FOUR

 

Impossible loyalties

 

 

1

 

Again the sun was setting in Qoble.

A solitary crow, homeward bound to its nest in Thume, thumped its way high over the Brundrik River — flying, of course, as the crow flies. The two girls standing on the western bank joined hands and disappeared.

 

* * *

 

Time stopped for Thaïle as she ran into the sorcerous barrier. She gathered power to force an entrance and was accosted by a man she knew, Archon Raim. They faced each other in the still nothingness of the ambience. He smiled. She glared angrily, prepared to wrest her way by him, and then was stayed by the color of his emotions.

“Welcome home, Thaïle,” he said softly.

He meant it, too. He was square-shouldered and solid, but the muscle was all genuine; so was the thick curly hair and the smile. He had bright gold eyes. There could be no deception in the ambience, no concealment of mind or body. Thaïle had not been a sorceress long enough to grow accustomed to unrestricted perception, and the last time they had met, she had slapped his face.

“Thank you.” Knowing that she was displaying embarrassment, she glanced at her companion, but Kadie was frozen in timelessness — as was the crow, suspended over the midpoint of the stream.

“You are a sight for worried eyes,” Raim said. He was amused by her reactions, but he was also flattered by them, and starting to respond himself. He could not have been a sorcerer long enough to have forgotten how it felt to a newcomer. Without a word, he passed an apology for his earlier offense and accepted hers for the slap; the incident was mutually discarded.

“I thought my return would be prophesied?” Thaïle said.

He nodded, surprised. “Of course it is. So is your nonreturn. You have not seen the Revelations?”

He was an arrogant young man, but perhaps he had much to be arrogant about. He was very young to be an archon.

“I saw it. I was not allowed to read it.”

“I am sure that will be permitted now. You will find it confusing.”

“It mentions me.”

He nodded again and laughed. “And many other people, also, most of whom have not happened. It mentions you twice by name. Once it prophesies that Thaïle of the Gaib Place will save the College. Elsewhere it says that Thaïle of the Leéb Place will destroy it. That is fairly typical.”

“Oh.” Thaïle had assumed that prophecies might be obscure or ambiguous, but she would not have expected them to be directly contradictory. “Then why is the book important?”

“Because it spends much ink explaining how the Chosen One is to be recognized. Because you seemed to fit about as many of the clues as could be hoped for.” He shrugged those husky shoulders. “Because even such apparent nonsense may turn out to be accurate. Much of the Revelations is very, very old, you see.”

They could stand here in nothing forever, without wearying or losing a moment of their lives. Kadie remained a statue.

“Old is good?”

“In prophecy it is,” he said. “Mountains are best seen from afar, yes? Close to they are obscured by foothills or even trees. For great events, the oldest prophecies are the most reliable.” He chuckled, pleased by his own metaphor.

“And it prophesies my return now?”

“It also said you might not return, which would be disaster.” Raim hesitated, then grinned and went on, because he could not conceal the rest. “And you have not been having romantic adventures.”

“That is important?”

“Apparently. Several verses warn of the coming of a woman with child, as harbinger of Cataclysm. That was why…”

Why my baby was murdered!

Raim flinched and nodded. “Er, partly. Certainly why you were not brought in sooner.” With less brashness than usual he turned his attention to the petrified Kadie. “And you bring a guest? Only one? The Revelations say the Chosen of the Chosen One are to be granted succor — ‘Chosen,’ plural.”

Thaïle glanced with relief at the petrified mundane, that piteous, ill-used princess. “She will not be harmed, then?”

“No, I am sure.” He frowned, obviously intrigued. “Only a mundane? That sword is a cunning piece of work, but she has no power of her own. Pretty little thing… been through some hard times? How and why did you find her?”

“It is a long tale, but she seems to be important, or her family does. Her father is the leader of the resistance to the Covin.”

“They do not concern us!” Raim’s anger flared up in blue-white auroras. “What the Outsiders do to one another is no concern of Thume.”

He was wrong — Thaïle was certain of that, although she did not know how. “That may not be true any longer. He was a demigod once. He knew five words.”

The archon started nervously. Had he been standing in the real world and not the ambience, he would probably have glanced over his shoulder. In either case, there was no way to know whether the Keeper was listening. She almost certainly was. “Was a demigod? And now is not? How can this be?”

