Cybele's Secret

“What if they’re all killed?” I whispered, half to the bee goddess, half to myself. I thought of the crewmen and their song; I thought of Pero asking eagerly if he could be taught to read. I considered Duarte with his delightful dimples and his sharp wit; I pictured Stoyan at the han by night, his fingers gentle against my face as he whispered away my terror. “This is wrong,” I murmured. “This can’t be what you want.”

The sky was covered with heavy cloud. With the waxing moon obscured, there could be no sailing after nightfall. Fortunately, if we could not go on, neither could the red-sailed vessel, unless she was crewed by bats and owls. Stoyan came down to tell me the crewmen were running the Esperança into a narrow inlet for the night. Duarte had ordered all lights to be extinguished as soon as possible; there would be no games this evening. We would move on as soon as the sky began to lighten. Everyone was praying for a favorable wind. Duarte, Stoyan said, was consulting over a chart with Pero and two other crewmen.

After passing on his information, Stoyan went silent. As for me, I was still pondering the remark he’d made earlier about inner beauty. His words had made my cheeks grow hot. What did this mean? Duarte and Irene had both on occasion tried to imply that Stoyan harbored feelings for me beyond those appropriate between a merchant’s daughter and her bodyguard. I recognized there was a bond between us now that went far beyond my friendship with, say, my two brothers-in-law. Those nights at the han had been like something that belonged in a different part of my life from everything else: a place that was secret, private, special.

I reminded myself that we were on a pirate ship, headed for an unknown destination with someone dangerous on our tail. Under the circumstances, I could not afford to spend time mulling over what Stoyan might or might not think of me and whether or not it was inappropriate. I’d got us into enough of a mess already without creating further complications.

Stoyan sat on the floor in his usual spot, in the dark, and I sat on the bed.

“What if they catch up?” I mused. “Will they board us? I’m sure these men would fight hard. They may not care about Cybele’s Gift, but they worship Duarte. They’d die for him, every last one of them, I’m certain. I’d much rather not die yet, Stoyan. I’ve got so many more things I want to do. I wonder if they can sail the Esperança out of trouble?”

No response.

“I thought Tati might come back,” I said. “There’s been one more sister on her embroidery each time she manifested, and she hasn’t shown me Stela yet, the youngest. If we saw her on the ship, it would confirm that this is part of the mission we’re supposed to accomplish.”

“We?” murmured Stoyan.

“You and I. And Duarte, I suppose. I wish he’d tell us exactly where we’re going.”

“I will do so.” Duarte’s voice came from the doorway, and a moment later he stepped over Stoyan’s legs and entered the cabin, a tall shadow coming to perch on the edge of the bunk. This time I did not move away. “We have made a decision about tomorrow, and it is time for me to explain that to you, as well as some other matters. Then you must rest.”

“What about tomorrow?” I asked nervously. “Can we outsail them, Duarte?”

“We must do so.” His voice held a darkness of its own; its intensity scared me. “Their vessel seems of similar size and capability to the Esperança. However, there is one element they lack: a crew to equal mine. If the pursuer remains within sight after a morning’s sailing, there is a particular option we can take. It is dangerous; I will not lie to you. By midday we will be close to a place where the land juts out in a large promontory on which steep cliffs rise from the water’s edge. A mountain range lies not far inland. I believe certain conditions will be in place when we reach that area allowing us to utilize a wind that comes down over the mountains, then creates a powerful, funneling effect around the promontory. A columnate wind, the phenomenon is called. The closer to the cliffs we sail, the more speed we can make. That way we can open sufficient distance so the Mufti’s crew loses sight of us until after nightfall. From that point on, I believe I can evade them.”

“Dangerous, you say,” said Stoyan when it became apparent I was not going to comment. “How dangerous? What are our chances of surviving such a maneuver with the ship intact and no lives lost?”

I imagined Duarte’s fierce grin in the dark.

“Better than those of the other ship,” the pirate said. “And I prefer them greatly to the prospect of a hand-to-hand battle should the pursuer overtake us and attempt to board. My men are sailors, not warriors. They can account for themselves with sword or club, but I would rather they did not have to.”

“This may seem like a silly question,” I said, trying not to sound shaky, “but I imagine falling overboard in that area you mentioned, near the cliffs, would mean one could not swim to land. Yes?”

“I will keep you safe, Paula.” Stoyan’s tone was steady as a rock, and I felt marginally better for it, even though I doubted his capacity to save me from deep waters, strong winds, and precipitous cliffs all at the same time.

“It’s not decided yet.” Duarte remained calm. “I wanted to warn you, since tomorrow will be a busy day, and if we must attempt that maneuver, nobody will have time for explanations.”

“You said that in due course you would tell us about our destination,” Stoyan said. “Is now the time for that?”

Duarte cleared his throat. “Very well. Let us assume tomorrow’s sailing is successful, we outrun the pursuer and lose him, we continue on a certain distance to the east. Two more days of sailing, by Pero’s estimation. Our landfall will be in a settlement so small it is not recorded on maps. There I will be put ashore with the artifact while the ship is taken to a place of concealment not far away to await my return. There is a track from that settlement up into the mountains—it is a region of high peaks and thick vegetation, a place of much rain. To take Cybele’s Gift home requires the crossing of a mountain pass. A steep and arduous climb. I will take only a small party with me. On the other side of the pass is a village, remote and…unusual. It is to that place that the artifact must be returned.”

Stoyan and I both spoke at once.

“Is that where—”

“A party, what—”

“You would ask, is that where one might find the other part of Cybele’s Gift?” Duarte’s voice was very soft. “So I have been told, Paula. Maybe the rumors that attracted the Mufti’s attention are accurate. Maybe someone has revived the cult of Cybele in the heart of Istanbul. But its true observance belongs not in that great trading city but in the most obscure of mountain villages, where a community that has loved and guarded the statue for generations is awaiting its return. The goddess Cybele is said to have retreated from this world long ago, when humankind had become deaf to the old messages of the earth that are so central to her lore. This mountain was her most holy of places, and the people who dwelt high on its flank were entrusted with her last words of wisdom, inscribed on a little statue formed in her likeness. Many years ago, an unscrupulous man found the secret village and attempted to steal the artifact. In that raid, the statue was broken. Half was taken away. Half remained with the mountain folk, held safe until the other should be returned and Cybele mended again.”

I tried to take all this in. “If that’s true,” I said, thinking hard, “why are you the only person who seems to know about it? What are your sources?”

“This mission was laid on me by a man born and bred in that place, a man who saved my life at the price of his own. He told me everything I know about Cybele’s Gift, including details of its appearance. I believe I was the only bidder unsurprised when the statue was revealed at the house of Barsam the Elusive.”

There was a silence while we contemplated this. Then Stoyan said, “This mission is a debt of honor for you?”

“Acquired when I was young and still testing myself against the world,” said Duarte. “I come from a merchant family, respectable, prosperous, but I had turned my back on them in a foolish desire to prove myself unaided. Mustafa and I were crew together on a spice ship. He spoke much of the remote place of his birth. He hoped in time to earn sufficient silver to set out on a very particular quest. Mustafa hoped he might find the missing piece of this statue that was so central to the faith of his home community and return it there. Each night he muttered a prayer to Cybele that she would help him find what he sought and deliver him safely home to his loved ones.

“There was a shipwreck. My friend and I found ourselves washed up on an unknown shore together. We were set upon by tribesmen and imprisoned in a little hut, injured and weak. I think they believed us to be devils. Peering out through the cracks in this meager dwelling, I could see preparations for a ritual killing, perhaps to be carried out at dawn. We discovered a chink through which escape might be possible, if we were prepared to risk the jungle and its wild creatures. But Mustafa’s leg was broken; he could not walk. At first, I refused to leave without him. ‘I will carry you,’ I said, knowing we would not get far. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Go. Live.’ I told him, ‘I will not go without you. What about your mission? What about Cybele’s Gift?’ Mustafa smiled through his pain. ‘You will find it for me,’ he said. ‘Fair trade. I give you a life. You give my people a future. Go, Duarte. I will talk through the night to cover your escape. Go now!’

“I hope I never again have to make such a choice. I do not know, still, if I did right or wrong. I squeezed out of the hut and fled into the jungle. I left Mustafa to his fate. The rest of the story is unimportant. All I brought home from that unfortunate voyage were the rags on my back and my debt of honor. Mustafa’s mission had become mine. I have searched for Cybele’s Gift a long time. I will not let anyone stop me from taking it back. Not even the Sheikh-ul-Islam.”

We rewarded this narrative with a few moments’ respectful silence. There was no doubt Duarte was telling the truth. His voice was trembling with emotion. As for the future of Cybele’s Gift, I realized I would have to rethink my attitude toward it. If there was indeed a place where folk still believed in the bee goddess and pinned their hopes on the return of this symbol, it was hard to argue that the artifact belonged anywhere else. Even a scholarly and respectful collector such as the one for whom Father had been working could not better such a claim. With a certain sadness, I felt my belief in the mission that had brought Father and me all the way to Istanbul slipping away.

“How many men do you plan to take ashore?” Stoyan asked Duarte. “A climb through a mountain pass, you said. How long will that take, and what if the ship is attacked while you are gone?”

“I will take as few as possible. A small party will be quicker, but there must be enough so we can defend ourselves if necessary. Pero has volunteered. The ship will be concealed; you should be quite safe. If the Esperança can set my party down, then sail to its waiting point unobserved, I do not think the pursuer will track us. The village is difficult to reach, isolated and small. Those who seek to take Cybele’s Gift from me will only find the place by walking in my footsteps. I wish to ensure they cannot do so.”

All through this speech, I was becoming increasingly edgy. Duarte had no way of knowing that the powers of the Other Kingdom had decided Stoyan and I had a quest, too. If there was some old friend of Drǎgua, the wood witch, in this part of the world, someone who needed a favor, Mustafa’s mountain village sounded just the kind of place where we might find her. It would be remiss of me not to warn Duarte. It seemed to me that he might not fulfill his mission unless both of us helped him. I hesitated.

“You have little to say, Paula.” Duarte’s voice came through a darkness in which I was aware that the movement of the ship had lessened and the sounds of voices from above had quieted. The Esperança had reached tonight’s safe mooring. “Can it be that you do not believe me?”

“I do believe you, Duarte,” I said, realizing I was clutching my hands together nervously and making myself relax them. “Stoyan and I have something to tell you. We have listened to your tale. Now you should listen to ours, because I believe it may be tied up with what you plan to do.”

“Very well.”

I told him everything. That my sister, who lived in a world beyond the human one, had come to us and told us about a quest. I spoke of her appearance on this very ship the day we reached Istanbul. I outlined the strange happenings in Irene’s library, the manuscript pages I suspected had been set out for me to find, the tree puzzle, the miniatures that seemed like clues to a task we were bid to undertake. I repeated the cryptic words: Find the heart, for there lies wisdom. The crown is the destination and Make me whole. When I was finished, there were a few moments of utter silence. Then Duarte chuckled.

“Well, Paula, you are an imaginative storyteller. I place no credence in the supernatural. I acknowledge that such beliefs remain strong in isolated places and amongst those who have good reason to adhere to them—the simpler kind of seafaring men, for instance. Folk cling to their gods and spirits in hope of finding comfort and meaning in difficult lives, and the return of items like Cybele’s Gift provides such people with heart and purpose. But I would not expect an educated young woman to have a head full of visions, dreams, and wild imaginings. Perhaps your true calling is not as a scholar but as a writer of diverting romances for the entertainment of noble ladies.”

A tumult of emotions churned inside me: anger, hurt, bitter disappointment that this man I’d been beginning to trust and to like very much had dismissed the precious secret I had confided in him as if it were nonsense. I sat there, mute, as furious tears welled in my eyes. I held them back and found words.

“You’re a fool,” I told Duarte bluntly. “I have firsthand experience of such phenomena—not dreams and visions but reality. During the years of my childhood, I regularly visited a place beyond the human world. That was a magical time, the best time of my whole life, and that realm was just as real as my everyday world. The two exist side by side. One is not fact and the other imagination. They are equal but different. If you cannot accept that, then I believe your mission is doomed to failure, because what Stoyan and I have been shown tells me you cannot succeed without us. Dismiss that at your peril.”

“Paula is right.” Stoyan’s voice was deep and certain. “I did not wish to say this, for the last thing I want is to see her put in still more danger. But I believe, Senhor Duarte, that unless she accompanies you up this mountain of yours, your quest cannot be achieved. And where she goes, I go. You have no choice but to take both of us with you.”

The next day, after sailing eastward from first light until the sun was roughly overhead, we still had not shaken off the red sails of our pursuer. I went up on deck to use the rudimentary privy and washing facilities and caught sight of our captain with Pero by the rail, the two of them shading their eyes as they gazed intently forward. I followed their gaze and my heart skipped a beat.

“Those are the cliffs he spoke of, no doubt,” said Stoyan, coming to stand beside me. A massive rock face rose above the sea a few miles ahead of us. It was formidable, a bastion. Behind it were the purple-green forms of mountains, the highest of them capped with snow. I considered my single set of borrowed clothing, in which I often got quite cold up on deck. If that was where Duarte intended to walk, I was not sure I wanted to go with him.

“I thought he was crazy before,” I said. “Now I’m sure of it.”

“And he believes we are out of our wits, the two of us—you because of a young girl’s overactive imagination, and I because…”

“Because of what? An excess of duty?”

Stoyan shrugged. “I can imagine what he thinks.”

I didn’t press the issue, for Duarte was striding over to us now, looking grim. “We’ll be there soon,” he told us. “You’d best go below, Paula. Once we come close to the cliffs, get into a small space and try to keep hold of something solid. If we need to tack to take advantage of the wind, things will get uncomfortable for you. Make sure everything is in the boxes or trunks, safely stowed.”

I nodded, my words deserting me, and headed for the ladder down to the cabins. Stoyan came behind me.

“Not you,” Duarte said. “We’ll need every able-bodied man on deck. Don’t look like that; Paula’s capable of fending for herself. We need those muscles of yours.”

In the cabin, I stowed everything in perfect order, then wedged myself into a corner, knowing that beyond the porthole the wall of cliffs must be looming closer and closer. I had lashed the strongbox that held Cybele’s Gift to the foot of the bunk with a length of rope. I might break if we had an accident, but with luck she wouldn’t. And since this whole sorry affair was because of her, that seemed the right order of priorities.

“I’m your best chance,” I told her. “You keep me safe and I’ll do the same for you. I just wish I knew what it is Stoyan and I have to do. Help Duarte get you over the mountains safely? Or something more?” The quests set by the Other Kingdom were always designed to make human folk grow and learn and lead better lives by achieving whatever task it was. They’d done it to Jena and Costi and they’d done it to Tati and Sorrow. They’d tried to do it to my cousin Cezar, but it had been too late for him to mend his ways; he had not been able to learn. “Why can’t I work it out?” I whispered.

I did not expect an answer, spectral or otherwise, and I got none. Before I could draw another breath, the Esperança leaned heavily to starboard, and I was pressed back against the wall, my stomach dropping in terror. After a little, the ship righted herself, and I got up, staggering over to the porthole and dragging out the stool to balance on it and look out. A wall of stone confronted me for an instant; then a wave of white water buffeted the glazed window as the ship heeled over the other way.

I crept back to the bunk and hugged the blanket around my shoulders. I wondered if God would be angry if I prayed to him now, since I had not been particularly good about seeking out an Orthodox church in Istanbul. Some had been converted to mosques when the Turks took over the city, but the Sultan had allowed several to remain open for Istanbul’s Christian residents. It was a long time since Father or I had attended a service.

I muttered a prayer, the kind that comes out of abject fear, in which I said I was sorry for a lot of things, such as losing my temper too quickly and not taking time to think before I spoke, and in particular for deserting my father and causing him grief. I asked God to keep Father safe and well, and to protect all of us on this voyage, and to look after my sisters, the three who were back home in Transylvania and the one in the Other Kingdom. “And look after Stoyan,” I said. “He’s the grandson of a…a znaharka, I think it was. That’s something like a white witch, the human kind. Some folk frown on people like that. Some folk believe all manifestations of the Other Kingdom are evil, that they’re the same as the devil. But I don’t think that can be true. I think all things exist together and their destinies are tied up together, like a great book of stories that weave and pass and thread through one another, making the most astonishing tale anyone could dream up. Keep us all safe, Heavenly Father, and please, please help me work out what my mission is. I need to know what I’m supposed to learn from this.”

I did feel slightly better after that. But only slightly; the Esperança was creaking and groaning like a huge, dying creature, and beyond the porthole it was almost dark. How close to the cliffs would Duarte sail? Was he so reckless, or in such haste, that he would risk battering his beloved ship to smithereens?

It was probably a good thing that I could not see out properly without staggering to the porthole and climbing up. Glancing over, I thought perhaps it was underwater for a bit. My teeth were chattering. I clenched them together until my jaw ached, then buried my face in the blanket, pressing my back into the corner. I felt how fast the ship was moving, hurled forward by the fearsome funneling of the wind. I saw it in my mind, the vessel skirting so close to the cliff face that scraps of sail caught on rocky protuberances and tore off, the gale so strong the men on deck struggled not to be blown bodily overboard, the masts bending and flexing under the strain of yards and yards of wind-stretched canvas. It was insanity. I was too scared even to cry.

The Esperança changed tack again, everything tipping the other way, and a groan of protest shuddered through her timbers. I fell off the bunk and landed in a heap on the boards of the cabin floor, jarring my elbow and bruising my knee. There was shouting from the deck, a series of commands and responses, and we barreled forward like a piece of debris washing down a chute, as if even the crazy pace of that last run had not been quite quick enough for our captain. I lay where I had fallen, one hand gripping on to the bunk to stop me from sliding helplessly around the floor. My arm hurt, and my leg. Tears came to my eyes, stupid tears, for if a person was going to drown anyway, what did a few scrapes and bruises matter?

“Paula!”

A pair of large boots appeared at eye level; then a pair of strong arms reached down and lifted me up, depositing me gently on the bunk in a sitting position. I held on to Stoyan as if he were a lifeline, burying my head against his chest.

“You are hurt? You fell?”

“It’s nothing,” I muttered against the none-too-clean wool of his tunic. “I’m fine. How much longer?”

“Not long. I will stay with you.”

“Don’t they need you up there?” I sniffed, the tears really flowing now that I felt almost all right again. It was amazing what a difference it made, not being alone.

“I do not care what they need. I will stay with you.” His words sent an odd feeling through me, like the ringing of a low, soft bell or the sudden sensation of falling into deep water. Then his arms came around me, more tentative than his voice. He had held me like this once before, for comfort, and I had accepted it gratefully without thinking beyond that. But something had shifted between us on this voyage, and I knew this time was different. With my cheek pressed against Stoyan’s heart and his body warming mine, I had a clear image of my sister Iulia, the one who was knowledgeable about men, lifting her brows and saying to me, This is only natural, Paula. You’re a healthy young woman; he’s a fine-looking man. What else do you expect? Just don’t make it into something it can’t be, that’s all. He’s a farmer, uneducated and penniless. He’s a foreigner. Imagine what Aunt Bogdana would say! As the wind carried us on through churning waves and blinding spray, past murderous cliffs and jagged rocks, I sheltered in Stoyan’s arms and pondered this. At last, the Esperança sailed into the smoother waters of a wide bay. We had survived the suicide run, and when we disengaged ourselves a little awkwardly and ventured on deck, it was to find that the red sails of the pursuing vessel were nowhere to be seen.

We sailed out of the bay on an easterly course. The necessary things happened on the run: an inspection of the ship to ascertain whether she had sustained any damage—it seemed not—and hasty individual trips to pick up rations from Cristiano. I smiled at him and he gave me a double scoop of olives.

