ELEVEN

 

Rolling drums

 

 

1

 

Maya had gone to sleep, and that was good. There was shade under the willow, where Eshiala sat clutching her daughter, and that was good, too. The little river chattered on its pebbles under a silver glare of sunshine. Birds were chirping. But someone was missing. Something was wrong, and she couldn’t remember exactly…

She’d hurt her leg, hadn’t she? Perhaps not, for it seemed to be all right now. Riding a horse. Jumping. Everything was very muddled. Someone missing? Girls. There had been two young women, or girls. No, someone else.

Twigs crackled. She jumped and turned to look.

“Let me see the child,” the man said, sitting down on the moss at her side. He was big and shaggy-chested, wearing only hideous purple trousers, but his ugly face seemed concerned and oddly familiar.

“It’s all right,” Eshiala said. “She’s having a nap.”

“More than that,” he said. “And you’re in bad shock yourself. You remember me? I’m Rap.”

“She’s asleep,” Eshiala explained. “Poor thing, she was very frightened earlier. But she’s asleep now. She’ll be alarmed if she wakes up with a stranger holding her.”

“I won’t let her be frightened. I can calm her like I’ve calmed you.” The man took Maya gently in his arms and frowned at her. “Trouble is, I can’t do more than one thing at a time anymore. Didn’t see where that batty daughter of mine went, did you?”

Eshiala’s boots were full of water. Her skirt was soaked, and badly torn. Daughter? The man had a daughter, too?

She wondered if she should mention the two girls, but perhaps she had dreamed those. She might be dreaming now. Everything was so muddled. There was something she ought to be doing, if she could just remember what it was.

“You’re right, she is asleep,” the big man said. “Must be Thaïle’s doing. Nothing serious, just bruises. I’ll fix them and then wake her up.”

Memory… worry. “If she’s all right with you, then I’d best go back right away. I have a friend to help. He must have been delayed.” She started to rise.

“Sit down!” the man said. “That’s better. You’re not really conscious, you know! You’re running around in a daze. You took a bad fall. I don’t know how you managed to walk all that way. I don’t know how you walked at all.”

Daze? It was true that things were rather muddled in her mind. Riding down a road and looking back for Ylo. Where was Ylo? Why wasn’t Ylo here? Sunlight glaringly bright on the water, moss warm, skirt all wet and tattered.

“Thaïle would have fixed you up, I’m sure,” the man said, still frowning down at Maya, holding her as if she weighed nothing. “But she was called away.” He turned and glanced at the trees behind. “And that halfwit daughter of mine is floundering around in the briars. Excuse me… Kadie! Come back here!”

Maya slept on, undisturbed by that ear-splitting bellow.

Where was Ylo? Why was he taking so long?

“My wife’ll be here shortly. You do remember me, don’t you? Rap from Krasnegar?”

Eshiala’s court training came to her rescue. “Of course I remember you. It has been a long time, hasn’t it? Have you been keeping well?” Where? He did look vaguely familiar. Count Rap? Senator Rap? An innkeeper, perhaps.

Maya opened her eyes. “Mommy, I’m hungry.” Then she looked up doubtfully at the big, bare-chested man holding her on his lap.

He grinned a faun’s wide grin at her. “Don’t suppose you remember me. Princess. I was on the ship. Do you remember the ship? My, but you’ve grown! I’m Rap.” He smiled again.

She returned his smile trustingly. “I’m hungry!”

“What would you like to eat?”

“Chocolate cake.”

He sat her down on the moss at his side and gave her a plate of chocolate cake — several slices — and a glass of milk.

“That should keep you happy,” he said. Then he turned big gray eyes on Eshiala.

Winds began to move the mists in her head. Things cleared. Ylo! Armed men on horses! She tried to rise and the man laid a large, powerful hand on her shoulder.

She yielded unwillingly. “I must go back and look for someone. He should have been here by —”

“Just wait a minute, your Majesty. I haven’t quite finished. I wish Thaïle had been able to do this. You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

Terror and horrors lurked behind the mist. She did not want to see. “We must hide!” she said, scanning the far bank over the silver glare of water. Panic! “Hide my daughter. The soldiers —”

“They’ve gone away,” he said. “Now do you remember me? Rap, from Krasnegar.”

“The king! Sorcerer?” The ferry on Cenmere… “How did you get here?”

“That’s a very long story.” His big faun mouth was smiling, his eyes were not. “And you’ve had quite a journey yourself, your Majesty.”

“You’re mistaking me for someone else,” she said automatically. Ylo! Where was Ylo? Gods, how was she going to manage in the forest without Ylo?

“You are Impress Eshiala. I’m a friend, remember?”

She nodded. Oh, yes, she remembered. He was a friend of Shandie’s. Another one who might try to steal Maya away and take her to the palace, just like Hardgraa and Ionfeu. She clenched her fists.

“You are quite safe here.” He shook his head. “No one is going to take the child from you. The soldiers won’t come. You’ll be looked after.”

She shivered and stared longingly at the meadow across the river, willing Ylo to appear, riding over the grass. There had been two girls…

“Your horse fell after you cleared the last gate,” the man said. “I don’t suppose you even remember the jump. But you made it to safety. You’re all right Your child will be all right.”

Startled, she looked at him. Which child did he mean? She wasn’t showing her condition yet, but he was a sorcerer.

Ylo! There was still no sign of Ylo.

“Where is my husband?” she demanded.

The big man winced. He glanced behind him, at the trees. “My wife will be along in a moment Kadie! This way! Over here!”

“They caught Ylo? Is that what you’re hinting? No!”

He shook his head. “He stopped them from catching you. He felled three armored men single-handed. He defended the woman he… He defended his impress, I mean. To the death.”

No! “You can’t possibly know that!” she said angrily. “You were here, he was over there.” No, she would not believe it! “You’re making that up.” It was all lies!

Again he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“I won’t believe it. He’s my husband!”

King Rap gritted his teeth. “When were you married? How long ago?”

“Some weeks ago,” she said evasively. She had started the baby before that.

“Your Majesty, Ylo did not lie to you, but he was mistaken if he said that the goblins killed the imperor. Shandie was rescued. As far as I know he’s still alive, and well. I admit I have no recent news of him, but if your wedding was more than nine or ten days ago… well, you weren’t married. It wasn’t valid. And it probably couldn’t have been valid at any time, unless something has happened to Shandie very recently.”

She shook her head, dumb with honor. Shandie alive? What had she done? Betrayed her husband, her imperor? That would be treason! Oh, Ylo! What would Ylo say?

“Ah!” the big man said, springing up. “At last! This is my wife. Queen Inosolan of Krasnegar. And my daughter Kadie.”

Eshiala clambered to her feet as two women emerged from the undergrowth from opposite directions. The first was tall and striking, not quite a jotunn. Her eyes were a startling green, her hair the color of summer honey, but she lacked the fierce angularity of jotnar. Ignoring her husband’s attempt at formalities, she swept Eshiala into a comforting embrace and hugged her.

“Oh, Kadie!” Rap said. “For Gods’ sake stop moping!”

“Thaïle disappeared again!”

Oh! So the girls had not been part of the nightmare. This was the one who had carried Maya across the stream. She seemed on the verge of tears. Her skirt was torn, her face scratched, and her long black hair had twigs in it.

“What if she did?” King Rap said crossly. “She’s not your pet dog. The Keeper’s dead. Thaïle had to go away with the other archons. She has duties. She can’t spend every minute of her life with you, even if she wants to.”

“More cake?” Uomaya said, holding up the plate. She was the only one still seated, and her face was chocolate from ear to ear.

“Maya! That is not polite!” Eshiala said despairingly.

“But it’s good sense,” the king said. “True impish practicality. How about some sherbet instead?”

“Rap!” Queen Inosolan said in a voice of menace. “Where do we go from here? Do we spend the rest of the day digging bait in this jungle, or can we go somewhere civilized? And by the way, you look like a serf.”

He shrugged and began buttoning up a shirt that he had not been wearing an instant before. “I don’t know what happens now. We’re in the real Thume, you see. I can’t move us back to the College — I nearly broke my neck coming down that hill.”

“And I had to do it without sorcery!” the queen said icily. “You might have left me a good pair of boots.”

He groaned and ran his fingers through his hair. “The only way back to the College will be one of their Gates, and I have no idea how to find one.”

“Sherbet is nice, thank you,” Maya remarked wistfully.

“What color sherbet?”

“I can’t leave yet,” Eshiala said, casting a yearning glance at the far bank.

Inosolan put an arm around her again. “I am truly sorry about Ylo. He died very nobly.”

“You saw, too?”

“No. But if Rap says it happened, then it happened.”

Ylo! Ylo! Ylo! She would not believe it. Lies! “I must go back. I should not have left him. I should have gone back as soon as I realized he was lagging.”

“You did exactly right,” Inosolan said. “You did exactly what he would have told you to do if he could, what he wanted.”

“Chocolate sherbet, please,” Maya said, “or strongberry.”

The king said, “Ah! Archon Neem, her Imperial Majesty the Impress Eshiala.”

The newcomer must have just stepped out from behind a tree, or somewhere. He had an odd face, with slanted yellow eyes and extraordinary pointed ears. His clothes were green, and more like city wear than peasant garments. Was his name all Archonneem or was some of that a title? He bore an air of authority. His expression was bleak. He nodded to her but did not bow.

Everyone began talking at once. He raised a hand for silence. “The Keeper told me to come and fetch you.”

“The Keeper?” Inosolan and Rap and their daughter repeated the words in chorus.

“The new Keeper, of course.”

The Kadie girl screamed. “Thaïle? Not Thaïle!” She had turned white. Queen Inosolan put an arm around her.

“Keeper of what, Archonneem?” Eshiala asked.

Rap answered for him. “Keeper of Thume.”

“Thume, the Accursed Land?”

That was why she could not categorize the yellow-eyed man. East of Qoble, of course. He must be a pixie. “It’s true, then?”

“It’s true,” Rap muttered.

“I like strongberry and I like chocolate, too.”

“Thaïle is the new Keeper?” the girl cried.

Archonneem frowned. “That was her name before she became Keeper. Impress, her Holiness suggested you and your child might stay at the Baze Place. Goodman Baze is a former archon. He and Goodwife Prin are both elderly, but they have room for you, and will make you welcome. The location is pleasant.”

“I think she should come back to the Rap Place first,” Inosolan said firmly. “She and I need to have a long talk.”

“The Keeper will be obeyed!”

“You’ve told her a fifth word?” Kadie wailed. “It will kill her! It will torture her!”

Eshiala’s head was spinning. Pixies?

“Shut up, Kadie!” Rap said. “Archon, what news of the Covin?”

Neem fixed him with a forbidding stare. “Nothing here.”

“Then where?”

Reluctantly the old man said, “The djinn army has halted but is not pitching camp. There is activity in Dragon Reach.”

“He’s raising the dragons?”

“Not yet, but perhaps soon.”

“Chocolate sherbet, please,” Maya said. “Or more cake.”

“How long would it take dragons to fly to Thume?” Inosolan demanded, looking from the pixie to her husband and back again.

The two men exchanged glances.

“Two days maybe,” the king said.

“They haven’t risen yet.”

“So they can be here by Midsummer?”

“Unlikely. But Longday may be only the beginning.”

“And the caliph, also?”

Eshiala could not keep track of all this. Her mind would not stop shouting for Ylo, wanting to know what he would say about pixies, about Shandie being still alive. Where had the soldiers gone? And dragons? She must have gone crazy. She was in a home for the insane.

“Mommy?” Maya said. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Where Ylo?”

 

 

2

 

“Three ravens,” Gath said. “A head with an ax in it. A bloody hand. A woman with… Yuck! Two sea dragons and —”

Blood Wave II had arrived at Nintor and was sailing just offshore, skirting the gray beach where the longships lay. Although they were drawn up on the shingle, clear of the water, they had their sails spread. Normally raiders’ sails bore only the orca symbol of a thane, but for the Longday Moot they had been decorated with their owners’ personal emblems, and Gath was reading them off before they came in sight. Drakkor had chosen to approach upwind, probably because that was tricky with a single square sail and let him show off his seamanship. Sounds of cheering followed his progress along the shore — he was the thane who had spoken for war at the last two moots, and now all of Nordland was behind him.

“Next three all show a white bear with red paws,” Gath added. “I’ll show up if I look farther.”

“Try it,” said Thewsome.

Gath stretched his prescience another few moments. “Two ships with a red shark. Three with raiders holding axes. Oh, Gods! A bloody phallus!”

“Yes, you’re showing! Well done! You’ve got it now.”