“He told four of the words to the girl’s mother, the queen of Krasnegar, his beloved.”

“Four? His beloved, and he stopped at four?” Perplexity writhed around him like purple flame. “That is contrary to all the lore of magic!”

“Evidently. And the woman broadcast them to her assembled people, diluting them to background words.”

Raim shook his head in bewilderment. “An incredible couple, then! It seems our wisdom is deficient. Such things should not be.”

Thaïle could not resist the opportunity. “So perhaps these people do concern us?”

He sighed. “Perhaps. I should not presume to instruct you, Archon Thaïle. Your power belittles us all. I am greatly comforted by it, and by your return.”

His honesty reassured her. Raim was not jealous of her power, or frightened of it, as Teal and Shole had been.

“Her Holiness is expecting me, I assume?”

Raim laughed, and it was the equivalent of a warm hug. His pleasure at seeing her was completely genuine. “If I could keep your return a secret, I would. I shall humbly suggest that you be granted a few days to rest and relax. You know where to find each other when you are ready.”

“And I am to be an archon?”

“You are an archon! You overshadow us like an elm amid seven daisies. Of course you are an archon! But the daisies can cope without you for a while yet. The duties are not taxing, you know, or we should delegate them to someone else!”

Whom do we serve? Yes, Thaïle would be an archon, because that was her duty. All pixies must serve the Keeper and the College, because the Keeper and the College preserved them all against the demons of the Outside. She had walked the Defile and seen the horrors of the War of the Five Warlocks. Now she had sensed the evil of the Covin and witnessed the Almighty’s atrocities. She was mighty, perhaps the mightiest since Thraine. With such a Gift, how could she refuse to serve?

“Welcome home,” Raim said again.

“It is good to be home,” Thaïle admitted.

He nodded and lifted the occult veil to let her pass. Instantly sorceress and friend arrived at the Thaïle Place. Time lurched back to life.

Kadie uttered a yelp of pleasure and approval at the sight of the trim cottage under the trees. She clapped her hands.

Thaïle recoiled in dismay. Oh, it was the Thaïle Place, all right, a luxury version of the Gaib Place where she had been born, set amid much the same upland pines and scrubby vegetation, the same sort of rocky outcropping and taxing mountain air. No one had been near it since she left. To her eyes it was exactly right, to her heart all wrong. A pixie returning home should be overcome with joy, but this was not home. The Leéb Place, now — wattle walls on the banks of the great slow river, the heavy scents of the lowland, the hum of insects; heron and parrot and flamingo, and memories of Leéb… Her soul was rooted there, not here, but the Leéb Place was no more; she herself in grief and rage had blasted it to ashes. A pixie with no Place of her own was a flower with no stalk, a snail without a shell.

A few moments later, far away at the Brundrik River, the crow settled contentedly onto its nest.

 

 

2

 

“The rascal is certainly mobile,” Tribune Hodwhine remarked cheerfully. “Wassailing down by the docks in Gaaze, getting married out in the fruit country, attending the races over in Forix — and that was all in the same afternoon! Must have wings.”

He tossed the whole wad of reports into a basket beside his chair and took a long draft from a misted goblet. Even on a day so hot that the air was hard to breathe, a tribune lived very well in the XIIth’s permanent barracks at Gaaze. Officer quarters included private courtyards, like this one, with flowers and cool willows for shade and a small stream running through it. The ranks were convinced that their betters passed off-duty hours sailing paper boats to one another. That did not seem too incredible in the case of Tribune Hodwhine.

Centurion Hardgraa paced from outer gate to trellis. The trouble was, in Qoble he had no real authority whatsoever. He would have more standing back in Hub — at least he would have until he was noticed by the Covin or the imposter imperor. Then he would be turned into a mindless tool, he supposed. He shivered. Still, that was probably no worse a fate than being a legionary grunt, and his duty would probably lead him to it, once he had recovered the rightful impress. He must return the child to court, no matter what sacrifice was required of him personally.