“You survived, then,” observed Duarte laconically as Stoyan and I walked past him on our way to a sheltered corner where we could eat our meal.

“What did you imagine?” I raised my brows at the captain. “That I would expire from a fit of the vapors? I’m made of stronger stuff than that, Duarte. They tell me we’ve made good distance and lost the pursuer. Your gamble paid off.”

“I don’t gamble. Not where human lives are concerned. I was certain we could do it. Almost certain. Now we are ahead, and we must stay ahead. I hope to reach the place the day after tomorrow, by midday if we are lucky. The moon is waxing; we may attempt to make some progress by night. If there is any chance the pursuer can sail by moonlight, we must do the same.”

“Your crew will be tired.”

“I am not as heartless as you imagine. They sleep in shifts, a few hours at a time. Once we make landfall, there will be no rest for those who continue on foot until Cybele’s Gift is safely delivered.” There seemed to be a question in his eyes.

“Then it’s fortunate you are taking us,” I said. “We, of everyone, have the best opportunity for sleep, thanks to your generosity in allowing us the use of your cabins.”

Duarte regarded me through slitted eyes. “I have made no decision on that matter,” he said. “It’s a hard climb, and I’m not convinced you can keep up.”

“I see you have decided not to take me seriously,” I said in withering tones. “I thought you had better judgment. Come, Stoyan, I’m getting the impression Senhor Aguiar doesn’t want us here.”

“Not at all,” came Duarte’s mocking voice from behind us. “Baiting you is great entertainment.”

“Let it go, Stoyan,” I warned as my companion’s cheeks flushed angry red. “He means nothing by it. And if he does end up taking us with him, we’re all going to have to cooperate whether we like it or not.”

“With one breath he praises you, with the next he insults you. What is his game?”

“Sheer mischief,” I said, sitting beside him on a wooden shelf out of everyone’s way and wondering whether to eat the olives first, while I was hungry, or save them until last. “Or maybe nobody ever taught him good manners. Would you like some of these olives? I have extra.”

We reached our destination at the time Duarte had predicted. It was at that point I realized there were some possibilities even our well-organized captain had not allowed for in his planning. For the last few miles, we had sailed close to the southern coastline, and Stoyan and I had stayed on deck, well wrapped in borrowed cloaks, watching with awe as the mountains marched closer and closer to the water, their dark forms towering over us, their upper reaches thick with vegetation until the blanket of trees gave way to stark, rocky peaks patched with snow. Pero came up to me, pointed ahead, and said, “Village there. High path. We come soon.” We had almost reached our landfall. Not that it mattered so much now. Duarte had told us we could not come with him.

The village had a scattering of low buildings and a little wooden mosque with a single minaret. The Esperança sailed into the bay, ready to drop anchor while a rowing boat ferried Duarte’s party ashore. Stoyan and I were to remain with the ship, in hiding, until he and Pero, with three other men, returned from their mission. There had been no point in pleading with him. On the surface, his decision made good sense. I willed Tati to appear and explain to Duarte that he was making a terrible mistake, but she did not. The cruelest thing about this was that if I failed to complete my own mission, that would mean Tati failed hers as well.

The rowing boat was about to be lowered into the water when Duarte gave a sharp, one-word order. The men who were untying the ropes paused.

A flag was being raised in the settlement: a black flag. Pero crossed himself, muttering in Portuguese. I heard him say peste, and the men close at hand echoed the same word as the color drained from their faces. As we watched, a boat headed out from the shore with two men rowing. They came within shouting distance, shipped their oars, and called in Turkish across the water between us. Duarte shouted a response in the same tongue, asking a question. When the reply came, he gave a series of quick orders to the crew. We put on canvas. The Esperança shuddered and creaked and turned, and we sailed out of the bay. Peste. I did not know any Portuguese, but I did know Latin. The word meant “plague.”

The charts came back out. Duarte and Pero pored over them as the ship headed along the coast to the east and the mountains lowered on our starboard flank.

“I can’t see anywhere at all where there could be a track over,” I said to Stoyan. “What do you think he’ll do?”

Stoyan frowned. “He will not return home,” he said. “Such a man never abandons his mission. Besides, he must continue to evade this pursuer. He will search for another way.”

We gazed up at the impossible slopes, where mountain goats, if they were especially nimble, might perhaps find a path.

“I don’t suppose it’s our problem anymore,” I was saying when I caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye: a tattered scrap of black against the white of the Esperança’s bellying sails. I hardly dared turn lest she vanish the moment I did so. “Stoyan,” I hissed.

“What?” He had heard the change in my voice and answered in hushed tones.

“She’s there. Tati. I can see her up amongst the sails. Over there, near the mainmast.”

After a moment, while we both pretended not to be looking, Stoyan said, “I see her, Paula. What now?”

“She’s pointing,” I said. “That way, back toward the shore but beyond that rocky headland to the east of us.” Still I did not turn directly toward her, but I could see her figure perched improbably halfway up, her feet on a spar, one hand clutching the mast, the other gesturing with confidence in the direction I had mentioned, as if to command the course of the ship. I could not see what lay beyond the headland; the mountains seemed as impassable as they were here, but maybe there was a path. On the deck and on watch atop the mast, crewmen went about their business as if there were no robed woman clinging to the timbers of their ship. It seemed she was invisible to them.

“She’s fading,” said Stoyan, and before our eyes the dark figure wavered and broke up and vanished. “Do we tell him?”

“Maybe we don’t need to,” I said, seeing Duarte coming across the deck toward us. I addressed the captain with what confidence I could muster. “There could be plague all the way along this shore. You realize that, I suppose?” I said. “Landing anywhere nearby might risk the lives of your entire crew. May we see your maps?”

Duarte was looking haggard. “Why not?” he said flatly, as if it hardly mattered.

Pero showed us our current position on the map and the site of the stricken village. I shivered to think of that. Plague had spread across our region more than once and had swept whole towns and districts bare of living souls. It was indiscriminate, taking men, women, and children alike, the poor, the wealthy, the wicked, and the saintly. That settlement had looked so small. I imagined the inhabitants perhaps gathered at their little mosque to pray, fewer by the day. I imagined mothers watching their children die or children left alone, confused and helpless. The worst thing was, there was nothing to be done about it. To land and offer assistance was to invite a death sentence. Still, it had felt bad to sail on by.

I found what I thought was the big headland, and beyond it a pair of narrow, slitlike bays. The map was lacking in detail. I could not tell if any paths led up the mountains from one or the other of these.

“You could put in here,” I said, stabbing the spot with my finger. “There may well be a way up into the mountains, perhaps a path that meets the one you intended to walk. And the ship could anchor in the second bay, out of sight. Of course, you may find plague in the settlement over the pass; it might be everywhere in the region. That’s your risk, which I suppose you must take on behalf of your whole party. You could always sail back to Istanbul, taking care to evade the Mufti’s vessel. You’ve got a fine crew. They could do it.”

Duarte looked at me, his dark eyes inscrutable. “Put yourself in my place,” he said, for once not mocking but entirely serious. “What would your decision be?”

I blinked, surprised. “I could not make it so quickly,” I said. “I know which choice is right but…I understand what it means to be dedicated to a mission, too. My head and my heart would do battle over it. I would need time to decide.”

“I have no time. We are here, and sooner or later the other ship will find us. If we go ahead, it must be quickly.”

I looked at Duarte closely. There were lines on his face that I had not noticed before, grooves between his nose and the corners of his mouth that made him look older. His dark brows were drawn into a frown. “You have a little time,” I said. “Until we sail around the headland and into the bay, and then until we see if there’s a path. You could talk to your crew.”

He gave a curt nod, then turned his back and went to the rail, where he stood looking ahead as the Esperança sailed on a steady course toward the promontory. I remembered how I had said before that I believed his crew would die for him. That was what he had to decide now: whether to put them in the path of death.

Without further talk, Stoyan and I went down to the cabin. It was cold. Out on the water, at times it was hard to believe the season was late spring. I held my cloak around me, watching Stoyan as he stood by the porthole staring out. He was tall enough to do so without standing on anything; indeed, he had to stoop a little.

“This is hard for Duarte,” I said. “It’s one thing asking his men to defend him against attackers; I expect they do that quite often. It’s quite another expecting them to enter what may be a plague village. What if he got there with Cybele’s Gift and found everyone dead?” A shiver ran through me; I could see the scene, what should have been a triumph turned to ashes. “He can’t attempt the climb alone. That would be foolhardy. If he sails back to Istanbul, he’ll be sacrificing the mission. And putting himself in the way of the Sheikh-ul-Islam.”

“So what would your answer be?”

“I don’t know. Imagine watching a friend die of plague, knowing you could have prevented it. Can a mission really be worth that?”

“I ask myself,” Stoyan said solemnly, “what would my choice be if I had to risk the lives of companions, of friends, in order to find my brother. Not so long ago, I would have told you yes, I would do so without hesitation.”

I waited for more, but it was not forthcoming. “And now?” I asked him.

“I believe that, like you, I could not do it. That I could not bear what might ensue. And that wounds me; it is as if I have set Taidjut aside.” His voice was full of pain now.

“Then we must both be glad the decision is not ours to make,” I said quietly. “Do you think of him all the time? Taidjut?”

“I count the grief I have caused, the losses, in my quest to find him. Salem bin Afazi, slain through my neglect of my duties, because I asked for leave to follow a thread of information. Your father, alone and unprotected in Istanbul because I did not keep a proper watch on you. Others before. I have acquitted myself miserably, Paula.”

I stood and laid a comforting hand on his back. “You’ll find him, Stoyan,” I said. “You’re strong of heart. And you’ve acquitted yourself bravely. When things went wrong, it was not your doing. It’s my fault entirely that you and I are in our current predicament.”

I pondered the future. If Duarte decided not to risk the climb, we could be back in Istanbul sooner than we had expected, and I would be able to end Father’s anxiety. He and I would sail back home, and Stoyan could pick up his search for his lost brother again. That was good. But I was filled with sadness: for those who were suffering in that little village, for Stoyan and Taidjut, for Duarte, torn between the duty laid on him by his friend’s sacrifice and his responsibility to his crew. And what about Cybele’s Gift? How could I set aside my own mission? How could I ignore my sister?

“Maybe the decision will be made for us,” I said. A cold feeling came over me, a certainty that what I had just said was true. “Maybe…” No, I refused to believe the plague had somehow been sent so that we would land in another bay, take another path, do the will of the Other Kingdom. That was too dark a possibility to be contemplated.

“What is wrong, Paula?” Stoyan turned, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Nothing, I…no, nothing.” I shivered, drawing the cloak tighter. “I just…” I realized that I was afraid. “Stoyan…”

“What? You frighten me, Paula, when you look like that. Come, sit down.” He sat me on the bunk, squatting in front of me, unclamping my hands from the cloak and putting his around them. “Now tell me.”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing. A fit of the vapors. But stay there, please.” His grasp was warm; it pushed the fear away a little. Soon, very soon, I suspected, nothing would have the power to do that.

After a while, Duarte came down to the cabin. We had sailed around the promontory and were heading into the first of the narrow bays. Stoyan had got up from time to time to look out and report to me. I was trying to read aloud—Aesop’s Fables— and he was seated on the floor with his back against the bunk, next to my legs. It was extremely hard to concentrate.

“I have a question to ask you.” Our captain was standing in the doorway, hands up on the frame, expression neutral.

“Both of us?” I asked, closing the book and feeling my heart pick up its pace.

“Stoyan only. If I find a track from this bay or the next, will you come up the mountain with me?”

We stared at him in stunned silence.

“I cannot,” Stoyan said after a little. “My place is with Paula. You cannot expect her to put herself in the path of plague. And if she stays on the boat, I do not go.”

“And if she comes, too?” Duarte’s dark gaze moved to me.

Now I was really cold. I knew why I had been afraid. At no point in the journey thus far had I really believed that I might die. Perhaps that was not quite true; the whirlwind sail around the cliffs had had its moments. But this…“Before, you said you wouldn’t take us,” I said, trying to sound calm. “What has changed your mind?”

Duarte gave a bitter smile. “If I could go alone, I would,” he said. “But I must have two men with me at least, one as a guard, a second to come back for help if one of us is injured. Pero has volunteered. Stoyan is the strongest man on board, an unparalleled fighter.”

“And the others?” I asked, knowing the answer before he spoke.

“Pero is a friend; we understand each other. I will not ask the others to risk their lives out of personal loyalty. Accidents, mishaps, bandits, yes. Plague, no.”

“You didn’t ever consider not going yourself?” I queried, clutching my hands together to conceal the way they were shaking. Because, of course, I did want to go. Despite the plague, despite the danger, I still believed I was meant to go.

“No. Paula, will you release Stoyan from his obligation to you? My crew will keep you safe. They will treat you with respect. You have my word—”

“I said no.” Stoyan’s voice was heavy with finality. “I will not go, and neither will Paula. She stays, and I am her guard. Take your little statue and make your climb, pirate, and if your loyal mate loses his life to those ills you list—bandits, accidents, plague—live with the knowledge of that. You will not take Paula with you.”

Duarte’s brows shot up. For a moment, he looked like his old self. “Ah, but Paula is very much her own woman,” he said. “I thought you’d have learned that by now. Besides, she’s your employer, unless I’ve got things wrong. Why don’t we let her answer?”

God help me. I had to say yes; everything that had happened up till now made that clear. A force beyond the worldly wanted Cybele’s Gift returned. My instincts and the messages of the Other Kingdom told me all three of us were required to make that happen. I was prepared to go. Terrified, but willing. I was not so sure I was ready to put Stoyan in the path of plague.

“We need to talk about this alone,” I told Duarte. “Stoyan and I.”

“There’s no time.” The captain’s features had a set look.

“It won’t take long. Please.”

He went out without a word, and I got to my feet. Stoyan stood, too, his face ashen in the bright light from the porthole. His scar made a sharp line across his cheek; his lips were pressed together.

“I don’t want to argue with you,” I said. “I believe I must do this. But I don’t want you to come because of duty, because it’s your job to look after me and protect me. I couldn’t bear to put you in such peril because of that, Stoyan.”

“That was the reason you hired me. As a bodyguard.”

“Then I’ll unhire you, if that makes this any easier. Consider yourself no longer in my employment. You are your own man, and you can make your decision based only on your own wishes. You can make it not as a bodyguard but as a…friend.” My voice had started to shake. I so much wanted him to come with me, but I shrank from the prospect of watching him perish from plague, or in combat, or from cold or injury. I realized, with a jolt of the heart, that I would not be able to bear it. I reached out and took his hand, and his fingers closed around mine. I had never seen him like this; he looked stricken.

“I will ask you one question, Paula,” he said.

“Ask, then.”

“You will go, I see that, despite anything I may say or do. I know you. I know how determined you are. Do you want me to come with you?”

I nodded, tears of relief and sadness brimming in my eyes.

“Then I will come,” Stoyan said on a sigh.

“Duarte!” I called, and he was there in the doorway again; probably he’d heard the whole thing. Side by side, Stoyan and I faced him, our hands still clasped. “We’ll come,” I said. “Both of us. It’s what we’re meant to do. But no more mockery. No more dismissive remarks. We’ll do our best to help you, and you’ll treat us with respect, as equal members of your party. Now ask Pero to find us some really warm clothing. It looks as if we’re going to be up there overnight.”

Four crewmen rowed us ashore and waited while we searched for a path. The shore was rocky here with only a tiny flat patch for landing, and the tree cover came down almost to the water. The pitch of the hillside was steep. There was no obvious track up from the shore. We were about to give up and sail around to investigate the second cove when Stoyan, who had scrambled higher up the rocks, called out, “Here!”

There was a tree there, a juniper that crawled over the stony ground and up the rock wall with a tenacity like that of a strong old woman. Its gnarled branches were festooned with offerings, scraps of cloth, lengths of colored wool, snippets of braid, human hair twisted and tied, beads, fraying threads, and tarnished buckles. Behind it, the slightest of gaps in the close-growing foliage could be observed. Nearby, a tiny stream of freshwater trickled through a natural channel in the rock to fill a bowllike indentation before spilling over and down into the sea. Stoyan’s eyes met mine, questioning, and I gave a nod. Everything about this place suggested the Other Kingdom. When Duarte and Pero climbed up to us, I said, “This is the way.”

Duarte peered up between the trees, looking doubtful. He began to say something, then closed his mouth, perhaps remembering he had promised not to make dismissive remarks. “All right,” he said, “for want of anything better, we’ll try it.”

A little later we headed off up the mountain, the vista of open sea behind us rapidly disappearing as we entered a realm of damp, dark forest. The small boat would be taken back out to the Esperança, which would sail into the neighboring bay and wait for our return. They would row around to look for us the day after tomorrow, and then every day until we reappeared.

The men carried packs. I had offered to bear my own supplies, but Stoyan would have none of it. My blanket, water bottle, and share of the rations were stowed away with his. We all had weapons. Stoyan had given me one of his to put in my belt: a small, very sharp knife in a leather sheath. I could not imagine using it and was not at all sure it made me feel safer. Duarte carried an extra burden. In his pack, liberated from its box and tied up instead in many layers of soft cloth, traveled Cybele’s Gift.

It was already late in the day. I knew the most important thing was to get as far as we could while it was still light, then find a place of shelter. We wasted no breath in talking. We climbed, keeping the pace as steady as we could, and for a long time the track went straight up and the terrain remained the same: a dense forest of conifers mixed with broad-leaved oaks and beeches, floored with mud, leaf litter, and, here and there, stony outcrops that were a test for my short legs. Many small streams gushed down the hillside, evidence of heavy spring rains. Each time we stopped to check our progress and catch our breath, Duarte stared at me in apparent amazement.

“Don’t look so surprised,” I said eventually. “I was born and bred on slopes like these, just as Stoyan was.”

“I’m grateful you’re not slowing us down,” said Duarte. He spoke to Pero in rapid Portuguese, then turned back to us. “If we can reach that big outcrop before the light fades too much further, we may be able to see whether this track meets the one we wanted. No point in going up if we can’t get over the—”

He had gone suddenly still, staring up to the rocks he had mentioned, an odd formation that looked a little like a cat’s head.

“What?” I asked. “Did you see something?”

Duarte frowned. “I thought—no, it’s not there now. Something fluttering, like a flag, up above the rocks. I must have been mistaken.”

“What color?” I asked. “Black?”

He gave me a searching look. “Why?”

“Nothing.” I had not forgotten the way he dismissed my visions as those of an impressionable young girl. He would learn, I thought. Tati was probably up there even now, beckoning us onward. I hoped very much that she did not expect us to traverse this hillside at night. Very soon the only light would be the moon, and it would be deathly cold.

“You’re shivering.” Stoyan was by my side, taking my hands between his and massaging them to warm them up. We both wore sheepskin gloves. Mine were several sizes too big, and I could not wear them on the steepest pitches, where I needed to slip my fingers between the rocks to haul myself up.

“I’m all right.” Our breath was making clouds before our lips. A thin mist was rising up the slopes, insinuating itself between the trees to wrap around our ankles. “We should move on.”

By the time we reached the outcrop, it was clear we would have to camp there for the night. The light was going and with it the last traces of warmth from the air. We halted at the foot of the massive rock formation. Pero and Duarte went off to climb up and assess the wider terrain while they still could. Stoyan and I looked for a place of shelter and found a shallow cave with a patch of open ground in front. He gathered fallen wood for a fire, finding some dryish branches under the natural cover of protruding rocks. I undid the pack and got out our blankets and rations. I found a flint and dry tinder, neatly wrapped in oiled cloth.

“Stoyan, I suppose it is all right for us to make a fire? What about that other ship?”

“Without it, we freeze.” Stoyan dragged a larger log across toward the stack he had made. “Your Portuguese friend may be obsessed with his quest, but I do not think he is a fool.”