Like all the rest of the crew, the two of them were leaning on the gunwale and waving obscene gestures at the shorebound audience — the lanky boy and the enormous Thewsome. He was the largest man aboard, bigger even than Red. His arms and shoulders bulged like pillows, his fists were the size of horses’ hooves, misshapen from innumerable fights. Not even another jotunn raider would ever pick a quarrel with Thewsome — which was why he looked that way.

“About five minutes is safe, then?” Gath said.

The giant nodded, and smiled. His eyes were a pale foggy gray, surprisingly gentle. He turned back to studying the passing shore, spray shining like diamonds on his flaxen hair and beard.

To Gath’s great relief, the wind had held for the journey from Gark. The crew had not been required to row. After Afgirk and Kragthong’s departure. Thane Drakkor had been remarkably merciful in administering punishment to the upstart atheling — a single punch that had laid him flat on the floor and left a purple bruise that still showed in the middle of his chest. When Gath had somehow wobbled to his feet and managed to raise his fists again, Drakkor had roared with laughter, thumped him on the shoulder, and told him to go board Blood Wave. Furthermore, that embarrassing rebuke had been delivered in the privacy of the thane’s own quarters, with no bystanders present to mock. All in all, Gath had been let off amazingly lightly.

His relief had turned to alarm when the longship had sailed without the skald aboard. A few cable lengths from shore, his prescience had inexplicably returned. Even then, he had not guessed.

For an island so famed in legend, Nintor was a dismal sight. It was low and grassy, and so small that few charts would show it. Thewsome had explained that it had no water, so nobody lived there. He meant that no one would bother to fight over a place so worthless and thus it could safely be decreed sacred, but even he would not go so far as to put that cynical thought into words. It was a barren strip of dark green under the milk-blue arctic sky, backed by the ragged peaks of Hvark beyond it to the north. Longships flanked the shore like a row of teeth. Gath had not realized that there were so many jotnar raiders in the world. Fifty men to a keel; he had lost count at eighty-some, and still they kept coming into view.

“There!” Thewsome said, pointing an arm as thick as a flayed goat carcass. “See?”

A few upright stones showed on the skyline. There were no other rocks in sight, and those were too regular to be natural.

“The Place of Ravens?” Gath shivered. “Is that where the thanes meet?”

The giant chuckled. “That is where thanes die! The Moot is held at the Moot Stow, which is being a hollow on the south side.”

“There won’t be any Reckonings this year, though, will there?”

The fog-pale eyes turned to stare at him disbelievingly. “You think that all thanes are accepting Drakkor as leader without argument?”

Gath said, “Oh!” and nothing more. He tweaked his prescience again: another red fist, two crossed axes…

Thewsome muttered, “Careful!”

It had been several hours after Blood Wave set sail that Gath had realized Twist was aboard. He had not noticed the extra crewman — nobody had. The others knew him, of course, for he had sailed with them before. They had paid him no special heed. They seemed to have no realization that he only appeared once a year, on the Nintor jaunt, and was never seen around the thorp.

Gath had been sitting in the bow, being inconspicuous, when the great tattooed giant had settled down beside him and smiled at him with Twist’s pearly eyes. Even then Gath would not have known him, had he not been allowed to.

“Is being traditional,” he had explained. “I told you — not all of us are skalds. Some are women, some priests. So we are always coming in disguise. For Longday Moot, I am Thewsome. Is a good name, right?”

Gath had wondered how it felt for a despised cripple to be a whole man for a few days each year. Thewsome claimed that his excessive size was designed to avert challenges. To brawl would require him to use sorcery, which a jotunn regarded as cheating. But he could have diverted a challenge with sorcery just as easily, so his fearsome appearance probably had another explanation — it must feel good, too.

Having established his identity. Twist had set to work teaching Gath how to control his prescience. It was not conspicuous, but it could be detected, he had said, and there would certainly be Covin spies at the moot. Lessons from a sorcerer were like no others, involving adjustments to the pupil’s brain, but now Gath was able to reduce his range all the way to zero if he wanted, as if he were turning off a spigot. He had even started to extend it, to two hours or more, and Twist-Thewsome said he might be able to raise it farther when he had more time to practice — but not to try that at Nintor.

Still the shore curved away ahead. Still the longships lay like basking sharks on the shingle just above the weeds that draped the high tide mark. Here and there groups of half-naked jotnar sprawled on the grass beyond, apparently asleep in the unending summer sunshine. Others were tending kit and weapons, or clustered around fistfights, hooting and jeering. Cooking fires smoked, but as Blood Wave went floating by them, the crews abandoned all other pastimes to run down to the water and cheer Thane Drakkor.

Drakkor himself held the steering oar and mostly ignored the applause. Once in a while he would raise a hand in salute to someone ashore, but he did not join in the vulgar gesturing. His babyish face was expressionless. As far as Gath was aware, he had not exchanged one word with his brother on the journey.

Gath glanced to his right to make sure his neighbor there was engrossed in other matters, then turned back to Thewsome. “There is a sorcerer for every ship?”

The skald spat over the side. “Oh, no. One for every thane, more like. But this year every thane is bringing all the ships he can muster. I have never seen so many.”

War moot! Fire and slaughter. Gath tried to imagine all these men charging, brandishing swords and axes, howling in blood-lust. He couldn’t imagine it, but he could come closer than he wanted to. He had decided he was not as much a jotunn as he had thought. He wasn’t even enough of a jotunn to want to be that much of a jotunn.

“And where is the Commonplace, where the secret moot is held?”

Thewsome pointed a finger as thick as a dagger hilt. “North. You can’t see it from here.”

The end of the line was near. It would come into sight in another few minutes. Then Drakkor could beach his ship. The cheering swelled as Blood Wave swept past some allies.

“Nobody’s booing,” Gath said. “Your brother seems to be the popular favorite.”

“Do not be calling him my brother!” the giant growled. “Not here!”

“Sorry.”

“And they will cheer his killer if he dies. But Drakkor is not the only one in danger, I am thinking.”

The wind was chill and laden with salty spray. Clad only in breeches like everyone else, Gath was already having trouble persuading his teeth not to chatter, but the implications of those words made him feel much colder.

“You, you mean?” he asked hopefully.

Thewsome chuckled ominously, still studying the island. Boards and ropes creaked… “Where is my world expert in sorcery? Are you not being aware of the problem?”

Gath had been thinking of little else but the problem for days now. The danger was much like the danger he and Mom and Warlock Raspnex and the imperor had faced in Dwanish, but there were differences. The trickery that Mom had dreamed up then would not work twice. He hoped Twist could think up an equally effective strategy, because he couldn’t.

“You mean the Covin sorcerers are going around turning all the others into votaries like themselves? Ganging up on them? You may be enslaved as soon as you step ashore!”

And him, too.

Seeming deep in thought, the giant scratched a dragon tattoo half hidden by the hairy mat on his chest. “Is not happening that way, though! I am not hearing any sorcery at all — which is why I keep reminding you not to use your prescience. The island is quiet as a grave.”

It might be quiet in sorcerous terms, but in Gath’s world the cheering was waxing louder and a small army of men had started running along the shore. It was heading for the place where Blood Wave would beach, gathering mass like a snowball as it went.

Mention of graves made Gath feel even colder. Perhaps the damage was done, and every sorcerer already ashore had been bent to the will of the Almighty. Best not to worry about that possibility! “Is the Commonplace shielded?”

Now Thewsome turned to look at him with Twist’s pale eyes. There was no hint of a smile in them, though. “It is.”

“So…” No, discard that idea… “That’s good, isn’t it? If war breaks out in there, then the Covin itself can’t interfere!”

“Shielding is only as strong as the sorcerer who made it,” Thewsome remarked softly, “but likely you are being right”

“If the odds are on the Covin’s side already, then the case is hopeless,” Gath continued. To think he had hated schooling back in Krasnegar! Here the penalties for mistakes did not bear thinking about. “We’ll lose. So we must just hope the odds are on our side, and we’ll win the battle in the Commonplace.”

“What battle?” Thewsome shrugged the obscene pictures on his shoulders and went back to watching the shore. Somehow he had implied disappointment, that Gath was overlooking something.

“But when we all come out again… ?”

The giant said nothing, merely scratching a few more tattoos. That was not the problem, then, or not the worst part of it.

“If all the sorcerers come in disguise,” Gath suggested wildly, “then you can’t tell which ones have loyalty spells on them! And we agreed that you probably can’t rely on knowing them anyway?”

Thewsome nodded, waving a vulgar finger at some man ashore. What had he seen that Gath had not? The best way to get answers was to ask questions, Dad had always said.

“Then how do you tell the good guys from the bad guys? How do you tell the sheep from the wolves?”

“Ah! Well, my lad, one way is that sheep mill around in herds and wolves run in packs.”

Was there a difference between a herd and a pack? Cold fingers closed around Gath’s heart. Oh, God of Horrors!

“Twist! What happens at the Moot Stow if the thanes vote for war?”

Twist-Thewsome looked down at him with approval, baring yellow teeth in flaxen beard. “Then they choose a leader. If needs be, the candidates fight it out at the Place of Ravens. But once a leader is chosen, then all the other thanes do homage to him.”

“Is it possible for a sorcerer to lie to another sorcerer?”

“Not usually.”

Gath shivered. His teeth chattered briefly. Then he brought them under control. “Homage can be done to a deputy, can’t it? An agent?”

The giant nodded.

“Was that why you let me come?”

“Whatever do you mean, Atheling? You came because you wanted to.” Thewsome uttered a gruesome jotunn laugh. Then he gripped Gath’s arm, and his fingers went all the way around. He squeezed painfully. “Will you do it? Are you man enough?”

This was Dad’s war. Here was Gath’s part in Dad’s war. He had chosen it himself, even if he hadn’t known he was doing so. This was what his craziness at Urgaxox had brought him to! He had no one to blame but himself. He straightened up and forced out the words, his knuckles white on the gunwale.

“No, I’m not man enough, but yes, I’ll do it, if it will help.”

“It is the only way I can think of, Atheling.”

“Then of course I’ll do it.”

“It is dangerous!”

“I said I’d do it!” Gath shouted angrily.

That was how to tell the sheep from the wolves — set a trap.

With him as the bait.

 

 

3

 

Inos came along the Way in the evening sunshine. A whiff of sea tang and a muted rumble of surf told her she was approaching the Rap Place. As she emerged from the trees she was greatly relieved to see Rap himself stretched out on one of the ugly purple lounges. He sprang up to greet her and they hugged.

“Funny,” she murmured into his neck. “I think I missed this more than anything — just being held.”

He grunted. “Well, it’s a start. Sit down and let me make you a drink.”

She sank down wearily, wondering if she was too old for all this wild adventuring or just unaccustomed to the Thumian climate. “Something stunning.”

“Elvish brandy?” He gave her a crystal beaker the size of a small bucket. She needed both hands to hold it.

“You were always generous,” she muttered. “I said stun, not kill.” It was cool and delicious and not elvish brandy.

Rap perched on the edge of the chair beside her and smiled happily.

“Kadie?” she said.

He glanced at the cottage. “Stretched out cold on our bed. I don’t think she slept all night.”

“Not much, anyway.” Inos took another draft and eyed him over the rim. “I wish I understood why you can’t heal her!”

He shrugged. “I can heal bodies. Souls belong to the Gods.”

“You cured me!”

He turned his face away as if to study me trees. “Not really,” he muttered.

“Rap!”

“Well… I did hurry your own healing along a little. You’re a strong, mature woman. You knew that what Azak wanted was to hurt and humiliate you, so you fought back against that. To recover was to defeat him, right? I just helped. Kadie’s problem is much worse, much deeper. What would you have me do — take away her memories? People are made of their memories, darling. Personalities are, I mean. I daren’t meddle in that. I might turn her into a mushroom.”

He ran his hands through his hair. “Besides, she’s right to be worried about her friend, isn’t she?”

Inos made a noncommittal noise. Friendship was one thing, obsession another. She laid the drink on the table beside her so she was free to squeeze Rap’s arm. “I’m sure you’re doing all you can, love.”

“How’s the impress?”

“Better. She’s a strong woman.” For a twenty-year-old who had been through several consecutive hells, the girl was a marvel.

Rap nodded, staring at nothing.

Inos said, “Prin and Baze are sweet.”

“Yes.”

“Rap? Is she pregnant?”

He nodded again.

Inos took another drink and thought yet again about Shandie. Having now met Eshiala, she could understand his infatuation. The impress’ beauty was every bit as incredible as he had claimed, but he had never been a sensitive or understanding husband. How would he react to her now that she carried another man’s child?

“I suppose that’s a fairly small problem really, isn’t it?” she said. “With the world at stake, what’s one more little bastard? Even an Imperial bastard. Minor problem.”

So was Kadie. Tomorrow was Longday. None of them mattered compared to that, not Eshiala or Kadie or Rap or Inos.

“How’s your day been?”