He turned about and headed back to the gate. He could influence events only secondhand, through this aristocratic ninny. He had persuaded Legate Ethemene of the urgency of the case — lying like a camel trader, of course. Sensing scandal and political quagmires, the legate had quickly distanced himself, assigning Tribune Hodwhine of the IIIrd Cohort to “assist Centurion Hardgraa in making certain discreet inquiries in accordance with the imperor’s personal wishes.” On that slender scaffolding rested all of Hardgraa’s hopes and perhaps the future of the Impire until the end of time.

“Do stop trudging up and down, old man,” the tribune said petulantly. “You’re wearing a rut in my lawn. Sit down, fergossake! Have another drink.”

Very likely Legate Ethemene had selected Hodwhine to handle the Ylo affair because he was a Hathino and the Hathinos had been mortal enemies of the Yllipos for centuries. Hodwhine appeared to be completely unaware of that, or else he considered the feud obsolete. In a sense it was, since the old imperor had wiped out the Yllipos. Ylo was the only one left, and there was no effective way to carry on a feud with one man when that one man was — or seemed to be — the new imperor’s most trusted confidant. Now Hodwhine ought to be grabbing the chance to spike Signifer Ylo, but so far he had shown a lamentable lack of motivation.

Hardgraa eased himself grudgingly into the other chair. He preferred hard stools, if he had to sit at all. As a matter of course he wore full uniform, chain mail and all, and he was sweating like an eel. He disapproved of Hodwhine’s nudity. The tribune had stripped down to a towel.

“Now, old man,” Hodwhine said, prodding the document basket with an elegant aristocratic toe, “we have at least two dozen sightings, from all over the place —”

“Thirty-one sightings, sir, of which eight were in Gaaze itself. The rest were almost all scattered at random, one to a site.”

“Well, then! So weight of numbers suggests the rascal’s holed up here in Gaaze?”

No, it didn’t. If Ylo were in Gaaze he would have been seen more often than that, but centurions did not contradict tribunes, or at least not directly.

Hodwhine smirked inanely. “Better start interviewing all the pretty girls in town, eh? The lads’ll enjoy that!”

Gods, the influence his family must have boggled the mind. Very few could have palmed off this dunce on the army as a tribune. Obviously he was not taking the Ylo affair seriously enough. Obviously he had some sort of sneaky admiration for the young lecher. Obviously Hardgraa must clear both of those obstacles out of the way promptly.

“Start with the married ones, sir.”

Hodwhine sniggered. “Finds those safer, does he? Someone else signs the nine-month report, what?”

“That’s it, sir.” Hardgraa smiled.

It was a calculated smile, because he very rarely smiled, and he had no real inclination to smile at this limp parody of an officer. But it was technically a smile and after a moment Hodwhine frowned at it.

“What’s funny?”

“Oh… Nothing, sir. Just thinking of something Ylo said once about… Well, no matter.”

Hodwhine’s asinine face was already pink from the heat; now it turned slowly scarlet. “Are you suggesting…”

“Just gossip, sir. Just common bazaar gossip, no importance. Now, that report from the priest… priestess. I think that one’s genuine.”

The tribune was still glaring, not listening. He was very minor grit in the aristocratic mill — youngest son of a baron, or something. In Hardgraa’s experience, the more senior a noble, the easier he was to deal with. Shandie himself had been the best example; they came no higher than the prince imperial, which was how Hardgraa liked to remember him, and as man and officer Shandie had been without flaw. Grass-roots aristocrats like Tribune Hodwhine were obsessed with protocol and social standing and correct behavior and decorum. But of course those concerns could be exploited.

Which was why Hardgraa had just hit this one below the belt.

“I want to know why you were smirking that way!” Hodwhine stormed, almost purple now.

“Nothing, sir.”

Veins bulged. “I order you to tell me!”

“Yessir. Ylo bragged more than once that he’d been… had slept with every officer’s wife in the legion. All those he could get his hands on, he said. A couple were not in Gaaze, of course.”

“He’s a lying bastard!”

“I’m quite sure he is, sir,” Hardgraa said, and he was, although as far as he knew Ylo had never made the boast just credited to him. “Now, this report from the priestess. I think it’s the most reliable we’ve had.”

Hodwhine licked his lips and ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. He was still wild-eyed. “Why?” he barked.