“It may not matter anyway,” I said, thinking aloud. “We’re well ahead of the Mufti’s men, and perhaps it’s not so very far to this place.” I wouldn’t even think about plague. “Maybe the two tracks meet at the top, and we can still go over the pass as Duarte originally intended.”

We had the fire crackling by the time the others returned. I saw Duarte’s face and spoke before he could. “I know someone might see it. We weighed that against the possibility of dying of cold or being too cramped to go on in the morning. This is our decision.” He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “Duarte, what could you see from up there?”

“Nothing conclusive. We should go on up at first light. This track must lead somewhere, and it seems the only possible option for reaching this village, if we cannot use the path from the plague settlement. It’s just that…”

My heart sank still further. “What?” I asked.

“The map is incomplete, so I must rely on the long-ago account of my shipmate for clues to the way. I have not visited this place before. There seemed no point in that unless I had found Cybele’s Gift. I did not think to learn the terrain here, to anticipate difficulties. I should have planned more carefully.”

“You couldn’t have foreseen plague,” I pointed out. “Nor that you would have us with you. What did your shipmate tell you?”

“He did not mention a second path. Indeed, I could swear he said the village was so isolated there was only one track in and out.”

“Then why are you suggesting we go on in the morning?” asked Stoyan, frowning. “What is the point of that if you believe this track will not take us to our destination?”

“Wait a bit.” I was thinking hard as I held my hands up to the fire, trying to get some feeling back into my fingers. “Perhaps Mustafa wouldn’t have told you. Perhaps this path is secret, a way that would only reveal itself to the person who brought back Cybele’s Gift.” As soon as I said this, I felt instinctively that it was true. “You saw that tree down at the bottom,” I added. “Gifts for a deity of some kind, a nature god or goddess—that’s the kind of place where folk leave them, an old tree by a spring. A spot where earth meets water. Cybele’s path.”

“That is more leap of imagination than logical deduction,” Duarte said, but he was gazing into the fire as if giving the idea serious consideration.

“No, Duarte,” I said. “It’s a mixture of scholarship and intuition. And experience, but I am not going to discuss that part of it with you, since you more or less called me a liar last time I mentioned it. I know about this kind of thing. This is the right path. We just have to keep going up and following the signs.”

“Signs?”

“Trust me,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Now, are we going to try cooking, or is supper to be strips of dried meat eaten cold?”

I’d been worrying about our sleeping arrangements. It was one thing to have Stoyan lying on guard across the outer doorway at the han, or in the next-door cabin on the Esperança listening for intruders. It was quite another for me, at seventeen, to have to share a small cave with three adult men and to be obliged to lie close to at least one of them to keep even tolerably warm. Now that it was time to bed down for the night, I found myself suddenly bereft of all social confidence. I stood shivering by the fire, wishing I was back home again.

“Here.” Pero spoke in halting Greek from within the cave, where he had been quietly laying out bedding. “Senhora Paula, Stoyan, Pero, Duarte. Senhora near fire. Good for sleep. Yes?”

“Thank you, Pero,” I said. “That arrangement sounds extremely sensible.”

Pero grinned at me, showing several gaps in his teeth. “I am father of seven children, senhora. Seven children, two beds. Is the same, yes?”

“Not quite,” observed Duarte. “Still, it would take a man with more fortitude than mine to consider getting up to any tricks when it’s as cold as this. Sweet dreams, my friends.”

Before he rolled himself into his blanket next to Pero, he set Cybele’s Gift in the cave, safely to one side where nobody could harm it with a sudden movement. Within its shroud of wrappings, it cast an odd shadow on the cave wall, round and bulging. Make me whole. Tomorrow, perhaps we would do just that.

Even with the fire in front of me and the solid form of Stoyan at my back, I was almost too cold to sleep. I kept dropping off, then waking with a start to the deep silence of the nighttime forest, punctuated by the cries of birds and by vague squeakings and rustlings. The first time I did this, Stoyan adjusted his blanket so it was over the two of us. The second time he murmured something that sounded like poetry as I gradually fell asleep again. The tone was soothing, though I could not understand the language. The third time I woke, trembling with cold, his arm came around me, moving me closer against him, and the chill began to retreat from my body. “Thank you,” I whispered. I felt his breath warm against my hair, but now he said nothing at all.

I awoke in the morning groggy with tiredness and sore from lying on the ground, but certainly not cold. As I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I realized that I had four blankets and someone’s cloak over me, with a folded jacket under my head. The cave was empty; all the others were up. The fire had been quenched, and Duarte was busy covering the ashes with soil. Pero was stuffing items into a pack.

“I was about to wake you,” Stoyan said. He was sitting on the rocks near me with a cup in his hands. “Please drink this. You need something in your stomach before we move on.”

I drank. It was a hideous brew of dried meat and stale bread soaked in water; I hoped I would never have to sample it again. Still, it was food and it was warm. They must have only just put out the fire. The sun wasn’t even up yet.

“We’re heading on straightaway,” said Duarte as Pero gathered the blankets, folding and stowing them each in turn. “With luck we’ll reach the mountain village while the sun is high and have shelter tonight. I don’t want you sleeping out in the open again if it can be avoided.”

“I’m an equal member of the expedition, remember?” I said, trying for a smile. “No special privileges, no concessions. Not that I’ll refuse a warmer bed if it’s offered. Excuse me, I need to go off into the forest for a little.”

I was squatting under a tree, making sure none of the men could see me, when a black-robed woman manifested in the shadows nearby: not Tati this time but an old crone, peering at me with her sunken dark eyes, her face as pale and crumpled as worn parchment. She could have been a sister of the ancient juniper down at the water’s edge, a thing of old earth, a survivor of many lifetimes of men. I had never felt more exposed or more vulnerable.

“It’s time,” she said, and once again I did not know what language she spoke, only that I understood it from instinct. “Sharpen your wits. You will have sore need of them before this day is out. Tighten your courage. And watch your balance.”

I nodded, wondering if I could ask questions or whether she might vanish if I spoke.

“Remember,” she said. “Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all. And learn. Learn wisdom. Go safely, Paula.” And she was gone, not fading away, not stumping off into the forest, not disappearing in a flash and a bang, just…gone.

I didn’t say anything when I got back to the outcrop, though Duarte observed that I was looking paler than usual and whistled the first line of Paula, de brancura singela in a thoughtful sort of way. The men already had their packs on their backs, and we set off up the mountain as the sun appeared above the horizon, veiled by clouds. The first part was steep. We scaled the side of the outcrop to pause on a level patch and gaze out at the view Stoyan and I had missed yesterday: a broad vista over the Black Sea, with headlands to both sides. The mist was rapidly clearing from the tree-clad slopes below us. We could see the Esperança at anchor in the next inlet, her sails furled, and several little islands not far from shore. There was a coastal settlement in the distance, a long way farther to the east. And moored in the cove from which we had begun our assault on the mountain, small as a toy on the sheltered water, there floated a stately three-master with sails of an unmistakable russet red.

The pursuers must have sailed by night to catch us. It was possible they’d reached the cove in darkness and begun to climb while we were still asleep. The ascent became a race, and I gritted my teeth and got on with it, determined not to hold the men back. Mountain-bred I might be, but my legs were shorter than everyone else’s, and my hands were soon bleeding with the effort of clinging on and hauling myself up.

The men weren’t saying much, and nor was I. I tried not to think too hard about what would happen if the pursuers caught up with us. I remembered the Janissary guards at the han, big, well-armed men with purposeful faces. We were only four; who knew how many of them might be climbing after us?

To distract myself, I thought about what the crone had said to me. It seemed I had a job to do and that it was possible for me to succeed at it, provided I followed her instructions. Wits: Yes, I was not short of those. Courage: If I failed there, Stoyan had enough for two. Balance: It depended, I thought as I clambered up a rock face, stretching for an impossible grip, on what kind of balance was meant. Pero reached down from above, seized my wrists, and pulled me bodily up. I gasped a thank-you before tackling the next climb.

Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all. What could that be? My family? My home? The Other Kingdom? I hoped I would understand what the old woman had meant before it was too late. As for Learn wisdom, I was a scholar, wasn’t I? I’d been trying to make myself wiser for years. I pictured the crone stopping the people who were on our trail and giving them the same advice she had offered me. Under the sweat that now coated my body, I felt cold. Perhaps it was a game for her, like chess, black against white, and the four of us a team of king, queen, knight, rook, playing it out on the mountain as if on an inlaid board. Maybe the old woman didn’t care who won. Maybe we were just entertainment.

We paused high on the flank of the mountain, beside a field of loose scree. One false step would mean a rapid, sliding descent back to the tree line.

“I can’t see a path from this point,” Duarte said. “We’ll have to find some sort of goat track around those cliffs. But I don’t see how that could lead to the place we want; there would have to be a—” He stopped short.

“A what?” I asked, wishing we had not stopped to confer, for the moment I ceased walking, my body began to remind me that it hurt all over and needed a good rest.

“A bridge,” Duarte muttered, his eyes distant. “Mustafa mentioned a bridge. Something about taxes and trade.”

“It seems unlikely,” Stoyan said. “How could trade affect such an out-of-the-way place? There must be nothing up here but the most isolated villages. Imagine it in winter.”

“Maybe there is a back way in,” I said. “There is a bigger settlement along the coast to the east; we saw it. If that has an anchorage for trading vessels and tax is payable there before the goods are sent off with caravans inland, this could be a way to sneak things by.”

“Whether your theory is correct or not,” said Duarte, “we must try the cliffs or retreat and meet the pursuer on his way up. No choice, in my view. I hope you have a good head for heights.” He glanced at me, not altogether joking.

“Come,” said Stoyan. “If we must negotiate a cliff path, let us do so while the Mufti’s men are well behind.”

“Of course,” I felt obliged to say, “if there is a bridge, it would be more logical for it to connect with a path down to that eastern settlement, not to a village on the other side of the mountains.”

“So,” Duarte said, hands on hips, “what is your advice?”

“Logic tells me this path doesn’t go where we need it to. Instinct tells me it’s the right path. Make of that what you will.” A bird had alighted on the rocks just ahead of us as I spoke, a large black crow. Its wings had a tattered look, its eyes a bright wildness, intent, unsettling. “In fact, I’m absolutely sure this is the way,” I added. Follow the crow, I nearly said, but stopped myself. I didn’t want Duarte to think me completely mad.

There was a path around the cliffs. It was so narrow I did not dare look down. The rock surface was pitted and crumbling. My limbs shook. My mind went numb with terror. I could not imagine any goat in its right mind choosing to go this way.

Duarte went first, with me next. I kept forgetting to breathe. Stoyan came after me, once or twice reaching out an arm to steady me or offering calm, quiet instructions. Pero was at the end, dogged and silent. I did have the advantage of being smaller and lighter than any of them, but the boots I’d been lent on the Esperança were not a good fit, and I was never more relieved than the moment I stepped off the tiny ledge onto more solid ground, to be enveloped in an embrace by Duarte before seeing the others in turn reach the safety of the broad, treed hollow where we stood.

“You’re a brave girl, Paula,” the pirate said. He still had me folded to his chest and seemed in no hurry to let go. My heart was beating fast, whether through terror, relief, or something quite different I was not sure. “I’m proud of you,” Duarte added in a murmur.

“It’s the thought of doing it all again on the way back that really bothers me,” I said with a shaky smile, and stepped away from his embrace.

“If we can find another way, we will,” he said. “Trust me on that. Now—”

There was a whir and a thump, and Pero gave a strangled gasp before collapsing to his knees by our side. My eyes went wide with horror. Something was sticking out of his calf, and he moaned as he clutched at it. Blood ran down his trouser leg and onto his boot. I had just time to identify the thing as a crossbow bolt; then Stoyan grabbed me and shoved me back under the cover of some straggly bushes. The crow, with a derisive caw, settled on a branch above me.

I stayed where I’d been put, watching Duarte and Stoyan as they moved like a team, keeping their voices low. Neither looked back along the cliff path. To lean out was to put oneself in the path of a second missile. I did not hear any sounds of pursuit, falling stones, or voices, but I knew we did not have long. Stoyan picked Pero up without apparent effort and shifted him to a more sheltered position. Duarte hunted items out of his pack. The two of them crouched beside the stricken man, busying themselves. I could see blood on Pero’s face; he had sunk his teeth into his lip to stop himself from crying out. I wasn’t prepared to stay crouching in cover while they worked, so I came out and held things for them as Stoyan set his hands to the bolt and drew it out with an unpleasant sucking noise. Duarte applied pressure to the wound. Pero endured the operation without a sound. Stoyan ripped lengths off his own shirt to improvise a dressing.

“Where are they?” I whispered as the last knot was tied. Fresh blood was already seeping through the linen. “How far behind us?”

“Too close,” muttered Duarte. “They must have been climbing in the dark, or they’d never have caught up. They must be right at the other end of the cliff path, probably waiting for us to move on. They’ll be vulnerable once they start to come along that ledge. We must go now. Pero…” He addressed his friend in Portuguese, his tone confident and warm. Pero’s face was an unlikely shade of gray. He was trying to smile. I looked at Stoyan and he looked at me. He was transferring items from Pero’s pack to his own.

“I can carry it,” I said. “You’ve got too much already.”

“I’ll take it, Paula. Pero’s going to need help. I want you to go ahead and find the path.”

Duarte indicated agreement with a jerk of his head. Perhaps the grim, weary look on his face was reflected on mine; I could not tell. I knew that forcing Pero to go on went against all rules for the care of the seriously injured. But now that our pursuers had shown their true colors, we had no choice.

“And, Paula,” said Stoyan as the two of them helped Pero to rise, supporting him between them, “if you need to use that knife I gave you, don’t hesitate. Promise me.”

The cliff path had taken us below the level of the scree, and we now entered another area of trees, where a broader, easier way opened out. We kept up a reasonable pace thanks to the combined strength of Stoyan and Duarte, who helped Pero as we went, but before long the path began to climb again, winding uphill between rocks overhung with creeping thorn bushes. The crow was still with us, flying ahead to land and wait, gazing at us with its impenetrable eyes.

I paused on top of a rise, turning to look back, and caught a flash of something between the trees lower down: a color that did not belong in the grays and browns and greens of the forested hillside, a movement I thought was human. “I can see them,” I muttered as Stoyan came up beside me. “I don’t think we can keep ahead much longer.”

“Where’s the bird?”

“You noticed? Still following this path. So I suppose all we can do is go on and hope.” Now I could see more of them, five, six men, moving purposefully up the hill a few hundred yards behind us. My heart felt like a cold stone in my chest.

“Keep going, Paula,” Stoyan said. “If the ground levels out up there, run.”

Duarte was helping Pero up the rise; Stoyan reached out a strong hand and hauled the injured man up beside us. Pero said something in Portuguese and made a gesture indicating that he could walk and that we should go on and stop worrying about him. The bandage on his leg was stained red.

“Quickly,” Duarte said. “Go.”

The ground leveled, and I ran. The path, such as it was, went around a bluff, then cut between high rock walls where mountain plants grew in crevices, their tiny flower faces turned up toward the cloud-veiled sun. The crow flew ahead, not crying out now but winging with intent along the narrow way. My legs ached; my head was dizzy; my breath rasped in my chest. I knew, deep inside me, that even with Stoyan on our side, we could not hope to prevail against so many attackers. Crossbows were probably only the first step. It was very possible we were all about to die. Wits, courage, balance. How could I employ any of them when I was so frightened I couldn’t think straight?

The rock walls opened out. I halted so abruptly that Duarte, who was next in line, almost crashed into me. We were standing on the very lip of a deep, narrow rift in the mountainside. I made myself look down and saw a thread of pale blue: a waterway far below us. Birds were wheeling in space above the river, mere dots against the gray of rock, the dark green of forest. It was a fearsome drop. A short distance along the path that skirted this ravine was a little hut and beside it a fire with smoke rising in a lazy plume up the side of the gorge. And there was a bridge: a ramshackle suspended construction of ropes and wooden slats, with a single knotted line as a handhold. It spanned the gap, a tenuous link to the other side, where the path began again, winding across a bare expanse of hillside to a great wall of rock. Dark foliage in a band screened the foot of that cliff. An odd formation of low cloud, like a localized mist, clung to its top, blotting out the view of the mountain behind. In and out of this haze flew waves of dark birds. I heard their screaming cries, like warnings to come no closer. It seemed to me a place of magic, strange and mysterious. Gazing at it, I felt an odd sense of recognition. The crow took wing and headed across the divide; it needed no bridge.

“Over there,” I said as Pero came up beside us. Stoyan had not yet appeared. “Where those cliffs are, that’s the place we must go.” After that first glance, I tried not to look at the bridge.

Duarte muttered something in Portuguese, and we headed along the path. We had taken only a few steps when a commanding voice shouted in Turkish, “Halt!” From inside the little hut appeared a man with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. He wore a soldier’s gear, protective leather over garments of padded cotton. “What is your business here? No passing!” At least that was how I interpreted his words.

Duarte began an explanation in fluent Turkish, accompanied by much eloquent waving of hands. The guard shook his head, pointing back the way we had come. A moment later a second man, then a third, emerged from the small hut. All were heavily armed; each wore the same implacable expression. Duarte began again, and this time the first guard cut him off with a single, snapped word.

“What is he saying? Tell them we must get over!” I said, wondering why there was no sign of Stoyan. Could he be back there fighting off the pursuers all by himself? “Tell them we’re being followed by men with crossbows!”

“They say nobody can pass without the authority of the local administrator,” Duarte said. “Something about taxes and contraband. They suggested a thorough search of our packs and our persons might be in order.”

“There’s no time!” I thought I could hear noises back along the path, the sound of many booted feet. I tried my basic Turkish. “Please let us pass!”

The first guard glared at me. “The bridge is closed!” he barked.

An impasse. We would stand here arguing until the enemy came up and killed us. It would be all too easy on the edge of a precipice. These guards would probably stand by their little fire drinking tea and watching it happen.

“Go back,” the first guard said. “Leave this place.”

“We could fight them, I suppose,” said Duarte quietly, in Greek. “But—”

Then, before our eyes, the adversarial scowls on the faces of the guards were abruptly transformed into expressions of combined shock, embarrassment, and servile apology. They were looking over my shoulder, down the path.

“Your Excellency!” exclaimed the first guard. “A thousand apologies! We are most honored…”

I turned my head, wondering if the pursuers were here already and had a dignitary amongst them. But the only person standing there was Stoyan, looking as bemused as I felt. He opened his mouth to speak, but Duarte, quick as a whip, got in first.

“His Excellency is traveling incognito,” was what I thought he said. “You are not to speak of this, you understand? Now let us pass, and be quick about it.”

And they did, ushering the four of us up to the bridge with many bows and polite apologies.

“Your Excellency, I did not realize…”

“We regret greatly…We wished only to carry out our orders….”

“Yes, yes,” Duarte told them airily. “His Excellency understands.” And he added something about others, speaking too fast for me to follow.

Stoyan said nothing at all. That was wise. If, as it seemed, he had been mistaken for someone else, the moment he opened his mouth and spoke with a Bulgarian accent, our permission to cross the bridge would be snatched away.

“Paula,” Duarte said, “you should go first. You are light-footed; we will be slower.”

I swallowed nervously, knowing I had to do it, wondering if I was going to be sick with sheer fright.

“One hand on the rope,” Duarte went on, his voice calm. “Don’t look down, don’t look back, keep moving whatever happens. Fix your gaze on a point opposite and walk toward that. Go now, Paula.”

Stoyan reached out, wordless; his fingers brushed my hair. Then I was on the shaky structure, stepping from one narrow, weathered plank to the next, my teeth clenched with terror, my whole body drenched in nervous sweat as the bridge began to bounce and sway under my weight.