Rap shrugged. “Frustrating. The Way won’t always do what I want it to. I can’t reach any of the archons’ Places I know of. I can’t find any trace of the Chapel, and I think Kadie tried for the Thaïle Place a hundred times. Mostly I’ve been following her around in circles, keeping an eye on her.”

“Any news of the Covin?”

He sighed. “The djinn army’s back where it was four days ago. If it advances tomorrow, it’ll enter Thume before midday.”

“How’s Azak?”

“Don’t know.”

“His sorcerers may have cured him?”

“If they weren’t frightened of the Covin, they might. Or Zinixo may have done so. Or he may have died. I have no idea.”

“We should have killed the bastard,” Inos muttered, “when we had the chance. Him and his whole murdering horde.” She saw Rap wince. Why? What did he know about Azak that he wasn’t saying? “Dragons?”

He brightened. “That’s interesting! Apparently they’re restless, but not going anywhere. They rise, circle, then return to their nests.”

“So why is that interesting?”

“Because either something is troubling them, or the dwarf suspects something.”

“He always suspects something! Such as?”

“I think,” Rap said, “that some of the anthropophagi must be still at large. Zinixo’s frightened to raise the dragons in case he triggers a trap or something. Or else the worms themselves sense the trap — they’re not entirely mundane, remember.” He ran fingers through his hair again. “All right! I’m clutching at straws. It just seems indecisive, see?”

Zinixo was notoriously indecisive, but let the man dream. And how had he learned all this if he hadn’t been able to reach the archons?

“What else did the new Keeper tell you?”

Rap shot her an admiring glance. “She was here. Not twenty minutes ago. Briefly.”

“How is she?”

“Can’t tell with demigods.”

“Did Kadie know?”

“Kadie was asleep.”

Mm. “Is Thaïle going to be more cooperative than her predecessor?”

“She will be, I think. If the Covin has noticed Thume, then she has no choice.”

“So what else did she say?”

“Not a great deal.”

“Darling, after all these years you think I don’t know when you’re being evasive?”

He chuckled. He swung his feet up, stretched out beside her on the pallet, and proceeded to kiss her at length and with great attention to detail. Inos began to appreciate that the Thumian climate might have certain advantages after all. It was several more minutes before he gave her a chance to speak.

“That was wonderful,” she said breathlessly. “And I shall cooperate fully at the first suitable opportunity. But we were talking business. No!” She pushed his busy hands away from her buttons. “Rap, I mean it!”

“Later!”

“Now! What were you not telling me?”

“The new Keeper has appointed a replacement archon.”

Inos studied his face for a moment, as it was all she could see — he was almost on top of her already. “I thought archons were exceptionally potent sorcerers?”

“She says she wants experience and counsel.”

Idiot! “You accepted?”

“You think I had any choice?”

“Yes.”

“I accepted.”

She could tell nothing from his smile. So he was worried sick and using sorcery not to show it.

This was Midsummer Eve. There might be no more chances.

“I’ve never had an archon make love to me before,” she said. “Can you make sure we won’t be interrupted?”

Rap said, “Yes,” huskily.

Inos reached for his buttons.

 

 

4

 

It was Midsummer Eve, and the Imperor was hosting a garden party. Anyone who was anyone was there. No one who was anyone was not. Someone who did not wish to be there was there. That one could see everyone, and he could also see some ones he was not supposed to see, sorcerers who were not one person but two. Skulking unobtrusively in the shadows between two fuchsias near a buffet table, Lord Umpily nibbled fervently on a heap of canapés and cursed his double vision.

Orchestras droned. Crowds strolled on the lawns below swaying rows of lanterns strung on cables; couples danced on a dance floor laid out in the Rose Garden. Bonfires hurled fountains of sparks into the summer night. There would be fireworks later. It was all very convivial.

Caviar, stuffed olives, peeled grapes, lark tongues on ginger crackers… Umpily ate convulsively. He knew he should go more slowly, to make the spread last. At this rate he would soon empty the plate and have to go back for more, but somehow his fingers insisted on staying busy. His teeth could barely keep up with them.

A globular moon was rising behind the willows. The lanterns strung over the lawn burned brighter now, reflecting the jewels and finery of the multitude strolling below them.

He returned a nod and a smile as the Countess of Somewhere wandered by his place of concealment. He stepped back a pace.

One partridge wing, two frogs’ legs, three turtle eyes… he really ought to slow down!

He really ought to parade around and let himself be seen. Once he had done that, he could safely depart, and if anyone inquired he could claim to have been present.

For three weeks he had skittered amid the shadows of the court like an overweight cockroach. Somehow he had managed to avoid the fake imperor and impress, but it was impossible to stay away from sorcerers. The Opal Palace was stiff with sorcerers, as if the Almighty had moved the entire Covin in with him. To mundane eyes they were always unexceptional — footmen, female domestics, miscellaneous flunkies — but to Umpily’s occult double vision their true selves showed, weedy youths or ancient crones or anything in between. Almost every race was represented: imps, elves, fauns… and dwarves. Possibly one of the many dwarves he had seen had been Zinixo himself, but not likely so, for none had resembled last year’s vision in the preflecting pool.

Lobster, smoked oysters, blue cheese, pistachio and curry — he continued to cram the succulent morsels into his mouth, chewing and swallowing convulsively, hardly aware of the flavors. When he had emptied the plate, he promised himself, he would saunter off across the lawn and mingle with a few hundred guests, greet a few dozen by name. And then scarper.

Oh, no!

Oh, yes! The imperor and impress! The royal party had just emerged from the throng, heading in his direction — Shandie and Eshiala, escorted by a fawning mob of senior courtiers. The impress was recounting some witty tale and the sycophants were hanging breathless on her words. At her side, Shandie was listening with a tolerant smile, nodding graciously to the bowing, curtseying onlookers as he strolled by. She wore a stunning white crinoline, glittering with pearls, and a diamond tiara that could almost rank as a crown. He was in uniform, bronze flashing under the lanterns. They were a fairy-tale couple.

They were total illusion. Prince Emthoro and Duchess Ashia stepped in their footsteps and occupied their same space. He looked drunk, eyes blurred and rolling, unshaven, bedraggled. She was a frump, her hair tangled and unkempt. She seemed to be laughing hysterically, but making no sound.

And behind them?

Who or what was that vague misty darkness at their heels?

Umpily could guess. His enchantment was not powerful enough to penetrate the Almighty’s invisibility but was seemingly catching hints of it. The Almighty would certainly detect his awareness, his terror. In moments he would be unmasked as the spy he was! Terror!

Still clutching his plate of canapés, Lord Umpily spun around and crashed away through the shrubbery.

 

* * *

 

He did not run very far before a biting pain in his chest brought him to a halt. He thought he was having a heart attack. It was either that or severe heartburn, and he had always had an excellent digestion. Just an attack of nerves, hopefully. He sat down on an ornamental urn at the side of the road and drooped in misery, waiting to see if he would die.

In the distance, the orchestras played on. Faint echoes of jollity drifted through the summer night. The moon crept up the sky and the air cooled.

He could not stand any more of this cat-and-mouse existence! To have evaded the Covin’s notice for three whole weeks was a miracle; he could not expect the Gods to favor him that way forever. He must flee to some safe refuge as soon as possible. Trouble was, he had been trying to think of such a sanctuary for three weeks and so far he had come up with an utter blank.

Eventually the urn’s unsuitability as a seat impressed itself upon his awareness. He realized, too, that he was for some reason racked by a terrible thirst. Also there were people wandering around in his vicinity. Lovers, perhaps. Inquisitive visitors. Guards, maybe. Possibly even sorcerers, although the Covin would not need to send out scouts in the flesh if it wanted to know what was going on. That was an unnerving thought in itself. By sitting here alone, he was behaving suspiciously.

With a private moan, he heaved himself to his feet, discarded the empty plate he had been clutching all this time, and began to walk. A sedate, purposeful stroll would attract no especial attention. He was a bona fide resident of the palace; he could walk where he wished. A gentleman could always claim to be going to the gentlemen’s room.

 

* * *

 

He brooded as he wandered, not noticing where he was headed. Some considerable time later, he realized that his feet ached and he had arrived at Emine’s Rotunda, its great dome gleaming in the moonlight. He had never quenched that thirst, which now thrust itself back into his attention. His throat was a fiery desert.

He glanced around dubiously. There were few buildings close to the Rotunda, and most of those were unfamiliar to him. They were all dark, too. But the door of the Rotunda itself was open, and a faint glow showed through it. Most probably there were workmen toiling there, installing the new seating for the coronation, or something. He knew the building well, including its many cloakrooms and antechambers.

He plodded up the steps and went in. The light came from a discarded lantern just inside the door, standing on a stack of timber beside some sacks of what seemed to be plaster. He could hear no sawing or hammering anywhere. The workmen had most likely slipped away to steal a look at the imperor’s garden party. Taking the lantern, Umpily went in search of water. He found some in the first room he tried and enjoyed a long, refreshing drink.

Then, moved by a vague curiosity to see how the alterations were progressing, he wandered farther into the great warren. Craftsmen’s supplies were piled everywhere: stone slabs, rolls of fabric, lumber, ladders, mysterious barrels. When he reached an entrance to the main auditorium, the Rotunda itself, he was much annoyed to discover it locked against him. He back-tracked, detoured along more cluttered corridors until he had reached the next quadrant, and there he tried again. This time the great door swung open at his touch. His lamp flickered twice and died.

He cursed under his breath. Finding his way out again in the dark would be hazardous. The Rotunda itself was bright enough, with moonlight pouring down through the panes of the great dome, and since he was here he might as well look — he advanced along the canyon between the banks of seats. He squinted uncertainly. He seemed to be seeing the Opal Throne on its dais in the center, straight ahead. He should not be able to. The four warden thrones that had once stood at the end of the entrance passages had all been destroyed the night the usurper came, but the Covin had replaced them, hadn’t it? Yes, of course it had! He had seen the replacements at the fake Shandie’s spurious enthronement ceremony, for there had been thrones for the imposter wardens to occupy. They had been there when he watched the imposter address the Senate, too. Or at least Umpily could not recall them being absent, nor anyone commenting that they had been missing. They must have been there! They might have been taken away to make more space for the coronation.

He emerged from the canyon where the seating reached floor level. The great amphitheater was awash with silver light and quiet as a tomb, banked seating soaring up from the arena’s perimeter to the base of the dome. The Opal Throne smoldered in uncertain greens and blues in the exact center. From its dais, the four points of the mosaic star ran out to the lower platforms where the thrones of Four had stood for three thousand years: red, white, gold, blue.

They were there now, and they weren’t there.

Ah! It was that Evilish enchantment of Olybino’s again. The replacement thrones were sorcerous, apparently, and Umpily could simultaneously see them and not see them. That was all! He felt oddly relieved to have solved the mystery. Mysteries upset him. He poked a finger gingerly at East’s throne. He felt the clammy touch of gold. He stroked it. Yes, only his eyes could detect the illusion; his other senses were deceived. That was why he had not been able to hear Ashia’s hysterics.

The new seating for the spectators was coming along very well. Both eastern quadrants were complete, resplendent in the new green. Northwest was still in its shabby old purple plumage, while southwest was a confused mess, halfway between caterpillar and butterfly perhaps.

He stared thoughtfully across at the Opal Throne. It was facing east now — someone gave it a quarter turn each day, but he had no idea who. Probably there was some hereditary office involved. Just for a moment he was tempted to go and sit on it. Just for a moment. See what it felt like to be imperor.

He didn’t. It would seem like sacrilege.

A year ago he had been granted a vision of Zinixo sitting there, in the center of the world, but that prophecy had never been fulfilled. It had been a warning only, not intended to be taken literally.

Oh, how he wished he had taken it a great deal more seriously at the time! They had all been at fault there. Acopulo had been advised to seek out Doctor Sagorn and had done nothing much about it. Of course Ylo had claimed to have found the woman he had been shown — lusty young Ylo was not the sort of lad to ignore a hint like that, and ten to one he had bedded her on his first attempt — but had Shandie ever located the boy of his vision? Umpily had no idea, and would likely go to his grave without ever knowing the answer. He wondered sadly how his former friends were doing now, and where they all were.

His occult view of the Opal Throne had not been from this level. Around to the right a little, and six or seven rows up… Moved by sheer whimsy, Umpily turned to the nearest stairs and climbed. Yes, about this height — along about here, maybe?

He sat down and studied the angle. Close enough. He yawned. One empty throne, no dwarf. And that was just as well! Zinixo was occupied elsewhere, playing puppeteer at the garden party, so here was as safe as anywhere, for the moment. These new seats were a big improvement. Gods, he was tired! His eyelids drooped.