“Several factors, sir. The fact that we had to enlist the help of her bishop before she would talk. The fact that clergy dislike lying. The fact that she heard the child named.”

“Mm? Missed that. What name?”

“Maya, sir.”

Even a minor aristocrat could catch the implications. “You mean short for Uomaya or some such name? Well, this woman Ylo’s supposedly abducted has been using the name of the new impress, so it would be a joke to use the name of the princess imperial for her dau… Wouldn’t it?” the tribune asked uneasily.

In the ensuing silence, color faded from his face until he was pale as a jotunn. He made a choking sound. “Whose wife did you say she was, Centurion?”

“I am not at liberty to say, sir. Obviously the matter has potential for scandal, or his Majesty would not be so grievously concerned.”

“But if… The child would be the heir presumptive!”

Hardgraa shrugged. “Can’t comment, sir.”

Tribune Hodwhine grabbed up his goblet and drained it. Then he set it back on the table with a shaking hand. “What do you want me to do?”

That was more like it.

“Well, I suspect the target is heading eastward, sir. I can line up most of the best sightings. He’s obviously avoiding military personnel, so he may not know yet that the XIVth’s been withdrawn and the XIIth’s sector extended to include Angot.” Hardgraa eyed the tribune’s glazed expression and decided he need not waste time on explanations. “I want the guards on the passes tripled. I want maniple signifers assigned to those posts and at least one of them on duty at all times. None of them can claim not to know him by sight. Double-check all shipping.”

“We’re already undermanned! How can I possibly requisition men from other cohorts without a —”

“Shall I ask Legate Ethemene to assign someone else. Tribune?”

“No! That will not be necessary, Centurion! I’ll speak to him. What else?”

“Post a reward.”

“How much?”

“A thousand imperials. Any more and we’ll be flooded with false sightings.”

Hodwhine grunted. “Getting that sort of money out of the bursar would be like skinning hedgehogs.” A sly gleam brightened his normally vacuous eye. “My fa— I mean, I could put up that sort of cash personally…?” His voice trailed off in appeal.

“A very noble gesture, sir. I shall see his Majesty is informed of it.”

The tribune brightened considerably. “Anything else?”

Hardgraa rose and paced over to the trellis. “Someone tipped him off.” He spun around and headed back toward the gate.

Hodwhine opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. Whether he was concerned about the accusation or his lawn remained unclear.

“It had to be the messenger at West Pass. Target did not go through Pinebridge.”

“What do you want?” the tribune said uneasily.

“Seventy lashes.”

“Flog him to death, you mean. Bad for morale.”

Hardgraa stopped beside Hodwhine’s chair and looked down at him with all the contempt he had been hiding hitherto. “I am not playing games, sir. The imperor is not playing games, sir. But some of his legionaries are, sir. I want them to know that this is not a game! Sir.”

Hodwhine pouted. “We’ll bring him in, then, and do it here in Gaaze. Full muster of the legion, as far as we can. Proclamation?”

“Just general, dereliction of duty. No need to mention Ylo by name — they’ll find out.” Hardgraa realized he had dug his nails into his palms. “If the target’s heading into the eastern foothills, we’ll need at least two more cohorts. We must continue to downplay the child, sir. But as you have so astutely guessed, the child is the key.”

“Gods!” the tribune said.

The idiot did not know the half of it. Sick at heart, Hardgraa resumed his pacing. Whatever his moral shortcomings, even Ylo would not mock the Gods with bigamy. That marriage ceremony buried the last shreds of doubt. The tale he had told at Yewdark must be true — Shandie really was dead. So the infant was the rightful impress of Pandemia, and Hardgraa would stop at nothing to get her back.

 

 

3

 

“Tell me more about Keef,” Kadie said.

She was sitting outside the cottage with Thaïle. They had just finished eating and started telling stories. They both enjoyed stories. It was Kadie’s second evening in Thume — a soft, warm evening with pink clouds. The air was drowsy with the scent of trees and flowers, and the clearing so full of peace that she could almost see it.

“There isn’t much more to tell,” Thaïle said, nibbling a strawberry. “It was a thousand years ago, remember. She was certainly a pixie, and the first Keeper. She overthrew Ulien’quith and founded the College.”