Sometimes there is nothing to do but keep going. I didn’t like heights; the cliff path had tested me severely. If I’d been traveling alone, I’d never have dreamed of trying this. But somehow I did it. With one hand holding the rope and the other out to the side for balance, I walked across in my ill-fitting boots, keeping my eyes on the wall of rock ahead with its odd cap of mist, knowing instinctively that up there lay the key to the mystery. Find the heart, for there lies wisdom. The crown is the destination. Could that have something to do with this? Hearts. Crowns. Kings and queens had both, and maybe Cybele was a kind of queen. I imagined her bulbous form crowned with leaves and berries. She was also like a tree, I reminded myself as I stepped over a gap where one board had fallen from the bridge. I teetered, catching a glimpse of the ribbon of water far below me. Concentrate, Paula. Use your balance. Heart of wood; crownlike canopy. That was what Stoyan had suggested. And the tile pattern was a tree. What was the connection?

The men were on the bridge. I felt it shudder and sway with the extra weight and the movement. This would be hard for Pero. I was almost over. There were about four strides in it….

Someone shouted. Don’t look back, I ordered myself. I stepped forward, one slat, two, three, and I was on the far side of the rift, where the path continued up across the rocky slope. I breathed, relief spreading all through my body. I was here, I had done it.

Another shout. I turned and my heart froze. Halfway across the bridge, Pero had fallen. He was clutching on to the slats with both arms, his legs dangling down into the void. Beside him, Duarte was lowering himself into a crouch on the violently swaying structure, trying to establish his balance so he could use both hands to help his crewman. Stoyan was between these two and the far end of the bridge. As I stared in horror, more yelling broke out from over the gap—our pursuers had reached the sentry post. There was a small crowd of men there now, in spirited argument with the guards. Someone drew a curved sword.

On the bridge, Duarte had let go of the handhold and was lying at full length on the slats, grasping Pero’s shoulders, trying to haul him up to safety. Stoyan stood immobile; if he moved toward them, he would set the flimsy structure bouncing and swinging and perhaps topple the two of them into the depths. On the other side, the shouts rose in a crescendo. Weapons flashed. A moment later there was a scream, and someone fell from the path near the hut, disappearing down the cliff like a discarded garment. Stoyan looked back. As he did so, Duarte managed to pull Pero up a little, and the stricken sailor got one knee onto the boards of the bridge.

I was cold with terror. I prayed with every fiber of my being—Keep them safe, don’t let them fall, please, please—but on the other side was someone with different priorities. A calm figure stood there, turban neat, green dolman sashed in clean white, crossbow aimed squarely at the spot where Duarte and Pero balanced between life and death.

“No!” I shrieked. “Don’t shoot!” But this archer cared nothing for my protests. The bolt was ready—he fired. Not at Duarte, leader of this expedition; not at foolish Paula, who had thought her presence might make some difference in this pattern of darkness and death. Not even at Stoyan, the strongest and most dangerous of our party. No, this weapon was aimed at the weakest, the man whose life depended on the strength and skill of another. The bolt struck Pero through the chest. He grunted and went limp, half on, half off the bridge. Duarte lay there, holding on. I could not see his face.

“Stop it!” I screamed again. “Leave us alone!”

“Let him go, Duarte.” It was Stoyan, speaking calmly as he walked across the bridge toward the place where the Portuguese was lying, supporting the body of his first mate and friend. “You must let him go.”

I saw Pero fall, down, down, a last flight to oblivion. The seven children would wait forever for their father’s homecoming. He’d never again tuck them into bed, solving their small territorial disputes with benign efficiency.

Stoyan bent to help Duarte up, to guide his hand back to the supporting rope. The crossbow leveled once more, aiming toward them. This time I got a better view, and I saw the archer’s face. My heart stopped. It was the court-trained eunuch Murat: Irene’s jewel. And behind him, clad in an outfit that was a perfectly cut blend of Greek fashion and Anatolian mountain dress, full gathered trousers tucked into boots, long woolen tunic and embroidered waistcoat, was Irene herself, her expression cold as winter. Now that the shouting had died down, I could hear her voice with perfect clarity through the thin mountain air.

“Leave the girl, Murat,” she said. “Her head’s a mine of information; she may be useful to us. Don’t harm the Portuguese. He’ll have the artifact in his pack, and he knows the way. Kill the guard dog.”

Stoyan was getting Duarte up, ensuring the other man did not fall as he regained his balance on the swaying bridge. He was a clear and easy target. Murat sighted.

I had no time to think, no time to consider the monstrous betrayal that had taken place. I ran back out onto the bridge, heedless of falling. I saw the shock on Stoyan’s face, saw him open his mouth to shout at me, but all that mattered was to save him—somehow to save all of us. I reached Duarte, who was half up. Murat was holding fire. With me on the bridge as well, the thing was moving erratically, and he had been ordered to kill only one of three.

I reached up to Duarte’s pack, undid the strap, and lifted out a rolled bundle of cloth. Something beyond my own body seemed to be moving me—I do not know how I managed to work so quickly. I took a step back and yelled toward Irene: “You see what I’m holding? Harm Stoyan, harm any of us, and I’ll drop it. It’ll smash into a thousand pieces, and this will all be for nothing! You think I value a piece of broken pottery above the lives of my friends?”

She was staring at me, and I thought perhaps there was a little smile on her lips. “What, sacrifice Cybele’s Gift?” she called across the divide. “You couldn’t do it, Paula. Kill him, Murat.”

“You think I’m bluffing? Just watch me!” I shouted, and dangled the bundle out over the drop. It was only when I saw the horrified faces of the two men on the bridge next to me that I realized I had let go of the hand rope. I wobbled, arms outstretched, and my burden swung wildly, almost falling.

“Slowly over,” muttered Stoyan. “One step at a time. Stay close together.”

I did as he said, inching back with the two men following. I waited for a cry, the sound of another terrible descent, but there was nothing. It seemed Irene had at last believed me. In the balance, Cybele’s Gift meant more to her than the chance to pick off another of Duarte’s protectors.

When we set foot on solid ground, there was no time to speak of what had happened. Duarte was gray-faced, his hands visibly trembling. My legs felt like jelly and my head was whirling. The pursuer was not the Sheikh-ul-Islam but Irene of Volos, Irene, who had been so kind to me with her library and her hamam and her interest in seeing me reach my potential as an independent woman…. How could she do this? And why? Could Murat’s past connections with the Sultan’s household include some kind of link with the Sheikh-ul-Islam? Could Irene and her steward be here on the Mufti’s behalf? Not possible; an Islamic cleric would not use an infidel woman as his agent. The pursuit probably had nothing to do with the Mufti. Irene was wealthy. She could have paid for a ship and crew. Had she been using me all the time, cultivating my friendship so she could find out my father’s plans? I had been the one to invite her to Barsam’s supper, but she had offered her services as chaperone before I did so…. How could she have known Maria would be ill on the day? Surely she hadn’t had a hand in that? It didn’t bear thinking about. I felt cold with shock.

Stoyan took charge with quiet competence. “They will be over quickly,” he said. “They have killed the guards. No time to cut the bridge. You think the way is up there, Paula?”

I nodded.

“You must go first. Run ahead and find cover. We will hold them back. You have the artifact; get it to safety.”

I looked at Duarte. He eased off his pack, reached in, took out a wrapped bundle. I stuffed the rolled-up shirt I had been holding back in and took Cybele’s Gift from him.

“You mean—” Stoyan’s brows rose.

“It’s what people believe that matters, not what actually is,” I said. “They’re coming; there are three men on the bridge. Can’t we all run? What if—”

“Go, Paula,” Duarte said. “Forget about us. Run as fast as you can. Go with God, little marinheira.”

So, clutching Cybele’s Gift in both hands, I ran. I told myself that I would not look back, that I would carry the precious artifact safely all the way to the shelter of the bushes and not even think about who might have fallen and how many friends I might lose today. Behind me men shouted, arrows hissed, and swords clashed. The mist was freakish. It lay now in strands across the open ground, and when at last I looked behind me, I caught only glimpses of what was unfolding. I saw Stoyan with his sword drawn and three assailants around him. I saw Duarte with a knife in each hand, his eyes ferocious above a savage grin. In a fog of terror, I tried to count the opposition and failed, for the shreds of mist now concealed and now revealed five warriors, seven, ten, a whole small army. There were many. We were grossly outnumbered. Now Duarte and Stoyan were standing back to back, snarling and brandishing their weapons, a fearsome two-man fighting force. The crow shrieked in my ear. Unable to dash away my tears because my hands held the priceless burden Duarte had entrusted to me, I turned my back and headed for the cliffs.

The bird led me. Under cover of the bushes, in semidarkness, I paused to wipe my eyes. The crow’s harsh cawing hurried me on along the base of the cliff, following a snaking path between the myriad plants that grew thickly beside this rearing edifice of stone. I could no longer hear the sounds of battle on the hillside below. My mind refused to take in the possibility that it was all over, that my friends were lying in their blood out there while the enemy came on after me. Irene. I still couldn’t believe it. She had described Duarte to me as obsessive, a man who would do anything to get what he wanted. But she was the obsessive one. Not only had she exploited me and lied to me, but it seemed she was prepared to see innocent men die so she could get her hands on Cybele’s Gift. It made no sense at all. If she had the resources to mount this chase, why hadn’t she simply outbid Duarte? Why make such a secret of the fact that she wanted the artifact?

The crow had settled on a branch of a young pine, not far from the cliff face. I halted, my chest heaving.

“Is this the place?” I whispered, looking about me. The wind sighed in the trees; I could hear the trickling of a stream nearby. The breeze parted the bushes, and on the rock wall in front of me was revealed a brilliant display of color, gleaming white, blue, green, and a very particular red in the dim sunlight filtering through the leaves. Tiles. I blinked, stepping closer. Here in this unlikely spot, far from the mosques and palaces of the great cities, away from the well-traveled trade routes, someone had created a small masterpiece. The pattern seldom repeated itself but flowed along the rocks with its own life—vines, fruit, foliage, here and there the taller form of a tree. I tucked Cybele under one arm and reached out to touch the smooth surface, drawing my fingers across it and marveling that in such a wild corner of the country it seemed unscathed, not a crack or mark on it, only a glowing patina, as if its perfection had increased with the passing of time. What was it, a temple wall? The ruins of an ancient home of kings?

The bird croaked again, and I came back to myself. What to do? The tiles, the pattern, the tree…I was meant to make something of this. To find a way. I hurried along the wall, following the pattern to its end, where gleaming color gave way once more to bare stone. I went back; perhaps there had been an opening of some kind and I had missed it. But I found nothing, only that smooth unbroken fresco, the tiles stretching up twice a man’s height and running a good fifty paces along the cliff.

Shouting came from beyond the trees. I heard Stoyan’s voice—thank God, he was still alive—and those of other men. They were much closer and heading my way. Think, Paula. I had been right along the tiled area; the only other course was to go all the way across the foot of the cliff, hoping somewhere there might be a cave or signs of a clearer way out. No time for that; they were coming now. Think.

There was a crashing in the bushes nearby. I hugged Cybele to my chest and backed against the tiles. A moment later Stoyan came bursting through, his garments stained with blood and sweat, his breathing labored. His hair had come untied and was over his shoulders and in his eyes, a wild dark cloud. Behind him was Duarte, still gripping his two knives. They halted in front of me, staring at the tiles.

“Where’s the path?” Duarte gasped. “Quick, Paula!”

Sounds of pursuit close at hand. My heart hammered. My mind edged into blank terror. Remember, remember, Paula. You are a scholar. Find what you need. I gazed wildly up at the pattern on the cliff, and something the crone had said to me, the part I had not understood, sprang into my mind.

Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all.

“Paula,” Stoyan said suddenly, his gaze on the tiles. “That’s the tree. Cybele’s tree.”

I had been too distraught, too dazzled to distinguish one tree from the others on the tiled wall, but he was right. Every branch, every leaf and little bird was the same as the image we had made in our sand tray, the one we had done our best to memorize. The tiny patterns hidden in the decorative border of the Persian manuscript were here in complete order, and Cybele’s tree flowered on the wall before us.

“They’re here,” Duarte muttered, and through the bushes came five or six of Irene’s men, not running to attack, simply moving toward us in a tightening semicircle, weapons in hand. My companions turned to face them.

“Paula,” came Irene’s voice, not in the least out of breath. She sounded as if she were welcoming me to a day of study, bathing, and good coffee. “How very clever of you. This must indeed be the place. I’m so glad you and the artifact have both come this far unharmed. You have such potential; I’d hate to see that snuffed out. Now might be the right moment to dispense with Paula’s guard at last, Murat. I feel he’s going to get in our way. Not the pirate. He’ll know the path. And make sure you spare Paula; she’s a real scholar, and that may come in useful to us. Besides, she’ll change sides quickly enough once she realizes how serious we are. Separate the Bulgar from the others, and let her watch him die.”

I was a hairbreadth from asking Duarte to hand over Cybele’s Gift to her. But that had to be wrong. The quest couldn’t end so bitterly. I must do the job I’d been given and trust Duarte and Stoyan to do theirs. As the two of them moved closer together, forming a protective shield between me and the attackers, I forced myself to look away, to concentrate on the tiled tree. Metal clashed, and Stoyan gave a muffled cry. It took all my will not to turn and launch myself into the conflict in a futile effort to help him.

A moment later I had it. Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all. The Other Kingdom. The key to a new portal. When my sisters and I had lost our doorway to the fairy realm, I had been given a bundle of papers and manuscripts. I had always believed that if Stela and I worked out the clues in them, we would be able to find another portal and go back. But we never had, and after six years of trying, I had given up hope of ever doing so. For all that time, there had been nothing in the world more important to me than that. And that was where I had seen the pattern before. In those papers, somewhere in the complex tangle of clues and maps and puzzles the scholars of the Other Kingdom had given me as a parting gift, this tree image had been present. No wonder it had teased at me so in Irene’s library.

“It’s a doorway,” I breathed as Stoyan was forced backward to the rocks by three fighters. Duarte, trying desperately to get close to him, was being held off by a blank-eyed Murat. “A secret portal…” Find the heart, for there lies wisdom. I reached out my hand toward the tiled tree, imagining its rotund form was that of Cybele. I placed my palm exactly where I thought her heart would be, closed my eyes, and prayed harder than I had ever prayed before.

Under my touch, a door opened. The whole panel where the tree was depicted swung inward, creating an entry just big enough for a person to step through. I glanced behind me. Stoyan had lost his sword and was on his knees, fending off his three assailants with sweeps of a knife. Murat and Duarte were wrestling for control of a dagger.

“Now!” I yelled. “Now, quickly!” But there was no way my companions could follow me. “Help us!” I added for good measure, not at all sure whom I was addressing, just knowing I could not do this alone.

The crow rose from its tree with a strong beat of the wings. As it flew by me, it became an old woman in flowing black, eyes fierce, seamed face deathly pale, arms extended toward the struggling men, long fingers tipped with pointed nails like the claws of a predatory bird. She shrieked; it was a sound to freeze the blood in the bravest man’s veins. For a moment, shock held everyone immobile. The combatants stared at the crone, their faces drained of color. One man crossed himself.

“Now!” I said again, pointing toward the dark opening that had been revealed in the rock wall. Stoyan was up with one quick slash of the knife and across to my side. Duarte slipped out of Murat’s grip and followed. Without another word, the three of us darted through the portal and into a shadowy subterranean passageway. A moment later the crow flew by us, heading deeper into the mountain.

Somewhere ahead of us there was a flickering light, perhaps from a candle. Behind us, on the other side of the portal, Irene was issuing sharp orders.

“Can you shut it after us?” hissed Duarte. “No, forget that, just run.”

We ran, not looking back. I heard Irene’s voice again behind us, and Murat’s, and shortly after they spoke, a creaking sound as if the doorway was being closed, or perhaps closing of itself. The passage had an earthen floor that muffled the sound of our feet and of theirs. It was not pitch-dark; the unsteady light was always there in front of us, though we saw no candle, lantern, or fire. The path curved around, went up sharply, then descended and became precipitous steps. At the foot of these, it branched three ways.

I halted abruptly. Each path was lit by the same uneven glow. There was no saying which our guide, if that name could be used for a crow, had taken. Sharpen your wits. My mind refused to cooperate. I had no idea.

“Paula.” Stoyan spoke hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“The tree. I think the tree is the path.”

“What?”

“A map. You put your hand on a certain point; that’s where we started, the heart. The shape of the tree we made, the one on those tiles, is the map of this underground tunnel. We are exactly at a place where the main trunk branched three ways.”

I remembered him on the night we had made the image in the sand poring over the tray and telling me he would memorize the pattern rather than sleep. “The crown is the destination,” I murmured. “We have to go to the top of the tree, the highest point. How well can you remember the image?”

“Well enough, I hope. Shall I go first?”

“Hurry up,” muttered Duarte. “I’m the one in position for a knife in the back. Can we run?”

So we ran, and the passageways grew narrower, and my nightmare engulfed me once more. Stoyan was leading, his strong hand clasping mine. Duarte came after me. The walls were close and the light dim. When we paused to check a turning or assess the safety of a crumbling stairway or shadowy tunnel, the pad of footsteps or the murmur of voices behind us was a reminder that death was only a heartbeat away.

Now our pursuers seemed to be keeping pace, letting us lead them, perhaps by footprints, perhaps by sound. I could not tell how many had followed us into the cave system, but I was sure they could have caught up with us if they’d so chosen. It came to me suddenly that it was Irene who had told me Duarte would head off in search of the second piece of Cybele’s Gift once he had acquired the first. That must be what she wanted—to put the whole together, just as he did. To follow him to his destination so she could have both. Perhaps she had gone to Barsam’s supper intending to bid. But once she knew the piece was incomplete, she had let Duarte do the job for her instead. A chill ran through me. She had wanted him to buy Cybele’s Gift so he could lead her to the missing piece. She had made sure the other serious bidder was out of the way before Duarte went to the blue house that morning. While I sat oblivious under her very nose, her henchmen had been attacking my father in the street. Irene had done that; Irene, whom I had trusted. In the nightmare, I had imagined the enemy a monster, a thing from the darkness. Remembering the look in the Greek woman’s eyes, cold and implacable, as she’d ordered Pero’s death, I recognized that the human monster was infinitely more frightening.

We emerged, panting, into a cavern. It was markedly colder and darker than the passageways we had come through. I took a step forward and Stoyan, with a sudden shout, grabbed me roughly by the arm, dragging me back.

“Wha—” I protested, then saw that across the center of the chamber was a deep crack in the stone floor, a chasm three yards wide and so deep that when I crept closer to peer into it, I could see nothing but fathomless dark. A rough rope hung down from the roof of the cavern above the gap and was hooked up against the rock wall on our side. No, not a rope, a tree root, perhaps the dangling remnant of an age when Cybele herself walked the earth, for only a forest giant of ancient lineage could have sent its feet so deep in search of nourishment. This was an old place, old and powerful.

“Dear God,” muttered Duarte. “The way across is to grab hold of that and swing.”

My eyes were growing more accustomed to the darkness. I saw that on the other side of the gap were five passages branching off from the cavern. Beside me, Stoyan stood gazing at them and moving his lips in silence, as if repeating a pattern. If his theory was correct, we needed to remember every bough and limb of that tree design, every leaf and flower and twig, to guide us through this maze of caves and tunnels. I hoped very much that if we chose the right way, we would reach the mountain village where Cybele’s Gift belonged. That seemed the only reason the crow, or the old woman, would have guided us in here.

I tried not to think too much about where we actually were. I had discovered that I did not especially enjoy being underground. My bones sensed the weight of earth above me. I found it hard to breathe.

We stood in silence as Stoyan did his best to remember the way. I thought it was the second from the right, but I did not say so, not until he had made his own choice. It seemed to me that he had more talent than I for tasks involving shapes and patterns and that in this matter he was more likely to be correct.