 

 

5

 

Shivering and covered with goosebumps, Gath strode over the coarse grass of Nintor, all alone. Behind him trailed his shadow, stretched and gaunt, as if reluctant to follow him into danger. He was barefoot, clad only in leather breeches too large for him, bunched at his waist by a thong. The cold wind ruffled his hair. If Mom saw that hair now she would tell him to get it cut — it was a terrible bush, and yet it was short compared to any other man’s on the island. Real jotunn hair didn’t stand on end like his. She would scold him for his dirty feet, too, and for not dressing more warmly. He decided he wouldn’t mind a bit of mothering at the moment. That was a very unmanly thought, but his was the only chin on Nintor without whiskers and Nintor was a long, long way from home.

The sky was a sickly blue, and cloudless. Straight ahead stood the peaks of Hvark, with Frayealk the most conspicuous. Frayealk lay due north of Nintor, Twist had told him, and the sun cleared the summit one day in the year. It was very close now, moving eastward of course. When it stood directly over the mountain, that would mark midnight and the start of Longday.

The jotnar were already gathered at the Moot Stow — thanes down on the floor of the hollow, their followers assembled on the slopes, all unarmed. They had been singing ancient hymns, waiting on the sun. One by one the sorcerers had slunk away unnoticed. Gath could see a few of them ahead of him still, pale figures moving north over the tundra. Thewsome had told him to follow when the sun was one handsbreadth from the peak.

He had an astonishing faith in Gath’s courage.

Those last few sorcerers were still in sight ahead, all walking alone, heading for the Commonplace, whatever that was. They all seemed to be able-bodied young men, just a random selection from the thousands of jotunn raiders now infesting the island. Doubtless many were not what they seemed. Some would be women, Twist had said.

Which were the wolves and which the sheep?

The sun was almost over Frayealk.

The effort of not using prescience was starting to give Gath a headache.

The standing stones of the Place of Ravens were just off to his right. If somehow the Gods ever did take him back to Krasnegar, then he would be able to brag to his jotunn friends about seeing the holy of holies. They would want all the details, though. How could he ever admit that he had been so close and not seen it properly? It would not take him far off his path. He risked a peek at the next few minutes and knew that there was nobody up there. The sorcerer stragglers were still in plain view. He changed direction slightly.

A few minutes later he stepped between two of the towering monoliths. There was nothing to see, only a circle of weathered boulders, larger than he had expected, maybe. And grass. Any cemetery was as exciting. There were no ravens in sight, just a few seagulls sitting on the stones at the far side, preening themselves. Was the grass a little greener within the circle, perhaps — fertilized by the blood of thanes? No, that was just the long shadows of the rocks.

He shrugged, shivering in the wind. Midnight sun. Should he cut across the edge of the circle? Peek…

No!

He would cut his feet if he tried that. The long grass was full of bones, old and brittle, weathered white. He saw a skull and then two more. There was a hazard he had never thought of! The combatants fought naked, or almost naked, and certainly barefoot. How many fatal duels had been decided by a careless misstep — tripping over a pelvis or planting a foot on a sharp vertebra? The skalds’ sagas would never stoop to mentioning that hero so-and-so had lost his head because he had stubbed a toe.

Cutting across the Place of Ravens would be unwise, perhaps even sacrilege. Gath went back out the way he had come in, and hurried around the outside.

Frayealk came in sight again. The sun was over the mountain. It was almost past the mountain. Longday had begun.

The wind faltered for a moment and he thought he heard a distant roar. Then it had gone. Had that been the sound of surf, or was the moot in open bedlam already? The vote for war would take no time at all, Thewsome had predicted. Choosing a leader would be another matter.

In sudden alarm, Gath quickened his pace, eyes scanning the green slopes ahead, squinting against the low sun. Where were his guides? He had no idea what the Commonplace looked like — Thewsome had just said he couldn’t miss it. If he did miss it, he was going to seem like a complete idiot. Worse! He would look like a coward! There was nobody else in sight. He was completely alone.

He began to run.

Then he forced himself to drop back to a fast walk again. Panic would not help, and he certainly did not want to arrive panting and sweating. Peek again — Yes! He was going to find it!

And there it was. Couldn’t have missed it, even without prescience. He’d mistaken it for a hillock, but it was too regular to be natural, a flattish dome with grass growing over it. In a few minutes he was going to notice that the turf had been trampled by many feet, converging into a path. Recently, too. The entrance was a low cave mouth in the south side. The Commonplace looked very much like some ancient, forgotten tomb.

The future inside it was a blank, meaning it was shielded, so there was no mistake, this must be the Commonplace. The first danger, Twist-Thewsome had said, was that he might not be allowed in, for he was not a sorcerer.

Horribly conscious of his pounding heart, Gath raised his chin and strode toward the doorway. Dad would approve, wouldn’t he? He could hear nothing except the wind in the grass. He could see nothing within except darkness.

He stumbled down a gritty slope and stopped when the passage widened into a chamber. Not even a sound of breathing broke the age-old silence. A quick peek of prescience told him there were people there, though. They were probably all looking at him. He was against the light of the door, and sorcerers could see in the dark anyway. He could see nothing of them. He waited. The air was icy cold and earthy-smelling, the ceiling oppressively low.

Dazzled from staring into the sun, his eyes took a moment to adapt. Then he began to make out a spectral shape glimmering before him, a glowing outline of a head… Argh!

Sorcery? No, trickery! It was only a man, lit from behind by a single beam of sunlight. His hair and beard and bare shoulders burned with golden fire and the rest was darkness. He must be even bigger than Thewsome.

“Who comes?” he demanded.

Gath jumped and clenched his fists. There was no echo. Why not even the sound of breathing from the onlookers?

“Who comes?” demanded that voice again, louder, more threatening. It was a deep, very male voice.

Never in his life, Gath thought, had he ever been really scared before. Not like this.

“Gath.” Twist must have told them he was coming.

“Who?”

God of Courage! Why had Twist not given him more instructions? Gath took a deep breath. Might as well be hung for a horse as a pony, Dad always said.

“I am Atheling Gathmor of Krasnegar, son of Thane… son of Rap Thaneslayer.” Was that stupid or smart? He swallowed with difficulty and added, “I come in peace.”

“You’d surely scare the piss out of me if you didn’t!”

Sniggers ran off into the darkness.

That had been another voice, a youth’s voice, or a woman’s. Gath’s eyes were adjusting to the gloom. The circular chamber was about ten paces across. He could see the shapes of people — vaguely, just indications of pale jotunn chests, silver hair. They were sitting all around the walls, on a bench, perhaps, tightly packed together. Some were smaller and darker than others, more covered — women?

“Gods’ bullocks!” roared the very large man — a very angry one, too — standing in the center. “Stripling, you blunder in where you are not invited. State your business or pay the penalty!”

Where in the Name of the Good was Twist? He had not warned Gath of any of this. Perhaps he had not known what to expect, because of the shielding. He had certainly not suggested having a speech ready.

Wiser not to. Would have scared him away completely.

The sheep and the wolves. The herd and the pack. The pack was united, loyal to Zinixo and the Covin. The free sorcerers had no leader, Twist had said. Being jotnar, they would take hours to choose one, if they could ever agree, and by then it might be too late.

That was why Gath was here. He was to be a rallying point, a symbol. Bait.

Faces were becoming visible — unfriendly faces. Yes, some women. Some very old men. One or two hale warriors. Several cripples, but still Gath’s frantic searching had not located Twist. Not a smile in the place.

“Come here!” demanded the man in the middle of the chamber. He was standing on a low slab, of course. Even without that, he was big, his flaxen head almost touching the stones of the ceiling. His glare was visible now. Gath had often seen its like in Krasnegar, and blood had always flowed right after.

A few firm strides put him directly in front of the speaker, and his eyes were lower than the giant’s furry chest. The sunlight was shining in through a shaft in the roof, and now it stabbed over the man’s shoulders into Gath’s eyes.

“Say what you expect of me, son of Rap Thaneslayer!”

Gath breathed a silent prayer. This was going to be suicide! He looked up defiantly. “I want you to do homage.”

“To you?” roared the jotunn.

“To my da — I will accept your homage to, er, for my father, who is leader of the battle against the Aim… the dwarf…” Gath swallowed again and wiped sweat out of his eyes. Why was he so wet outside and dry inside? He desperately wanted to peek at the future, but his prescience would be detected and might seem like cowardice.

The jotunn raised a fist the size of a small anvil, right in front of Gath’s nose. “Tell me why I should kneel to you, boy!”

Speech!

Gath put his hands on his hips and shouted up at him. “Would you sooner kneel to a dwarf? You know the war that hangs over us! Some of you here are votaries of the usurper and are planning to enslave all the rest of you. Your only hope of remaining free people is to join the army my dad leads. Him and the imperor and the wardens against the dwarf.” Gods, this was coming out all muddled! He should never have mentioned the imperor! “The Protocol doesn’t protect the jotn… us… anymore. If the thanes go to war this time, they’ll be fighting against sorcery. My dad has promised a new protocol, which will stop votarism. You can trust him. I want you to help. He’s fighting for freedom. Your freedom, too.”

Gods, that had sounded really awful! He’d fouled it all up! Why hadn’t Twist warned him he would have to make a speech?

“That’s it?” the big man snarled, his breath reeking of fish and sour beer.

“That’s it!” Gath said, and braced himself to be knocked senseless.

“Sounds like a smart move.” The big man stepped back, off the plinth. “Get up there.”

Bewildered, fighting not to use his prescience, Gath stepped up on the flat rock. The sunbeam dazzled him. He felt shamefully shaky and his eyes were still not level with the sorcerer’s, but then the big man dropped to his knees and raised his great hands, palms together as if in prayer.

“I am Drugfarg son of Karjiarg and I am your father’s man,” he said loudly.

For a heart-stopping moment Gath stared down at those huge hands, while his mind whirled in search of the correct response. He found it in a faint memory of one of the fairy-tale plays that Kadie wrote and made all her friends perform at Winterfest. The words he would have to invent, but he recalled the gesture. Kadie knew all that sort of stuff.

He clasped Drugfarg’s hands between his own. His were colder.

“In the name of my father, Rap Thaneslayer, I accept your homage, Drugfarg son of Karjiarg.”

The giant waited.

There was more? Oh, yes. Gath bent to grip the sorcerer’s meaty elbow and raise him. Of course he could no more have truly lifted Drugfarg than he could have drunk the Winter Ocean, but that was the correct gesture. Drugfarg rose smoothly to his feet and stepped back without a smile or a word. He turned his back and walked away. Another man rose and came forward to take his place. Older and smaller, he also knelt before Gath and raised his hands.

“I am Gustiag son of Prakran and I am your father’s man.”

Gath bent to clasp the hands. His mind turned cartwheels. He was accepting the homage of sorcerers! There must be sixty or seventy of them in this chamber.

“In the name of my father…”

Sixty or seventy sorcerers! Not all of them would be willing to do homage to him, of course. Members of the Covin would not They could not, for they were already bound to Zinixo — and they could not just pretend. Twist said, because in something like that they could not deceive the others. So when the sheep had all lined up behind Rap’s deputy, leaving the wolves…

Gath stole a peek at the future and saw —

He was about to die!

The world exploded, in pain and fire and thunder.

 

 

6

 

It was laughter that wakened Lord Umpily. For a moment he was bewildered, not understanding where he was or what he was doing — low moonlight shining straight in his eyes, coldness, cramp from sleeping in a chair, and what chair anyway? Rows of seating? He must have dozed off in the middle of some theatrical…

Reality struck him like a brick. He flashed straight from confusion to gibbering paralysis.

The Rotunda was filling up. People were climbing the aisles, filing along the rows, taking seats. In the ghostly blue light he could make out imps, dwarves, fauns, elves, trolls… Even as he was drawing breath to scream, more arrivals flowed in along the entrance canyons. Others flickered into existence on the floor below him and then headed for the stairs. He did not need occult vision to know that these were sorcerers, and in fact none of them was wearing any sort of glamour. They needed no disguise at a gathering of the Covin itself.

God of Terror!

He choked back the scream and looked wildly around for some means of escape. To his left, the way he had come in was already blocked by a trio of female dwarves settling into position, elderly, squat, and ugly. Fortunately they were all deep in conversation, mumbling in guttural whispers. He turned to look the other way just as a youngish faun entered the far end of the row and headed toward him. Two imps and an elf followed.

Blocked!

The intruder cowered down in his seat. The Covin was assembling. There must be several hundreds present already, and more arriving all the time. Pouring in now. He heard the hum of innumerable conversations, heard undertones of excitement, as if something major was about to happen.

What about an execution to start the proceedings? How could he possibly hope to remain undetected amid so many sorcerers? Any second now someone would notice the solitary mundane spy and raise the alarm.