“Killed him?”

“Probably.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” Thaïle’s golden eyes twinkled. “Nastily, I hope.”

Kadie frowned. True stories were always full of annoying gaps like that. “But if he was such a powerful warlock and had an army of sorcerers… like Zinixo?”

“Very much like Zinixo.”

“Then how did Keef manage to kill him?”

Thaïle hesitated. She glanced in disapproval at the dirty dishes on the table between them, and they all vanished. “Keef was what your father was once.”

“And what the Keeper now is? So she can kill Zinixo?”

“She says she can’t.” The sorceress smiled oddly. “You know, Kadie, you are almost the only nonsorcerer in the whole world who knows that five words make a demigod! I couldn’t tell you if you didn’t, because it hurts me to talk about such things to a mundane.”

“My mother told me.”

“Yes. If she could then it was only because she isn’t a sorceress anymore! I’m sure the Keeper could defeat Zinixo if they had a straight-up fight, just the two of them, but he is the Almighty and has his Covin to aid him.”

Kadie wondered if she was being too nosy. She did not want to hurt her rescuer and friend, but it was an important subject. “Don’t talk about it anymore if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll tell you if it hurts.” Thaïle sighed. “Won’t tell you, I mean!”

She was very pretty, with her golden eyes and curly brown hair. Kadie had decided she approved of pointed ears. Standard ears were a ludicrous shape, when you thought about it Were all pixies as trim and graceful? One day she would like to meet more of them — but not yet. No, definitely not yet! For the present, a quiet life at Thaïle’s cottage was what she wanted, what she needed. Eat and sleep and exchange stories.

“Well, the Keeper has an army, too. Scores of sorcerers in the College, you said.”

Thaïle shrugged. “We are not bound by the same sort of loyalty spell, although of course we are all loyal and we would fight to the death. There just aren’t enough of us. The usurper’s been gathering votaries for twenty years, all over Pandemia. The Keeper says if he ever finds out about us there will be a battle and we shall lose.”

That was a subject Kadie would not pursue any further. To the rest of the world Thume was the Accursed Land. The tiny piece of it she had seen so far seemed more blessed than cursed, a secret paradise hidden for a thousand years behind an aversion spell. Zinixo would never think about Thume unless something drew his attention to it very strongly, Thaïle had said. But Kadie could see now that she was probably going to be a prisoner here for the rest of her life.

Well, it was a wonderful prison. She loved the romantic little cottage in its private glade. It held all sorts of magical wonders, like spigots that put out scalding hot water and lamps that lit when you asked them to. In two days there had been no visitors except squirrels and jays. But never to see her parents again, or Gath, or Eva, or Holi…

“Thaïle? Is there any way to find out what is going on Outside? My family, I mean?”

The pixie shook her head sadly. “Nobody ever goes Outside. Well, a few do. Sometimes the Keeper will send out appraisers. Spies, I suppose, is what they are. That is rare. And the Keeper herself, of course. That’s her main duty. She can walk the world undetected. No one else can.”

Kadie did not like the idea of spies. Skulking around everywhere, being invisible, listening and watching and then reporting back to Thume? Perhaps they even came to Krasnegar sometimes! Who knew what they might not have pried into in the last thousand years?

“So tell me more about Keef. She was a demigod, too. She did not destroy her words?”

“No. Keef killed her —” Thaïle stopped and shook her head. She looked appealingly at Kadie, inviting her to finish the sentence.

“Killed?” No! “You don’t mean her husband, er, goodman? Her lover? She killed her lover?”

Thaïle nodded again, but she was very tense now, her face pale and screwed up with pain.

“Let’s talk about more cheerful things,” Kadie said quickly. She did not like the way the Keef story was going. “My mother escaped from Thume on a magic carpet.”

Thaïle relaxed gratefully. “That was during the reign of the last Keeper. I expect it’s all recorded in the Library somewhere. We can go and look it up sometime, if you want.”

Thaïle had mentioned the Library before. It sounded as if there would be all sorts of interesting storybooks there. Kadie wondered if she could borrow some.

“Not now!” she said firmly.

Thaïle laughed. “Kadie, you are turning into a real pixie! You just want to stay here, at my Place, hiding out in the forest, never going anywhere — don’t you?”

