleeted; and the impact was deafening.

This was a guard point. Was a sentry outside, or did the whole watch shelter within the turret? Niall crouched low and padded forward.

Light shone from slit windows. The door was shut. In front of it did stand an Ysan marine. While the tower blocked off wind and water, he was drenched, chilled, miserable. He stood hunched into his cloak, helmeted head lowered, stiffened fingers of both hands clutching his pikeshaft.

He must die unbeknownst to his comrades.

Niall squatted under a merlon. The next great wave struck and flung its cloud. He leaped with it, out of the whiteness, and hewed.

Himself half blinded, he misgauged. His sword clanged and glided off the helmet. The young man whirled about. Before he could utter more than a croak, Niall was at him. The Scotian had let his sword fall. His right arm went under the guard’s chin and snapped the head back. His left drove dagger into throat and slashed.

The pike clattered loose. Blood spouted. Niall shoved. The sentry toppled over the inner parapet, down to the basin. Night hid the splash. His armor would sink him.

Niall retrieved his sword. Had the rest heard?

They had not.

He wiped dagger on kilt, sheathed both weapons, and trotted onward. The sea showered him, washing away blood.

Above the northern edge of the gate, he stopped and looked. As if to aid him, for that instant the surf was lower and clouds parted from before the moon.

On his left gleamed, faintly, the arc of the harbor. Its water was troubled; he saw vessels chafe at their moorings along the wharf. Yet wall and gate kept it safe, as they had done these past four centuries. Behind reached Ys, mostly a cave of night but its towers proud in the moonlight. Cape Rach, Point Vanis, the inland vale were dream-dim.

On his right heaved Ocean. Wind, still a howl and a spear, had in the fullness of its violence piled up seas which would not damp out for days; and as Niall stood above, the spring tide was at its height. Skerries lay drowned underneath, until time should resurrect them to destroy more ships. A few rocks thrust above the relentlessness out of the west. Each time a wave smote them, they vanished in chaos.

The sea was not black but white, white as the breasts of Dahut. A billow afar growled like the drums of an oncoming army. As it drew closer, gathered speed, lifted and lifted its smoking crest, the breaker’s voice became such thunder as rolls across the vault of heaven. When it struck and shattered, the sound was as of doomsday.

Niall shaded his eyes and squinted. He sought for the floats that on ebb tide drew open the doors. There, he had found the nearer of them. It dashed to and fro at the end of its chain, often hurled against the wall. Had that battered the sphere out of shape? He could not tell in the tricky light, through the flying spindrift. But neither one had cracked open and filled. They were too stoutly made.

Now and then the sea recoiled on itself. Suddenly emptiness was underneath the floats. They dropped. Chains rattled over blocks in sculptured cat’s heads till they snapped the great balls to a halt. It was a wonder they had not broken; but they likewise were well wrought of old. The waves climbed anew and again the globes whirled upon them.

Niall smiled. All was as it should be.

He started down the inner stair. Below the wall there was shielding against wind and water, save for what flew across. However, the stone was slippery and the moon hidden. He kept a hand on the rail and felt his way most carefully.

The stairs ended at a ledge. In the dark he stumbled against the capstan there and cursed. He should have remembered. He had kept every sense whetted when Dahut showed him the system, as her father once showed her.

Well, the machine had naught to do with him. It was for forcing the gate shut if need arose at low tide. He groped past a huge jamb to the walk that ran across this door.

Copper sheathing was cold and slick beneath his right hand. His left felt along the rail that kept him from falling into the chop of the basin. Whenever the surf hit, the door trembled and he heard a groaning beneath the crash. But it held, it held.

Distance between rail and metal suddenly widened. He was past the walk, onto the platform at the inner edge of the door. He turned to the right. His fingers touched iron, a tremendous bracket, and inside it the roughness of the beam that latched the gate.

They found the chain that secured the bar.

They found the lock that closed the chain.

They took the Key and felt after the hole.

It seemed like forever while he fumbled blind. A horror was in him, that he would drop the Key, that it would skitter off and be lost in the harbor which the gate guarded. He forced the fear aside and continued seeking.

The Key entered. He felt it engage. He turned it and felt the pins click.

He withdrew the Key, unclasped the lock, cast it from him to sink. A moment he stood moveless: then, with a yell, flung the Key after it.

The chain slithered through his grasp. The bar was free.

It would not likely rise of itself, however much it and the portal that it held shivered beneath blows. Niall was not finished yet.