Raise the alarm? No, they would just swat him where he sat.

The juvenile faun sat down a couple of places away. From the smell of him, he had just come from the stables. Ignoring the fat old imp, the boy turned at once to study the crowd.

So did Umpily. Everyone else was, so he would. Trolls? One or two of the giants seemed to be completely unclothed. The dark savages must be anthropophagi. Innumerable imps. Could those two pale ones be mermen? Not a jotunn in sight, though. Odd. Nor a gnome, either, although gnomes were never conspicuous. Mostly imps.

Wiping his streaming forehead with a very shaky hand, Umpily tried to estimate numbers and got nowhere. Certainly many hundreds. He could not remember the capacity of the Rotunda, and most of one quadrant was out of commission, still in the process of renovation. He had never guessed there could be so many sorcerers in the world.

Then he saw a woman he recognized, an enormous, silver-haired troll. She marched in from the south corridor with two or three other trolls at her back, beef on the hoof. He had seen her once before, at the real Shandie’s enthronement — Witch Grunth! She had not been a Zinixo supporter then, but she must be one now. Hastily his eyes raked the hall, searching for signs of Raspnex or Lith’rian.

The assembly was apparently complete. A few latecomers came running in and teleported themselves up to seats to avoid the lines on the stairs. But the stairs cleared quickly. Movement along the rows died away as the last arrivals found places. The entire company was seated then, falling silent in a hush of eager expectation. Waiting for…

Oh, Gods!

The throne! Umpily’s terror-filled gaze turned to the center and the glowing, somber mass of the Opal Throne. The prophecy! The true horror of his situation dawned. The preflecting pool had warned him of his greatest danger, that which he must most seek to avoid. The forgotten scream bubbled up again and was suppressed again. He had walked right into that very peril!

Even as he watched, the prophecy was fulfilled. A dwarf materialized on the Opal Throne.

Cheers! The congregation leaped to its feet with a roar to acclaim its leader. Applause thundered. Six or seven rows back from the front. Lord Umpily rose to clap and cheer with the best of them. To do anything else was unthinkable and would give him away instantly. Harder! More enthusiasm!

The tiny figure of the Almighty sat motionless on the great throne of Pandemia, a nondescript dwarf whose boots dangled above the floor. Louder! No expression showed through the metal-gray beard as he accepted this standing ovation from his massed followers. The Covin cheered and clapped, clapped and cheered. Jubilation! And so did Lord Umpily. Waves of adulation echoed through the vast Rotunda. Zinixo just sat, stony gaze sliding suspiciously over the multitude.

Soon Umpily’s hands were raw, his arms aching, his throat sore. Still he clapped, still he cheered. More! More! Still the ovation continued. Who would dare be the first to stop? And who, in this congregation of devoted vassals, would want to?

 

 

7

 

“You’re all right, Atheling! You’re all right!”

There were many faces looking down, but that had been Twist’s familiar voice. Gath lay on me cold dirt, surrounded by people kneeling and more standing behind them. The chamber was still dark and cold. He felt very peculiar.

“What happened?” he mumbled. Something important…

“There was being a bit of a fight, but we won. You died.”

“I what?”

“Here — up with you.”

Many hands lifted Gath to his feet, and the other people all stood up around him. Smiling? Why smiling? There was a strange smell of burned meat in the air.

“I killed you,” said a new voice. “I am truly sorry.”

Gath spun around, staggered, and was steadied.

The speaker was a young jotunn little older or taller than himself. He had a scant reddish beard and a fuzz of red hair in the middle of his chest. From the look of his shoulders, he did not row longships for a living, and he bore no tattoos. The most notable thing about him, though, was that his eyes were closed, as if he were blind. Yet his mouth smiled right at Gath.

“I am Jaurg. I killed you. Will you accept my apology?” People laughed. Jaurg thrust out a hand.

Gath took it. “I don’t feel dead.”

Jaurg’s palm was horny, but not as horny as a sailor’s. He played fair, too, not trying to crush.

“You are all right now,” Jaurg said. “I am glad.”

“Don’t do it again, though!” Gath said, and was rewarded with chuckles. He glanced around and recognized misshapen little Twist leaning on a crutch at his side and the enormous Drugfarg beyond. The other faces were unfamiliar. Most of them seemed to be smiling.

What was going on here? He ran fingers through his hair, and it had a curious sticky feeling. Burned hair? What was that smell? Everyone in the chamber was gathered around him, and he found the attention unpleasant.

“Your plan worked, Atheling,” Twist said. “The traitors — I mean votaries — saw the trap and were reacting with violence. Luckily there were few casualties.” He grinned his distorted teeth.

My plan? Gath thought. Your plan, you mean! “Except me?”

“You were being one of them, yes.”

“I didn’t know sorcerers could bring the dead back to life.”

“Normally we cannot, but your heart stopped for only a few seconds. There was much power available. You are a fortunate person, I am thinking.”

“It’s my friends!” Gath muttered, but his head had stopped spinning now, and he could work out the details — Twist’s strategy succeeding, the Covin spies seeing how they were going to be isolated, attempting a preemptive attack, being overpowered and released from their votary spells. All good guys now.

“I was a votary of the Covin’s,” the blind Jaurg said. “Now I am not. I will gladly do homage to you, Atheling Gathmor, if you will accept me as your man.”

“That isn’t necessary now, is it?” Gath was seized by a frantic desire to leave this underground pit of horrors, this close press of sorcerers around him. He wanted sunshine and fresh air, not dark mystery and a stink of overdone steak.

“I think it is! And if I may, I will do it to you, not to your father. I owe you this.”

“It doesn’t matter —”

“Up on the Speaker Stone, Atheling!” Twist said brusquely.

Apparently it did matter, then. The crowd parted. Gath stepped forward to mount the center slab again and the blind Jaurg knelt before him to do homage. The others backed away and resumed their places on the bench around the walls.

Of course it mattered — there might still be Covin votaries present who had not revealed themselves. Every man must prove his innocence by paying homage to King Rap’s deputy, and every woman, also.

“I am Jaurg the bastard and I am your man.”

Two cindery heaps lay by the doorway. That was where the smell was coming from.

“In the name of my father. Rap Thanesl —”

“Your man, I said, Atheling Gath!”

It couldn’t matter, but it felt good, a sort of Kadie make-believe. “Then I accept your homage, Jaurg the bastard.”

I died today! Gath thought, as he raised his new vassal, the man who had confessed to killing him. His heart had stopped. Had he also been charred to a crisp like those two at the door? Was that why his hair felt funny? His breeches seemed like a better fit than before, so perhaps they were not the same breeches. Roast Gath — his gut turned a somersault.

One by one, the sorcerers were coming forward to kneel to him. Most took their cue from Jaurg and did homage to Gath himself. They didn’t mean that, surely — it was all just a formality anyway, wasn’t it, just make-believe? He accepted in his own name or Dad’s, as they wanted.

Eventually the procession ended. He stood alone on the slab in the center and everyone else was sitting on the shelf around the walls. They had all passed the test. Now what? He could guess now what, but again it was something from one of Kadie’s stories that told him what to say. He glanced around. Which?

“I yield to Drugfarg son of Karjiarg,” he said. Since Drugfarg had held the floor when he intruded, that was fair.

He quit the Speaker Stone and the audience broke into applause, some even cheering. Unable to believe this was all happening, Gath hurried over to Twist, who grinned triumphantly at him and made a space on the shelf. Gath squeezed in between him and Jaurg. The huge Drugfarg rose and came forward to resume his place in the center.

“In respect to our liege lord,” Drugfarg boomed, “I move that this debate shall continue in words.”

A chorus of groans returned from the outskirts, but no one argued.

“Brothers and sisters,” Drugfarg proclaimed, “we have now all established our loyalty…”

He was winding up for a speech. Gath glanced at Twist and whispered, “How many were there?”

“At least a dozen.”

“There were fifteen of us,” Jaurg said softly, not looking around. “You have made thirteen lifelong friends today, Atheling.”

Gath stole a squeamish glance at the two odious corpses.

“They took their own lives,” Jaurg murmured.

Twist said, “Sh!”

The jotnar Gath knew preferred actions to words, but Drugfarg evidently fancied himself as an orator. He was in full torrent already, denouncing the Almighty and demanding that the sorcerers of Nordland, here assembled, now prove their valor, be true to their pledges of allegiance, and rally to the banner of Rap Thaneslayer.

Fine! Gath thought. Where to find that banner, though?

It would be a historical battle, the sorcerer proclaimed. Skalds would sing of it for centuries.

Not if Zinixo wins, they won’t.

The audience sat in stony silence around the cold, dim crypt.

Easy for them! They can magic themselves warm.

Et cetera, et cetera… At long last the big man reached his inspiring peroration. “I have spoken!” he concluded unnecessarily, and stepped down from the Speaker Stone. A few of the listeners clapped politely. Half a dozen of them rose to their feet.

Drugfarg looked them over and pointed. “I yield to Osgain, daughter of Gwartusk.” One of the women hobbled to the center to take the podium. She was very old and bent.

She was also very long-winded. Certainly the jotnar must support Thane Rap, she agreed, for he was of jotunn blood himself and his cause was the more just of the two. Nevertheless, as she understood the issues, the revolutionaries were not proposing to restore the Protocol of Emine, which had for three thousand years protected Nordland from the abuses of sorcery…

A protection that the thanes had shamefully abused, in Gath’s opinion, although he could not imagine himself saying so in this company. The stone bench was cold and most horribly uncomfortable. This moot was going to go on all day, and the Gods alone knew what might be happening outside.

How long? He opened the spigot on his prescience. Ten minutes, twenty…

Twist rammed an elbow in his ribs. Oops! To use foresight when people were making speeches would be bad manners, like glancing at a clock.

At long last Osgain announced that she had spoken. The next speaker observed briefly that the Covin was certainly waiting for the company to emerge from the Commonplace, and the danger was extreme. They were trapped! Should not the meeting be considering means rather than ends?

That seemed like good sense to Gath.

But the speaker after that went back to discussing principles. He started to hint that a scout should be dispatched to open negotiations with the Covin. A few angry murmurs broke the silence. Suddenly men began jumping to their feet. They said nothing, but apparently the move implied dissent. When about a dozen had risen, the speaker took the hint and yielded the floor to another.

And he, in turn, to another.

An hour or more crept by like a dying snail.

Perhaps, suggested one oldster, the jotnar should offer to remain neutral. More angry growls…

This was becoming ridiculous! They had all sworn allegiance to Dad or to Gath himself, and now they were threatening to renege. What sort of jotnar were they?

Sensible, probably. They seemed to have very little grasp of correct debating procedure, for they wandered from topic to topic, but perhaps as sorcerers they knew a hopeless cause when they saw one. How were they going to escape from this cellar under the eyes of the Almighty?

How would they ever find Dad, who might be anywhere at all? What was happening outside, in the real world? What was going on at the Moot Stow?

 

 

8

 

Rap gazed up drowsily at the rafters, working out what had wakened him. Shafts of moonlight angled down from window to bed, reflecting enough light to show the ceiling. It was around midnight, the start of Longday.

Nothing stirred in the mundane world. In the other room, Kadie fretted through a nightmare on her cot. Inos slept deeply at his side, one arm across his chest. He summoned memories of their lovemaking and cherished them — first outdoors, then again in bed. Not since the first nights of their marriage had they so utterly abandoned themselves to raw passion, like wild, crazy youngsters. A sense of impending doom had contributed to that, but of course a little sorcery did help compensate for advancing years…

He had been summoned.

Keeping Inos asleep, he slid magically from her embrace and from the bed. When he released the spell, she stirred and rolled over on her back. The moon cast silver light over her face, her breasts, the tracery of her hair on the pillow. He stared in rapture for a moment. Then with a sigh he turned to his duty.

He clad himself, making the sort of sensible artisan work clothes he wore at home in Krasnegar. He could change them for cooler pixie garb when the day grew hot. He added a cowled cloak of dark flimsy cotton, archon uniform. He said, “Ready!” and was snatched away.

 

The Chapel was huge and dark, but not silent, susurrous with the beat of rain on the jungle outside. The archons were assembled, kneeling around Keef’s grave. He saw them by farsight — three women, four men. In the ambience they reacted with consternation; obviously they had not been informed that Thaïle had chosen a demon as her replacement.

To hurry in such sanctity was unthinkable. He walked forward slowly, boots tapping on the ancient stone. He was disinclined to kneel to Keef, but even less inclined to antagonize his new associates. He knelt, completing the circle.

Young Raim shot him a smile of welcome in the ambience. Several of the others radiated strong disapproval.

The Keeper materialized outside the group and the archons bowed their heads. Rap joined them willingly in that token of respect, paying homage to her pain, the agony he so well remembered.