Kadie nodded guiltily.

“You’ve had a hard time,” Thaïle said sympathetically. “You’ll get over it. I expect you’ll become ghastly bored soon.”

That might be true one day, but it wasn’t true yet.

“I don’t mind,” the pixie said. “I’m happy to be back.” She did not look happy, though. “This is my Place and no one will disturb us here. I was just thinking that it might be fun to introduce you to some people and watch their reactions.”

“Your friends?” Kadie asked uneasily.

“I don’t have any real friends. I was a novice until just a few days ago. Now I’m a sorceress, I’ll have to make new friends. How would you like to go to the Meeting Place?”

The answer was “Not at all,” but Kadie felt ashamed of that reaction. She was perfectly safe here — in spite of the nasty experience Mama had gone through when she had visited Thume — because she was the guest of a sorceress. And she couldn’t hide out in the woods forever. That would not be princessy behavior at all.

She nodded nervously. “If you think it will be all right.”

Thaïle smiled a very thin smile. “It should be fun, watching their faces. You’re the first visitor in a thousand years! The language has changed, but I can give you that with sorcery, and most of the people you’ll meet are sorcerers anyway, so they could understand you.”

“Can I wear my sword?”

The pixie laughed aloud. “In Thume? What do you plan to kill, Great Warrior?”

Kadie felt herself flush. Mama had met danger in Thume! Mostly, though, her rapier had been her constant companion for so long that she could not bear the thought of being without it. It had been her sole comfort among the goblins. It was a reminder of Gath, her twin, and Krasnegar. It was the only thing she had that had come from Krasnegar, and it had saved her from the ravens.

“Let me see it.” Thaïle held out a hand.

Kadie drew the sword reluctantly and passed it across the table. The pixie took it and closed her eyes for a moment.

“It’s very old. Very subtle. It was made for someone called… Olliano? No, Ollialo.”

“Inisso’s wife! He was the sorcerer who founded Krasnegar.”

“And a very powerful warlock. Almost the only warden who ever resigned his throne.” Smiling, Thaïle passed the sword back. “It’s all recorded in the Library.”

“Is everything recorded in the Library?”

“Just about everything. Keeps people busy.”

Kadie gasped, seeing the rapier changed. All its silver filigree was clean and shiny, and the one blind dolphin had a ruby eye again to match its sisters. “You’ve mended it! Thank you!”

“I restored it, too,” Thaïle said, standing up. “You almost wore it out killing ravens.” Her smile faded. “I can prophesy something about that sword, Kadie.”

“What?”

The pixie frowned, as if puzzled. “It will draw blood again soon, but not in your hand. Someone else wields it.”

“You?”

“No, not me. Someone I have never met — and who has never yet touched the sword. You give it to him… I think it’s a him.”

Kadie said nothing. She could not imagine herself ever giving her sword away to anyone, anyone at all.

Thaïle shrugged, and smiled. “There are strange times coming soon, times I cannot foresee. It would not be good manners to take a sword to the Meeting Place, I think.”

And what use would a sword be against sorcerers, anyway? Kadie reluctantly unfastened her belt.

 

 

4

 

The two of them had barely started along the white gravel path before Thaïle began to realize that she might be making a real error in dragging Kadie away from the safety of the Place. Her guest was a badly wounded fledgling who needed time to heal, and apprehension was burning up around her like a thicket of purple fire. She had taken Thaïle’s hand, and her own was damp and shaking.

“This is the Way,” Thane explained cheerfully. “It goes everywhere in the College, one road to anywhere. All you have to do is think where you want to be, and it will take you there.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s even more wonderful than you might think, because the College is scattered all over Thume. To go from my Place to the Meeting Place would take you a week on a horse.”

Kadie said, “Oh!” again, not sounding at all comforted.

“But it’s really only a Way Back, because it will only take you to somewhere you have been before. Notice how the vegetation has changed already?”

Time to heal… but that time might not be available. Old Baze, the former archon, had predicted that Thaïle would not be an archon for long. She could probably foresee such things for herself now — although not while shrouded within the Way’s shielding — but she had not done so and did not intend to do so. Prophesying one’s own future was a dangerous and ill-advised thing to try.

