"Choice of the Black Goddess" by Gene Wolfe

TEV NOEN LAY in his bunk, listening to Ler Oeuni's screams. Something was wrong, he was under some spell. No, it was Oeuni who was under the spell—the spell cast by the surgeon who was taking away Oeuni's right hand. Oeuni was watching the saw blade, her face calm, her eyes screaming, following the saw back and forth, back and forth. How was it, then, that he could hear her screaming eyes? How was it Oeuni never wept?

The surgeon said, "This might have been saved by a spell of healing; healing of a spell might have saved this," and Oeuni screamed again.

"Too far gone. Can't make something too far gone."

The final word ended with a thump; Noen sat up, habit keeping his head from the deck beams. There was a knock at the door. Ler Oeuni's scream became only the shrieking of the block that hoisted Windsong's mainsail, the surgeon's voice the creaking of a pump and the shuffle of the steward's feet on the steps descending to his cabin under the quarterdeck.

No doubt thinking her first knock had gone unheard, she knocked again. "I'm awake," Noen called. "What's the time?"

"Two bells, sir."

Noen swore and swung his long legs over the side of his bunk. "I told you to call me at the forenoon watch." He thrust them into ragged canvas trousers.

"I did, sir," said his steward from the other side of the door. "You said you were awake, sir." She added meaningfully, "Just like now."

He laughed in spite of his customary resolve to maintain discipline and opened the door. "Well, this time I mean it."

"You were up so late. sir. It don't hurt to sleep a bit extra." She looked at his trousers. "Why don't you wear the ones I've mended, sir?"

There was warm seawater in the wide-bottomed pitcher. He poured some into a bowl and splashed his face. "Because I might need them to go ashore." The shah game he and Oeuni had abandoned when the wind rose was still on the table. Despite their weighted bases, some of the pieces had fallen over. "Put these away," he said.

There was a good breeze, just as he had anticipated from Dinnile's raising the mainsail. Dinnile believed in the slow, implacable heartbeat of the timesman's kettledrums, believed in the sweeps, the enormous oars that could—with the backbreaking labor of four or five sailors at each sweep—send Windsong flying over a calm sea like a skimming gull.

"Mornin', sir." Dinnile said, and touched his forehead.

"Good morning, Lieutenant."

"Leak's no worse, sir. Not since I come on. Oeuni said to look for a place to careen her—we got twenty hands at the pumps—but there hasn't been nothin'. I got the lookout watchin' sharp. And seaward too, sir," Dinnile added hastily, noting the expression on his captain's face.

Noen extended his hand, received Dinnile's telescope. and studied the coast. It was jungle, a jungle that looked as solid as a wall, green-robed trees higher far than Windsong's mainmast marching down to the water's edge.

"Deck!" called the lookout at the mainmasthead. "Deck!"

"What is it?"

"Looks like a bay, sir. Two points off her bow. I see water past them trees, sir."

Cursing himself under his breath, Noen raised Dinnile's telescope again. It was a bay with a very narrow mouth perhaps—no, a bay with a large island shielding its mouth.

"Out oars, sir?" Dinnile asked happily.

Noen was on the point of saying that he doubted it was worth investigating when the lookout called, "Flag of distress, sir."

Noen looked from Dinnile to the bay, and finally at the foam blown from the crests of the little waves. Dinnile was probably right; but Dinnile was too anxious to use his oars, and it would be a pleasure (as Noen admitted to himself) to give his second mate a lesson.

"I don't think so," he said with the calm deliberation suited to a captain who has considered every aspect of the situation. "Strike the mainsail, Lieutenant." He turned to the sailor at the wheel. "See the entrance to that bay, Quartermaster?"

The woman looked. "No, sir."

"I can't either, without the glass. Northeast by east then, until you see it."

With her big mainsail down, Windsong was much slower; but she was much handier as well. The foresail and the small mizzen sail—one at each end of her long hull—gave the rudder enormous leverage.

"Sir...?"

Noen nodded reluctantly. "Call gun crews."

A flag of distress was probably just what it appeared to be, the doleful signal of some stranded ship. Yet it was possible (just possible) that it was the trick of some pirate not watchful enough to haul it down at the sight of a galleass of war. Or even of a pirate ambitious enough to try to seize such a galleass.

"Stand to quarters, sir?"

"I said call gun crews, Lieutenant." Oeuni had gotten no more sleep than he had—no, less—and there was a chance, just a chance, that he might be able to get the gun crews to their posts without waking her. If he called all hands to quarters—the order that summoned the entire crew to battle—the midshipman of the watch would pound on the wardroom door to rouse Oeuni and Ranni Rekkue, the third officer.

"Gun crews ready, sir," Dinnile announced.

Noen nodded. "Have them load, but not run out." Running out the quarterdeck basilisks would wake up Oeuni as sure as it would have wakened him. Worse, it might frighten the stranded ship into firing at them, provoking a battle both sides could only lose. He told himself that in trying to preserve Oeuni's rest he was merely acting as any good captain would, then remembered that Rekkue had fought the leak as hard as Oeuni; he had not thought of her until this instant.

It had been useless anyway. There was Oeuni leaping up the companionway with Rekkue, small and dark, at her heels. Noen glanced at the narrow inlet between the island and the mainland, then at Windsong's sails. "Trim up there, foremast!"

Oeuni was hurrying forward to take command of the gun deck; he could count on her to keep the foremast crew on their toes as well. As he watched, she used the iron hook that had replaced her right hand to pull herself up. Resolutely, he forced his eyes back to the island and the presumably inverted flag that rose above its trees. "I'll have a lead in the bow, Dinnile."

"Aye aye, sir." Dinnile, still officer of the watch though Oeuni was on deck now, gave the order.

"Masthead! Are those our colors?"

There was a pause as the lookout made sure. "Aye aye, sir."

He had been nearly certain already. Not that it meant anything, he told himself. Any serious enemy of Liavek would surely have its flag in his signal chest.

The leadsman called, "By the long nine!"

Plenty of water—water enough for a carrack, and far more than Windsong's skimpy keel drew. Dinnile, sharing his thoughts, grinned and said, "Couldn't improve it without a little brandy."

"By the mark nine."

Yet it was shoaling, as was to be expected. Noen studied the entrance to the bay. Shallows often (though not always) revealed themselves by their color in sunlight and the action of their waves; he could see just such shallows on the seaward side of the island, yet the center of that narrow inlet could not have been a darker blue or more uniformly waved had it been in the middle of the Sea of Luck, far from land.

"By the mark nine!"

Good. Good. Noen trained Dinnile's glass on the flag again. It was the Levar's (the lookout had been right), and judging from its height above the trees, it was flying from a mast a good deal more lofty than their own. A ship seeking shelter from a storm might easily have ducked behind that island, he decided, if her captain knew the inlet was deep enough or simply because he thought she had no better chance. And if a ship that big had managed to enter the bay, Windsong should be able to follow with impunity.

"By the long eight."

Weary men clambered from the hold and flung themselves on the deck. That was the pump gang, of course, and their presence meant it was two hours into the forenoon watch. He had been too preoccupied to think about the leak, or even to hear the bell. Yet the leak might grow worse at any time, and their need to careen was as urgent as ever.

"Deck!"

"What is it?" There was a long pause, so long that at last he called again: "Masthead, what do you see?"

"Nothin', sir. I thought I saw somethin', sir, but I must a been wrong."

"What was it?"

Another pause while the lookout decided that refusing to tell her captain could only land her in troubled waters. "Stone, sir."

"Stone?"

"Like a tower or somethin', sir." Unhelpfully, the lookout added, "I don't see it no more, sir."

Without even considering that the telescope was Dinnile's, Noen thrust it through his belt, jumped down the steps from the quarterdeck to the maindeck, and swarmed up the ratlines to the dizzying crow's nest in the maintop.

"I seen it again while you were comin' up, sir," the lookout told him, "but it's not there now."

"Where was it?"

The lookout hesitated. "Right under the flag, sir."

Noen trained the telescope, trying to steady it against the heaving of his chest and the swooping circle the crow's nest traced with Windsong's every roll. Belatedly, it struck him that his own glass was somewhat better, and that it waited useless in his cabin.

A stronger puff of wind ruffled the leaves of the jungle trees, and he glimpsed a white wall. Squinting and still gasping for breath, he watched the place intently, and when a moment or two had passed he saw it again. "You're right," he told the lookout. 'There's a building on that island."

The white stone structure might easily be a castle, or at least a fort; and though reinforced by the gun-deck basilisks, Poltergeist, Windsong's giant culverin, would be no match for even a single small gun mounted on a steady platform and sheltered behind walls of stone.

''I'm glad you see it too, sir," the lookout sighed. "It sort of comes and goes."

"That's the wind in the leaves," Noen told her, and took Dinnile's telescope from his eye.

The instrument gone, his view was no longer restricted to the little patch of jungle he had watched before. He could see the whole island, including the dark, gray battlements that rose above the foliage and the elaborate, machicolated tower from which the Levar's colors flew.

He clapped the glass to his eye again. The tower remained, a narrow shaft of stone the color of a storm cloud, with a bartizan and a merloned summit. "That was a mast," Noen said.

He had only whispered the words to himself, but in the silence of the crow's nest the lookout had heard him. "Aye, sir," she said. "It comes and goes, sir."

"By the mark seven."

Noen heard the leadsman's cry as he descended slowly to the maindeck, and it decided his course of action. "We'll anchor here, Lieutenant. Break out the jolly boat."

"Aye aye, sir!" Dinnile shouted orders and bare feet pattered up and down Windsong's decks. The jolly boat was slung on davits below the stem gallery. and so could be put into the water a good deal more easily than the big longboat stowed upside-down aft of the mainmast. When the bow anchor had splashed into the sea, Noen bawled, "Steward!"

As though by magic, Oeuni was beside him, "You're not going yourself, sir'?"

"Get my sword," Noen told his steward. "My pistol, too. Load it." Belatedly, he remembered to return Dinnile's telescope. "And the small glass."

"Let me go, or Rekkue."

Privately Noen admitted that no matter what regulations might lay down concerning the captain's staying with his ship, he was quite incapable of sending Oeuni into danger while he remained in safety. Aloud he said, "You're not fully recovered, Dinnile's officer of the watch, and Rekkue's not experienced enough yet. That leaves me."

Dinnile put in, "You ought to take the longboat anyhow, sir. That'd give you twenty hands."

"Twenty hands dead," Noen told him, "if there's a gun on that island."

"Pistols for the crew?" Oeuni asked. She was too good an officer to argue.

Noen shook his head. The average sailor was to be trusted with a matchlock pistol only in the gravest emergency. (Not even then, according to some captains.) "Cutlasses and dirks. I'll have the falconets fore and aft, though. I'll man the aft falconet myself and mind the tiller. Eitha can see to the bow gun. "

As he loaded the falconet, taking exaggerated care to keep its smoldering slow match well away from the powder, Noen recalled that moment and regretted it. He was fundamentally a sailor, he told himself, and not a fighter; and even as a fighter he preferred cold steel to the tricky firearms that went off so often when their owners did not want them to, and so often failed to go off when they did.

But the little jolly could not carry more than seven in any kind of sea, and the two swivel-mounted bronze falconets, with their powder and shot, weighed as much as any seventh passenger. Eitha, the cockswain of the jolly, had her gun loaded and ready long before Noen (only too conscious of the eyes of the four men at the oars) had rammed a handful of musket balls down the barrel of his own and fixed the match in the serpentine.

That done, he assured himself that his steward had loaded his double-barreled pistol and that she had not wound its wheellock. There would be time enough for that when some actual danger threatened. Or there would not, and he would have to depend on the falconet and the clumsy broadsword he had hitched out of his way. Not that sword, gun, or pistol was apt to be of much use against magic.

The gray stone tower flashed into existence again, only to vanish like smoke. "Cockswain!" Noen called. "I want soundings."

Eitha tossed the lead ahead of the boat, letting the lead line run through her fingers. When the bow was over the lead, she drew it up, counting the knots. "By the half seven, sir," she reported.

"Again," Noen snapped. Could magic deceive a lead weight at the end of a line? Yes, certainly—but not quickly or easily.

"By the half seven, sir."

Plenty of water for Windsong, and they had nearly reached the inlet. Noen studied both shores, but particularly that of the island. There should be a sentry there, someone fleet-footed, to tell whoever was in charge that the jolly had come. He saw no one, but perhaps the sentry had already gone. "Cast again," he told Eitha, "when we're at the narrowest point."

A bird circled the island and Noen, fearing it might be of the carrion kind, trained his glass on it. It was as black as any crow, yet lovely with its long wings and tail and its elaborately ruffled head: not a carrion bird, Noen thought, nor even a predatory one, though he was no student of such things. Twice more it circled, then flew seaward toward Windsong and appeared to light in the delicate filigree of her rigging, though when he turned his glass toward her he could not see it. "Smaller with its wings folded," he muttered to himself, then seeing one of the rowers looking oddly at him, cleared his throat.

"By the mark seven, sir." The island and the mainland loomed to the right and left of them.

"Again, when we're well into the bay," Noen said.

Now the castle appeared as solid as the Levar's palace. The rowers were whispering and jerking their heads toward it as they pulled their oars. "Silence!" Noen growled at them.

Rooks circled the tower, and the black muzzle of a gun thrust from every crenel on the walls. Had the castle been real, the entire navy could not have battered it into submission; but Noen felt sure those guns posed no more danger to the jolly than the phantom rooks.

A terrace led from the bay to the portcullis; on it stood two groups of gaily dressed people, some in armor and shouldering halberds or harquebuses. Both groups appeared to be watching intently the two richly dressed figures that stood arguing between them, though occasionally Noen saw someone glance sidelong toward the jolly, then look away at once.

"We'll land there." he told the rowers. "On that pavement." He put the tiller over.

"By the mark seven!" Eitha called triumphantly a moment later.

"Cut!" A small man in a shabby tunic stepped from the shadow of a ravclin. "Break, everyone! Rehearsal's over. I think—that is, I hope—we've been rescued."

The gaily dressed actors seemed to relax. They were not really as numerous, Noen saw, as they had appeared; less than a score, perhaps. The two who had been arguing ended their dispute instantly and turned to watch the jolly.

At the same instant, the castle shrank and changed, dwindling to a beached caravel whose canted mainmast flew the inverted flag of the Levar. The white-plumed disputant nudged the other, and together they swept off their hats and bowed low. With a few more oar strokes the jolly's keel grounded, scraped free, then grounded again. "In oars!" Noen ordered. "Get her to shore."

The rowers sprang out, seized the gunnels, and pulled the jolly far enough up the beach for him to step onto the sand without wetting his second-best shoes. "Eitha, see to the matches." Hiking his sword to a more conventional position and throwing out his chest while bitterly regretting his ragged trousers, he stalked up the beach with as much dignity as he could command.

The darkly plumed disputant made a second bow before replacing the hat that bore them. There were flashing black eyes below the broad brim, a great beak of a nose, and a prominent wart. "Welcome, sir!" This in a voice that boomed like a kettledrum. "Welcome, I say again, whomever you may be! I am Nordread ola Gormol, and I've the honor to be—"

"The menace of our troupe," cut in the little man. "That is," he added bitterly, "I hope you are."

The white-plumed disputant favored Noen with a dazzling smile. "And I'm its leading woman." The curtsy that followed this somewhat startling statement involved spreading the tails of a very masculine coat while kicking the wearer's sword out of the way. Noen thought of the awkward fashion in which he had adjusted to his own as he said, "I am Captain Tev Noen of Her Magnificence's galleass Windsong."·

"Ah," the "leading woman" sighed. (Noen decided the second disputant was a woman, though a woman as tall as he.) "I've heard of you. You're the captain who took that big Zhir ship a few months ago. Everyone thought you were going to be simply swimming in gold, but we're not officially at war with Ka Zhir, they say, so they gave it back. What a pity!"

Noen said, "I doubt that my history bears on the situation."

"Oh, but it does! If they hadn't, you'd be at home in Liavek, in your palace, and—"

"I," the little man put in, "am generally called Baldy. I'm our stage manager, and in the absence of our owner and leading man, Amail Destrop, I'm boss. That is, I'm boss when things get bad. That is, when they're not everybody else is, as you've already seen." .

"And you are in distress?" Noen asked.

All three tried to talk at once, one booming like a broadside, the other grasping Noen's sleeve and cooing in his ear, and Baldy jumping up and down and yelling until he had shouted them both to silence. "You can bet your luck we're in distress, Captain! That is, we're not actually starving yet, but we can't get off this rotten island, and there're three—"

"We can get off in the ship's boats, Captain. But the mainland's ever so much worse! There are—"

"I require transportation to Liavek," Nordread thundered, "and at once! I have myself had the honor of performing at the Palace, and His Scarlet Eminence was so kind—"

"—three wizards," Baldy finished. "And Amail's gone the gods know where. That is, unless something's eaten him."

At that, a silence seemed to descend upon the island.

Noen cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind his back. "Let me establish a few things if I may," he said, raising his voice. "You are shipwrecked. I am the commander of a vessel that has come to your rescue. As such, I can have any or all of you clapped in irons if I judge that to be in the best interest of my ship. Do you understand that?"

The erstwhile disputants glanced at each other, then they nodded. So did Baldy, and so did several of the onlookers.

''I'm going to ask some questions. They're to be answered fully but briefly by the person I indicate, and by no one else. Should anyone else answer—or attempt to answer—he or she will be bound hand and foot by the sailors under my command and thrown into that little boat. You will then be rowed to my ship and turned over to my first officer with instructions to put you in irons and confine you in the hold. My master-at-arms will see that you're fed once a day, provided he remembers. I understand prisoners can keep the rats at bay quite effectively by rattling their chains, at least for the first few days." Noen paused to let his threat sink in.

"Now then." He pointed to Baldy. "I take it you were passengers aboard that ship. Where is her crew?"

"I don't know," Baldy said. "That is, I don't know where they are now, or what happened to them. They disappeared—that is, most of them did, one by one while we were sailing from Cyriesae."

"They deserted?"

Baldy shrugged, his face blank. "I don't think so. That is, we were at sea, and they didn't take the boats."

"Could they have been stolen by the Kil?"

Baldy shrugged again.

"How did you come to this island?"

"With so many of the crew gone, we had to help pull up the sails and so on. That is, we helped as much as we could, but—"

"You weren't sailors, understandably."

"So when it looked like there might be a storm, the captain thought it would be better to get the ship in here. That is, we all thought that, and we did. Only the anchor dragged, and the storm washed our ship onto the beach."

Noen nodded. The bottom of the bay, like the beach, was probably sand. "Where's the captain?"

Baldy jerked his head toward the island, and Nordread coughed.

"You want to say something," Noen told him. "What is it?"

"I wish—I would point out…Captain, our captain took the remaining sailors—there were only two of them—and went inland. That was two days ago," Nordread's deep voice laid a heavy significance on the two, "and we haven't seen him since."

"He took all the sailors and none of you? Why would he do that?"

"I believe he had some thought of, ah, a hidden treasure, perhaps, or something of the kind. I don't believe he trusted us, Captain. At least, not as much as his own—ah—employees."

Noen nodded and turned to Eitha, waiting with her crew near the jolly. "Go back to the ship," he said. "Tell Lieutenant Oeuni that there's a good shelving sand beach here and no danger. No immediate danger, anyway. Handsomely, now!"

"I wish to point out," Nordread rumbled, "that our sailors vanished at a steady rate of one per night, and that—"

"Shut your mouth," Noen snapped.

•

That evening Noen told Lieutenants Oeuni, Dinnile, and Rekkue, "That's it. The players know nothing about the white building I saw, or they say they don't. My guess is the captain saw it and most or all of them didn't. As to what happened to their crew and whether it will keep on happening, I'd like your thoughts."

Dinnile said, "We mustn't let our lads and lasses find out about this, sir."

"That's why I made the players stay in the vicinity of their ship and posted the sentries," Noen told him. "But they will find out. We can't afford to fool ourselves. They'll probably find out tonight, even if no one vanishes. If they don't, we can be certain they'll know by tomorrow night. If we finish plugging the leak tomorrow and get Windsong back to sea, they'll know even faster because we'll have to take the players with us."

Rekkue said, "The storm that washed their ship on the beach must have been the same one that stove in Windsong. Sir, do you remember the wind that wizard on Zhironni whistled up? Could it have been magic?"

Noen lifted his shoulders and dropped them again. "I don't know, Lieutenant. And I don't know how we can find out, unless we can find the wizard and stick his feet in a fire."

Oeuni used her hook to scratch her head. "You said there were three, Noen. Three wizards."

Noen put a finger to his lips. One of the sentries was coming, his approach made visible by the crimson spark of the slow match in his pistol. As he neared their fire, Noen saw a second figure behind him.

The sentry touched his forehead. "Cap'n, I got a sailor here from the Lady of Liavek."

Inwardly Noen berated himself. All afternoon he had planned to examine the log of the beached ship, but he had been so involved in the tricky process of careening Windsong without doing further damage that he never had.

Dinnile said, "Is that the derelict, Chipper? I didn't think there was a hand left on her."

The sentry, in more normal times one of the carpenter's mates, shook his head. "He says when the others went off in that pirate they captured, he didn't want to go, sir. So he hid, but then he was afraid the passengers would take it out on him, so he stayed hid." He winked. "I reckon he had a pretty easy time of it, sir. Only now he says he wants to tell about the wizards. They're the ones that make that castle come and go, I guess, sir."

Noen said, "We'll talk to him. Get back to your post."

The sailor who came forward was young and blond, tall but rather slightly built for a seaman. He saluted awkwardly, looked at Windsong's four officers one after another, and at last seemed to fasten on Dinnile as the largest. "Cap'n Noen?"

Dinnile shook his head. "Second mate. That's the captain over there."

The sailor saluted again. "Cap'n Noen, there's somethin'..." He seemed at a loss for words.

"Something odd?" Noen prompted. "Something uncanny?"

"Yes, sir. I heard about what them passengers told you today sir, and—"

"I know you did."

"—and I want to tell you some more, sir. 'Cause what that little bald 'un said wasn't the truth of it, sir, not at all, and—"

Oeuni broke in, "Noen, this man's no sailor!"

"Certainly not," Noen told her. "But how did you know, Lieutenant?"

"By his hands." Oeuni paused, suddenly embarrassed. "I suppose I look at hands now more than I used to. But they haven't been in the sun much, and I never saw a hand in my life—I mean a hand's hand—with nails that long."

"I had supposed it was because he said yes." Noen was speaking to the imposter, not Oeuni. "Sailors don't say yes, because the word's too soft to make itself heard in a high wind. Sailors say aye or aye aye. Please try to keep that in mind."

The imposter saluted a third time. "Aye aye, sir. I'll try, sir, 'at I will."

"For that matter," Noen told Oeuni, "This man's no man, although the last time I saw her she was dressed like one and playing a man's part. Very skillfully too, I thought. Meet the leading woman of the players."

Oeuni's mouth opened, then shut again.

The player smiled and said in a somewhat higher though still throaty voice, "Since you've penetrated my little masquerade, Captain, may I sit down?"

"Of course. Move over a bit there, Rekkue. By the way, I appreciate your giving my sentry that tale about the pirate ship."

He was rewarded with a dazzling smile. "I thought you would, after the way you stepped on poor old Nordread this morning; sailors are a superstitious lot, I understand. And I want to apologize for playing dress-up; but you or one of your officers must have told those men not to talk to members of our troupe, and I wanted to see you."

"I also told you not to talk to them," Noen said severely.

"For a good reason, which I understood and respected. But what Baldy told you just isn't true." The player paused, pulling off a scarlet bandanna and shaking bright blond hair. "I'm Marin Monns, by the way."

Oeuni said, "What did Baldy—is that the stage manager?—tell you anyway, sir? I was about to ask when Marin came, and if we're going to have two conflicting stories, it might be better if all of us knew both of them."

Noen nodded. "I think I can summarize it quickly enough. Like most theatrical companies, this one has a wizard to provide appropriate backgrounds for its performances and occasionally do a magic act as a curtain raiser. Theirs is an old man called Xobbas, a pleasant, harmless old fellow, according to Baldy, whose worst fault is that he sometimes produces the mountains for The Snow Lover when the company's supposed to do something else. He also has a hobby of altering his appearance—making himself taller, turning his beard orange, and so forth."

Oeuni and Rekkue nodded; Dinnile scratched his head.

"Baldy's worked with him for years, and he says he never changes himself enough to be unrecognizable; but now there are at least two other people going around looking like him. They discovered the first on the ship. Baldy had left a wizard—he thinks the real one—asleep in the passenger's quarters. He went on deck and saw a second standing in the bow. That could have been astral projection, but Xobbas had never done it before. Yesterday the leading woman—Marin here—and Nordread compared notes and found they'd each been talking to a wizard when their cue came for the second act of The Prince and the Piper. That's the play they've been rehearsing while they waited for rescue, and in that scene, as I understand it, they enter simultaneously from opposite sides of the stage."

Marin nodded.

"Furthermore, each got the impression that the person they'd spoken with wasn't really Xobbas. So that makes three wizards: the real Xobbas and the two frauds. The problem—one of the problems, anyway—is that no one has any idea who the other two can be. The other problem is that Xobbas isn't providing scenery any more. Baldy started as a stage wizard, so he's been doing it himself; but he's rusty and the castle comes and goes."

"Captain," Dinnile said, "I've got an idea. Tomorrow afternoon we ought to have the ship patched up. Then we can lighten Lady as much as we can, take Windsong out in the bay, set both anchors, and winch her off."

Noen nodded again.

"We put a crew, like a prize crew, on Lady to sail her back to Liavek. Well, as these players get on, all three wizards have got to get on too, don't they? So each time old Xobbas shows his face, we say prove it. He's got to prove he really is Xobbas, or he doesn't get on the ship."

Rekkue said softly, "Dinnile, I think somebody who could disguise himself as a wizard could disguise himself as somebody else too. Suppose there were two Dinniles? For that matter, how do we know the real Marin Monns isn't over there"—she jerked her head toward the unseen bulk of the Lady of Liavek—"sound asleep?"

The blond player laughed. "I should have known it would come to this. Would you like to hear me recite all my speeches from Piper? 'Most noble lords and commoners, have you not seen that when all else sinks, yet the crown swims? When Repartine the Great—'"

Noen raised a hand for silence. "I accept that you're who you say you are, and if I accept it so do my officers. What I want to know is why you said what Baldy told me was false, and how you know it."

"I didn't mean he was deliberately lying to you," Marin said, "but he's wrong. Since yesterday, I've talked to anyone who looked like the wizard anytime I saw him. And I..."

"Go on."

"I know him pretty well. He's a kindly old pot, and he still has an eye for the girls. He likes me because I give him a hug every so often, and when we have a cast party sometimes I sit on his lap." Marin paused, staring into the fire.

Oeuni said, "You blush beautifully, Marin. Please go on."

"Did the blood really come up in my cheeks? You sort of hold your breath and try and force the air up, but I've been having trouble with it. Anyway, I do know the old man, and that was how I knew the—the wizard I'd talked to while Nordread talked to the other one wasn't real. He was too..." Marin made a helpless gesture. "I guess I need a playwright to make up my lines. But Xobbas, the real Xobbas, is old and his mind isn't very clear. He forgets things, and when he feels sorry for himself he says so. Oh, I do, too, and so do lots of other people, but we try to be underhanded about it so you'll feel sorry for us too. Xobbas would just come right out with it like he was talking about somebody else, and this wizard wasn't like that at all. He didn't forget a thing, and I had the feeling he was laughing at me inside all the time."

Noen said, "I understand. What about the others?"

"One was cruel. I know he was! And old Xobbas was never like that. And one was frightened and tried to get away from me as fast as he could. That wasn't like Xobbas either, and Xobbas couldn't have walked that fast, no matter how bad he wanted to. And I think it's important you know that there are three, because what if it's the other two you find, and leave the cruel one? He isn't the real Xobbas either."

Oeuni took a deep breath, looked at Noen, and let it out again. "I've been a little hard on you, Marin," she said. "And I shouldn't have been—you really are trying to heIp. Is that all?"

The player nodded.

"Sir, is it all right if I take her back as far as the sentry lines?"

"Someone will have to take her back," Noen said. "I don't want her getting into mischief. It might as well be you."

When they had gone, Dinnile wiped his forehead. "By Rikiki, what a looker! And tricky as they come."

Rekkue nodded. "She could be dangerous, I think, starting fights among the crew just for the fun of it and so forth. Are Oeuni and I going to take Lady back to Liavek, Captain? If so, I'll try to keep an eye on her."

Noen said, "I don't know why, but I like her."

Dinnile chuckled. "Here's the time I've waited for, sir! The one when I know more than you."

There was a moment of silence, filled only by the crackling of the fire and the call of a jungle bird. Dinnile moved uncomfortably, clearly afraid that he had said too much; Rekkue started to speak but thought better of it.

Superficially impassive, Noen was secretly delighted. A captain necessarily walked a fine line between self-isolation and overfamiliarity with his officers, and he feared lately that he had swung too near the latter. Let them sweat—it was good for them and for the ship! He allowed the silence to grow until he saw his first officer returning, then called harshly, "Oeuni, you're the best judge of character I know. Why'd you change your mind about Marin?"

Rekkue put in, "I was saying how dangerous I thought she was. Was I wrong?"

Oeuni nodded slowly. "Yes, I think you were. I thought so too, at first—all that playacting. But Marin's too fond of showing off to be a real threat; at every moment she wants you to know how completely she fooled you the moment before. And what she said about there being three false wizards…"

Noen cleared his throat. "I thought that was it. You knew she was telling the truth. How did you know?"

"I didn't really know. But—remember late this afternoon, when I went looking for a tree big enough to anchor the winch? This jungle's only thick here at the edge, where it gets sun all the way down. Farther in, there's plenty of space between the trees, and moss and fern on the ground, mostly. I did some looking around while the hands were rigging the winch, and I found a grave."

Rekkue's gasp was distinctly audible.

"At least it looked like one. It was narrow, but long enough for a man, and the earth was fresh. I should have told you earlier, sir; but we were pulling Windsong onto the beach, and it didn't seem terribly important at the time."

Noen leaned forward. "We have four missing persons," he said, "though some of you seem to have forgotten it: Lady's captain, two of her crew, and the leader of the players, Amail Destrop. Dinnile, you were talking a moment ago as though we could refloat Lady and sail away without making an attempt to locate those people; would you want to be the one to tell Admiral Tinthe we might have left four subjects of Her Magnificence marooned? Now I think we've found out what happened to at least one of them."

Oeuni shook her head. "There was a slab of bark pushed into the loose dirt at one end," she said slowly. "A slab of bark with a letter scratched on it. The letter was X."

•

As they made their way between the jungle trees the next day, Noen wished he had refused to allow any of the players to come. He had left Rekkue in charge of both ships; young as she was, Rekkue was an able officer, and with Windsong and Lady of Liavek riding at anchor in the bay nothing remained to do but reload the material they had removed earlier to lighten them. Someone or something, he had argued with himself, had stolen Lady's crew; and if there was going to be fighting, he wanted Dinnile's strength and dauntless courage. As for Ler Oeuni, why, Oeuni was—he winced at his own expression—his right hand. He had brought fifteen steady sailors as well, each armed with a cutlass and a boarding pike.

Then the players had wanted to come, too—the same players, as Noen had reminded them at length, who had waited two days on the beach without making the least effort to find their missing captain and his hands, or even their own missing leader. But they had insisted, and he had made the error of permitting Baldy, Nordread (who might actually be of some use), Marin, and eight more players to accompany him. All were carrying halberds or swords, rusty yet serviceable; but Noen strongly suspected that at the least sign of danger they would drop them and bolt like rabbits.

Besides, he had an irrational feeling that by bringing them he had brought the three false wizards, too. Once, looking back through the trees at his straggling column, he had thought he had actually seen one, a bearded old man in a black robe and slouch hat. He had called a halt then, inspected the players a second time, and found no one who in the least resembled the flitting figure he had glimpsed. After that he had put Dinnile and two burly hands at the end of the column with orders to hustle along stragglers and keep their eyes open. They had seen nothing, or at least nothing they felt worth reporting. There had been no trace of Lady's missing captain, his sailors, or Amail Destrop.

Oeuni said, "You'd think it would be cool because of the shade, but I'd trade it for a sea breeze." Her face was bright with sweat.

For the hundredth time, he took out his handkerchief, mopped his own face, and studied the compass. "We should be nearly across the island now."

"We could have missed it easily enough, sir."

Noen had an uncomfortable feeling that despite her verbal support Oeuni did not really believe the white-walled building he had seen from Windsong's maintop existed. He said, "If so, we'll sweep the seaward side until we find it."

As soon as he had spoken, he realized he had been looking at it for the past few seconds. That pale blur to the left could be nothing else—too dim for sunshine, too regular for a natural rock mass, too light for foliage. Striving to keep any exultation from his voice and terrified he might yet be wrong, he added laconically, "Port two points, I think, Lieutenant."

It was a building more impressive for its beauty than its size, a perfectly proportioned rectangle of white marble surmounted by a dome of the same material. Once its marble walls had been carved in a tracery as fine as lace. Now pounding jungle rain had eroded the graceful curves to cobweb; vines clutched at the delicate threads of stone that remained, which bent backward as if fainting in their embrace. Strange letters, angular yet in harmony with the structure, bowed above its dark doorway.

Noen turned to the sailors, who were edging toward the building, curious but still mindful of discipline. "Can anybody read this?"

The hand who stepped forward had been a nomad of the Great Waste before signing aboard Windsong. "I can, sir. It's Old Tichenese: 'The Black Warrior Woman, Precious Helper of Men.'"

Oeuni whispered, "I can read something more, Noen. The vines have been cut away so somebody else could read the lettering."

Noen nodded absently, having made the same observation himself. It seemed probable, though not certain, that it had been done by Lady's captain, though— "Pass the word for Baldy, Lieutenant," he said. "No, make that all the players."

As they came crowding up he asked, "Did any of you know your captain well? Could he have read Old Tichenese?"

They looked at one another blankly. At last Nordread rumbled, "I doubt it, Captain. He didn't seem like an educated man. Amail and I dined with him once or twice."

"What about the sailors he took with him?"

"I suppose there's always a chance, but..."

"What about Destrop? Could he read Old Tichenese?"

Nordread snorted. "Absolutely not, Captain."

"I see."

Greatly daring, Oeuni said, "Well, I don't, sir."

Noen pointed. "You or I would have cut away enough to discover we couldn't read the inscription and stopped. Somebody's cleared every word. He could read them, so he wanted to see the entire—Dinnile, what the blazes is wrong with you?"

The second mate slapped his leg again and looked apologetic. "Ants, sir. There's a whole line of ants, and I stepped in 'em, sir, not noticing."

"Noen, they're going into the temple."

He nodded, winding his wheellock. "I imagine there's an altar in there, and we're about to find a recent sacrifice on it." He wondered whether it would be a human sacrifice—with four people missing it seemed almost inevitable—but thought it best to keep the speculation to himself. "See that everyone stays here. That's an order."

Three shallow steps led up to the doorway. He paused there to study the dim interior before entering. Nothing moved except the line of ants vanishing into the shadows. There was no altar and no sacrifice, only a statue on a pedestal.

Two more strides showed him that it was, as seemed logical, a beautiful woman carved in black stone. The crest surmounting her helmet was a bird with outspread wings. He moved nearer to examine it, and one of the squares of the tessellated floor gave ever so slightly under his feet.

As he stepped hastily back, his heel struck something that rolled clattering nearly to the wall. He turned to look at it and saw that Dinnile was standing in the narrow doorway, with Oeuni trying to crowd past him. "Rotten stink in here, sir," Dinnile said cheerfully.

Noen nodded. "I think I've just discovered why." He crossed the wide room and picked up the skull he had kicked, then dropped it at once. Despite its tumble over the floor, it was black with ants.

Dinnile took a step and Oeuni rushed past him, the sword she now wore at her right side clutched in her left hand.

"Recent," Noen said. "The ants aren't finished with it yet." He gestured toward two more skulls, clean and white, lying in a corner among a pile of bones. "He—or she—was probably killed last night."

"Aye aye, sir," Oeuni said. Then, "Noen..."

"What is it?"

The point of her sword was probing the back of the skull. "I've seen animals sacrificed. There was a fire, and they cut off the heads and hooves and threw them in, and then the skin and some of the organs. Then whoever had paid for each animal gave part of the meat to the priests and kept the rest. And for magic, when they sacrifice a little animal, don't they usually burn the whole thing?"

Noen nodded. "So I've heard."

"Someone's opened the back of this to get at the brain."

Dinnile had been examining the floor while Oeuni looked at the skull. Now he said, "Captain, here's a crown here."

Noen turned, not sure he had heard correctly. "A crown?"

"Like the one on the shah, in that game." Dinnile looked sheepish at the mere mention of it; he was a poor player, and Noen, an excellent one, sometimes invited him for a game when Oeuni was on watch. "And next to it's a wizard's hat, sir, and next to that's the warrior's horse."

Noen hurried over.

"See what I mean, sir? It's like the whole place's just a big shah board. Only the only piece left's the black sultana, and that's it over there."

Oeuni kicked aside bones to examine the floor on her side of the room. "He's right, Noen. There are pictures here too, for the white pieces. But the game's already started—some of them have been moved. And the squares move too, a little, when you stand on them. That must be how you invoke the goddess."

Noen stared at her. "Invoke the goddess?"

"Well, this place is obviously a temple, and there's no altar and so on. So what does she want us to do? It must be to play this game, putting a worshiper on each square for a piece. Then she's the black sultana, as Dinnile said." Oeuni paused. "If we did it, maybe she'd help us."

''I'm not so sure we need help. Windsong's patched and both ships arc in the water again. As for Lady's captain and his crew, I'm afraid we've found them."

From the doorway, Baldy said, "Maybe you don't, Captain, but we do as long as Amail's missing."

Oeuni added, "And what about whatever took the sailors, Noen? Suppose it's still on Lady? I know invoking a goddess is liable to be dangerous, but she must be a good goddess—remember what it says outside? 'Precious Helper of Men'?"

Baldy came into the temple, looking curiously at the statue and the designs on the floor. "If you won't, Captain, we will."

The very impracticality of the idea decided Noen. "You haven't got enough people. You'd have to go back to the beach and get the rest, and even that might not be enough. It would take all day, and I intend to sail with the dawn wind." He turned to his first mate. "All right, Oeuni, I'm no priest and you're no priestess, but we'll try. Get them all in here. Dinnile, you're the tallest; I want you for the white shah. Where's that fellow Nordread? Nordread, you're the black shah. Marin, you're the white sultana—stand there beside Lieutenant Dinnile."

Oeuni said, "One black soldier's been taken, Noen, so we can use the hands for soldiers—there should be just enough. And the players in armor for warriors, and there are four tall women for towers." She gestured toward one of the armored thespians. "Here, you! You're a black warrior. Stand on this mark, in front of the sultana's wizard's soldier. Su, line up those hands on the symbols; I want the other black warrior in front of the shah's tower's soldier. Sir, I need a white soldier three squares in front of Nordread."

Noen nodded and sent a woman over. "I'll play white, Lieutenant. You play black. I must say it looks to me as though white has the better position, besides a lead of one soldier."

"But it's my move, and I'm going to take one of yours, I think. I've got my choice—no, I don't. Captain, you're supposed to have a wizard there by the door, protecting that other white soldier, but we don't have anybody left to play the wizards."

"We have one," Noen told her. "Baldy, you're a wizard. Take your choice of positions."

Baldy walked to the square to the left of the black statue. "If this goddess knows where Amail is, I want to hear it."

When the little temple was no longer filled with the sound of shuffling feet, the silence became oppressive. Dinnile fidgeted and coughed, then pretended he had not.

"Great goddess," Oeuni pronounced. "Black warrior woman and precious helper, I, too, am a woman warrior. I beg you to reveal the fate of Amail Destrop to us and aid us against the slayers of our fellow mariners."

There was no reply. Outside a monkey screeched, swinging away through the trees until it could no longer be heard.

Noen cleared his throat. "I'm Windsong's captain, and I'm in charge here. We've done what we think you want. Now we'd like your help. If you want something more, just tell us what it is."

Nothing happened. The statue did not move; no voice was heard in the temple.

"Captain, I'm afraid it's not going to work without—"

"What is it?"

"—the wizards! Noen, don't you see? Everyone kept saying three wizards, three wizards, Marin and Baldy and Nordread and even you. But there aren't three wizards, because Baldy's a wizard, too, and that makes four. Four wizards for the shah board! We have to get the other three, and it won't work without them."

A new voice, deep and eerie, seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, echoing from the bare white walls: "You have one." The taIl, black-cloaked man who strode into the temple looked old, his face lined with wrinkles and his long beard gray where it was not white; yet his eyes seemed to glow under his slouching wizard's hat, and he stood as straight as any rapier. Saluting Ler Oeuni with his crooked staff, he took the square beside Nordread.

"Goddess!" Oeuni cried to the statue. "Behold! Aren't two wizards enough? We've given you your shah's wizard, as well as your own."

Nordread stepped forward and touched her shoulder to get her attention. "Three, actually, Lieutenant," the deep-voiced player rumbled, and pointed. A third wizard, smaller than the second but dressed in much the same fashion, stood at Dinnile's right hand.

Noen roared, "Where'd that man come from?"

The burly second mate touched his forehead. "I dunno, sir. I was watchin' you 'n' Oeuni, and then he was there."

"One more," Oeuni said. "If we had the last—" She stopped because something uncanny was taking place on the square black stone behind and to the left of Syb, the seaman who portrayed Marin's warrior's soldier. A cloud that was black and yet not smoke swirled there, as though a waterspout had somehow formed over the dry floor. Then it was gone, and the fourth wizard grinned at them, rubbing his hands and chuckling.

"Now, goddess!" Oeuni called.

Noen, Oeuni, and Dinnile, every sailor and every player watched the statue; but it did not move nor speak, nor give the slightest sign of magic or of miracle.

As the awful silence lengthened, it brought a sense of hopelessness.

"Maybe we have to continue the game," Oeuni sighed at last. "My warrior there takes Marin's soldier." She pointed to the player in question. "That's you. You go over there, and she goes"—Oeuni hesitated—"outside, I guess."

The player remained where he was.

"You heard me!"

He looked embarrassed. "I did, ah, Lieutenant Oeuni. But I can't. I can't go."

She stared at him, and Noen asked, "Are you paralyzed, man?"

"No." The player lifted one foot, then the other. "But I can't go over there. When I try, nothing happens."

"Sir...?"

It was Syb, and Noen turned to face him. "What is it?"

"Cap'n, when that wizard there started to appear like he did behind me, I tried to run, sir. Only I couldn't. Just like him." Noen whirled to Nordread. "You walked over to Lieutenant Oeuni and touched her a moment ago. Do it again!" The theatrical company's menace nodded, lifted one foot, and put it down where it had been.

"Noen," Oeuni's voice trembled, "are you frightened?"

He was, but he shook his head stubbornly. "Why should I be? We're getting somewhere at last."

"Well, I am. And I'm not afraid to say so. We said we were the shah players, Noen. You were supposed to be white and I was supposed to be black. But we aren't really, or we could move the pieces, couldn't we? Are the real ones good and evil, Noen? Or the Black Faith and the White? Or what?"

Dinnile's wizard said, "It would be better, perhaps, if you were not to ask to know too much." His speech was soft, so low that only the utter silence of the temple made it possible for them to hear him.

"Who are you, anyway?" Oeuni asked. And then, "Why didn't we ask that before?"

The wizard only repeated, "It would be better, perhaps, if you were not to ask to know too much."

Noen said, "We won't ask you any more questions, but I would appreciate your advice. Tell me what to do, and we'll do just as you say."

There was no reply, but Nordread and Baldy gasped. The statue, the black sultana. had begun to move, rocking ever so slightly to the right and to the left, like the pendulum of a metronome that had almost run down.

Slowly it slid from the black square upon which it had stood to the square in front of Nordread, and then to the square beyond that. It was only then that Noen realized the black square where it had been was not a stone at all. but a dark cavity in the floor, a pit or a sunken vault.

There was a sudden cry, unearthly and utterly evil, and some dark thing streaked from the dome over their heads and vanished into the pit.

Baldy and Nordread turned, white-faced, to stare after it. Oeuni, only a step or two farther from the pit than they, threw down her sword and dashed to it, dropping to her knees beside it and reaching inside with both her arms. Her hook emerged with an emerald necklace caught like some shining fish, her right hand with a handful of gold. She reached in again; as she did, a hideous face topped with such a crown as the Levar herself could not boast emerged. It seemed almost a skull, but flames blazed behind the sockets of its eyes, and the fangs of its mouth were smeared with blood.

At once the missing black stone appeared, sliding swiftly from the wall to seal the pit. The hideous face ducked, the crown toppling from its head. Noen called, "Look out!"

He was aware, even as the shout left his lips, that it had come too late. The sliding stone clicked to a stop against Oeuni's iron hook.

At the same instant, the gliding statue reached the wall opposite the door. It seemed to Noen that it must crash into it, crash and perhaps even shatter, for it had been picking up speed, accelerating faster and faster as it moved. It did not. For the black sultana the solid stone seemed no more than a mist. The statue entered that mist and was gone.

He knelt beside Oeuni. The point of her hook was against the edge of the floor, actually driven some minute distance into the stone; the bend was jammed against the slab. Her other arm vanished into the dark crevice that remained, which was about the width of his own hand.

"Noen," she gasped. And then again. "Oh, Noen..."

"Let go!" he told her. "That hook could break." Bracing his feet against the edge of the floor, he heaved at the slab with all his strength; it did not move.

"Noen, I can't let go! It's got me, that thing, that devil—it's got my hand!"

He pulled at her arm until she cried out. Across the room, Dinnile raged against the confinement of his square, but neither his curses nor his frantic gestures freed him. Nordread had drawn a rapier, but could not thrust into the pit. Baldy muttered words that sounded like spells—and the reality of the situation altered not at all.

The demon's face appeared at the crevice. Noen fired both barrels of his pistol point blank, the shots deafening in the bare stone chamber; if he had fired instead into a raging sea, his bullets could have been no more futile.

"Noen," Oeuni gasped. "It's got me. That thing!" Bright tears filled the eyes that never wept.

The hook slipped. Its movement was slight, and yet Noen saw it and felt it too, for he was standing upon the slab. The demon's hand emerged from the crevice, groping for his ankle. He jumped back, drew his sword, and slashed at the scaly wrist with all his strength; the wide blade broke like glass, and he flung down the hilt.

"Now you will die, all of you." It was the voice of the fourth wizard, of Marin's wizard. "She because she cannot get away. You because you will not leave her. They because they cannot leave their squares. But not I. Kakos is mine, you see, my crowning achievement."

Then voice and wizard were gone, not vanished, but crushed to a broken doll whose crimson blood splattered Syb and the unfortunate sailor standing before the player who was Marin's tower. The black statue had reentered its own temple through the door like the figurehead of a galley that flies before a gale, and it had struck him like that galley's ram.

The demon's shoulder followed its arm. Narrow though the crevice was, it oozed through it like clay through a potter's fingers. Oeuni cried, "Noen!" Her body writhed with effort, the muscles outlined beneath her thin shirt like cables.

The hook came free. The slab slammed the edge of the floor as the weighted jaw of a rattrap crashes down when the rat pulls at the bait, and it left the demon's arm squirming at Oeuni's feet.

"You all right?" It was Dinnile, panting, sword drawn, leaning over Noen as Noen leaned over Oeuni. Freed from their squares, the rest. sailors and players, clustered around.

"My hand," Oeuni said, gripped the bent iron socket that had held her hook.

Noen said, "Your hand is fine," and touched it to prove it.

"But—"

He took a deep breath, feeling that when he had explained she would want him to explain more, and knowing that he could not. "When you dropped your sword, it was from your left hand. But when you reached into there the first time and brought up that necklace—here it is—on your hook, the hook was on your left hand. It can't be an illusion, because your left hand couldn't have held back the slab; I don't know what it was."

Nordread and Dinnile, Baldy and Marin and a dozen others were all speaking at once, but Noen paid no heed to them. Leaning close to Oeuni, he heard her whisper, "It's right, what they say. I had to choose. Lose my other hand, or the demon would have killed you and Dinnile and everybody. It wouldn't have killed me—it told me that."

Baldy had taken advantage of his small size to penetrate the crowd. "Let me see it," he said, and examined Oeuni's right arm. "Ha!" He tugged at the iron cup. "This is a prop."

Noen grasped him by the shoulders. "What did you say?"

"It's a prop, Captain. I may not be much of a wizard, but I'm a pretty good stage manager, and the properties come under my jurisdiction. That is, we use one just like this in The Pirates of Port Chai. See, the player sticks her hand in it and holds the handle, and it looks like she's lost it. But it comes off. That is, this one won't because it's dented in."

At that moment it did. The hand that emerged from the metal cup was Ler Oeuni' s own, slightly larger than most women's and much harder, though by no means so hard as iron. She flexed her fingers and stared at them, laughing and crying at the same time.

"Cap'n?" It was Su; she and another sailor were holding the tall wizard, one at each arm. (Noen suspected there was a dirk at his back as well.) "Cap'n, this 'un's still here. We asked that tower woman if he was the real 'un, and she said she didn't think so."

Noen turned away, sorry to part from Oeuni's joy. "Well," he snapped, "are you?"

"No," the wizard admitted. His voice was as resonant as ever, and loud enough to be heard over the tumult around them. "If my good wife will but remove my hat and my beard (carefully, please, my dearest, though I think perspiration has somewhat loosened the gum), she can tell you who—"

Nordread's sword clattered to the floor. "Amail!" Her embrace might have broken the ribs of a bear. Noen looked across the room to the white flagstone where the third wizard had stood beside Dinnile. It was empty, save for a single black feather lying upon the graven symbol of a wizard's hat.

•

That night, aboard the Lady of Liavek, Rekkue asked, "Was it Amail Destrop who buried the old wizard?"

Oeuni nodded. "He found the body, and he thought if he made himself up as Xobbas, whoever had killed the real Xobbas might attack him. Then when he heard that the false Xobbas was trying to get the players to go inland, he scared them so much they didn't. Only Lady's captain took the wizard's bait." She paused. "We don't usually think of actors as being brave, but I suppose they are, sometimes."

Marin, who had been leaning on the rail listening to them, said, "I think what Nordread did was braver."

"Who was the wizard?" Rekkue asked. "Did the captain ever find out?"

"Not really," Oeuni told her. "Noen thinks he was a Pardoner who'd found the temple earlier and stowed aboard Lady in Cyriesae because he saw that Destrop's theatrical company would be ideal for staging the shah game. His pet devil had to be fed every day, but he made it spare the players. Of course he raised the storm that brought the ship to Temple Bay, and made sure she went aground. And now I'd better see..." Oeuni glanced toward the quarterdeck, where a midshipman stood watch.

Rekkue wailed, "Please, Oeuni! One more thing, or I'll go stark mad. That statue and the game, I don't understand them at all. How—why did it come out of the wall like that?"

Oeuni paused, looking from the sea to the sky, then at the trim of Lady's sails. "Noen and I, and sometimes Noen and Dinnile, play conventional shah, using a flat board with sides. But there's another game; you pretend the board's a cylinder, that it wraps around the whole world, so to speak. Then a piece that goes off one side diagonally appears in the next row on the other, the way the black sultana did. You see, while we thought we were playing conventional shah, the gods were playing cylindrical shah. I think there's a message there, though I'm not sure I know what it means. Anyway, that's why I left the emeralds around the statue's neck—as a gift for the player, whoever that is."

Marin said, "You were right, and you were right about me too, that night by the fire. You see, I often take female roles, and when I saw Captain Noen thought Nordread really was a man, I couldn't resist showing off."

Oeuni took her hands from the rail and started aft. Marin tried to follow her, but Rekkue caught him by the arm. "Passengers are not permitted on the quarterdeck," she said sternly. "I, however, am off duty."

Marin grinned. "Hello, sailor. New in town?"