She was garbed as she had been when she came to the Rap Place the previous evening, in a white robe, cowled like her predecessor’s. It was impervious to farsight and he could detect no hint of her feelings or expression. She was a glimmering wraith in the darkness, barely visible.

Her voice was flat. “The djinn army is preparing to strike camp. I seek your counsel. Should I trigger the trap or let them advance into our land?”

More shock from the archons told Rap that the previous Keeper had not asked for advice like this. But then she had managed to avoid making this decision and had surely never been required to make a worse one.

“Archon Raim?”

The youngster’s distress showed as a writhing glow in the ambience. After a moment he spoke aloud. “I think not, Holiness,” he said hesitantly. “That would be a crime beyond remorse. We have already offended the Gods enough. To slaughter sixty thousand…” His voice faded off into the sound of the storm.

“Archon Quaith?” The Keeper was taking them in order of age.

Quaith wrung her hands and then whispered, “No.”

“Reason?”

“It will reveal our existence to the Covin!”

But the Covin already knew, Rap thought. Or if it didn’t know, it suspected, and Zinixo could never live with suspicion. As had been prophesied, a woman with child had brought evil to the Accursed Land.

Rap should probably have been next after Quaith, but Thaïle passed him over. All seven pixies spoke, and all seven said no. They mostly gave the same reasons as the first two, but Toom said that war now seemed likely and to initiate brutality on such a scale would antagonize potential allies — a logic that Rap thought showed the best sense yet. It was wrong, though.

Neem was the oldest and last. His reedy voice quavered. “No, Holiness. Surely we can mask our land in power so that the horde passes through without conflict? This has been done before.”

Not when Zinixo was running things. Rap thought.

Thaïle had given no reaction yet. And finally —

“Archon Rap?”

Rap’s mouth was dry, and he felt sick. “Yes. If the duty were mine, I would spring the trap.”

Eight cowled heads remained bent over the ice-coated grave. Seven shocked faces stared horror at him in the ambience.

“Reason?”

“Two reasons. First, you cannot now avoid war with the Covin. In war you must seek to win. Backed by magic, that djinn army alone will ravage your land utterly, so you must destroy it while you have the chance. Second, the Covin has won every skirmish so far — the wardens, the imperor, the goblins, the legions, dragons, Warlock Olybino… It has met with no resistance. Unless we can chalk up a victory soon, our cause dies stillborn. To smite the djinns will send a signal to all those we must enlist, the sorcerers still uncommitted. It will show that the Covin can be beaten.”

The dread words died away into the steady beat of the rain on the forest canopy.

“Will it not cause revulsion, though?” Thaïle said. “As Raim suggested, will they not recoil from joining an ally who launches such mass slaughter?”

“The djinns are not innocent peasants,” Rap said grimly. He hated his own logic, but he was sure he was right. “They are professional soldiers bent on aggression. And Zinixo began the atrocities. You saw the field of Bandor. Have you forgotten the legions?”

Thaïle sighed. “No. It shall be done.”

She was gone.

One by one the archons rose to their feet until they were all standing.

“Well?” Rap said harshly. “I seem to have convinced the Keeper. Have I changed any of your minds?”

Neem vanished without a word. Then Toom.

In a moment only Raim was left.

The youngster grinned. He strode around the grave and pumped Rap’s hand in a firm clasp. “You changed mine! In fact, I think I’d have voted the other way if I hadn’t been first They all sounded so, well, timorous!”

His sincerity was appealing, yet very juvenile.

“I do not feel happy with my reasoning,” Rap confessed, “but the alternative would be worse.”

The pixie nodded. “The others will come around. They will support the Keeper.” He chuckled. “Being outvoted by a demon has upset them.”

“It takes a demon to fight demons,” Rap said sadly. He had given Thaïle a horrible beginning to her reign. He should be feeling soiled by his own words, yet he had a strange hunch that the advice had been irrelevant, the whole scene staged for some other purpose altogether.

“Come!” Raim said. “Let us go and watch!” He was excited.

Rap hesitated. To refuse to witness the results of his own counsel seemed the worst sort of hypocrisy, but to do so would be ghoulish. He shook his head.

Raim scowled at him and disappeared. Rap stared for a while at Keef’s grave, and then turned and headed for the door.

 

He came back to the Rap Place in clear moonlight. Kadie still tossed in nightmares. He sent her a deeper slumber. Inos slept on in the other room just as he had left her.

He wanted to go in and join her, to lie there in her arms. He could waken her and tell her what he had done; she would hold him while he wept, and comfort him.

He could never do that to Inos. He sat down on the steps and cradled his head in his arms.

 

 

9

 

Who never sleeps?

In the silence of the night, Thaïle stood for a long while by the river. The site of the Leéb Place was a pond now. Nothing moved in the deep dark of the flooded crater except a silvery gleam of fish, although once in a while a breath of warm wind moved ripples of moonlight over its surface. Ugly charred tree trunks in the background marked the edge of the forest and the limits of her destruction.

Here she had loved. Here she had been happy. Here she had brought forth a child, not half a year ago. Here she had fought the Keeper.

Now she was Keeper. Now she knew, with wisdom greater than human, that her predecessor had been blameless in that iniquity. Not the Keeper but the archons had slain her child and her love.

It had been foretold that Thaïle of the Gaib Place would save the College and Thaïle of the Leéb Place would destroy it. Lain had expunged the revelations from the records, but the words were still preserved in the archons’ memories, easily visible to a demigod. By their own misdeeds, the archons themselves had brought the prophecy to pass. It had been the bereaved Thaïle of the Leéb Place who had rescued the woman with child.

She had goaded them a little this night. What fools they seemed now! They were not even worthy of vengeance. Sinning out of stupidity, in folly they had unchained the hounds of fate and been driven by them to calamity. The end of that chase had seen Thaïle herself bring in the woman with child, as the auguries had warned. Her pity had been folly, also, of course — yesterday she had been as addle-witted as the rest of the archons — but had the archons left her to dwell in peace here with Leéb, then Thume might have eluded the Almighty’s notice for ever.

She would weep, were the pain not so great.

How little time the Gods had granted her for happiness! Yet even less time had passed since that final morning when Leéb had departed to fetch the old woman. If They sent him back to her now, he would not know her. She was no longer a peasant child content with a peasant’s love, a peasant’s life. Leéb had died and the Thaïle he had loved so staunchly had died, also. She was not that same Thaïle now. She was the Keeper.

With a Keeper’s responsibilities. With a Keeper’s pain.

Lain had been Keeper for seven years. Many of their predecessors had endured longer, but in the end they all failed. In the end they all broke under the strain. They all died as Lain had died, consumed by unbearable power.

Thaïle had never doubted that she must spring the trap on the djinn army, so why had she summoned the archons to give her counsel she had no intention of heeding? For spite? To demonstrate how far above them she was now? Petty, Thaïle, petty! But if that had been her purpose, then why had she involved the faun?

Perhaps she had hoped for reassurance that her destruction of the djinns could be justified by necessity and was not motivated by resentment and pain. Only the faun had given her that comfort.

A good man, the faun. He would be a bastion of strength for her in the struggle to come. He was the only one she could call on for wisdom about the Outside. He knew the world as no pixie did, or ever could, not even her, and few saw reality as clearly as he did. He had said that the djinns must be destroyed although he had hated himself as he did so.

She looked for him then and found him moping on his own doorstep, grieving for the death of his foes. A dark cloud of impending loss hung over him and she turned away quickly. To pry into the future this night was to risk madness and despair — she would not, must not.

Almost a thousand years ago, Keef had foreseen this day.

For almost a thousand years, Thume had waited for it.

Now it had come and the cause seemed hopeless. Thaïle gazed again at the dark, still pond.

Farewell, child I never saw! Farewell, Leéb, my only love!

 

* * *

 

The moon was near to setting. Dawn stirred in the east like a wakening ogre, lightening the sky, staining the ranges with blood. Thaïle flew north and came to rest on a frosty peak above the long lake. Here she stood on the extreme limit of her realm.

In the shadowy valley downstream, the djinn army was forming up, blighted to her eyes by a shimmer of the Covin’s sorcery. The order of march left no doubt that it planned to advance into Thume. As King Rap had said, this was her only chance to avert the threat. Only here, striking from behind the occult barrier, could she hope to take the Covin by surprise.

She reached out to the trigger. Centuries ago, one of her predecessors had seen the deadly potential of this gorge and made it ready. It needed so little power to start the process that she had done it almost before she realized. A mountain began to move. Slowly at first, barely perceptible, then gathering speed and force, half a landscape fell away and plunged down.

A white cloud rushed out over the still surface, impossibly fast. The lake fled from the intruding rock, rising into a dark hill of water, which swelled into the far reaches of its basin and bulged upward until it leaped over the threshold where the little stream had carved its notch. No warning tremor of sorcery alerted the army, only a great wind coming ahead of the disaster, lifting men and tents and animals like leaves. Behind it came the giant wave, white now, surging irresistibly down the canyon, bringing trees and rocks and death, rending sixty thousand souls, hurling a momentary occult agony searing across the world.

Thaïle whimpered and curled herself small upon her vantage crag, blotting out the horror. Leéb, Leéb, what would you think of me now?

When she looked again, there was nothing. The valley was a barren cleft in the hills, scoured to bedrock all the way to the sea. Landslides still tumbled from the walls. Waves were spreading far out on the ocean, staining it orange and masking it with spray. The caliph and his army had ceased to exist.

Far away in Hub, black flames of rage spouted up as the Covin realized how it had been outwitted. Thunder shook the ambience. Power slammed against the walls of Thume like a mighty boot, like a child’s tantrum. The barrier trembled, and held.

First the woman had been snatched away from the soldiers, now this. Now there could be no doubts. The Almighty’s eyes glared fury and hatred at this unexpected defiance from an unknown opponent. For a moment Thaïle braced herself to resist all-out frontal assault on Thume. Then the danger passed — for the time being. The Covin settled back to consider its enemy, as a dog might study a cat on a fencepost.

Fire in the northwest proclaimed the sun. Longday came racing across the world.

 

 

10

 

Tiptoeing and carrying his boots. Rap was heading back to bed at last. Dawn was brightening the sky outside the windows. He was cold and damp with dew. Too late, he realized that Kadie was awake.

“Papa?”

“Morning, beloved,” he whispered. “Try to go back to sleep.”

“Where have you been?”

“Sitting outside. Thinking.”

“Thinking of what?” Kadie demanded crossly.

Thinking of tens of thousands of men screaming as they died.

“About the war. I think it’s going to start today.”

“Have you talked with Thaïle?”

Rap sighed and went to perch on a chair alongside her cot. Kadie pulled the sheet up under her chin and stared distrustfully at him.

“Yes, I was with the Keeper for a little while.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. Just very busy.”

“But she hurts? The words hurt her?”

He sighed. “Kadie, Kadie! Thaïle has an enormous ability to control sorcery! An incredible, historic ability. That’s what matters. She can live with five words when other sorcerers would be destroyed by them. Some Keepers have survived to be very old, so Archon Toom told me. Don’t worry about Thaïle. She’ll outlive all of us, I promise you.”

“I want to see her!”

Rap stood up. “I told you, she’s very busy. She’s queen of Thume, remember, and she has many things to worry about. I expect she’ll send for you when she has time. Now you try to —”

“Rap!” the Keeper said, her image flickering into view in the ambience. “The dragons are rising! Come, please!”

Seeing him start to fade, Kadie opened her mouth, but he was gone.

* * *

He staggered and dropped his boots. To his astonishment, he was standing in one of the little cabanas of the Meeting Place. There was no sign of the Keeper, or anyone else, either. Why had she brought him here?

The glade was heavy with shadow under a pale-blue sky, the grass dewy. Even the flowers seemed still asleep, but birds were waking in the forest. He sat down on a bench and reached for a boot.

Then he was whirled into the ambience beside Thaïle. All of Pandemia opened before him. He saw the northern lands glowing under their unending daylight, Zark already baking in morning heat, the steaming jungles of Guwush. The towering sky trees of Ilrane were catching the first rays of the dawn. Beyond them darkness… and power, the alien taint of dragon.

He was overwhelmed. Suddenly he was a demigod again, as he had been in his youth, but he had never been this great. How could mortal mind stand so much? Thaïle was sharing her omniscience with him, and he even thought he could feel hints of her torment, the torturing burn of too much power. Krasnegar — the town was still there! And Hub, roiling under the evil anger of the Covin. Azak… gone!

And Dragon Reach — power flaming. Conflict!

“What’s happening?” he demanded.

“I hoped you could tell me.” She was projecting fear and indecision, no longer hiding behind her impenetrable Keeper persona. Despite her might, she was still only a girl, little older than Kadie. “I have not seen its like before.”

“Nor I!” Rap thought. “Try this.” He conjured a vision of Tik Tok — tattoos and sharpened teeth and a bone in his nose.

Thaïle registered shock and then unexpectedly sniggered. She reached out to that confusion of forces. “Ah! Yes. I see traces of him.”

Before Rap could tell her that was a good sign, all of Dragon Reach erupted with destruction. Waves of power rolled outward across Pandemia, lighting a myriad of momentary sparks like stars as individual sorcerers reacted to the shock. Hub blazed in black flame.

“The dragons!” Thaïle cried. “The dragons are gone!”

And so they were. Utterly.

Rap crowed in triumph. “It worked! Tik Tok and Thrugg! And the others! They did it! They must have set a trap…”

Wonderful! Marvelous! First the djinn army and now the dragons! The Covin had taken two staggering blows. He yelled out his excitement like a boy, and the Keeper smiled.

Zinixo screamed in fury and hurled devastation upon Dragon Reach. Mountains reeled. Power flashed and roared. The world shuddered.

“Save them. Keeper!” Rap cried. “We need them!”

“You call them!” She thrust strength into him like coursing fire in his veins. “Bring them!”

Rap called.

“Thrugg! Tik Tok! Sin Sin! Murg!” One by one he declaimed the names of the band who had been his companions on Dreadnought. He knew that some had fallen to the Covin — Grunth in particular — but many must have survived to organize that incredible annihilation of the dragons.

“Rap?” A faint image of Tik Tok’s nightmare shape flickered into view. He was distant and clearly in distress. “You are indeed a site for psoriasis!”

“Come, friend! All of you! Come now!” Rap reached out in the metaphor plane of the ambience, feeling his hands grasped by many hands. He heaved; power surged across the world and a horde of sorcerers exploded into the cabana. Its flimsy wicker walls bulged and burst, spilling trolls and anthropophagi out into shrubbery. Roars of sorcery filled the glade. Water birds exploded off the lake in terror. Thaïle gasped at the sight of these savage figures.

“Twenty-four?” Rap yelled. “No, twenty-six! Welcome to Thume! Well done, all of you!” He saw burns and wounds vanishing as the sorcerers healed themselves. Giant trolls lurched to their feet, growling. Jingling bones, a laughing Tik Tok hurled himself at Rap and enveloped him in a rib-cracking embrace.

The ambience rumbled and Rap was back with Thaïle again. Waves of black fire boiled above the Qoble Mountains, shaking the occult ramparts to their foundations. Thaïle hurled power into them and the attack faltered. Then it ceased, as abruptly as it had begun.

But it had been close! Clearly the Covin had traced that rescue to its source. It knew its enemy now. How long could Zinixo tolerate a rival?

“Gods!” Rap said. “We can’t take much of that, can we? Summon your sorcerers. Keeper! All of them! We must organize defenses.”

Thaïle nodded. Raim materialized, recumbent upon the grass outside the cabana. He had no clothes on and neither did the lovely Sial clasped in his arms. They looked up in shock and outrage. Sial screamed. Thaïle snapped out a command and the two figures vanished again.

“I’ll bet he remembers that one!” Rap said under his breath. “Thrugg, you big monster!” But events were racing ahead too fast for friendly greetings.

“Rap!” the Keeper shouted. “Proclaim your war! You said you had friends? Bring them!”

Again Rap felt the surge of her power elevate him. Again he saw Pandemia spread out before him. He stood above it like a giant, a shining cloud in the shape of a man. He had been given no time to prepare his proclamation, and he bellowed the first words that came into his head.

“Sorcerers! I am Rap, king of Krasnegar. Today we destroy the Covin! Today we begin the new protocol! Today freedom dawns! Come and enlist in the cause of right!”

Bolts of lightning buzzed up at him from Hub and were deflected by the age-old defenses of the Accursed Land — how long until Zinixo analyzed this alien sorcery and took its measure?

“Come now and join the cause!”

For a moment the ambience was still, shadowy nothing, silent as a crypt; The world seemed to hold its breath. Then a familiar figure shimmered into view — a slim youth with golden skin and eyes of many-colored gem. He, too, bestrode the world with power, smiling an infinitely cynical smile.

“King Rap demonstrates a remarkable potency and heralds a spectacular cause. I am Lith’rian, warlock of the south. I place my powers and all the sorcerers of Ilrane at his disposal.”

God of Wonders!

“Come, and welcome!” Rap grabbed. A blizzard of shooting stars flashed in the ambience and the Meeting Place was filled with elves. A hundred? Well, several dozen, anyway. Too choked with relief and excitement to say a word, he bowed low to the warlock.

Lith’rian sighed. “Your Doctor Sagorn is a remarkable advocate, your Majesty. He bludgeoned me into submission with sheer loquacity.”

“I had sooner believe that Jalon inspired you with jotunn battle songs, your Omnipotence!”

“Actually it was what you did to the djinns that persuaded us. Exquisite barbarity!” Lith’rian chuckled. “And obviously you were correct about Thume.” Then he discovered Thaïle and his big eyes widened in shock. He glanced apprehensively at Rap.

“Her Holiness, the Keeper,” Rap said.

“Your humble servant, ma’am!” The elf sank gracefully to one knee and bowed his head. Whatever his faults, Lith’rian always had style.

“And I am Raspnex,” another voice boomed, jolting Rap’s attention back to the ambience, “warlock of the north. I also join King Rap and my dearly loved brother of the south in their campaign.” The familiar ugly face twisted with what a dwarf regarded as a grin, showing teeth like quartz pebbles in a beard of iron turnings.

Raspnex! He was closer, just over the mountains, and with him were two other dwarves — and Jarga, by the Powers! — and a goblin and a shadowy figure who might be another goblin, and… and… And then Thaïle yanked them all to the Meeting Place. That last one had been a mundane.

“Shandie!”

The imperor was thinner than he had been, gaunt and glittering of eye, clad in a nondescript and none-too-clean Zarkian robe. He beamed at Rap quickly, and then glanced around the glade with understandable astonishment. Pixies were materializing all over, answering Raim’s summons. Half of them were still in a state of undress, emitting shrill squeals of alarm as they registered the presence of so many demons. The archons were calling out occult reassurance, but Rap blanked that from his mind.

“Keeper! This mundane is the imperor! Let him also speak.”

No sooner thought than done — Shandie staggered in confusion as the occult world opened before him.

“Summon your imps!” Rap prompted in his ear. There must still be impish sorcerers at large. “Proclaim the new protocol!”

Shandie was an old hand at making rousing speeches. As he announced himself the true imperor, a small voice spoke from the east.

“King? We had certain assurances from your mate concerning Imperor’s good intentions.”

Rap stared in delight at the tiny man. “Ishist, you old rascal! I gladly confirm the imperor’s good faith.”

“This is strange. Rap!” Thaïle whispered. “The Covin is letting them come! Why does it not seek to block this assembly?”

“We come, then, King!” the old gnome said, clutching Rap’s occult hand. A horde of male and female gnomes pattered down into the Meeting Place, scores of them.

Horde of gnomes? A mob of gnomes? A dump of gnomes, perhaps? No matter! Their help was welcome. Rap spared a brief glance Hubward. The Covin was indeed holding its fire, as the Keeper said. Why? Had Zinixo panicked at this sudden revolution? Again no matter! The freedom fighters would be more effective if they were all gathered together. If nothing else, that would make control easier and desertion almost impossible.

Now voices clamored everywhere in the ambience, demanding admission. Rap recognized old Vog and Wurnk in the far-off Mosweeps, with a large herd of trolls. He brought them. Thaïle had set the archons to work, also, pulling in scattered bands from all over Pandemia — djinns, imps, dwarves, even a dozen female goblins from the taiga. The sorcerers of the world were rallying to the cause, and the Meeting Place was filling up.

“Rap!” Shandie said. “How can you be sure all these recruits are what they seem? There must be Covin agents among them!”

Rap thumped the imperor on the shoulder. “No. They’re being vetted. They can’t come in unless they’re brought. Deception is impossible, just about.”

“Just about?”

“Impossible. By the way, your wife and daughter are here in Thume.”

Shandie’s face went rigid with shock.

“King Rap,” the Keeper said, “there is something going on in the north. That is what is holding the Covin’s attention.”

Shandie was clutching Rap’s shoulders and shouting questions. The Meeting Place was a tumult as the various races organized themselves in groups, every group eyeing all the others with wary suspicion. The ambience flashed and rumbled as the archons brought in more, and more.

Rap tried to see what was concerning Thaïle, but it was too far off for him, and there was too much going on in between.

“Probably the Nordland Moot,” he said. “Perhaps they have some sorcerers there. Not too many, I expect.”

Thaïle eyed him darkly. “What’s wrong?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Gath was somewhere in Nordland.

The God had warned Rap that he must lose a child in this war. Kadie was safe, here in Thume.

Still, Gath would never have managed to penetrate the thanes’ moot and he wasn’t a sorcerer, so whatever the Covin was up to could not concern Gath. If that Nordland diversion was keeping the Covin distracted, then it was a Godssend and must not be interrupted. Meanwhile Shandie —

“What? Yes, they’re quite safe. Ylo brought them.”

“Ylo?”

Rap needed no sorcery to recognize the apprehension. “Ylo’s dead. I’m sorry. Two days ago. He died defending your wife and child from the Covin. No, I can’t explain at the moment. And no, you can’t go to her. Now shut up! I’m busy. Inos is here, too, by the way. And Kadie.”

Shandie said, “Congratulations!” in tones to be expected of an imperor who had just been told to shut up.

The Meeting Place was becoming crowded, but the races were sorting themselves out in groups. Mostly pixies, of course, a couple of hundred pixies. Thirty or forty elves stood by themselves in aloof disapproval. Imps were rarer, perhaps twenty. With his incongruous black kibr swishing around his ankles, Shandie went stalking over to deliver an oration to them. Thirty djinns at least, and those chattering near-naked little folk were fauns. The dwarves had assembled as far from the elves as they could get, but Raspnex had them under control. The trolls had wandered into the trees, sampling as they went.

The fifty or so gnomes had vanished under flower bushes, out of the sunlight. Unfortunately they were upwind.

And merfolk! Sitting in a cluster by the edge of the lake — at least two dozen blue-haired merfolk! Rap had missed their arrival. As sorcerers they could use power to restrain their racial curse, but it was still an eerie sensation to see a group of merfolk in the crowd. In the army. His army!

He wanted to throw back his head and scream his triumph to the skies. He might yet lose the battle, but at least there was going to be a battle. Zinixo would not win by default.

In the Outside world the ambience was growing quieter as the last few stragglers clamored for recognition, eager to be admitted before the Covin retaliated. The archons were still busy, but inducting them in ones and twos now. Whatever was going on in Nordland was still happening and keeping the Covin distracted. Long may it last!

“Your Holiness,” Rap said formally, “I think we are about done recruiting. I suggest you make a speech, welcoming our allies to your land.”

Thaïle looked at him sadly. Then she pulled up her hood and became again the inscrutable Keeper, a white-clad enigma. “It would be more fitting if you made that speech, Archon Rap. You are the general and they are your warriors.”

Rap’s heart chilled. “You are not hopeful? You foresee defeat?”

“I cannot, will not, try to read the outcome.”

“How many are we?”

Thaïle glanced around. “More than four hundred, but not many more. Make your speech. General.”

Hastily gathering his thoughts. Rap took a last quick glance at the ambience Outside.

 

 

11

 

Gath squirmed. He was stiff and cold on the gritty stone bench. Above all, he was bored to distraction by the unending speeches. Nothing had been decided or seemed likely to be decided for hours yet. What was happening on this fateful day while he sat here in this shielded madhouse?

The sunlight had already abandoned two windows and was starting to creep in through a third. The shafts were positioned to shed light on the Speaker Stone, and he had decided that this was a very clever device that probably only worked on Longday itself. On other days the sun would not be in the right position. So what?

He had also realized the true purpose of the meeting. These men and women were the loneliest people in the world. All sorcerers were forced to be solitary, but power was especially despised in Nordland, and their duties forced them to live their lives far apart. Once a year the Nintor Moot gave them the chance to meet and be themselves and know others of their own kind. That was why they were all being so atrociously long-winded, and why they wanted to be. He might have to stay here all day!

Longday was living up to its name.

“Go ahead!” whispered a tiny voice in his ear. It came from Jaurg, although he had not moved or spoken aloud.

Gath pondered. Dare he try to address the group? He risked a tiny peek of prescience — and apparently he would be heard. He was their liege, wasn’t he?

What did he have to lose? He’d died once already today.

He stood up in the middle of a long digression on the merits of Dad’s new protocol.

The speaker was Gustiag, the older man who had been the second to do homage. He frowned at this insolent interruption.

“May I say one thing?” Gath asked quietly, marveling at his own courage.

“I yield to Atheling Gathmor!” Obviously reluctant, Gustiag stepped down but did not return to his seat.

Well!

Gath stalked forward and took the vacant stone.

“I appreciate your courtesy in holding this debate in words for my sake,” he said loudly, “but I’m sure you could get finished faster if you used occult means.”

Silence — very cold silence.

“Is this your father’s command to us?” Gustiag inquired.

Gath wilted before the sarcasm. “No… merely a suggestion of my own… I do think the situation is urgent.”

Still no reaction from the onlookers.

He mumbled, “Thank you, er, I have spoken,” and stepped down.

Gustiag took his place. “As I was saying…”

Gath slunk back to his seat. Twist smiled mockingly at him. Jaurg was holding hands with Fraftha, a girl of about Gath’s age. As he squeezed into his previous place, Gath realized that this was the kiddies’ corner. The four of them were the youngsters of the group, expected to maintain a respectful silence while their elders debated, and he was the youngest of all. He had been wrong to stand up.

Gustiag ended and recognized an elderly woman as his successor. Her speech was the shortest yet, and about the shortest possible: “I yield to Jaurg the bastard.”

Eyes still firmly closed, Gath’s neighbor rose and strode forward to mount the stone. Blindness would be small handicap to a sorcerer and bastardy could be no great shame in Nordland, for at least a dozen of those present had been unable to name their fathers when they did homage.

“Brothers and sisters, I speak for those who were enslaved and now are free.” He spoke softly and simply, spurning the dramatic tricks that many speakers had attempted. “For that release, we are eternally grateful to the rest of you, although we were happy in our servitude. We expected an attempt to unmask us and feared it, but did not think it would succeed.

“It would not have done, I am sure, without the valor of one man. Some of you may feel that your pledge of homage to him was mere formality, a way of demonstrating your independence. I assure you that we who were enthralled do not think of it that way. We honor Atheling Gathmor for his father’s sake of course, but we honor him also in his own right. How many mundanes would have defied a gathering of sorcerers as he did today? He is not pure jotunn, I agree, but does any man or woman here claim to be his superior in courage?”

The whole chamber broke into applause. Oh, horrors! Shame! Gath curled up and hid his face on his knees. They all knew how frightened he had been when he came in, so this was just cruel, hateful mockery! Perhaps they were getting back at him for having had to kneel at his feet. He thought bitter thoughts about the despicable Jaurg, who had seemed quite a solid sort of guy until then.

The clapping died away into open laughter, and then stilled.

Jaurg chuckled. “He does not believe us! Let us prove our sincerity. On your honor, brothers and sisters, let any here who feels demeaned by having knelt to this man today now stand and ask to be released from his homage.”

Warily Gath lifted his head a little and peered around the chamber. No one was standing. What sort of game were they playing with him now?

Jaurg sighed loudly. “He is still modest — that must come from the nonjotunn part of him! But I must get down to business. As you can guess, our mission and purpose was to enlist all the rest of you to the cause that we so wholeheartedly then supported. When we set out for Nintor there were five of us loyal to the Almighty. Our ships encountered others at sea, and some stopped to make wassail at ports on the way. When we came ashore, we were twelve.”

He paused a moment, to let his audience reflect on that.

“We enlisted three more on Nintor itself, but then the arrivals overwhelmed us. We were outnumbered and dared try no further recruitment lest we reveal ourselves. We waited for this meeting, planning to take possession of the building in advance and entrap each of you in turn as he or she entered. You all know how Twist son of Kalkor thwarted us… Are you aware of that, Atheling Gath?”

“No,” Gath said.

Because of his closed eyes, Jaurg’s smile seemed to imply that he was dreaming happy dreams. “He suggested that this year we assemble outside and enter by lot. Thus were we balked! To him also we are now grateful.

“Our alternative plan, of course, was to leave first, and overpower you singly as you emerged. We failed in the first attempt and shall not now try again, but the Usurper was most certainly watching who entered. Oh, yes, he can see this far! Right at the start, he warned us that we might fail. He said he would give us three hours. That time, I believe, is almost up. I have spoken.”

Jaurg stepped down from the stone and waited for others to rise. No one did. Several voices shouted: “Speak on!” “Then what?” “Tell us more!”

Drugfarg’s weighty bellow drowned them all out. “You mean he’s going to overpower us as we leave?”

The blind man stepped back up on the podium. “No. He will simply destroy the Commonplace and us with it.”

Half the sorcerers leaped to their feet, and then more followed, but no one said anything at all. Puzzled, Gath glanced at Twist. The cripple was showing his tangled teeth in a grimace and concentrating blank-eyed on something. So, apparently Jaurg had succeeded where Gath had failed and the debate was now being conducted at an occult level. Gath himself could no longer hear it, that was all.

Jaurg shrugged and walked back to his seat between Gath and Fraftha. He put an arm around the girl.

“That livened things up a little,” he remarked cheerfully.

“You were serious?”

“Quite serious.”

How could he be so calm? Gath wanted to scream. He had visions of that low ceiling collapsing, burying him under the hill. His skin felt like cold maggots were eating it already.

“But why would Zinixo kill you all? There must be sixty sorcerers —”

“Sixty-four here.”

“Doesn’t he want you, to serve him? He collects sorcerers, doesn’t he?”

Jaurg yawned. “Not any more, apparently. He probably feels he has so many now that he may as well just exterminate the rest. Hub’s a long way off. At this range… hard to explain. Take my word for it, it’s easier to stamp than grab.”

Gath said, “Oh!” and tried to look unworried.

He wasn’t that good a liar. He opened his mental spigot and grabbed all the future he could foresee. He said, “Awrk!”

In about three minutes the roof was going to blow right off the Commonplace.

In sudden urgency, Jaurg straightened, releasing Fraftha. He grabbed Gath’s wrist in an astonishingly powerful grip. “Hold tight, Atheling! We meld. I’ll try to take you in with me.”

Gath clutched Jaurg’s wrist also — he was in a mood to clutch at anything. He felt Twist grip his other arm in a similar double hold, and then they were all on their feet.

“In where?”

“Into the ambience.” The blind youth smiled again. “I’m not sure it’s possible for a mundane, but we’ll try.”

“Otherwise,” Twist added, “you will be finding things even more confusing.”

“More confusing than what?”

“Than anything.”

 

Gath saw double.

Within the dim chamber, the sorcerers stood around the walls, many holding hands. Superimposed on that was an image that seemed to make no sense at all. It was bright and yet without light. It had no points of reference at all, no place, no being — no underground chamber, no world or sky. This must be how a sorcerer saw things. Within that shadowless nothingness the sixty-odd jotnar were clustered tightly around him, many smiling at him, and none of them seemed to have any clothes on! He found Drugfarg the armorer and old Gustiag the healer — and how did he know their professions? And the women. Gods! No clothes. Some were as solid as boulders, others almost transparent; Then he located Twist the skald and Blind Jaurg the cobbler, and between them a faint image of a lanky young man with unruly blond hair and a stern, worried expression. That one seemed oddly familiar.

By the Powers! He knew that one! He really had grown lately, hadn’t he? No beard yet, but… well, getting there. Hey, not bad! He would rather have breeches on, though.

“Now!” Atheling Twist said. He had been chosen leader, because he was as strong as any, also brother to the thane who was certainly going to be war leader of the Nordland Host and how did Gath know all these things? A mighty fist punched upward and the roof of the Commonplace dissolved in a spray of flying dirt and boulders.

Was that real?

There were many things to see then.

The Moot Stow. Drakkor had been raised on a platform of shields held by a dozen husky jotnar. He was haranguing the mob, promising blood and loot and rape, and the warriors were cheering their lungs out for him, thanes and churls…

The Commonplace from the outside, apparently undamaged.

All of Nintor, as if seen by a bird soaring at cloud height.

Sixty-odd sorcerers racing over the grass, heading for the longships drawn up on the beach — not running, for crippled Twist was moving as fast as any, but traveling faster than a hunting hawk.

A roiling dark evil… Eyes. Huge, hateful dwarvish eyes filling the sky and staring contempt right at him.

A voice, booming: “The faun’s son! So there you are! Got you at last!”

There was no doubt who that was.

“Go puke yourself, you squat-eyed gray horror!” Gath roared, and registered laughter and approval all around him. “My dad squashed you once and he’s going to squash you again!”

Fury boiled in the sky. “Die, stripling!”

A fiery foot descended.

The meld of sorcerers slid sideways, evading that giant stamp. The ground erupted in flame where it struck.

That was not real. That was only an image, perhaps invoked by something Jaurg had said earlier. The reality behind it was something else but just as dangerous.

At the Moot Stow the crowd stilled and turned to see where the noise had come from…

Voices all around him, the melded mind of the sorcerers:

“To the ships — is the boy with us? — where can we go?”

Another fiery stamp. Another explosion of dirt and rock, high in the air. And another dodge. Another blast from the Covin, another fast evasion. Pillars of smoke rose above Nintor.

The horde at the Moot Stow dissolving in panic —

The beach. A ship. Any ship. When in danger take to the sea.

Thane Afgirk’s Raven Feast…

“It will do — all aboard — lift her now —”

Sorcerers poured aboard. The longship leaped from her berth a moment before blasts of fire smote the shingle where she had lain. Her former neighbors exploded in red flame and a blizzard of pebbles. She hit the sea with a shower of spray and was a league away before the Covin’s next bolt struck in steam and boiling eradication. Southward. No time to set sail. No time to run out the oars. Leap. Impact. Leap again. Like a giant marlin. Raven Feast vaulted over the face of the ocean while the Covin’s strokes exploded the green sea behind her in white breakers and clouds of mist.

Nothing was real except perhaps the longship itself and the fierce grips on Gath’s wrists. The voices of the meld roared in his ears.

“We can’t keep this up forever — he’s sure to catch us eventually. Where can we go — where is King Rap?”

The Covin’s volleys were closing in, pillars of steam bursting all around.

“Atheling!” Twist bellowed in Gath’s ear. “Where is your father?”

“I don’t know!”

“Find him for us! We need sanctuary! Call him! He will recognize you!”

Call him?

Gath saw the shiny sea and the sky and the distant peaks of Nordland. He saw the evil of the Covin and its blasts of power. He saw sixty-four sorcerers and a mundane boy.

They were appealing to him?

Call Dad?

The last news of Dad had been months ago, when he had been somewhere down near the Mosweeps, about as far from Nordland as it was possible to be. These maniacs expected Gath to call to him?

A near miss showered Raven Feast with icy seawater, half swamping her. The shock and cold almost jerked Gath out of the meld. He was sprawled on the gratings with Twist hanging on one arm and Jaurg on the other, tearing him apart. Overhead the bare mast whirled against blue sky.

“Try, Atheling!” Twist howled. “Or we are being undone!”

“Give him power, everyone!” Jaurg shouted. “Give him all you can!”

“Save us, Atheling! Call on your father!”

The world swelled.

The world was round.

Nordland shrank to a cluster of barren islands, swathed in pack ice to the north. Land swam into view to the south — that would be Guwush, and the shimmer of silver beyond that the Morning Sea and the green to the west must be the Impire, shadows of night still rushing away to the southwest. The sun was white and hot at his side.

There was the Winter Ocean, and if he tried he could probably see all the way to Krasnegar, but he mustn’t waste time looking there. Dad wouldn’t be in Krasnegar. People — more than the land itself he could see the teeming millions of people. Imps, gnomes, many races. Mountains to the south, sparkling with snow and ice but very tiny, and the sky trees of Ilrane that Kadie had talked of, little crystal pinecones against the deep blue of the Summer Seas. That black fire roaring in the middle of the world was the evil of the Covin and ignore those hateful eyes and think where Dad might be…

“Dad!” he howled.

No response.

“Dad, it’s me, Gath!”

Contact?

“Dad!”

A tiny whisper, very far away…

“Gath?”

Dad’s voice!

“Dad? King Rap? It’s Gath! I’ve got some sorcerers for you!”

“Gath? Is that you? Where are you?”

“Dad, I’m here! In Nordland!”

Near miss — the sea exploded. Raven Feast rolled below a vast green wave. Icy surf sucked at the crew, sweeping oars and baggage overboard. Gath had water in his eyes, up his nose. For a moment the longship seemed ready to turn turtle. Slowly she fought to straighten herself. The meld shimmered and began to break up. Gath felt power draining away. The craft was swamped. One more blast would do it.

“Dad! Save us!”

“Got you!” The whisper swelled into command; “Gath! Here! Come now!”

 

Rolling drums:

Thy voice is heard thro’ rolling drums,

That beat to battle where he stands;

Thy face across his fancy comes,

And gives the battle to his hands.

Tennyson, The Princess, vi