Then the Way emerged from the trees and into the Meeting Place. The clearing was hot and bright with sunshine, a dell of flowered park land enclosing a small lake at its heart. Green was greener here, among the Progiste foothills on a summer evening, setting off the myriad bright colors of blossoms and tropical birds, of gay-clad people sprawled on the grass or conversing on benches and in shady cabanas. White swans floated among the water lilies and wading herons. A herd of small deer grazing on the bank jerked their heads up in alarm, apparently registering the arrival of a mundane. They had been oblivious of their human company until then.

Kadie stopped dead. “Pixies!”

“Of course.” Thaïle decided not to inform her young friend that she was one of the dark-haired demons mentioned in the Catechism. This intrusion was probably very unwise all round. Seeing the cold stare on every face, she realized that the few fragile friendships she had begun to build as a trainee were all lost to her. Archons could befriend only other archons.

Well, if she couldn’t woo them, she could awe them.

“Come! I’ll introduce you to some pixies.”

Kadie dragged her feet as she was led forward along the path. “They’re beautiful!” she muttered.

Perhaps they were, to her mundane eyes — graceful, youthful, tanned, all clad in fine garments of soft colors, mostly golds and greens. Few were less than full sorcerers, though, and Thaïle could see their true ages and shapes. Why did they bother to pretend? Only the lowly trainees would be deceived.

Talk had ceased all over the Meeting Place. A hundred golden eyes stared disbelievingly at the newcomers. Closest was a group of two women and three men, standing. One of them was distinctively clad in blue, instead of the forest shades most others preferred; he strode forward a couple of paces, flickering with anger and indignation.

“Trainee Thaïle?” he barked. Then he became aware of the solidity of her presence in the ambience. He stopped with a flash of alarm.

Give Teal his due, he made no claims to youth; he projected an image of fatherly middle years, silver hair and a mature figure. To sorcerer vision he was repulsive — old and fat, bald, curvaceous body coated with white fur. Despite the fur, he made Thaïle think of snakes. That he should be the first to greet the visitor might be pure coincidence. If not, it boded ill for Kadie’s chances of ever leaving Thume.

Thaïle flashed him an ominous smile. “This is the Master of Novices, Analyst Teal. Master, may I present Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar, a visitor to our land?”

Teal froze. In the ambience he flamed green terror. “An imp?” he croaked. “A demon? And you? Trainee Thaïle?”

“Archon Thaïle.”

Teal vanished with a wail. An instant later, the ambience blazed with occult power and the Meeting Place was deserted. The departure of so many people simultaneously created a clap of thunder. The deer took off for the safety of the surrounding forest. Ducks skittered across the water into flight; swans reared and flapped in white spray.

Kadie jumped and squealed: “Oh!”

Startled herself, Thaïle flinched, and then she began to laugh. “There!” she said. “I told you you had nothing to fear! They’re far more frightened of you than you are of them.”

Kadie’s pale face forced itself into a sickly smile.

“Thaïle, Thaïle!” a reproving voice murmured. “You’d better bring her with you, I suppose.”

“What’s wrong?” Kadie demanded.

Thaïle shivered. “We have to go and meet the Keeper.”

 

Rain was falling on the jungle. Little could penetrate that great ocean of foliage, but the air itself was wet, dense with odors of vegetation and rotting humus. The Way snaked dimly between giant trunks, barely visible to mundane vision. Kadie clung fiercely to Thane’s hand, whimpering nervously as trailing moss brushed her hair. Together they walked down into the blackness of the vestry, then through into the cold gloom of the shrine. Twice before Thaïle had seen this ancient ruin, and yet the Chapel had lost none of its power to awe her. Empty expanse of flagstone floor, high shadowed roof, ill-placed and odd-shaped window openings, the two black corner doors, and the absence of an altar — all seemed wrong and sinister. Again she sensed the mourning centuries.

Even a mundane could detect the outpouring of grief from the farthest corner. “What’s that!” Kadie shrilled, pointing a tremulous finger.

“Keef’s grave,” Thaïle muttered, and was annoyed to hear herself whispering. “The dark patch is ice, frozen tears.” For a moment she considered taking her visitor over there to pay her respects, and then decided not to.