He made his way onward. The south door had its own platform, butting against that of the north door at their juncture. There was another bracket. Beyond it was the pivot on which the beam turned.

A light cable ran from the north end of the bar, through a block high on the south door, and down. When Niall reached its cleat, he bayed laughter. He knew what to do, as fully as if he could see.

He hauled on the line. The effort was small, so craftsmanly counter-weighted was the timber. Through wind and sea, did he hear it creak while it rose?

Soon he could pull in no more, and knew the beam rested entirely against the south door, that the gate of Ys stood unbarred. Niall cleated the cable fast.

He hurried back over platforms and catwalk, up stairs, to the top of the wall.

Wildness greeted him. Let the floats haul the doors open just once, just part of the way. The tide would rush in. Striking from both sides, waves would rip the barriers from their hinges. Dry-laid, the wall of the city might fall to pieces. Surely a flood as high as Hightown would ride into Ys.

A wave smashed home. Its crest cataracted over Niall of the Nine Hostages. He stood fast. After the salt rain was over, he cupped hands around mouth and shouted seaward: “I have done what was my will. Now do You do what is Yours!”

He turned and ran, to get clear while the time remained.

6

Gratillonius woke inch by inch. In half-awareness he felt himself struggle heavily against it. He sank back toward nothingness. Before he had escaped, the drag recalled him. It was as if he were a fish, huge and sluggish, hooked where he had lain at the bottom of the sea. That was a strong fisherman who pulled him nearer and nearer the light above.

He broke surface. Radiance ravaged him. He plunged. His captor played him, denied him the deeps, compelled him to breathe air under open sky. On his second rising, he saw the gray-bearded craggy face. The sea lured him with its peace. He went below. That was briefly and shallowly. Once more he must ascend, and now he came altogether out.

Corentinus’s hands were bony and hard, shaking him. “Rouse, rouse, man!” the pastor barked. “What’s got into the lot of you? Lying like dead folk—” He noticed eyes blink. Stingingly, he slapped the King’s cheeks, left and right.

Gratillonius sat up. Astonishment and anger flared. The fish burned away, and he was on earth, himself. “You! By Hercules—”

Corentinus stepped back and straightened. “Use your wits,” he said. “Shake off that torpor. Get dressed. Help me kick the men awake. You’re in bad danger, my friend.”

Gratillonius drew rein on his temper. This fellow wouldn’t come here on a midnight whim.

Midnight? What hour was it? Wind yowled and rattled shutters. The room was musty-cold. His candles guttered, stubs. So a long while had passed since he dropped off—at last, at last—into blessed Lethe. Darkness outside must be nearing an end.

“Tell me,” he said.

Corentinus took his staff, which he had leaned against the wall. He clung to it and let it bear his weight, stared before him and answered low: “A vision. I saw a mighty angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head; and his face was like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire. And seven thunders resounded while he cried, ‘Woe to the city! For it shall perish by the sea, whose queen it was; and the saints shall mourn. But go you, servant of God, make haste to the King of the city, and call him forth ere his foeman find him, that he may live; for the world shall have need of him. It is spoken.’

“I came to myself with the voice and the brightness bewildering me still. I didn’t understand—”

Abrupt tears ran from beneath the tufted brows, across the leathery hide. “I did-didn’t know what it meant,” Corentinus stammered. “Could it be a demon in me? Would God really… let His innocents die by the thousands, unhallowed? I went and prayed for a sign. Nothing, nothing came. I thought, I grabbed after the hope, that God wouldn’t destroy Ys. Wicked men might, the way they destroyed Jerusalem. You could forestall them. The command was to go and warn you”

He swallowed before he finished in a steadier tone: “Maybe this is a trick of Satan. Or maybe I’m in my dotage. Well, there didn’t seem to be much harm in going to you. At worst, you’d boot me out. At best, you may untangle the thing and do whatever’s needful. Me, I’ll help any way I can. And—” he laid hand over heart—“I’ll be praying for a clear sign, and for Ys.”

Gratillonius had listened frozen. He recoiled from prophecies and Gods, to immediacies a man could seize. “It’s senseless,” he snapped. “The weather’s easing off. We won’t take any more damage from it. As for enemies, none could possibly come by sea, and the land’s secure at least as far as Treverorum. I know; I just traveled through.”

The same practicality responded: “No army bound here, no. But a band of sneak murderers could use the storm for cover. Who? Well, what about vengeful Franks? There are men who might well secretly have egged them on.”

“I doubt that. The orders of the praetorian prefect were strict.” Gratillonius ran fingers through his hair. “In any case, I am alert now.”

“Your attendants aren’t,” Corentinus reminded him. “Not a man on watch. They’re sleeping like drugged hogs. I say let’s pummel them out of it, and all of you take arms. Might be a good idea to lead them to town. Forget your wretched vigil. Leave this house of death.”

Remembrance came back of another night. Gratillonius gaped. He swung himself out of bed. “We’d better get going.” His glance fell on the Christian’s bare feet. They bled from a score of slashes. “What happened to you?”

“High Gate’s choked with wreckage. I stopped and told the guards they ought to clear it, because we might have sudden need of the road. But I couldn’t wait for that, of course.”

Gratillonius nodded. It was a command such as he would have given, were he not confined to this kennel. Need he be?

He went after his clothes. Something was missing. What? He felt at his chest. He choked on an oath, sprang about, scrabbled frantically in the bedding.

The Key was gone.

Faintness closed in on him.

It receded. “What’s the matter?” Corentinus asked. “I thought you were about to drop.”

Gratillonius snatched for his garments. “You wake the men,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Follow me—No, best you stay. They aren’t trained fighters. But they should be able to stand off an attack on the Lodge, if things come to that.”

“Where are you bound?”

“Yonder’s a lantern. Light it for me.”

Corentinus’s voice reached him as if across the breadth of Ocean. He sounded appalled. “The Key of Ys! I should have seen, but you keep that devil’s thing hidden—”

“It may well be a devil’s thing—now. I’m going after it.”

“No! God’s word is to save you. If Ys is to fall—”

“I told you to light me my lantern.”

A shadow wavered before Gratillonius in the dimness. He turned. Corentinus had raised his staff. Gratillonius snarled. “Would you club me? Stand aside before I kill you.”

Not troubling with undergarments, he had drawn on breeks, tunic, boots. His sword hung on the wall, from a belt which also supported knife and purse. He took it and secured the buckle.

“In Christ’s name, old friend,” Corentinus quavered, “I beg you, think.”

“I am thinking,” Gratillonius replied.

“What?”

“I don’t know what. But it’s too ghastly to sit still with.”

Gratillonius opened the lantern and lighted its candle himself off a stub. On his way out he took a cloak from its peg.

Wind squalled, whined, bit. Its passage through the Wood made a noise like surf. The Challenge Oak creaked, the Shield rang. Right, left, and behind, night crouched around the frantic yellow circle of his light. The wood and the meadow beyond were gray under the beams of a moon he could not see but which tinged the bellies of clouds flying low overhead.

Heedless of fire hazard, he carried the lantern into the stable and set it down. Warmth enfolded him, odors of hay and grain and manure. For an instant Gratillonius was a boy again on his father’s land.

Glow sheened off the coat of Favonius. The stallion should have pricked up ears and whickered. Instead he stood legs locked, head hung, breath deep and slow—asleep. “Hoy!” Gratillonius entered the stall and slapped the soft muzzle. The beast snorted, twitched, slumbered on.

How long had the Key been missing?

Gratillonius had not meant to waste time on a saddle. He changed his mind. His foot helped him tighten the cinch to its utmost. The bridle went on despite the awkward position of the head, and the mouth did not resist the bit, but opened slackly when he put thumbs to corners. He donned his cloak and shut its clasp before he released the tether.

Leaving the stall, he led the reins over its top and kept them in his left hand. His right drew blade. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, and reached between the rails. The flat of his sword smacked ballocks.

The stallion screamed. He plunged and kicked. Wood flew to flinders. Gratillonius jumped around in front, got a purchase on the reins, and clung with his whole weight.

Had the animal been disabled by pain or become unmanageable, Gratillonius would have left and run the whole way to Ys. Favonius traveled so much faster, though. “Easy, boy, easy, old chap, there, there.”

Somehow the man gained control. He led the horse from the demolished stall. A last shying knocked the lantern over. Its cover fell off. Beneath it were wisps of straw scattered across the floor. The crib was full of hay. A tiny flame ran forth. Gratillonius gave it no heed. His task was to get the neighing, trembling beast outside.

He did. Wind tossed the long mane. He forgot about the lantern.

A shadow stumbled from the shadows. “I implore you, stay,” cried the voice of Corentinus. “God needs you.”

Gratillonius hoisted himself into the saddle. “Hoy-a, gallop!” he shouted, and struck heels to ribs.

“Lord have mercy,” called the chorepiscopus at his back. “Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.”

Hoofs banged. Muscles surged. Gratillonius rode off.

7

Once on Processional Way, he had Ys before him. Most of the city was as black as the headlands which held it. Towertops shone iron-hued by the light of a moon too far down for him to see above the wall. Tears blurred vision though he squinted, for he raced straight into the gale. Mithras preserve Favonius from tripping and breaking a leg.

The road bent south. Hoofs racketed on the canal bridge. Water swirled just underneath, dense with soil. It made a restless pond, from crumbled banks to city wall and on around into the sea that besieged the cliffs of Point Vanis.

Processional Way ended at Aquilonian Way. Here the wind was largely of Gratillonius’s own haste. He was well into the lee of Ys, but likewise into its shadow. Barely could he see the highway heaped with shards of buildings. He kept Favonius bound south a while, to get around. Drenched earth smothered hoofbeats. Or so he supposed, somewhere at the back of his mind. He could not tell in this din.

When it appeared safe, he reined the stallion to a trot and turned west over grass, shrubs, mud that had been gardens, until they two reached the wall. Northward along it they groped, to High Gate. Somebody hailed. Men were at work clearing debris as Corentinus had urged. Gratillonius thought they were a fair number. The officer of the watch must have summoned everybody in barracks.

“Who goes?” a voice challenged. Pikeheads lifted.

“The King,” shouted Gratillonius. “Make way. Keep at your labor. We’ve need of that road!”

He walked Favonius past, not to trample anyone in the dark. Lir Way opened before him, empty between buildings and sphinxes. He smote heels for a fresh gallop.

Within the compass of the rampart, seeing was a little better. And he knew the way. After seventeen years, how well he knew it. Nothing obstructed it, either. The colonnades of the Forum passed by, specters under cloudy gravestones of towers. A few windows gleamed. They fell behind. He sped on, deeper into the roar of the sea.

The gate was his goal. Rather than stumble through tangled and lightless lanes, quickest would be to continue straight down the avenue to the harbor, speed over its wharf to the north end of the basin, turn left past the Temple of Lir to pomoerium and stairs, bound up to the Gull Tower and summon the guards there to join him in defending the city.

Mithras, God of the Midnight, You have had our sacrifice. Here is my spirit before You, my heart beneath Your eyes. I call, who followed Your eagles since ever my life began: Mithras, also a soldier, keep now faith with Your man!

Skippers’ Market sheened. Favonius’s feet slipped from him on the wet flags. He skidded and staggered. Barely did Gratillonius hold saddle.

The stallion recovered. “On!” yelled Gratillonius, and flogged him with the reins. He neighed. The arch of triumph echoed to his passage.

They came between the waterfront buildings, out onto the dock. Its stone rang under the hoofs. Ahead, the basin flickered, full of a heavy chop. Ships swayed at their piers. Half-seen under moonlit, racing clouds, they might have been whales harpooned. The outer wall thrust bulk and battlements into heaven. Foam fountained above and blew away on the wind. The copper on the gate caught such light as to make it stand forth like a phantom. Surf sundered.

Favonius reared and screamed.

The doors opened. The moon shone through from the horizon. It frosted the combers that charged inward, rank upon rank upon rank. Ahead of them, below the wall, gaped a trough as deep as a valley. Amidst the wind that suddenly smote him with full force, Gratillonius heard a monstrous sucking noise. It was the basin spilling out into the depth. That rush of water flung the gate wide.

A crest advanced. As the ground shoaled between the headlands, it gathered speed and height. The sound of it made stone tremble. Yet when it reached Ys it seemed to stand there, taller than the rampart, under spindrift banners, a thing that would never break.

Favonius reared again. Panic had him—no, the Dread of Lir. Gratillonius fought to bring him back.

The wave toppled.

The gate had no time to close itself. The torrent broke past, into the basin, over ships and wharf. There it rebounded. The next wave met it. Between them, they tore the doors from the wall.

With the full strength of his shoulders, Gratillonius had gotten his horse turned around. Hoofs fled between buildings and under the arch. The sea hounded them. Pastern-deep, it churned across Skippers’ Market, sprayed in sheets from the hasty legs, before it withdrew.

Up Lir Way! Gratillonius felt nothing but his duty to survive. The Key had turned in the Lock and the old Gods were riding into Ys. Let him save what he could.

A second billow overtook him, surged hock-deep. Wavelets ran across its back and flung spiteful gouts of foam. It would have peaked higher save that along the way it broke through windows, pounded down doors, and gushed into the homes of men.

When he crossed the Forum, Favonius swam. Against the turmoil around him, Gratillonius made out heads, arms, bodies. They struggled and went under. He could do naught to help them, he must seek toward where the need was greatest.

The avenue climbed. For a small space, he galloped over clear pavement. Clouds ripped apart and he had some light from above. A few stars fluttered yonder. The east was gray.

Favonius throbbed beneath him. The stallion had shed blind terror, or the tide had leached it from him. He heeded the reins. Gratillonius turned him left.

Rising narrow between Suffete houses, the side street brought him to a point where he saw widely around. Ahead, that jewel which was the Temple of Belisama shone pale behind Elven Gardens. Beyond, Point Vanis heaved its cliffs heavenward and cast back the legions of Ocean.

South of it they charged into Lowtown. The wall disintegrated before them. Glancing backward, Gratillonius saw the Raven Tower drop stone by stone into its drowned crypt. Through breaches ever wider, the waves marched ever stronger. They undercut their first highdweller’s tower. It swayed, leaned, avalanched. The fall of its mass begot new, terrible upheavals. Its spire soared like a javelin into the flank of a neighbor, which lurched mortally wounded. From Northbridge to Aurochs Gate, the sea front rolled onward.

Gratillonius had not stopped while he looked. A glimpse into the wind, across what roofs remained, was enough. Already the flood seethed bare yards at his back. He galloped on through the gully of darkness, the noise of destruction.

Ahead on his left was the house of Dahut. Her alone could he hope to save.

It cracked wide. A wave engirdled it, hurled out of the spate that was Taranis Way. Stones and tiles became rubble. They slid into the water. It spouted, churned, and momentarily retreated.

Though the moon had gone down, light as well as wind streamed through the gap. Night still held out against day, but Gratillonius could see farther. He saw the daughter of Dahilis. She had escaped barely in time. Naked she fled up the street ahead of him. “Dahut! Wait for me!” The wind tattered his cry, the sea overran it. Her hair blew wild about her whiteness.

Favonius would catch her in a few more bounds.

The next surge caught Favonius. It boiled as high as his withers. Undertow hauled him back. He struggled to keep footing. The wave that followed swept around him and his rider. Right and left, buildings fell asunder. There was nothing but a waste of water and a scrap of road up which Dahut forever ran.

To Gratillonius, where he and his horse fought for their lives, came Corentinus. Somehow the holy man had reached Ys from the Wood as fast as hoofs had flown. Across the tops of the billows he came striding, staff in hand. Robe and gray beard flapped in the tumult. His voice tolled through it: “Gratillonius, abide! The angel of the Lord appeared to me before the heathen house. He bade me save you even now. Come with me before it is too late.”

He pointed east along that street that led off this toward the mound where stood the Temple of Belisama.

Gratillonius whipped his mount. The wave pulled back, awaiting the higher one behind. Favonius broke free. His hoofs found pavement and he went on aloft as his master bade.

Corentinus paced him on the right. “No, you fool!” the pastor shouted. “Leave that bitch-devil to her fate!”

The new wave rushed uphill. Water whirled about the daughter of Dahilis, waist-high and rising.

Gratillonius drew alongside. She was on his left. He tightened the grip of his knees and leaned over. She saw. “Father!” she screamed. Never had he known such terror as was upon her. “Father, help me!”

They reached for each other. He caught her by a wrist.

“Take her with you, and the weight of her sins will drag you down to your death,” Corentinus called. “Behold what she has wrought.” He touched the end of his staff to the brow of Gratillonius.

Spirit left him. It soared like a night heron. High it rose into the wind that blew across space and the wind that blew through time. Against them it beat, above the passage taken by the Ferriers of the Dead. The moon rose in the west. The spirit swooped low.

Seas broke on Sena. The greatest of them poured clear across. They ramped through the house of the Gallicenae.

In the upper room of the turret, a single lamp burned in a niche before an image of Belisama. Carved in narwhal ivory, She stood hooded and stern, Her Daughter in Her arms, at a bier on which lay Her Mother. Though the window was shuttered, the flame wavered in wintry drafts. Shadows writhed and hunched. The voice of Bodilis was lost in the skirling around, the bellowing underneath. She stood arms folded, to face the Goddess. Her lips formed words: “No longer will I ask mercy. The Three do what They will. But let You remember, by that shall You be judged.”

A crack jagged across plaster. Stones had shifted. The floor beams left their fittings. The planks tilted into the gap between them and the wall. Bodilis stumbled backward. She went into murk. The waters received her. She rose blinded, to gasp for air. The waters dashed her from side to side and against floating timbers. A broken red thing squirmed and yowled in the dark.

The whole house crumbled. Blocks slid over sand and rock to the inlet where the dock had been. The last human works left on Sena were the two menhirs the Old Folk had raised.

—Storm blew the heron back east. Behind him the moon sank. He came to the Raven Tower. Forsquilis stood on its roof, at the western battlements. Wind strained her black dress around her, a ravishment she did not seem to feel. Her hair tossed like wings. The moon on the horizon showed her face whiter than herself or than the waves that rammed below. Pallas Athene had been less cold and remote. She watched the fury until it cast open the gate.

Then, swiftly, she passed through the trapdoor and down a ladder to the topmost chamber. There she had left kindled her lamp fashioned from a cat’s skull. Taking it in both hands, she hastened along the descending stairs. Night and noise went beside her. Stones shivered and grated, began to move under the blows from both sides.

The guardroom was deserted, its keepers fled. Forsquilis set lamp on table and stepped forth for a look. Water plunged through the gateway and the gaps in the wall. As yet it was feet below the parapet, but soon it would reach this entrance and batter the door aside if she barred it. She did, reclaimed her lamp, and continued on into the depths. The bird followed invisible and unhearable.

At the bottom was the crypt, the Mithraeum. She entered, where never woman trod before. Between the Dadophori she passed, across the emblem of mysteries that floored the pronaos, and once more between the Torchbearers into the sanctum. Her flame made golden stars flicker in the ceiling, lion-headed Time stir as if in threat. Him too she went by, to the twin altars at the far end. Before her died the Bull at the hands of the Youth, that quickening might come into the world.

Forsquilis held out her lamp. “Now save Your worshippers if You can,” she said. “My life for Ys.”

Through the span of a wave-beat there was silence. Then she heard a mighty rushing. The sea had broken in. She set the lamp down, turned about, and from her belt drew a knife. The cataract spilled over the stairs, into the crypt. Before it reached her, she smiled at last. “Nor shall You have me,” she said. Her hand with the blade knew the way to her heart.

The Raven Tower fell in on itself. The heron flew free.

—Ocean rolled inward across Lowtown. The heron saw Adminius asleep, exhausted, with wife and two children who had not left the nest. The incoming din woke them. Bewildered, half awake, they stumbled about in blindness. A wave burst the door. Flood poured through. Adminius drowned under his roof.

—Cynan shepherded his loves through a lane toward higher ground. Pressed between walls on either side, the pursuing water became itself a wall. The weight of it went over the family. Maybe it crushed their awareness before they died.

—The heron winged to the Forum and by a hypocaust entered the library. A few candles showed fugitives crowded in hallways, study rooms, the main chamber. Innilis went among the poor countryfolk and fisherfolk. Her garb of a high priestess was filthy and reeky, her face pinched and bloodless until it seemed a finely sculptured skull, but exaltation lived in her eyes. “Nay, be careful, dear,” she said to a woman who scrambled erect by a shelf, heedless of the books thereon. “We must keep these, you know. They are our yesterdays and our tomorrows.”

The woman held forth an infant. It whimpered. Fever flushed it. Innilis laid fingers on the tiny brow and murmured. Healing flowed.

Sound of wind and surf gave way to rumble and crash. Walls trembled. Shelves swayed. Books fell. Folk started out of their drowse, sprang from were they lay, gaped and gibbered. Water swirled and mounted across the floor. People howled, scrambled, made for the one exit. They filled it, a logjam of flesh that pummeled and clawed. A man knocked Innilis down in his mindless haste. Feet thudded over her. Ribs broke, hip bones, nose, jaw. The sea washed her and her blood in among desks and books.

Outside, it tumbled such persons about as had gotten clear of the buildings. Perishing, a few glimpsed a man on horseback, a-swim across the square.

—The heron circled over Hightown, where the great folk dwelt. Vindilis ran down the street from her home. Sometimes she slipped and fell on the wet cobbles. She rose bruised, bleeding, and staggered on. Her hair fell tangled over the nightgown that was her sole garb.

When she came out on Lir Way, crowds swarmed along it, fleeing for High Gate. She worked herseli to the side, on toward the Forum.

Water raced to meet her. The avenue became a river. It caught Vindilis around her throat. She swam. The current was too powerful for her to breast. It swept her backward till she fetched against a stone lion. Long arms and legs scrabbled; she got onto the statue. Riding, she peered and cried westward. Still the stream rose. Vindilis clung. It went over her head.

—Soren sought his porch. Through wind and dark, he needed a while to understand what was happening. When he did, he went immediately back inside. To the servants clustered in the atrium, he said, “Ocean has entered. The city dies. Hold! No cowardice! You, you, you—” his finger stabbed about—“see to your mistress. Carry her if need be, out the east end. You three—” he pointed to his sturdiest men—“follow me. The rest of you stay together, help each other, and it may be you will live. Make haste.”

Brushing past his wife, he met Lanarvilis bound from a guest chamber. She had thrown a cloak above her shift. He took both brown-spotted hands in his and said, “The Gods have ended the Pact. Well it is that you agreed to stay here till the danger was gone. Afterward, we shall see.”

Shock stared, until the Queen rallied. Hand in hand, they went out into the night. Soren’s wife caught a sob before she let the people assigned hustle her along.

The household stumbled downhill to Lir Way. They reached it quite near High Gate. The first false dawnlight made pallor within the opening. On their left they saw the deluge approach from where the Forum had been. Behind that white chaos, yet another tower collapsed. It toppled straight eastward. The wooden upper works came apart. Fragments arced as if shot from a ballista. They seemed to travel infinitely slowly. Their impact filled no time whatsoever. Beams and planks slammed into the wall. They choked the gateway. A shard of glass hit Soren in the neck. Blood spurted. He fell. Lanarvilis knelt by him and shrieked, “Is this what I served You for?” The sea arrived and ground her into the barricade.

—Maldunilis’s fat legs pumped. The flood chased her up her street. The sound of it was like chuckling and giggling. At first it moved no faster than she could run, for the way was very steep. Soon, though, she began to gasp and reel. “Help me, help me,” rattled from her; but servants, neighbors, everybody had gone ahead.

She sagged downward, tried to rise, could not for lack of breath. The water advanced. She rolled onto her back and sprattled as a beetle does. “Bear me,” she moaned. “Hold Your priestess.” The water floated her. Around and around she drifted, among timbers, furnishings, cloths, bottles, food, rubbish. Sometimes brine sloshed over her nose. She emerged, choked, coughed, sneezed, grabbed one more lungful of air.

A man washed out of an alley and collided with her. He too was large; but he floated facedown. His limbs flopped and caught her. She tried to get free. That caused his head to turn. Eyes stared, mouth yawned. She flailed away from the corpse’s kiss, went under, breathed water. Presently she drifted quiet.

—Her maidservant shook Guilvilis loose from nightmares and wailed the news. For a moment the Queen lay still. Then she ordered, soft-voiced. “Take Valeria with you. At once.” That was her daughter at home.

The maid ran out with the candle she had carried. It left Guilvilis in the dark. She murmured a little at the pain in her hip when she crept out of bed. Bit by bit, she hobbled into the atrium. The three who attended her, and nine-year-old Valeria, were there. “Why have you not gone?” Guilvilis asked.

“I was about to come get you, my lady,” the man answered.

“Nonsense! Don’t dawdle. I can hardly crawl along. You can’t carry me through a tide. Bring the princess to her father in the Wood.” Guilvilis held out her arms. “Farewell, darling.”

The girl was too terrified to respond. The man led her away. The women followed. Guilvilis must shut the door behind them.

They had lighted a pair of lamps. She sighed, found a chair, settled down, folded her hands. “I wish I could think of something to say,” she murmured into the clamor. “I am so stupid. Forgive me, Gods, but I try to understand why You do this, and cannot.”

After a while: “Should I forgive You? I’ll try.”

The sea came in.

—Valeria’s party reached the pomoerium. There the flood trapped them beneath the wall of Ys.

—From the palace dome, just below the royal eagle, Tambilis had a wide view. Light from the east seeped upwind into night. By its wanness she saw waves roll everywhere around. To west, stumps of wall or tower reared foam-veiled out of them. Eastward remained more of the rampart and a few islets where ruins clung. North and south abided the horns of land; she made out the pharos, darkened at the end of Cape Rach.

“The tide is at its height,” she said. “Soon it ebbs.” Billows drummed, wind whined.

“We might have gotten ashore had we been quicker, my lady,” Herun Taniti muttered at her side. The naval officer had put himself in charge of the guards detailed to her for the duration of the tempest.

She shook her head. “Nay, the thing happened so fast. I could see that. We’d have needed more luck than I believed the Gods would grant. Here we stand above and can wait.”

“Well, aye, well, belike you’re right. Yours are the Power and the Wisdom.”

“If only—” She bit off her words. “Grallon would scorn me did I lament.” She covered her face. “But oh, Estar!”

Her home was the lowest-lying of the Gallicenae’s. Her younger daughter had surely been without possibility of reaching safety.

Tambilis raised her head. Against the mass of Point Vanis gleamed the Temple of Belisama, on the highest ground in Ys. A part of that terrain extended some yards west, low as Sena. Surf bloomed about Elven Gardens. Her Semuramat was among those vestals who had had night duty yonder.

Herun tugged his ruddy beard. “Best we go down, my lady,” he suggested. “They’re frightened, your household. You give them heart.”

Tambilis nodded and preceded him to the stairs. On the second level, floorboards quivered, plaster cracked and fell off in chunks, rooms reverberated. The ground level was flooded halfway to its ceilings.

That would be as high as ever the sea rose in this bay, were the weather calm. Still raving from the storm they remembered, waves rushed over that surface. They struck the palace walls, shuddered, fell back with a titanic whoosh for their next onslaught.

Tambilis looked about the corridor where she and Herun had emerged. Nobody else was in sight. The passage boomed dim and chill. “Poor dears, they must be hiding,” she said. “Come, my friend, help me find them and comfort them.” She straightened. “For I am a Queen of Ys.”

A surge came enormous. Foundations gave way. Stone blocks tumbled. The dome broke, the eagle fell. As she went under, Tambilis closed herself around the child in her womb.

—Una, Sasai, Antonia, Camilla, Augustina—Forsquilis’s Nemeta and Lanarvilis’s Julia were at the Nymphaeum. The rest of Gratillonius’s daughters, quartered round about in Ys, Ocean engulfed. In like manner went most of the children of Wulfgar, Gaetulius, Lugaid, and Hoel, together with every work of those last Kings.

—The bird flew inland. A tall man with whitening golden hair ran along Processional Way. Before the Sacred Precinct, he slammed to a halt. The building on its west side, which held the stable, was afire. Wind-fanned, flames had already taken hold on the Lodge and spread to the Wood. They whirled, roared, hissed. Sparks streamed. Roofs caved in. Red and yellow flared over a courtyard where attendants milled about. They had snatched their weapons. The tall man howled. Before they should see and come after him, he left the road for the meadow and the heights northward.

—The night heron flew back to Ys.

Gratillonius glared around. The river that had been the street flowed swollen. Houses gave way like sand castles. Through the gaps they left, he saw how fast the eastern half-circle of rampart broke asunder. But the Temple of Belisama shone ahead.

“So are the Gods that Dahut did serve,” knelled the voice of Corentinus.

For that moment, Gratillonius’s fingers forgot her. The current tore her from him. Her shriek cut through the wind. He leaned almost out of the saddle to regain her. He was too slow. The waters bore her out of his sight.

Corentinus grasped the bridle and turned about. Favonius plowed after him, onto the ridge that the sea had not yet claimed. Corentinus let go.

A machine inside Gratillonius declared that it would be unmanly to surrender. He guided his mount over the neck of land, behind the striding shepherd. Waves crested fetlock deep. Spume blew. The Temple was vague in sight against the gray that stole from distant hills. They could shelter there and wait for ebb.

Bits of Elven Gardens lay heaped on its staircase or washed around beneath. Corentinus stopped, looked back, pointed his staff past the building. Dull startlement touched Gratillonius. “What?” The chorepiscopus walked on.

“I should follow you ashore?” Gratillonius mumbled. “No, that’s too far through this water.”

Corentinus beckoned, imperiously.

Gratillonius never knew whether he decided to heed—what matter if he died? How easy to go under—or whether ground slid and carried Favonius along. Suddenly they were swimming.

Corentinus walked ahead over the tops of the waves.

Around Gratillonius was salt violence, before him reefs of wall or tower, until the surf crashed in full force against land. A billow dashed across him, another, another. Glancing behind, he saw pillars topple. Flood had sapped earth. The Temple of Belisama fell into the sea.

Favonius swam on. Combers rocked the stallion toward gigantic whitenesses. Gratillonius left the saddle. They’d have to take this last stretch each for himself.

The breakers cast him about, up, down, around. Whenever his face was in air, he seized a breath, to hold when he went back under. Saving what strength remained, he made himself flotsam for Ocean to bear into the shallows.

He and the horse crept the last few feet.

That which upbore Corentinus left him after he had no more need of it. He waded to the new strand, where he stood leaning on his staff in the wind, gray head a-droop.