Stoyan cleared his throat, but it was someone else who spoke, the voice coming from a particularly dark corner. “You cannot simply make a choice here,” it said, and its tone reminded me of warm afternoons and rich cream and the smell of freshly mown grass. “In my chamber, the key to the door is using your wits. Which of you will attempt it? Choose one and one only.”

A figure emerged from the shadows, not the dark-robed crone as I had expected but a smaller personage, wrapped in a cloak of pale fur. The garment had a deep hood, and under this, all I could see was a pair of shining eyes. They were elongated and mysterious, the irises gleaming, one of brilliant blue, the other golden yellow. “Be quick,” the creature warned. “Others come after you. If you would pass swiftly, choose your cleverest and take the test.”

Both men looked straight at me. “Paula,” said Duarte. “The obvious choice. She’ll do it, whatever it is.” Considering his avowed disbelief in all things supernatural, he was coping well, but I could hear the nervous edge in his voice. His calm self-possession was not so much in evidence now.

I remembered the miniatures: someone talking to a cat. Great heavens, must we complete a whole set of challenges before we could get to wherever it was we were going? My mind shied away from memories of a figure dangling from a rope; another fighting; the girl who was possibly not picking apples, not if she was underground, but doing something a great deal more difficult…. I made myself fix on the fact that my companions had selected me as their champion this time around, that they respected my intelligence, that they trusted me. That the others were coming, so I’d better get on with this.

“I’m ready,” I told the catlike figure, passing Cybele’s Gift to Duarte, just in case. He stowed it in his pack.

“Good,” the creature purred. “Three riddles, Paula, one for each traveler, though you will answer all. With each correct answer, you win passage forward for one of your party. Here is the first:

Stronger than iron

Crueler than death

Sweeter than springtime

It lives beyond breath.”

“Love,” I said straightaway, hoping the other riddles were as easy.

The creature motioned toward the dangling root rope with a hand whose human fingers were clad in soft fur. “One may pass,” it said solemnly.

We waited, and after a moment the catlike being gestured again. “One must go now,” it said.

Stoyan looked over his shoulder and made a little sound under his breath. Following his gaze, I saw two figures emerging from the shadows of the tunnel from which we had come. A turbaned man in green and a stylish figure in a tunic and trousers, with her black hair piled atop her head. Only the two of them. All they had to do was listen to my answers and they’d be over the chasm in a flash.

“Too easy,” Irene said as if reading my thoughts. She walked forward, and Murat came a step behind, a tall shadow.

“Wait!” The cat creature’s voice was commanding, and the two of them halted. Irene lifted her brows. “Each in his turn,” the creature said, and now its tone was closer to a growl.

“That’s all very well.” Irene sounded cool and controlled. “But—” She fell suddenly silent, looking at the rift in the ground and the rope. “Astonishing,” she breathed. “Just the same as those miniatures in the library, the ones our little scholar here mysteriously found for us…What are you up to, Paula? What is this?”

Nobody answered. The cat creature looked at Duarte. “Go now,” it repeated.

Duarte unhooked the vinelike tree root, testing it for strength. His glance moved from time to time toward our unusual puzzle master but did not settle for long. I reminded myself that, of the three of us, only I was familiar with the Other Kingdom. I was frightened and nervous, but the creature itself did not trouble me. I had seen far odder in my time.

“You go first,” Duarte said to Stoyan. “I’ll bring Paula.”

“I will bring her.” Stoyan wore his most dogged look even as he, like Duarte, cast furtive glances at the robed figure. “She cannot do this alone. It requires too much strength in the arms and shoulders. I can support her and swing us both over.”

“Go now or lose your chance,” said the catlike creature. “One at a time. That is the rule.”

“I’m a sailor,” Duarte said, setting the dangling root firmly in Stoyan’s hand. “I know ropes. Besides, what about your shoulder? And I need you to catch her on the other side. Now go.”

“Shoulder?” I asked in alarm. “Are you hurt, Stoyan?” His clothing was so bloodstained, as was Duarte’s, that it was impossible to tell whether either had been wounded in the fight. Because both were able to talk, to run, to make decisions, I had assumed most of the blood was that of their enemies.

“Only a scratch,” Stoyan muttered. “It’s nothing.” Tight-jawed, he gripped the root, took a few steps back to gain momentum, then ran to the edge and swung. My heart did not beat again until he was safely over and had sent the rope back into Duarte’s hand.

“Gift of a raven

Sharp as a blade

Black is its burden

Wisdom its trade.”

The catlike being regarded me with its luminous, odd eyes, and I stared back, thinking hard. Raven, crow, what sort of gift might they offer…a feather…black is its burden…a black feather…no, something carried by the feather, something used to create wisdom…

“A pen,” I said. Crow feathers were the most commonly used for quills, being strong and relatively easy to obtain. Black ink, words of wisdom…The riddle was a good choice for a scholar. Perhaps these folk wanted me to get them right.

“Good,” said the questioner, and fixed its eyes on Duarte. “Go now. Do not delay. Time passes.”

“Paula, you must go next,” Duarte said, doing something to the rope. “We’re not leaving you to come last.” He glanced toward Irene and Murat.

“You will go now.” The creature sounded displeased. Its voice no longer held the melting softness of its first greeting but was all sharp edges. “She answers the riddles,” it hissed. “You chose her. She swings last. Go!”

“I’m not leaving her here on her own!” Duarte protested. “These people mean us harm!”

“Go, or forfeit your right to proceed.” The voice was implacable.

“Go on,” I muttered.

Duarte’s expression was stricken. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, I’ve made a loop. When it’s time, put your foot in that; it will be easier to stay on. Watch me, and when it’s your turn, try to do the same. Don’t be afraid; we’ll catch you.” He sounded more confident than he looked.

“Just go, Duarte. Let’s get this over with,” I said, not daring to glance across at Stoyan.

The pirate was, as he had said, familiar with ropes. I recalled my first glimpse of him on the deck of the Esperança, a nonchalant figure leaning far over the turbulent water of the Black Sea, one hand carelessly holding on, the other extended to whisk my scarf out of midair. As if the two of us shared the same thoughts, Duarte reached now to touch a corner of red fabric that protruded above his belt and turned his dimpled smile on me. He set his hands to the tree root and backed up, then ran almost to the brink, slipped his foot neatly into the loop, and swung across the divide as if it were nothing, jumping down nimbly by Stoyan’s side. They sent the rope back to me; I caught it and looped it ready. Paula, the scholar. Paula, who was not particularly good at tasks requiring agility or strength. Well, I had gone across that bridge. I could do this, too.

“Give me your last riddle, please,” I said, trying not to dwell on what was to come. Too much imagination can be a drawback in such situations. I did not want to consider what might lie in that pit, beneath the shadows.

“It sees the sailor and his crew

Through winter’s fiercest storm

It draws the traveler home at last

To the place where he was born;

It keeps the scholar working long

Though wisdom’s hard to find,

It soothes the weary, eases pain

And calms the troubled mind.”

Irene was coming toward me, eyes dark with purpose. Behind her, Murat walked with knife in hand. Now the cat being was making no attempt to hold them back. What they intended, I did not know. Not to kill me, surely. Hadn’t Irene said my head was a mine of useful information? But maybe once I’d answered the third riddle, they would already have all the information they needed. After this, maybe I would become superfluous.

“Lay a hand on her and your life will be measured not in days but in minutes!” yelled Duarte from the opposite side of the chasm.

Stoyan said nothing. His amber eyes were fixed on Murat, his expression truly frightening. He raised one hand above his shoulder. In it was a little knife, poised for flight. It was a warrior’s pose, full of a graceful, deadly purpose.

“Wait, Murat.” Irene did not raise her voice. She and her steward halted, three paces from me. “Aren’t you going to answer the riddle for us, Paula?” the Greek scholar went on. “You must know the solution. You know everything. Don’t you?”

I hesitated, my heart thudding with tension. How to respond? It was a riddle that could have several answers, any one of them appropriate. A trick? I had not asked what would happen if I got any of the riddles wrong. Would the others be allowed to go on, leaving me behind? What if I could not guess it and Irene could? I cleared my throat nervously.

“Have you an answer for me?” the catlike creature asked. “Time runs short. You have other challenges to face.”

“Don’t disappoint me, Paula.” Irene’s voice was almost friendly. When I glanced at her, I saw the sly smile with which she usually accompanied her little comments about my naiveté where men were concerned or my inadequate understanding of fashions in dress. “You’re such a clever girl. I hate to see you squander your talents and your freshness on a misguided fool like Duarte da Costa Aguiar. Now would be a very suitable moment to change your allegiance. Answer your riddle, then come with Murat and me. You must know why we’re here. With your talent for working things out, you must have seen it quickly. I was on the verge of making you part of the secret, you know. The first time you visited the hamam, I was so tempted to offer you an invitation to join our sisterhood, but it was too soon…. You’d love it, Paula. I need an assistant, a clever younger woman whom I can train in the rituals…someone who can share with me the rare and dangerous thrill that comes from outwitting the most powerful of men…someone who will, in time, learn to love being a leader as deeply as I do. Your father would let you stay. An opportunity to remain in Istanbul, housed with a respectable matron, studying Anatolian culture…. Do it, Paula. Let go of your misguided pirate and your Bulgar brute.”

I tried to take in what she was telling me while some part of my mind still wrestled feverishly with the riddle. “Tell me,” I said, “was it you who had my father beaten so Duarte would be the one to acquire Cybele’s Gift and lead you to this place? Did you befriend me just so you could get to Barsam’s supper without revealing you were a buyer? Why did you need to be so secret about it? Why not just bid like everyone else?”

She gave a slow smile. “Oh, you are quick, Paula,” she said. “And observant. I saw the miniature, but it did not occur to me that the artifact was broken until you pointed it out. I would give much to know how it was those manuscripts came to your attention when I did not know they were in my own collection.” Her voice changed abruptly; her lovely eyes gleamed with a new emotion, something intense and dangerous. “The statue is rightfully mine,” she said. “I am Cybele’s priestess in Istanbul. I revived her worship; I drew women from all cultures and levels of society to the temple I established, a secret temple within the safe walls of my home. You do not imagine those women visit me solely to study, gossip, and enjoy my hamam, surely? That is what visitors such as yourself are shown—those whose worthiness to join us is still being assessed and those like your acquaintance Maria who come quite innocently, without knowing the true purpose of my establishment. In fact, you almost stumbled on the secret the very first time you were in the hamam, when the women were talking about the Mufti’s interest in our cult—it is most fortunate that your Turkish is not as good as your Greek, or you might have understood better. Once we knew you were awake, we altered the conversation somewhat. I did intend you to hear us mention Cybele. I wanted you to be intrigued, excited, eager to return.”

“I can’t believe this,” I breathed. “You, a devotee of a pagan earth goddess? I know you have always valued freedom for women, but…” It was hard to accept. Irene’s elegance, her sophistication, her smooth manner, none of these seemed right for wild, earthy Cybele with her bloody rituals and her affinity with creatures. There was neither love nor reverence in Irene’s voice when she spoke the goddess’s name. “A temple. Where?”

“Behind the library is another part of my house, an inner sanctum where we enact our rites. What better place for Cybele’s Gift to be displayed? Why should the pirate be entrusted with such a powerful symbol? Why should he be allowed to carry it over the mountains to some complete backwater? Folk in such places don’t know how to cherish precious things. The statue will be broken and chipped and forgotten within one generation. Or Duarte will bear it away from the mountain and sell it for his own profit. We cannot allow that to happen, Paula. Cybele’s Gift belongs to me. Join me, and in time it could belong to you: the statue, the cult, the power. And the unparalleled excitement of the game—a true battle of wits. On one side, the Sheikh-ul-Islam and the other leaders of established religion in the city; on the other, myself, a mere woman and an infidel, presiding over such rites as would turn their hair white in a day if they could be present. I am always a step ahead, always just out of their reach. What clever girl could resist that?”

Irene glanced at Murat as she ended this extraordinary speech, and I saw him smile for the first time since I had met him. It was a little, tender, intimate smile, and for a moment, as he gazed back at her, his icy blue eyes warmed. Only a moment. The smile faded, the eyes were once more remote. As for me, I was having difficulty taking it all in. The whole thing a sham, a facade—the library and the hamam and the gracious lady with a reputation for good works—and behind it a covert temple in which the worship of the bee goddess was carried out right under the noses of Istanbul’s religious establishment, perhaps for the sole purpose of Irene’s personal entertainment.

“You’d better answer the riddle,” Irene said pleasantly, “or we’ll be here all day. Your men are growing agitated. I’d hate one of them to start throwing things.”

I turned to the robed creature. “What happens if I get the answer wrong?” I asked. “Couldn’t I just swing across anyway?”

There was a gleam of pointed teeth under the hood. “You would fall,” the creature said in a tone of absolute certainty. “Answer now.” It glanced toward Irene. “For those who follow,” it added, “there are new riddles.”

As a scholar, I had learned to focus my mind, though that skill had deserted me once or twice on the journey here. I blocked out Irene’s startling revelations. I blocked out Murat, who had killed a good man today. I set aside Stoyan and Duarte; I did not even think of Cybele’s Gift. I narrowed my thoughts to the riddle itself and the three possible answers I had: trust, faith, hope. Some parts of it were better suited by one, some by another. But, in fact, there was only one answer that worked for the whole verse. It had to be right. If it wasn’t, I was going to the bottom of the chasm.

“Hope,” I said.

There was a moment’s charged silence; then the creature said quietly, “Go now.”

I let out my breath in a rush. Then, without allowing myself to think too hard, I grasped the rope, backed up, and ran toward the chasm. Duarte was shouting instructions. But I was not looking at him. Stoyan had put the knife back in his sash; he stood like a rock on the other side, arms outstretched to catch me, his anguish and terror in full view on his broad features. If I fell, he would fail again, as he had done with Salem bin Afazi; as he had done with my father. I could not fall. I would break his heart.

On the brink, I slipped my foot into the loop and launched myself into space. It was over in a heartbeat, and I was on safe ground again, Stoyan’s strong grip steadying me, Duarte grabbing the rope and disentangling my foot. The pirate stood there with the tree root in his hand, gazing back across the chasm. The cat creature was speaking quietly to Murat and Irene.

“Of course,” mused Duarte as Stoyan brushed my hair from my eyes with gentle fingers, “I could hook the thing up on this side, out of reach, or only send it as far as the middle.”

“I think that would be considered cheating,” I said shakily. “I’m certain that to get to the end of this, we must follow the rules, even if they sometimes seem unfair.”

He swung the rope back across the divide. Not a flicker of expression crossed Murat’s face as he caught it. Irene was saying something to the robed creature; I imagined she was already answering her riddles.

“Second from the right,” Stoyan said, taking my hand. “Now run!”

We ran. The passages grew narrower, their corners sharper, the light dimmer. I held on to Stoyan as if he were my lifeline. The ground under our feet changed. There was a scuttling, a rustling, as if many tiny creatures were moving along the passage beside us, above us, under our feet. I slipped and skidded, knocking my elbow on the rock wall. Something crunched under my boot. Behind me, Duarte cursed. Still Stoyan’s confident hand drew me forward. I was out of breath, damp with sweat, feeling the vast weight of rock above me, wondering where the air came from down here and whether it would last. Then, suddenly, everything went dark.

There is the darkness of a moonless night out of doors, and there is the darkness of a house with its shutters closed and the lamps quenched. There is the darkness of sleep, relieved by the bright images of dreams. But no darkness is as complete, as blanketing, as terrifying as the utter darkness of underground.

Stoyan’s hand tightened on mine. He slowed his pace but kept going, and there was no choice but to follow. The scuttling, whirring sounds seemed louder now that the light was gone. Something buzzed by my ear. Something blundered across my face, brushing my eye. Spindly legs were crawling up my neck, over my hands, inside my tunic. Panic swept through me—I couldn’t breathe. Make it stop. Make it stop. I have to get out. There was no holding on to common sense. My heart was knocking in my chest. I made some kind of sound, not speech, more of a whimper that, in normal times, I would have been ashamed of.

“I’m here, Paula.” Stoyan’s voice was firm, his grip the same. “Keep hold, I’ll guide you.”

“I can’t,” I squeaked, despising my weakness. “I hate this, I hate the dark—”

Stoyan swore, staggered, and let go of my hand. I froze. If this was the next challenge, to be all alone in a darkness so deep it was like a smothering blanket around me, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be here, I couldn’t bear it a moment longer….

“Paula?” Stoyan’s voice was coming from somewhere ahead of and below us. It was a lot less steady now. “Duarte? Are you there?”

A hand closed on my shoulder; I started violently.

“It’s me, Paula,” said Duarte. “Stoyan, where are you? What’s happened?”

“There’s a sharp drop. Be careful. Hold on to Paula and edge forward slowly.” Then, after a little, “I think it’s a dead end.”

Dear God; all that way back, and Murat behind us with his expressionless eyes and his crossbow. “It can’t be,” I said in a thread of a voice as the darkness crowded in. “Not unless we chose the wrong way.”

“Wait a bit.”

I breathed again as Stoyan spoke. I could hear him moving about on some lower level of the cave system. I did not go forward. I had felt the edge of the drop but did not know how deep it was. Duarte and I stood waiting, his arm around my shoulders. That human warmth barely held hysteria at bay. Too dark, too dark…

“Duarte? Paula?” Stoyan’s voice was coming from a new direction, over to our right and much lower down. “I think there’s a way through. But it’s tight. I can see a place beyond where it’s lighter. Duarte, you’ll need to help Paula down. Don’t let go of each other. Follow my voice.”

Duarte scrambled down, then lifted me after him. Hand in hand, we made our way across a more open cavern, with Stoyan’s steady instructions our only guide. The darkness remained absolute. I strained to hear footsteps behind us but there were none. There was only the susurration of many small wings, the scurrying of tiny claws, the occasional sound of something smashing underfoot. Cobwebs tangled in my hair and draped themselves in clinging intimacy across my nose and mouth, and I dashed them away.

“I’m here,” Stoyan said. His hand brushed against me and I grasped it. “The place is down at the foot of the cave wall, here beside me. If I lie on the ground, I can see faint light coming through. The way is narrow, not much more than a crawl space. You’ll get through easily, Paula. Duarte should be all right as well. I’ll come last.”

I crouched, and he guided my hand to the outline of what felt like a very tiny opening in the rock wall. I lay down, peering into the black, and wondered if the impression of a faint lightening was created purely by our longing to be out of this place, able to see, able to breathe. “What about the packs?” I asked, getting up again. “It’s really tight. What about Cybele’s Gift?”

“Time to leave a few things behind,” Duarte said. “When you get through, Paula, reach back and I’ll pass the statue to you. Then if…”

“Then if what?”

I could hear the two of them removing their burdens, throwing items out. So much for rations, blankets, the means to make fire.

“Did you hear what Irene was saying?” I muttered into the darkness. “The cult—she said she was the leader of Cybele’s cult—”

“I heard,” said Duarte as he emptied his pack. “I curse myself for not seeing it sooner. If it’s true, she’s been expert at concealment—her reputation as a pillar of the community has no doubt helped. No wonder the Mufti couldn’t work out who it was. He’d never have dreamed of looking in her house. Her husband is a personal friend of his.”

“I wonder what her followers would think if they knew she was prepared to kill for a symbol of Cybele,” I said, remembering the women at the hamam, who had seemed quite normal and friendly. Just now, Irene had suggested that the peril of flouting the authorities was the most exciting part of the whole thing. How could she possibly run a secret religion in her own house without her husband knowing? She must be in love with danger.

“I’ve no plans to hand it to her, Paula,” Duarte said. “Are we ready?”

“Keep your knife,” Stoyan said to me. “Watch you don’t lose it crawling through.”

“And pray that this is the right way,” added Duarte.

I lay down again and wriggled forward into the narrow opening. If I survived today, if I got through all of this, the snow-pale skin Irene had admired would be patched all over with livid bruises. What if Stoyan had been wrong and this went nowhere? What if I got stuck? The tunnel bent around. I struggled to fit my body to the curve. A protruding spear of rock dug sharply into my hip, making me gasp with pain. How would I reach back around that corner to take Cybele’s Gift? How far was it until I could get out of this hole? I ordered myself sternly not to dwell on the possibility that I might crawl on and on until I was so exhausted I could go neither forward nor back. I would not consider how Stoyan, a muscular giant of a man, could pass safely through this tiny space.

And then light. Oh, God, I had never been so grateful for light. A dim glow first, then, as I wriggled forward, a gradual brightening, a flicker, a golden gleam as of a lantern, and at last the tunnel opened up to a cave, and I made my clawing, sobbing, undignified exit, rising to stand unsteadily and run shaking fingers over the tattered remnants of Duarte’s blue tunic. I was in a far larger space than those we had passed through before. There were lamps on the walls, and a strange, rippling brightness played across the high vault of the roof. Not important now. I crouched down again.

“Duarte? I’m through. Come now!”

With the light had come fresh courage. I knew I could not stand here long, savoring release. I must go back in. Duarte with his broad shoulders could not get himself around that curve in the tunnel while holding Cybele’s Gift safely. I made quicker progress this time, reaching the place before he did, calling instructions to him for the trickiest part so that when our hands touched, he was ready to manipulate the artifact, still safely bundled in its cloth wrapping, around the corner to me. I backed out, grazing my elbows as I held Cybele’s Gift away from the rough stones. Not long after, Duarte emerged into the cavern, his clothing in the same state of disrepair as mine. We exchanged a look. In it was a shared relief that we were safe and a shared fear for our larger companion. Duarte fished the red scarf out of his belt and tied it around his neck.

“Talk to him,” he said. “Talk him through. His misplaced heroism is all to do with you. Tell him you can’t do without him. That should do the trick, even if he has to break a few bones to manage it.”

“Misplaced heroism?” I echoed, outraged on Stoyan’s behalf, but Duarte’s words made a kind of sense. I crouched by the tunnel exit, my voice eerie in the echoing space of this larger cave. “Come now, Stoyan! It’s not far. There’s only one part that isn’t straight; you might need to wriggle a bit to get through. We’ve got Cybele’s Gift safely out. You’ll be all right. I’m just on the other side here….” I kept my tone as reassuring as I could, even as my heart quailed at the thought of my friend stuck halfway and the terrible range of choices that would lie before us if that happened. I could hear him coming, his progress slow, his breathing labored. It was taking a long time. It was taking too long.

“You’re crying,” Duarte observed.

“Shut up,” I muttered. Then I bent down again and called out, “Stoyan! Come on, you can do this! I need you!” My voice cracked. “I can’t go on without you!” Glancing up, I caught the fleeting smile that flickered across Duarte’s features. “Please, please,” I whispered, holding Cybele’s Gift to my chest. “Let him get through. Let him be safe. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“None of us does,” Duarte observed. “But it could be said each of us has brought it on himself, for whatever reason. And see, here our friend comes at last. Your prayers have been answered.”

We helped Stoyan out; he would have bruises far worse than mine. I fought the urge to throw my arms around him and burst into full-scale tears. He was struggling to catch his breath.

“I apologize,” he gasped. “I was too slow. What now?”

As he straightened, a voice came from higher up, a smoky, insubstantial voice that brought to mind polished brass and fine silks and the smell of pungent spices.

“Travelers, you draw close to your destination. A new challenge awaits you.”

This cave floor was on an incline, rising from the place where we stood to a high shelf shielded by a fringe of old roots, fronded brown and gray. The lamps were odd, glowing without visible wicks, their brightness doing nothing to relieve the deep chill of the cavern. I could hear a trickling nearby, and when we reached the topmost point, I saw that the canopied shelf led through into a higher chamber whose floor was gleaming blue-green water. Here, the roof was lower, perhaps twice the height of a tall man above the rippling surface. The place was filled with a curious droning sound.

On the rocks that bordered this subterranean lake stood the source of the instructions: not a man or woman, not a creature such as the catlike being we had encountered before, but something that seemed made up of smoke and mist and illusions. It swirled and changed and twisted itself in and out of various shapes, but if I narrowed my eyes, I could make out, vaguely, the form of a portly man of Turkish appearance, his full trousers, billowing shirt, and bejeweled caftan winking in and out of view as if he did not really want us to see him at all.

“A djinn,” whispered Stoyan.

He was probably right. I had read stories in which such magical beings appeared, usually as a result of a human accidentally summoning them by polishing a mysterious old lamp or uncorking a forbidden bottle. I could not remember whether they were of a helpful disposition or not.

“Who are you?” I asked, aware that I had shown my worst side during the last ordeal and determined to start as strongly as I could this time. “What challenge?”

“We need to move on,” Duarte muttered, half to me, half to the djinn, which he was rather pointedly not looking at. “We mean no harm here; I do not understand why there are so many barriers to our progress. What must we do to pass forward?”

I was recalling the miniatures. The cat and the riddles, the rope swing. What came next?

“This task is for two,” said the djinn in its vaporous voice, waving its evanescent arms toward the lake. “Choose the two with the greatest bond of trust, those who will work best as a team. The third need not endure this trial.”

No choice, I thought. Duarte and Stoyan had, at best, a wary truce. The fledgling trust between Duarte and myself was too new to be put to such a test. “It has to be Stoyan and me,” I said, glancing at the others.

A crimson flush spread slowly across Stoyan’s pale skin. He uttered not a word.

“But…,” Duarte began, looking from me to Stoyan and back again. Then, to the djinn, he added, “This is unreasonable. We need to know what this task is first. If it’s a feat of strength, we’d want Paula to be the one who is spared from having to attempt it.”

“In this place, the rules are not yours to make,” the djinn said solemnly. “Your quest brought your companions here. Either they will help you or they will hinder you. The choice is made.”

“So you do know why I’ve come here. Then I don’t understand these obstacles that have been set in our way. What purpose—”

“It is required,” said the djinn, gesturing with its incorporeal hand. “It is foretold.”

“It’s the way of things in the Other Kingdom,” I said under my breath. “Tests and trials. They love them.”

There was a little flat boat on the lake, tied up by the rock shelf. It looked unstable. I could not remember anything in the miniatures that matched this.

“Balance,” said the djinn. “The boat must be guided through the cave. There is a pole to propel the craft forward. That will require strength.”

It sounded suspiciously easy, something Stoyan could do without even thinking. “And?” I asked.

Somewhere within the vaporous form of its rotund countenance, the djinn seemed to be smiling. “Balance,” it said again. “You bring the goddess home. She cannot come without an entourage, a celebratory throng to accompany her. You will find them here, in the cavern of the lake. While your companion guides the boat, you must gather them.”

“Gather?” My voice had shrunk to a wisp of sound. The bee goddess. A celebratory throng. I recalled the miniature, the image of Cybele with her hair flowing wild, garlanded with flying insects. High above us, the strange humming sound echoed around the cavern. “You mean gather…bees? How?” The nightmare again, the sensation of crawling creatures on my face, in my ears, swarming down my throat…My gorge rose.

“How could she reach them?” Duarte was staring up at the cave roof. “It’s too high even for the tallest of men. Besides, she’d be stung. You can’t ask Paula to do this!”

“Shh,” I said, forcing down both physical sickness and fresh panic. “We have to do it; that’s the way these things work. If I’m supposed to get through without being stung to death, then I will. Stoyan, that day you came bursting into Irene’s hamam, I thought I might find another picture. I dreamed it the night before; I thought the girl was picking fruit. I know what we have to do.” I bent down and took off my boots.

As if this were not already hard enough, the djinn insisted I carry Cybele’s Gift. Perhaps it was to prevent Duarte from abandoning his crazy friends and somehow bolting ahead with the artifact, leaving us to what did indeed seem an impossible endeavor. I tied a loop of the cloth around my belt so the artifact hung by my side. Stoyan stepped into the boat. It rocked wildly under his weight until he balanced it, standing with legs apart.

“You realize what we’re going to have to do,” I said, meeting his eyes. As I spoke, I heard sounds from the lower cavern—voices, footsteps. I had believed the run through the darkness and the hideous, squeezing passage through the rocks might have defeated our pursuers. It seemed I was wrong. Irene was every bit as determined as we were. And she was taller than me.

“I know what must be done, and I do not like it at all,” said Stoyan through gritted teeth. I could feel his unease in my own belly.

“Here,” I said, picking up the pole by which the boat was guided and leaning it against him with one end wedged in the boat and the other by his shoulder. “Once you’re supporting me, you won’t be able to bend and pick it up. I’m not quite sure how to do this next part….”

“Paula,” said Duarte, his tone incredulous, “you can’t be going to—” Then, seeing that I was, he fell silent.

I stepped into the boat. Stoyan gripped my hands; I climbed via his knees to his shoulders. It was not a particularly graceful performance, but his strength and my light weight made it easier than it might have been. In addition, we had practiced maneuvers of a similar kind when rehearsing our combat sequences. It all helped.

The next part was the most difficult. I was no acrobat, and I did not like the look of that rather odd-colored water or the long dark shadows I could see moving in its depths. Sitting on the shoulders of a tall man who was standing in a rocking boat was quite challenging enough. But the cave ceiling was still too high for me to reach. I let go of Stoyan’s hands and set mine on his head. Shakily I brought one leg up, then the other, until I was in a crouching position. Then, as Stoyan held my ankles, I took my hands away and straightened to stand. The boat tilted, and Stoyan adjusted his balance. I stretched my arms out to the sides, trying to ignore the awful churning feeling in my stomach. All this and bees, too.

“I’m ready,” I murmured.

“Great God Almighty,” Duarte said from the shore, and crossed himself.

I wobbled as Stoyan took away his right hand; I almost fell as he removed his left. There would be no steering the boat if he could not grip the pole. He must use all his skill to maintain a controlled course and to keep the craft as stable as possible. It was up to me to stand straight and not fall.

We moved off slowly across the lake, leaving Duarte and his strange companion behind us on the shore. I thought I heard the djinn say behind me, “You must complete your own task, mariner.”

The watery light rippled all around us, casting uncanny shadows on the rock walls. Don’t look down, I ordered myself. Keep your back straight. Don’t lock your knees.

“Breathe slowly, Paula,” Stoyan said. “I can see a place where something is moving about up above. I will steer for that corner.” I could hear how he was pacing his breathing, trying to keep calm. His body was strung tight; I felt it through the soles of my feet. “If you are stung, if you are in pain, tell me. We need not go on with this.”

“Mmm,” I managed. Of course we had to go on. If we failed to do so, what had this all been for? We were almost there. If Cybele required a triumphal procession complete with attendant insects, then we must provide one.

The buzzing above us became louder. I made myself tilt my head back and look up as Stoyan dug the pole in, bringing the little craft to a halt. A mistake—I teetered, a hairbreadth from falling as a wave of dizziness swept over me.

“Reach up slowly,” Stoyan said. “Be careful. There are odd currents in this water. I may not be able to hold us here for long.”

Without looking, I reached a hand above my head. My face screwed itself up, waiting for stings. There was a slight soft motion against my fingers, and when I brought the hand back down, a single bee was crawling there. The soft light of the cavern touched every hair on its body to a small miracle of brown and gold. Its legs were delicate threads, its eyes bright and strange. I put my hand to my shoulder, and the bee crawled onto my tunic and settled there with every appearance of purpose.

“Listen,” Stoyan said. “The buzzing has stopped. But I can hear something else.”

I was holding both hands up again, trying to get a glimpse of what was above me without moving my head. My reach was well short of the cave ceiling, and no more bees came. “I can’t get high enough, and I’ve only got one,” I said. “If I had a net or something…”

“I cannot hold the boat here any longer, Paula. The current is too strong.” And, indeed, we were moving off quite quickly now, Stoyan’s efforts with the pole futile against the pull of the water. If he dug in too hard, I would fall. I was already struggling to stay upright. The boat was making its own course for the far end of the lake, traveling faster and faster. Stoyan’s hands came around my ankles once more. His touch gave me heart. I hoped the pole was somewhere he could still reach it.

The boat took us to a place where the sound overhead was higher and softer. This time the creatures flew down to investigate the intrusion. Not bees, but bee-sized birds, brightly hued, fantailed, each no larger than a thimble. They whirred around my head and around Stoyan’s, causing him to curse and sway. I had to bend down and clutch his hair again to keep from falling.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I’ve got one.” A scrap of vivid red had joined the bee on my shoulder. As soon as the miniature avian settled, the others flew up in a flock to vanish into the shadows above. The boat moved off again before I could so much as stretch a hand up. Tears of frustration welled in my eyes.

“Paula,” Stoyan said quietly.

“What? Stoyan, this is no good, I can’t reach properly—”

“Paula, I think this is right. The current moves us despite my efforts, as if on a predetermined course. Perhaps we need collect only one of each kind: one bee, one bird, one of whatever else we find here. We should not struggle against the pull of the water but let it carry us where it will.”

I drew a deep, shaky breath. Perhaps he was right. The more I thought about his suggestion, the wiser it seemed.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s see what happens.”

We stopped in another place, and whatever was scuttling about overhead dropped down a spiky creature like a small gargoyle. I caught it, wincing, and set it on the other shoulder in case it had a taste for poultry.

“Stoyan?”

“Mmm?”

“Can you see back to the shore where we started? Is there any sign of Irene and Murat? I thought I heard the djinn telling Duarte he had his own task to complete.”

“I cannot see, Paula. I hear the sound of some larger creature. Perhaps—”

The boat moved off toward a rock shelf near the end of the lake. I fought for my balance; Stoyan could do no more than try to hold steady. The closer we came, the louder the cacophony from ahead, a wild howling and barking that sent echoes all around the cavern. Here, a tunnel led from the rocks on into the system of caves. Guarding the passage was an enormous creature, perhaps some kind of mountain wolf, perhaps an outsize dog, though I had never seen such an intimidating animal before. Its barking mouth revealed a ferocious display of sharp teeth and slavering tongue. Its body was all harnessed power, muscles bunched, legs planted, every part of it gathered for a leap. I looked into its eyes, an odd light green unusual in a dog, and thought I read there a blind greed for human blood. There had been many bees, many birds, a number of gargoyles. There was only one dog. This was the one we had to take with us. As the boat drew closer to the shelf where it stood, the animal drew back its lips and growled low in its throat.

“Stoyan,” I whispered. “It doesn’t look very…What if…?”

“Come down slowly; let me help you,” Stoyan said. “This is the way out. It fits with our tree map. Stay behind me. No sudden movements.”

“Yes, but…” I crouched, then slid down to stand behind Stoyan in the boat, my legs threatening to collapse under me. “It’s not just a matter of getting past; we have to…” I fell silent as the wolf, or dog, sidled toward the boat, its growl acquiring a menacing edge. On my shoulders, the three little creatures maintained their silence.

Stoyan stepped out onto the rocks, one hand holding the boat against the shore. “Stay there for now,” he warned me. He remained crouching, his gaze not on the dog but directed away, though I could see he had the animal in the edge of his sight. His free hand was relaxed by his side, in a position where the dog could smell it but not actually reaching out. He was keeping up a continuous flow of quiet talk. It was Bulgarian, and I could not understand the words, but the meaning was clear in the tone. I am a friend. I can be trusted. I know you are afraid. Smell my scent. I mean you no harm. You are safe with me.

Slowly the creature settled and the fearsome challenge died down. The dog crept closer. It sniffed at Stoyan’s hand. He waited awhile longer, murmuring all the time, before he tried a deliberate touch, a caress at the base of the ear, then a stroke down the neck. Gradually, with remarkable control, Stoyan got me out of the boat and squatting beside him while all the time petting the dog, talking to it, making sure my movements did not startle it into another defensive frenzy.

“Now extend your hand slowly; that’s it.” He put his large hand around mine, and we stretched out together to let the dog assess this new scent. Then Stoyan rose carefully to his feet, drawing me up after him, keeping close enough to grab me if he needed to. The dog was still nervous. I imagined few human creatures made their way to this subterranean realm and fewer still penetrated to the depths we had reached. Behind us, the boat had floated away.

“We can go on now,” Stoyan said quietly. “He will come with us.” He spoke a few words to the dog, and it moved to stand by his side, turning its eyes up to him expectantly.

“How did you do that?” I asked in wonderment. “How did you know?”

“I saw it was a good dog, but wary and afraid. One must take time to earn the trust of such a creature. With a more damaged animal it would be far longer—days, weeks of patience. This one is strong of heart. Paula, we can go on.”

For a moment we paused, looking at each other.

“You chose the right team,” murmured Stoyan.

A sudden thought came to me. “What about Duarte? We can’t go back to fetch him. The boat’s gone.”

“You have the artifact,” Stoyan said, and now his tone set a distance between us. “Whatever has happened, he would want you to take it on.”

There were possibilities behind this that I could barely bring myself to think of: Duarte at the mercy of Murat and his crossbow; Duarte carrying out a task of equal difficulty to ours, somewhere in the caves alone; Duarte trapped on the other side of the lake, unable to leave. I said nothing. If our mission was to take Cybele’s Gift on the last part of its journey and leave the pirate to his fate, the powers of the Other Kingdom were cruel indeed.

As we passed through another tunnel, leaving the lake behind us, the little creatures I had gathered from the cavern grew more and more excited, two flying up from my shoulder to dance around my head like a strange garland, the third creeping to and fro and making anticipatory wheezing sounds. The dog was silent, padding beside Stoyan as we emerged to the grandest chamber of all.

The sight that lay before us stopped us in our tracks. The walls were pillared, the ceiling vaulted, and in the central space…My eyes widened with amazement. Here lay every sort of treasure one could imagine: jewelry, gold coins, silver ewers and basins and platters encrusted with decoration, statues and vases and coffers of precious stones. Scattered amongst this wealth were books with covers of the finest tooled calf leather and manuscripts whose delicate calligraphy and dazzling decoration caught and enthralled my scholar’s eye. All was jumbled together, a brilliant chaos of merchandise, a veritable dragon’s hoard. If only my father could see this!

“Welcome,” someone said, and there before us was the old woman in black. “You have passed through Cybele’s Heart. I am the keeper of Cybele’s mysteries. We have waited a long time for your coming. Many years. Many long years.”

My hand slipped into Stoyan’s. “We greet you respectfully,” I said, wondering if we should have brought gifts. “Perhaps you are a friend of Drǎgua, the witch of the wood. If so, she would want me to give you her best regards. I understand that each of us has a quest to fulfill. Stoyan and I have traveled here as helpers to Duarte Aguiar. He is bringing the last words of the goddess home and should be close behind us.” How far across the lake would Murat and Irene have traveled by now? Was there another bee, another bird, another gargoyle and dog waiting for them? By my side, Cybele’s Gift in its soft wrapping hung against my thigh. “There are others following,” I told her, “people who think they have a claim to the statue.” I was not sure whether to warn her, to tell her Irene wanted to snatch Cybele’s Gift and keep it for herself to enhance her prestige with the cult in Istanbul—if what Irene had told us was true. I thought it must be; what else could have brought her all this way? Should I say it? The folk of the Other Kingdom tended to take offense when human folk tried to tell them how to conduct their own affairs. It was possible this crone already knew all about Irene and considered her a more suitable custodian for the artifact than the inhabitants of Mustafa’s mountain village.

“Ah,” said the old woman, “but Cybele’s Gift is in your possession, Paula. Why do you not go forward with it yourself?”

I shivered. It was like what Stoyan had said before, a choice that implied Duarte might be left behind. “It’s not right for me to do it,” I said. “Duarte made a promise to a friend, someone who saved his life. Duarte should be the one to finish this.”

“Let me make this plain to you,” the crone said. “There are two ways to Cybele’s treasure trove, which you must pass to complete your mission. One is before your eyes—simply walk forward across this chamber, and you will reach it. You have Cybele’s Gift. You are safe and so is your companion. That is the first way: the easy way.”

“And the second?” Stoyan asked.

“The second lies there.” The old woman pointed a long-nailed finger toward what had seemed a plain rock wall, and an archway appeared, through which a smaller cavern could be glimpsed. A reddish light flickered there.

“Which will you choose?” the crone asked quietly. “How brave are you, Paula?”

It was an echo of the dream, the one in which Ileana had interrogated my sister about my part of the mission. This was not the simple choice it seemed to be. Take the wrong path and it might not be just Duarte I abandoned to whatever fate awaited him but Tati as well. “The second one,” I said, glancing at Stoyan, who gave a nod. “We’ll go that way. I hope I’m brave enough for whatever it is.” Let this be right, I prayed. Let all of us be safe. Almost as much as that, I wanted Cybele to go to Mustafa’s people. It couldn’t be right for Irene and her cult to have the statue. The goddess was an old thing of earth, simple, wild, and good. She did not belong in the hands of a devious person like Irene, a woman who was prepared to lie and dissemble and kill to get the statue for herself.

“Be quick,” the old woman warned. “Those whom you have brought after you are almost here. Each in turn will have a chance to make a claim. If you would have Duarte be first, show us what you have learned.”

Hand in hand, Stoyan and I went through the arch into the smaller cave. The crone did not follow us, for there was another guide here, an ethereal woman whose hair was a shimmering cloud like spun silk, its color pure white. Tiny twinkling stars dotted her locks, and her gown seemed made of sea, or summer sky, or the wings of delicate blue-green butterflies. A peri, I thought, an Anatolian fairy woman. Her eyes were lustrous, her face creamy pale, but not as pale as Tati’s. I gasped in a shocked breath, then fell silent.

My sister was standing very still halfway across the chamber, which was rimmed by a ledge onto which we had emerged. Tati was on the lower level. She was blindfolded and her wrists were bound together. The floor of the cavern was a metal grille of elaborate design. Most of the holes in it were quite large, big enough for a slender woman like Tati to fall through. A red light came from beneath, as of fire not so far down, and the chamber was hot. Tati stood right at the center on a little platform. If she tried to move blind, she would quickly fall to those flames beneath the treacherous floor. There was a strange smell here, like bone, or iron, or something old beyond counting.

Across the narrow bars of the grille moved a number of creatures similar to the one I bore on my left shoulder, things like gargoyles, though these were much bigger and their mouths were open wide to show knifelike teeth. Their little avid eyes, shining red in the flickering light, were uniformly fixed on Tati, as if they were only waiting for her to stumble and fall. They scuttled from one crossing point to another, apparently heedless of the danger. When they met face to face, which was often, they snarled and scratched at each other. As they ran past my sister, this way, that way, each took a snap at her legs. I heard her suppress a cry as, through the cloth of her robe, a set of teeth found its mark. The gargoyle on my shoulder made an anxious chittering noise and hid its face under a wing. The shelf where we stood seemed too high for the creatures to attempt a leap up. If Tati could make her way over to us, we could haul her up beside us, out of danger. All she needed was a set of clear instructions. Or, better still, someone who was prepared to cross over and lead her back.

Footsteps behind us. I spun around, fearing Murat and Irene had reached us already, but it was Duarte, his face parchment white. He had an oozing slash on one cheek, as if from a whip. Around one arm was coiled a bright green snake, clinging but apparently quiescent, its pale eyes narrowed to slits.

“Don’t ask,” he said with a crooked smile. “Let me just say that this amiable little fellow had a lot of far less friendly and much bigger brothers and that I’ve changed my mind about my skill with ropes. If anyone ever asks me to climb one again, I’ll tie the thing around his neck.” What he saw on my face and on Stoyan’s stopped the flow of words. His eyes went to my sister, all alone amidst the circling creatures. “What in heaven’s name is this? Don’t tell me we’re not finished yet.”

“None may speak!” the peri ordered, raising her hand. “None may approach her!”

Tati had heard this interchange, despite the cacophony of the creatures’ shrill cries. She turned her head toward us. The blindfold concealed all but her mouth, the lips pressed tightly together. Perhaps she, too, was forbidden to speak. Fury and frustration welled up in me. To subject Tati to this kind of trial was barbaric. This was just too much. I was a hairbreadth from screaming childishly that it wasn’t fair, that they couldn’t treat my sister like this, that I’d never asked for a quest, and that I wasn’t doing it anymore.

I looked at the peri, wondering if I was allowed to speak to her, if not to Tati, but she made a sharp negative gesture.

“You must all remain silent,” she murmured. “You must remain here at the side, the three of you. There is a solution. Find it.”

It was horribly unfair. My mind ran in circles as my sister stood frozen on her little platform amidst the circling, slavering creatures. Cruel. Ridiculous. This seemed so arbitrary, so violent, when all Tati wanted was a chance to visit her loved ones, so simple and modest a reward. Why had the crone asked me how brave I was? What difference did that make if all I could do was stand by and watch?

“Curse it,” muttered Duarte. “What is the purpose of these tests? I’m here in good faith to return Cybele’s Gift to its people. Who is that woman anyway?”

“Shh!” hissed the peri, frowning at him.

Learning. The purpose is learning. I did not say it aloud. Duarte might be prepared to risk speech, but my knowledge of the Other Kingdom held me mute. With Tati’s life in the balance, we could not afford a single error.

Tati took an unsteady step forward, the direction apparently random, and one of the gargoyles fastened its teeth into her ankle and hung on, jaws firm. She could not suppress a cry of pain.

Think, Paula. You’re the scholar, work this puzzle out. Stay calm and concentrate. Words: we were forbidden to speak. Signs: useless with Tati blindfolded. Clapping, stamping, clicking: only helpful if everyone agreed in advance what they meant. Something to throw, a knife or rock, to deter those hideous creatures: it might get rid of one, if the aim was good, but there were so many of them, enough to use up within moments every missile we could lay hands on.

Struggling to dislodge the creature from her ankle, Tati lost her balance and fell to one knee. Immediately, four or five of the gargoyles leaped to cling to her, growling and shrieking. Stay calm? My heart was pounding and my breath was coming in panicky gasps. My blood was boiling with outrage on my sister’s behalf. A pox on the Other Kingdom! I gathered myself to break every rule I knew about quests. No peri was going to make me stand by and watch my sister being bitten to death.

Stoyan’s hand fastened around my arm, holding me back. He gestured, pointing to himself, then to Tati. He looked from me to Duarte and back again, his expression clearly saying, Let me do it.

I could not see any way he could manage it other than by disobeying the peri’s order and rushing across to try to pluck Tati to safety. Let that happen, and no doubt a terrible fate would befall the two of them, likely a plunge through the grating to the flames below. In a place like this, rules were rules—even Duarte, a man who in the outside world was a law unto himself, was not supposed to break the codes of the Other Kingdom. If I trusted Stoyan with this, two people I loved would suffer a horrible death right before my eyes. I looked desperately at Duarte, thinking he, of all of us, might have some surprising solution, some brilliant, quirky answer to this apparently impossible challenge. But he only shrugged and shook his head.

My sister was crouched down, her head bowed toward her knees. The gargoyles were all over her, eight or ten of them, snapping. Her body jerked and flinched as the teeth made their mark. I could see blood on her bound hands. Stoyan touched my shoulder, making sure he had my attention. There was a smile on his lips and in his amber eyes a shining confidence, and suddenly I understood the crone’s words to me. How brave are you, Paula? Are you brave enough to admit your weakness? Brave enough to trust? Swallowing my tears, I laid my hand against Stoyan’s ragged tunic, over his heart, and nodded. Then I stepped back.

Stoyan clicked his fingers. The dog moved up beside him, alert, quiet. I’d been so shocked by Tati’s predicament that I had forgotten it was there. Stoyan made a simple gesture, hand slightly cupped down by the dog’s face, motioning it forward.

The dog moved steadily, advancing with confidence across the narrow spans, ignoring the menacing light, the rushes of heat from the gaps between. It padded toward the quivering form of my sister. It did not hesitate, even when three of the creatures came scuttling straight toward it, hissing and shrieking defiance. The hound opened its massive jaws and uttered a single, monstrous bark of warning that echoed around the cavern as if it had summoned a whole pack of great dogs in its support. The creatures hesitated, then retreated.

The hound reached Tati and barked again, right next to her head. Unsurprisingly, Tati cowered lower. One gargoyle, particularly bold, was creeping toward the dog now, ready to seize a leg in its jaws. A piercing shriek sounded in my ear, momentarily deafening me: The creature on my shoulder, the one that looked like a miniature cousin of those attackers out there, had sounded a shrill warning. The dog made a snatch, a snap, a jerk of the head, and the would-be attacker was flung across the grille to fall neatly into one of the gaping holes. There was a little fizzing sound, a puff of dark smoke, then silence. Beside my left ear, my own gargoyle gave a muted hum of satisfaction.

Stoyan clapped his hands twice, sharply. The dog looked across at him. Tati was huddled down as if trying to press her face into the ground. How could he do it? How could he let her know she was under a friend’s guidance now and would be safe if she could only bring herself to trust?

Stoyan motioned to the hound, keeping the gesture clear. Come. Lead her.

The dog nosed at Tati’s cheek, gentle as a loved household pet. It gave a little whine, licking her face. Tati stirred.

Duarte began to whistle. The tune he chose was a jig, innocent and jaunty, a melody full of the joy of life. It was entirely alien in this place of darkness, fire, and pain. He could not have known the power such a sound would have to lift my sister’s spirits, for he had dismissed as fantasy my tale of full moon revels in a mysterious fairy kingdom. But we knew jigs, Tati and I. We’d pranced our way through hundreds of them over the years with our uncanny companions. In this cavern speech was forbidden. But nobody had said anything about music.

Tati sat up, turning her head toward the sound. A foolish gargoyle was creeping closer, eyes glinting with greed. The dog, intent on washing my sister’s face, had not seen it. The gargoyle sprang, landing on the hound’s neck and sinking in its fangs. The dog yelped and twisted, struggling to dislodge its unwelcome passenger. It was perilously close to the platform’s edge.

The bee left my shoulder, winging across the divide. I could not see exactly what it did, but suddenly the clinging gargoyle was thrashing on the platform, and a moment later it was gone, fallen into the fire. The dog shook itself and returned its attention to Tati. The bee alighted on my shoulder once more. Perhaps all it had needed to do was provide a diversion. Or maybe the bees of the Other Kingdom sting and sting again and do not die.

Tati was on her feet, her bound hands against the dog’s neck and her blindfolded face turned toward us. Duarte whistled on, the tune more muted now, for Stoyan had begun to coax the animal back. Without benefit of his voice, he used his body with eloquence, crouching, gesturing, mouthing words of encouragement, clapping his hands when he wanted the creature to pay attention, for here and there it was necessary to turn sharply, to circle, to backtrack in order to reach us. Tati held on, her face chalk-white below the dark cloth of the blindfold, her feet wobbling on the narrow tracks of the grille. On my right shoulder, the little bird twittered a counterpoint to Duarte’s melody.

Tati was almost here. She was moving across the treacherous path, leaving the gargoyles behind. They were clustered on the edge of the platform, watching us with crestfallen expressions on their odd little faces. I breathed again, a great gasp for air, my relief like a spasm all through my body. He had saved her. Against the odds, Stoyan had found a remarkable, ingenious way to solve the seemingly impossible puzzle.

Tati had reached us. The two men stretched down to help her up to safety, and the dog jumped up after her.

“Oh, Stoyan, thank you,” I breathed; then, at a nod from our guide, I untied my sister’s blindfold and threw my arms around her.

“It is good,” said the peri coolly as Duarte undid the bonds around Tati’s wrists, and my sister hugged me back. Stoyan spoke quietly to the dog, praising it for its courage and obedience. Then Tati, looking over my shoulder, suddenly shrieked, “Emerald!” and released her hold on me. She reached out a hand toward Duarte, and the green snake uncoiled itself from his arm and flowed onto hers, making its way up to her shoulders.

“Where was she? Where did you find her?” Tati was addressing a bemused Duarte, using the language of the Other Kingdom. “Oh, thank you so much for bringing her back!”

“Delighted to oblige,” Duarte said smoothly. He had no doubt noticed that, even when she was pale with shock, my sister was a woman of exceptional beauty. “Your Emerald had discovered some far bigger companions; they made it somewhat difficult for me to reach her, but my instructions were to retrieve one particular creature, and that was what I did. And put myself off climbing for the rest of my life.” He examined his palms, which now bore rope burns in addition to the damage inflicted by our passage through the mountain. “A little friend of yours, I take it?”

“My dear companion,” Tati said. “Given to me by Drǎgua, the witch of the wood. I thought I’d lost her forever. She insisted on coming, and then she slithered off on her own. Oh, Paula, I have so much to tell you—”

The peri interrupted, using the same language Tati had, that nameless tongue we could all understand but not identify. “If you would be first to reach Cybele’s treasure trove and make your claim, you must move on now. Say your goodbyes.”

“What?” I gasped. It was the first proper chance I’d had to talk to my sister since she left us for the Other Kingdom six years ago. “Already? But Tati’s hurt; she’s bleeding. It’s so soon—”

“I’m all right, Paula.” Tati’s voice was shaky, but as she showed me her hands, I could see no trace of injury—her skin was ghostly white but unmarked. “The fear was real enough, the pain as well,” she said, “but the rest was mostly illusion, I think. We must do as they tell us. Maybe I’ll see you again soon, if I’ve got this right. Oh, Paula, I did so want to be able to explain what I was doing, but there were rules….”

I was wordless. I felt as if I had been thumped in the chest and all the air pushed out of me. “You can’t go,” I whispered. But I was not so foolish as to believe I could change the laws of the Other Kingdom. If her quest depended on obedience, then she must obey, and so must I.

“Sorrow’s waiting for me,” Tati said, and as we walked back under the archway to the larger cavern, I saw to my surprise that it was so. The crone still waited there, not far from the pile of treasure, and at a slight distance stood the pale-faced, black-clad form of my sister’s sweetheart, his grave gaze leaping instantly to her as we appeared. She had not come all this way alone, then. I was glad of that. Still, I could feel that pain in my chest, the bittersweet hurt of holding her so briefly, then losing her again. I had not told her anything, our family news—marriages and babies and merchant voyages—our small triumphs and disasters over the years since she had left us. I had not even said how much we loved her and missed her. But perhaps she knew that. How brave are you, Paula? Brave enough to say goodbye?

“It’s time, Tatiana,” the crone said solemnly. “Your part in this is over. It is for your sister and her companions to take the quest forward now. Make your thanks and depart. Pay my respects to Drǎgua. An old friend.”

Tati smiled at Stoyan and reached to touch his arm, a gesture of gratitude. She acknowledged Duarte with a little bow of the head. Then she put her hands on either side of my face and kissed me on the brow. “Be safe, Paula. It looks as if you have good companions for your quest. I hope you’ll be happy.” The snake on her shoulders gave a faint hiss. Whether this was an objection or a farewell there was no telling.

“Goodbye, Tati,” I said, choking on my tears, and watched her walk over to Sorrow. He put his arm around her shoulders; she slipped hers around his waist. The snake moved to drape itself across the two of them. I saw in Sorrow’s face that he loved my sister every bit as much as he had when we let him take her away to the Other Kingdom—more, perhaps. His care for her was in the curve of his somber lips, the tenderness of his touch, the dark intensity of his eyes. With her free hand, Tati gave us a little wave, and the two of them walked away into the shadows. I did not think they would travel home by merchant ship or cart, on the paths of men, but by a different way.

There was a little cough behind us. Irene and Murat had emerged into the treasure cavern. They were looking less immaculate now. Their skin bore bruises and scratches, and their clothing was as torn and filthy as ours. By Murat’s side a cat stalked, palest gray, sleek and aloof. I thought it bore an uncanny resemblance to the eunuch, and this made me look again at the dog that had been so quick to obey Stoyan’s unspoken commands. On Irene’s shoulders perched creatures similar to mine: a bee and a bird—hers were green. Instead of the gargoyle, she had a rat. Her eyes met mine, the look in them supremely confident. She gave me a little crooked smile.

“You are all assembled. You have triumphed in the tests we set for you.” The old woman’s tone was solemn. “Few pass through this mountain, and still fewer emerge with wiser hearts. Perhaps you thought the tests unreasonable.” She looked at Duarte. “But this is a secret way. If you cannot learn, you will not pass through. To reach this point has required much of you. In recognition of that, the goddess offers each of you a reward.” Her gaze passed over us in turn, Stoyan and I close together, Duarte a little apart, looking exhausted, with Cybele’s Gift in his hands. Irene was holding her head high. Murat stood, impassive, by her side.

“Each of you may take one item from our treasure trove before you pass on,” the keeper of Cybele’s mysteries continued. “I am certain each can find something to please. Weapons for warriors. Books for scholars. Jewels and gold for those who lack resource. Collector’s items such as are seen but once in a lifetime. Choose with care, and only when I call your name.”

“Wait!” I could not stop myself from speaking out, though Stoyan squeezed my hand in warning. “You shouldn’t let those two pass through the cavern; they mean us only harm! They only got here because they followed us to find the way. That isn’t fair—”

The old woman fixed me with her obsidian-dark eyes. “You will choose first,” she said. “If there are rules in this place of the goddess, it is not for you to make them, Paula. Come, let us see what you have learned on your journey. Which do you value most highly now, wisdom or scholarship?”

I might have known the trials and tests were not yet over. As I considered her question, I pictured Stoyan quieting the dog, taking time, staying calm, knowing from both instinct and experience what to do. He had quickly worked out how to help Tati, though neither Duarte nor I could see a solution. I recalled, with shame, that I had at first expected my friend to use muscle, not mind, to solve that problem. I remembered him poring over the little drawings I had found so hard to make sense of, then saying, Perhaps it is less complex than you imagine.

“I have overestimated the role scholarship plays in finding answers and in understanding the world,” I told her. “I have learned that there are deeper kinds of wisdom.” I thought of Duarte supporting his friend as he dangled over the void and his stricken expression when he lost him. I heard him telling me to run ahead with Cybele’s Gift—to save it and myself. I thought of Irene’s cool voice as she ordered Murat to kill. “And I’ve learned it’s a mistake to judge people too quickly,” I added.

“Well spoken, Paula,” Irene said approvingly, as if the original question had been hers. “I do hope you will reconsider your decision now. Move on with Murat and me, and a brilliant future awaits you. You are young; perhaps the attention of these men of yours flatters you. Believe me, neither has anything of worth to offer you.”

“Choose your reward,” said the crone, waving toward the mound of treasure.

It seemed I had answered the question to her satisfaction, and now I was supposed to take some kind of prize. I had only to reach an arm’s length to pick up any one of five items, each worth a king’s ransom. My eyes fell on a lovely manuscript not far from my foot, its borders embellished in gold leaf, with little images of minarets against a night sky painted in rich deep blue. Beside it was a tiny bound book, open to show delicate calligraphy on creamy vellum. Either would make a miraculous start for my business, for each was an item nobody from here to Transylvania would be able to match.

“Oh, Paula,” said Irene. “Such riches. Such a beginning for your collection. How can you possibly choose?”

I stood gazing at the lovely things, the precious and glittering assortment of treasures, and I knew I didn’t want any of them. I just wanted to see Duarte achieve his mission and the three of us get safely out and home again. I wanted to hug Father and tell him how sorry I was. Most of all, I wanted my sisters.

“Choose, Paula,” the old woman said.

The little red bird flew from my shoulder to the heap, alighting with precision on an item tucked behind a grand silver jug. A hint of bright color told me what it was even as I reached across to retrieve it. Tati’s embroidery was finished now. The crumpled rag unfolded, its creases disappearing before my eyes, and there were five girls dancing proudly across the linen hand in hand, their faces wreathed in smiles. Tati, Jena, Iulia, Paula, Stela. We were all there, together, strong and alive. No more tears, Paula, I ordered myself. “May I have this?” I asked.

Irene sucked in her breath. It seemed an odd choice, I suppose, with such riches on offer.

“It is yours,” said the crone, and a rare smile curved her withered lips. “And I will give you another. As you are a scholar of some note, I am certain you would appreciate an additional riddle.”

I refrained from telling her that right now I was incapable of dealing with a riddle for three-year-olds, let alone anything more taxing.

“It is not to solve now,” the old woman said, apparently reading my mind. “Take it away with you, consider its meaning, find the solution in good time. But don’t wait too long. It goes thus:

Water and stone

Flesh and bone

Night and morn

Rose and thorn

Tree and wind

Heart and mind.”

There was a silence. Nobody offered me a solution, and nothing immediately suggested itself to me. But then, she had told me to take time. “Thank you,” I said with mixed feelings. The trouble with being a scholar is that once someone sets you a puzzle, your mind starts working away at it even if you are too tired to get anywhere.

“You, young man”—the crone motioned to Stoyan—“choose next. Three rewards you have earned, one for the courage that saw you take an arrow for a man who was not yet your friend; one for the steadfastness that held Paula safe and strong as she endured her trials; and one for the openness of your mind to this world beyond the human, a world in which trust and cooperation take many forms. Make your choice: One item from the pile is yours.”

He was far quicker than I. “If you permit,” he said to the old woman, and reached out to take a diadem of gold. It was an opulent piece, thickly crusted with precious stones: an adornment fit for the Sultan himself. I was surprised by his choice and a little disappointed. After all this, after what we had been through together, my friend would measure his reward in riches? A moment later, I realized an item like this would allow him to stop earning his keep as a guard and get on with the search for Taidjut.

“I understand your choice, Stoyan,” the old woman told him. “This is the first of your rewards and the only one fully in my power to give you. Although you have earned all three, the long-sought second and the deeply desired third do not depend on the decisions of the Other Kingdom but on those of your own kind. You are a good man. I hope both will come in time.”

I met Stoyan’s eye as he slipped the priceless ornament into his sash, then looked away, full of shame that I had doubted his motives even for a moment. And what had the crone meant about an arrow? He’d said his wound was only a scratch.

The crone did not ask Stoyan what he had learned but turned her attention to our companion. “Duarte da Costa Aguiar,” she said. “You have come farthest of all to make your choice. Step forward now and do so, bold adventurer.” Her tone was warm.

Duarte stood there a long time with the cloth-wrapped artifact in his hands. He was scanning the hoard, searching for something, not necessarily the most valuable item, or the most unusual, or the rarest. It became clear to me that he was looking for one particular object amidst a hundred, a thousand individual treasures. We stood waiting, and Duarte walked around the pile of precious things, hunting high and low. Irene tapped her foot. Beside her, Murat waited quietly.

I think both Stoyan and I realized at the same time what it was Duarte was looking for, and we joined him in the hunt. It wasn’t easy. Gold and silver dazzled the eyes; parchment and vellum, unrolled and tumbling down, screened what lay behind. Vessels spilled forth small rivers of rubies and amethysts. Necklaces, bracelets, and decorated swords vied for attention. But then, perhaps we were meant to find it.

“Duarte,” I said, suddenly still. “There.” I pointed to a low corner where something protruded slightly from beneath an ornate sword hilt.

Duarte smiled. He knelt and the crone moved closer. I held my breath. He cleared away the sword and a bronze platter the size of a small table, and there it was, a modest piece of broken pottery, like the lower half of a bulbous gourd in shape, its upper edge snapped off cleanly. Amongst the thousand rare and expensive items in the hoard, this was a thing of unpretentious clay fashioned with modest craft, unadorned save for a scrawl of cryptic writing curling across it.

Duarte placed the small bundle he was carrying beside the broken fragment. He untied the cloth and drew out Cybele’s Gift. In the cavern, there was utter silence. On my shoulders, the three attendant creatures had become preternaturally still.

“I have come not to take, but to give,” the pirate said, glancing up at the old woman. He lifted Cybele’s Gift in hands that were remarkably steady and placed the top part of the little statue on the base.

Something changed. I could not say what it was, for there was no sound, no dazzling light, no sudden cold or warmth. Nobody spoke a word. But I sensed a profound difference in the cavern, as if a drought had broken or a pestilence had been cured. Before our eyes, the two parts of Cybele knitted together, joining up as smoothly as if the artifact had never been broken.

Duarte rose to his feet, leaving the statue where it was. As he moved, the creatures moved as well, bee and bird soaring upward, small gargoyle jumping down from my shoulder to scamper away. The hound padded off more slowly, pausing once or twice to look back at Stoyan, its heart in its eyes. The creatures that had accompanied Irene and Murat made their own departure, the cat stalking off without a backward glance.

“Cybele thanks you,” the crone said softly. “You have been dogged in your task, Duarte. You have never taken your eyes from the horizon. What have you learned?”

He grinned disarmingly. Solemn as the moment was, he was still himself. “I don’t know where to begin,” he said, glancing at me. “Trust would be the first lesson. I’ve learned the hard way not to discount tales of the remarkable and uncanny. And I’ve been forced to acknowledge that I am not, in fact, entirely devoid of human weakness. Not that I plan to make that widely known. It might get in the way of business.”

“Good,” said the old woman. “The three of you have acquitted yourselves as we hoped you would: bravely, wisely, with love and balance. It was ever decreed thus, but the fulfillment of the quest has been long in coming.”

“Have we permission to pass on through the mountain?” Duarte asked her. “My intention was to take the statue to the village on the other side, a place where, I was told, Cybele is still revered and loved. That quest was laid on me by a friend long ago. Is it right to carry it out of this cavern?”

“Perhaps,” the crone said, turning her gaze on the others, the ones who had not earned the right to be here. “We are not yet finished. Murat, come forward.”

She was actually going to do it. She was going to grant them the same privileges as we’d been given.

“But—” I began, and wilted at the look in her eye. Whatever was to unfold, I could see it would happen whether we liked it or not. I clutched Stoyan’s hand and prayed that this would come out right, that justice and goodness would prevail.

Murat stepped up beside us. He bowed his head respectfully to the crone and said, “I serve the lady of Volos. Her reward is my reward.”

The old woman fixed him with her eyes. The eunuch met them with perfect calm, and I watched him, thinking of what he had done at the swinging bridge and before. Today he had rendered seven children fatherless; he had forced Duarte to drop his friend into the void. If not for my desperate bluff, he would have killed Stoyan. What mad loyalty could inspire a man to act thus, with no regard for what was fair and right?

“Very well,” the old woman said. “Irene of Volos. You like lovely things. What will you choose?”

The chamber grew darker. On either side of me Duarte and Stoyan moved in closer. We had become vulnerable, all of us. There would be no bluffing our way to safety now.

The lovely line of Irene’s throat was exposed as she tilted back her head and laughed. The sound rang around the cavern. “You mean it,” she said to the old woman. “Anything. I may take away anything from this remarkable treasure trove.” Her brows lifted in mock astonishment.

“The rule is the same for all,” the crone said. “One item as reward. Then all will pass onward.”

“This is—” Duarte began, and this time it was I who hushed him.

“Let it go,” I muttered. “We can’t control this; we have to let it happen.” I had seen enough of the workings of the Other Kingdom to understand that human intervention could go only a certain distance. There were patterns here far larger and older than our minds could encompass. Wisdom, a deeper form of wisdom than any scholarship could unlock.

“Very astute of you, Paula,” said Irene in her most charming tone. “I knew I was right about you; I saw your potential from the first.” And, bending gracefully, she picked up Cybele’s Gift. She rose with it cradled in her arms. Her lips shaped a benevolent smile. Her eyes were alight with the triumph of her win. “You disappoint me, pirate,” she said to Duarte. “You have led me here, and now you have passed over your treasure as if, all the time, you did not really want it.”

“Want it?” Duarte’s face was a ghost’s, a hollow-eyed study in black and white. “I never sought to possess Cybele’s Gift. I wish only to repay a debt of honor.” His gaze went to Murat. “But, of course, this is a concept your mind cannot encompass. I have seen today that you do not know the value of a human life.”

It seemed Irene was not listening. She had one hand under the little statue, and the other was caressing the wild hair of the miniature goddess, whose hollow eyes gazed out at us from her broad earthenware face. “The artifact is mine,” the Greek woman said. “As head of the cult, I have the only legitimate claim to it. The statue will be safe with me, hidden within my home in our gathering place. Through possession of such a fabled item, my position as leader of Cybele’s rites will be absolute. It would be ludicrous to leave the artifact up in the mountains. That would result not only in the statue crumbling away because folk are too ignorant to preserve it properly but also in bitter disappointment when it’s proven to have no more mystical power than any other lump of clay. I imagine these villagers actually believe in Cybele. They’ll be pinning all their hopes on the conviction that this scrap of pottery can magically bestow instant peace and plenty. It’s a forlorn hope of extricating themselves from their destined lot on the earth, which, unfortunately, must be one of grinding poverty. Senhor Aguiar, your quest to take the statue there is sheer folly. Cybele’s Gift belongs to me and to my followers. Paula, now might be a good time to make your choice. Come back with Murat and me. Whatever impulsive reason you may have had for accompanying Senhor Aguiar on his journey, you can rely on me to provide an acceptable explanation for your father. When Master Teodor has come to terms with that, we’ll ask him if he will let you stay in Istanbul awhile and extend your knowledge of Turkish culture. I will initiate you personally.”

A shudder of sheer horror ran through me. “Never,” I said, meeting Irene’s eyes and seeing on her face an expression that truly scared me. “I’ll never betray my friends. You told me you value freedom for women, and of course I believe in that; it’s central to the way I live my life. But you are a poor example, Irene. You’re selfish to the core—all you want is to be admired, to be the center of your so-called cult, with your devotees clustering about you like bees around a flower. You call yourself a priestess, and yet you tell us quite openly that you don’t believe in the goddess you claim to represent. That’s immoral. It’s despicable. People have died because of this, good people. You may thrive on the foolish risks you take, but what about those other women? Your hunger for power could draw them and their families into terrible consequences. Look at what happened to Salem bin Afazi, and he wasn’t even part of the cult.”

“Salem made an error; he attracted the Mufti’s notice. I do not make errors.” Her voice was chill. “Have you more to say, Paula?”

“In one breath you tell us Cybele’s statue belongs to you, and in the next you express scorn for what she represents: the ancient wisdom of earth. You dismiss people’s faith just because they are poor and isolated. But these old gods are powerful. Perhaps they are sleeping now, waiting out a long time of change in the world, but that doesn’t mean they are only the imaginings of simple folk. You sicken me, Irene. I can’t believe I ever trusted you.”

“Well, well,” she said, eyes slitted, “there is indeed some passion in that scholarly breast. I’m disappointed, Paula. I had believed we might make something of you. You realize, of course, what an enormous difference your decision will make to your future?” She turned to Duarte. “Senhor, now that you have seen me here, it will unfortunately be necessary for me to ensure that you and your companions do not return to Istanbul to tell the tale. The Sheikh-ul-Islam and his cronies don’t care for the revival of pagan practices in their Muslim city. As for the possibility that such a group might be headed by a woman, I imagine that terrifies them. For the sake of my husband’s career, if not for myself, I must continue to keep this particular interest secret….”

Around us the light was rapidly fading. Murat was drawing a knife from his belt. Beside me, Stoyan reached for the hilt of his dagger. The old woman had stood quietly in the shadows during this interchange; it did not seem she was planning to intervene.

In my mind, I saw how it might be, how, in seeking to do the right thing, the three of us would be slaughtered here beneath the ground, our corpses slowly turning to bone and dust in Cybele’s treasure chamber while the Greek scholar and her protector made their way to the surface and home to Istanbul with the prize. The guardian of Cybele’s cave was going to let this false priestess walk away with the statue, and Mustafa’s people, who had kept the faith all these years, would never see it again. How could this be? Back in Transylvania, I had seen the folk who ruled the Other Kingdom make some strange choices—choices that, on occasion, had seemed quite cruel. But everything they had done had been for the greater good.

“Take it, then,” the crone said to Irene, and smiled. Irene was looking at the statue and did not see the old woman’s expression, but I did. It was inimical, so full of danger it made my stomach clench tight. “Take it and go on your way. Move swiftly; Cybele’s doors will not remain open much longer. Not even for a priestess.”

With that, the old woman vanished into nothing. Before our eyes the pile of treasure disappeared, leaving the five of us in the dimly lit cavern. I felt under my sash; the folded embroidery was still there where I had tucked it. As my fingers touched its soft form, a solution presented itself to me, a possible solution at least. For although Irene had the artifact, there was one bargaining piece still in our possession.

“Irene,” I said as calmly as I could, my eyes on the knife in Murat’s capable hand. “Did you wonder how we knew the way to this chamber through the underground passages? It’s a kind of code, a map—I found it in your library. Each of us knows part of it; it was too complex for one person to remember. If you kill any one of us, you won’t be able to get out.”

Murat had taken a step forward. She halted him with a hand. “Each of you?” she queried. “When had the pirate an opportunity to learn this secret map? I don’t recall seeing him in my library. And your big dog there?” Her eyes were contemptuous as they raked over Stoyan. “A man like that couldn’t memorize his own mother’s name.”

Stoyan hissed, surging forward.

“No!” I shouted, and a moment later I found myself seized in a powerful grip and spun around as Murat took advantage of the moment. Duarte had grabbed Stoyan, halting his charge. And now I was pinned in front of the eunuch, with the sharp blade of his knife laid cold as ice across my throat.

My companions were suddenly still.

“Drop your weapons, both of you.” Murat’s tone was cool. “All of them.” He waited while knives and daggers clattered to the ground.

“Very well,” Irene said when it was done. “We go forward. Let us test whether Paula’s faith in the two of you is justified. I see three ways from this cavern. Who will choose for us?”

Stoyan moved, heading for the left-hand opening. We followed, Murat dragging me with him, the others behind us. I thought I could feel the knife breaking the skin, blood trickling down my neck. Wrong, all wrong. This could not be intended to finish so miserably. Why had we been rewarded if we were to fail in the quest?

I was crying. I sniffed back the tears, unable to wipe my eyes with that powerful arm holding me, that cold metal kissing my throat. Where had I gone wrong? What had I failed to learn? What pieces of the puzzle had I forgotten?

“This way,” said Stoyan, making another choice of paths. The ground was rising; we were getting closer to the surface. I fought down terror and made myself focus. Think, Paula.

What have you learned?

Murat jerked me around a corner. The knife dug in.

Concentrate. I had learned the difference between knowledge and wisdom. I had experienced a lesson in trust. At least, I’d started to understand these things. A whole lifetime was probably not enough to learn them completely. Especially if that life was cut short before one reached one’s eighteenth birthday. Think. And I’d learned other things that I hadn’t mentioned. How to escape from the grip of someone much stronger, who grabbed me from behind…Of course, the lesson had not included dealing with the complication of a knife. But Stoyan had taught me to look for the right moment, the kind of moment Murat had just used to his advantage. And if Stoyan, walking in front of us, also knew the right moment…

All along, I had tried to keep my own image of the tree map clear in my mind. I had not retained it as well as Stoyan had; without him, we would indeed have been lost. Now I made myself concentrate on this section. There could have been several possible ways from the treasure chamber up to the top. Stoyan was taking the most central route, past a place where the tree image had been thick with fruit of many shapes. We moved forward along a winding way—a particularly wayward branch—passing small caverns to either side, each with its own peculiar form. I saw them as they had appeared on the tiles—pear, apple, plum, bunch of cherries.

We came to a fork: two ways, left and right. Stoyan paused, glancing back.

“Move, Bulgar!” Murat said. “Which is it? Make up your mind!”

For a brief moment, Stoyan’s eyes met mine. I tried to convey something to him, intent, purpose, and I thought he gave the smallest of nods. “We go right,” he said.

I knew it should be left. I moved forward, still clasped in Murat’s menacing embrace. Behind, I heard the soft footsteps of the others.

Something creaked above us, jolting my heart. The rocks were shifting. Murat tensed; his knife fell momentarily away from my neck. I sagged in his arms, making my body abruptly limp. Stoyan leaped toward us, eyes blazing, ready to tackle the well-armed eunuch with his bare hands. Murat dropped me, bracing to defend himself. Suddenly he had a knife in each hand. I rolled to the side and came up on one knee as I’d been taught during those practice sessions on the Esperança. Stoyan stuck out a hand in my direction; I drew the little knife he had given me out of my sash and tossed it to him. Nobody had thought to ask me to throw down my weapons.

The struggle was brief but intense. Duarte could do no more than crouch by me, shielding me, for the combatants moved so fast there was no getting between them. Murat fought like a dancer, with elegant economy of movement and a sequence of practiced swings and turns and kicks. Someone had trained him to perfection. Stoyan’s style was brutal and efficient. They grappled and wrestled and fell, rose and came together once more, muscles bulging, eyes glaring, feet slipping on the rock floor. Above them, the earth trembled and groaned; showers of little stones fell from the tunnel’s roof. Irene stood watching, mute, with Cybele’s Gift clutched to her breast. Huddled by the wall, I felt the rocks shuddering under my hand.

Murat had Stoyan pinned against the opposite wall, his right forearm pressed across his adversary’s chest. It wasn’t looking good. With his left hand, he held Stoyan’s wrist in a painful grip clearly designed to make him drop the little knife that was his only weapon. As soon as the knife fell, the eunuch would use his own head to smash Stoyan’s skull back against the rock wall or employ a dagger to stab my friend in the heart.

Stoyan drew a deep, shuddering breath.

Then, with an odd sort of twist that suggested getting himself pinned against the wall had been a planned combat move, he hooked a leg around Murat’s and toppled him. There was a hideous crunching sound as the eunuch’s head went down on the rocks. Stoyan knelt and, with deliberation, drew the little knife across Murat’s throat.

“Quick, Paula!” Duarte was helping me up, pulling me back along the passageway. The place was alive with the sounds of warning, rock grumbling, creaking, moaning as it shifted. More stones fell, bigger ones this time. Cybele’s doors will not remain open much longer.

“Stoyan,” I whispered, and he was there beside me, wiping his knife on his tunic and sticking it in his sash.

“Run,” he said.

Irene was blocking our way. She stood stock-still in the middle of the passage, staring at the prone form of her steward. She had set the artifact down on the stone floor.

“The place is coming down,” Duarte said to her. “If you value your life, follow us out.” As we pushed past Irene and ran, he scooped up Cybele’s Gift.

Over the sound of the shifting rocks, I could not hear if Irene was coming or not. When we reached the place where Stoyan had deliberately led us down the wrong branch, I snatched one backward glance. Irene was kneeling on the ground. She had gathered Murat’s body close, his head resting on her knees; her hands, cradling him, were dyed crimson. On her features was a look of such grief and pain it hit me like a blow. She turned her face upward and wailed, a wordless, primal sound of sorrow that rang all through the subterranean passageway, making the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

A moment later, her cry was drowned by a roaring like the voice of a huge wild creature, a monstrous rumbling above, beneath, on either side of us.

“Paula!” shouted Stoyan. “Come on!” Not waiting for me to obey, he picked me up and slung me over his shoulder as he sprinted down the left-hand passageway. A jerking, bobbing vista of rock and earth and shadow passed before my eyes. We ran around corners, dashed through caverns, ducked into openings not much bigger than the portholes on the Esperança.