This whole visit was folly. Her return to Thume itself had been. The thought of meeting the Keeper again was starting to hammer pulses of fury in her throat. She killed my lovely Leéb! She killed my baby! Hatred and loss! Raw, bleeding, unquenchable loss. Could even Zinixo surpass such evil?

The fourth corner was empty. To reach the Keeper, Thaïle must make that odd sideways move to the other Thume, the Thume that existed on the same plane as the rest of Pandemia — and she was not sure how to take Kadie with her. To leave her here alone would terrify her beyond reason. Even as Thaïle wrestled with the occult problem, the Keeper solved it for her. She did not seem to appear, she was just present, as if she had been standing there all along, a darker shadow in the darkness.

Kadie saw her a moment later and shied.

“It’s all right!” Thaïle said — adding I think under her breath. Nothing was all right where the Keeper was concerned. A demigod was not, strictly speaking, still human. Thaïle bit her lip as she stared over the barren floor at that eerie cowled shape, motionless as a draped pillar. She felt her hatred straining for release, for action. All the power she could summon was useless against the Keeper. She knew that in her mind, and yet her heart urged her to try again.

Hand in hand, the two women approached the ominous figure. Kadie’s trembling was likely from fear, Thaïle’s from abhorrence. They halted at a respectful distance. Instinctively Kadie sank to her knees, then glanced up in surprise at Thaïle, who remained defiantly erect.

“I will not kneel to you!” Thaïle could not penetrate the darkness within the-hood. She could remember the ravaged, wasted face it concealed, but she could not see it now.

The Keeper sighed, and that one faint sound dismissed her visitor as trivial, her rebellion and disrespect as meaningless. Her suffering, that sigh implied, was as nothing compared to what the Keeper endured and must continue to endure. Only her enormous Faculty could withstand the burden of five words, and then only at terrible, superhuman cost.

“You are forgiven. You are welcomed back.” The Keeper spoke aloud — for the benefit of the mundane, perhaps — but the voice was a tortured hiss, a sound like rain on dead leaves.

Despite her brave show of defiance, Thaïle felt a cold wash of relief at the words, and despised herself for it. Why, when she felt only contempt for the Keeper and indeed the whole of Keef’s grandiose sorcerous design, must her pixie heritage so disgrace her as to make her feel relieved? Now that their cruelty and oppression had been revealed to her, why could she not shuck off the lies and indoctrination of her childhood?

“You are the Chosen One,” the Keeper said. “There is no doubt now.”

Shudder!

“Then may I read what the book prophesies about me?”

“No. I have destroyed the book.”

“Of course you remember what was in it?”

The Keeper did not deign to reply, leaving Thaïle shivering with frustrated rage.

The venomous whisper came again. “Your duties as archon begin now. You are assigned the western sector, as that is where the greatest peril lies.”

“I do not know what is required of me.”

“You will understand when there is need.”

The cowl tilted slightly, as if its wearer had moved to study Kadie, and Kadie, who had been staring up with green eyes big as tiger mouths, doubled over to press her face against her knees.

“You were not prophesied, child,” the scaly murmur said, “but I foresaw you.”

Kadie’s head jerked up in astonishment. “Me?” she squeaked.

There was a pause. “Not you personally, no. But someone yet unborn. You have your mother’s eyes.”

What sort of mockery or trick was this? Before even Thaïle’s occult reflexes could react, Kadie cried out.

“You know my mother?” She half rose, then stopped.

Could that have been a hint of a chuckle within that cowl?

“I was an archon when she came to Thume.”

Kadie blurted, “That was nineteen years —” And stopped.

The Keeper seemed to nod. “I reported the intrusion to my predecessor. I advised him to take a hard look at the young woman in the party. His Holiness commended my acuity of prevision and confirmed my premonition. It was for your sake that your mother was allowed to depart in peace. He let the others go, too, which I would not have done.”

“So the princess may remain with me?” Thaïle demanded.

“You sound,” the Keeper hissed, “like a child asking for a kitten.” Then she was gone.

The audience was over.

 

Impossible loyalties:

…home of lost causes, and

forsaken beliefs, and unpopular

names, and impossible loyalties!

Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism