Issola

Issola

Vlad Taltos, Book 9

Steven Brust

BOOKS BY STEVEN BRUST, P. J, F.

The Khaavren Romances

The Phoenix Guards

Five Hundred Years After

The Viscount of Adrilankha

Volume One: The Paths of the Dead

Volume Two: The Lord of Castle Black

Volume Three: Sethra Lavode

The Vlad Taltos Novels

Jhereg

Yendi

Teckla

Taltos

Phoenix

Athyra

Orca

Dragon

Issola

Other Novels

To Reign in Hell

Brokedown Palace

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille

The Gypsy (with Megan Lindholm)

Agyar

Freedom and Necessity (with Emma Bull)

Prologue

I’ve heard it said that manners are more complex in primitive societies—that it is easier to give accidental offense in, for ex­ample, the Island kingdoms of Elde or Greenaere, or among the Serioli, or the Jenoine, or the various kingdoms of my own East­ern people, than among the more civilized Dragaerans.

You must allow me to observe that it is invariably Draga­erans who point this out. One can imagine finding a Dragaeran who will not insist that the Empire has achieved the highest imaginable pinnacle of civilization; but then, one can imagine the Emperor presenting one with the Imperial Treasury, too, if one’s imagination is active enough.

Yet even among the Seventeen Great Houses of the Empire, there are differences in what is considered proper behavior in various circumstances, and it is worth noting that, if you look hard enough, you will find that there are always very practical reasons for some phrase or action being considered polite or rude under certain circumstances. To pick an obvious example, among my own people, when arriving at the home of an ac­quaintance, one is expected to pound upon the door with one’s fist, whereas among the Dragaerans, this is considered rude. I will not insult you by explaining why, in a culture rich in sorcery and steeped in paranoia, it is a bad idea to touch the door of someone’s home. The practical has become a matter of courtesy.

In the Jhereg, the House to which I belong (and the crim­inal Organization for which I used to work), it is considered rude, when asking to meet with a superior or an equal, to arrive at the meeting first, whereas among the Dragons it is rude not to be first if you’ve done the inviting. The Dzur remain seated when greeting new arrivals to their tables at public or private houses; the Lyorn invariably rise. Except that the Dzur meeting the Lyorn might rise, knowing the Lyorn custom, whereas the Lyorn ... well, you get the idea.

It is all very confusing.

As an Easterner, and, in several different ways, an outcast, I have had the opportunity to observe many of these customs and considerations of proper behavior, and so, on the assump­tion that you might one day have the chance to visit some of these fascinating and delightful people (okay, then, these irri­tating and obnoxious jerks), I herewith submit a small treatise on manners in the Dragaeran Empire. I hope you find it useful. But, in case I made an error somewhere, and you inadvertently commit a minor breach of etiquette, please, don’t tell me about it; I have my own problems. 1. Adapting Behavior to Environment

Just because they really are out to get you doesn’t mean you aren’t paranoid. If they’ve been after you long enough, paranoia can become a reflex.

Interesting things, reflexes: if you pay attention to them, you’ll stand to learn some interesting things about yourself. This is one reason I avoid paying attention to my reflexes.

But sometimes I can’t help it.

Let me pick an example at random:

I awoke almost instantly from a sound sleep to active still­ness, and before reaching for a weapon, or dodging from a pos­sible attack, or even opening my eyes, I reached out, mentally, psychically, for contact with my familiar. My mind to his, I said, “What’s going on, Loiosh?” At that instant, all I knew was that something had happened to wake me up. I didn’t even remember where I was, though one patch of ground in the wilderness is much like another, and that’s where I’d been sleeping lately.

My first real clue that there might be a problem came when he didn’t make any wisecracks. Instead there was a moment of mental silence, if you’ll excuse the expression, and then Loiosh said, “We may have been hunted down, Boss.”

“Well,” I said. “That wouldn’t be good.” Pretending to be calm to my familiar helps me to actually be calm. Loiosh accepts this as part of his job, and doesn’t give me grief about it, much. In the meantime, without any conscious decision on my part, I was holding a neat, slim stiletto in my hand. Reflexes again.

I remained still, counting on Loiosh to tell me if and when I ought to move. While I waited, I contemplated my circum­stances—in particular, the sharp, nasty stone that had insinu­ated itself onto the ground between my shoulder blades. I had a thick layer of darr skin between me and the ground, and a thin layer of chreotha fur between me and the sky.

“Brigands, do you think, Loiosh?”

“Brigands come in bands, Boss. Whoever this is, there’s only one of him.”

“So the Jhereg is more likely.”

“Or something else entirely.”

I heard Rocza shift, caught the faint psychic whispers of Loiosh telling her to stay still. Just to fill you in on the basics, in case we haven’t met before, Rocza is Loiosh’s mate, which I’m sure must answer every question you have.

“Coming closer, Boss.”

“Do I have a target, yet?”

“No.”

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“No. But I’m not worried, Boss. I’m sure you’ll come up with a plan.”

Reptiles are cold-blooded; a reptilian sense of humor will naturally display the same characteristics. This, in spite of being hunted and hounded by a massive and murderous criminal so­ciety that wants nothing less than the destruction of my soul, is probably the greatest burden I carry.

“All right,” I said, ignoring his remark. “Fly as silently as you can away from whoever it is, and circle around. As soon as you see—”

I was interrupted by the ostentatious clearing of a throat, followed by someone saying, “I beg your pardon for disturbing you at such an hour, Lord Taltos, but I’m certain you must be awake by now, and I’m afraid if I come any closer you might do something I’d regret.”

I sat up, the knife poised for throwing. “You can’t be who you sound like,” I said.

“I am, though.”

“It’s not polite to lie.”

She laughed. “Nor to accuse a friend of lying.”

“You can’t be—”

“It is, Boss.”

“Well,” I said after a long moment. “I’ll be skinned for a norska.”

“Probably,” said Loiosh. “But not by her.”

I heard her come a little closer; Loiosh could now see her, but I can’t see as well at night as he can.

“Don’t feel bad, Boss. We can’t all have adequate vision.”

“At least both of my eyes face forward, scavenger.”

“Mind if I make a light?” I said.

“Please do.”

I stood up slowly, put my knife away, and found my firekit close at hand. I lit a candle and held it up and away so we would both be illuminated. There was, fortunately, little wind. I saw her standing before me, looking very beautiful and incredibly out of place. She gave me a courtesy, and I bowed in response.

“Lord Taltos,” she said.

“Lady Teldra,” I replied. “Welcome to the wilderness.”

She looked around. “Yes. Well, shall I start, or should it wait until morning?”

“If it is urgent enough to track me down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, can it wait until morning?”

“It can, Lord Taltos. My urgency was to find you before you moved on, thus making the search more difficult. Again, I apol­ogize for disturbing you.”

“Not to worry. Did you bring any blankets?”

“I...”

“I know how difficult this must be for you, Lady Teldra, and I can’t wait to hear about what brought it all about, but, believe me, we’ll both be better off if you let me handle things for tonight. I’d prefer it that way. Please.”

“Very well.”

“Did you bring any blankets?”

“No.”

“Is anyone following you?”

“No.”

“Are you—forgive me—are you certain?”

“Yes.”

I studied her face. Lady Teldra was worried about something. She was worried enough about something that she had allowed it to appear on her features, and something was wrong enough for her to have deliberately woken me up. This was almost more startling than her sudden appearance in the forest between Appertown and Ridge.

Startling. Yes.

When one knows an Issola, such as Lady Teldra, one gets so used to the grace, elegance, and manners of the House that one forgets its other side. The issola is a beautiful white bird. I’d seen several during my recent travels. One usually saw them standing, graceful and lovely in the early morning or late eve­ning, in swamps or the shallow banks of rivers. They stand as if their only reason for being were to look lovely and graceful. And then the issola would be holding a fish in its beak, and you’d never see it strike. And then the fish would be gone in a single swallow, and the issola would be standing on one leg, looking lovely and graceful.

Lady Teldra looked lovely and graceful. I felt plain and clumsy. On the other hand, now that the adrenaline was no longer coursing through my system I realized that I was still pretty tired.

“Let’s sleep,” I said. “You can share my furs, as long as you don’t get forward with me.”

“My lord—”

“I’m kidding. Climb in.”

I blew out the candle. It had been a long time since I’d slept curled up with a warm body—it brought back memories that I’d been trying to suppress, and the fact that she wasn’t human did little to help me forget. There had been a time when, every night, I had gone to sleep next to a woman I loved, and, even better, woken up with her. Those days were over and beyond recall, and allowing myself to dwell on them could take from me the edge I needed to stay alert and alive.

It took a while, but eventually I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was dawn, and she had climbed out of the furs and had a fire going.

“Have you klava?” she said, when she saw I was awake.

“Not even coffee,” I said. “But we’re within a few miles of a town.”

“Really? I’d have thought you’d stay at an inn, then.”

“Loiosh works better out here, and these days I’m thinking more about survival than comfort.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and seemed to mean it. But, of course, she was an Issola: she would always seem to mean it. In the light of dawn, I saw that she was dressed in white and green, in a gown suited less to the wilderness than to her duties at Castle Black, home of the Lord Morrolan, where she’d welcome you into his home, serve you wine, and convincingly seem delighted to see you. For almost the first time in the years that I’d known her, I wondered: Just exactly what were her duties for Morrolan? She looked an inquiry at me, then held out her hand. I nodded and Loiosh flew over to her, landing delicately. Her hand was stiff and slightly tilted, her elbow sharply bent: she knew the technique, though as far as I knew she’d never held a jhereg before. This failed to startle me.

“A pleasure to see you,” she told my familiar. He gracefully lowered his head until it was below the level of her hand, then raised it again.

“I believe,” said Lady Teldra in an amused tone, “that I am being mocked.” I heard Loiosh giggle inside my head. He turned around on her hand, launched himself, and returned to my right shoulder. Rocza, by now on my left shoulder, shifted and wrig­gled, which she often did in the morning. It probably meant something. There are many interesting facets to the character of the wild jhereg—poisonous reptilian scavengers of the jun­gle—but for some reason I got stubborn and decided not to learn about them. I imagine Teldra knew a lot about the wild issola.

“I’ll bet you know a lot about the wild issola,” I said.

“I know a bit about them,” she said. “But, your pardon Lord Taltos, I should imagine that isn’t the question foremost on your mind.”

“No, foremost on my mind is breakfast. There’s bread, cheese, and the remains of a dried and salted wild boar in my pack, as well some dried gammon and jerky in my pouch. Help yourself while I vanish for a moment and get myself a little cleaned up. There’s a stream about a hundred feet this way, just over that rise.”

“Thank you, my lord. I found it earlier.”

I went off and did what was necessary and filled my water flask. When I returned Teldra had broken off several chunks of bread and, while they toasted on the rocks next to the fire, she was cutting up strips of cheese to lay across them.

“No questions before you eat?” she said.

“Exactly.”

“I can respect that.”

The bread started smelling good. When she put the cheese over it, and the boar, my mouth started watering. The cheese was a smokey honin; I usually prefer something sharper, but it went well with boar. We ate, and I passed the water flask over. I almost apologized for the lack of wine, but Teldra would have been mortified to hear me apologize, so I didn’t. The food was good. As I ate, I fed bits to Loiosh, some of which he passed on to Rocza.

When I was done eating, I wrapped my furs and few possessions in their leather cords so I could leave in a hurry if I had to. As I did so, I said, “Let’s have it, then.”

“Where should I start, Lord Ta—”

“Vlad,” I said. “I’m sorry, Teldra, but titles just don’t work with the surroundings.”

“Very well, Vlad. What would you like to know first? How I found you, or why I wanted to?”

“Start with how you found me; it might be more urgent. If you can find me, perhaps the Jhereg can find me.”

“Not the way I did.”

“Oh?”

She said, “Do you remember Morrolan’s private tower, and the windows in it?”

I stared at her for some few moments, then said, “Oh. No, I don’t suppose the Jhereg is very likely to find me that way. I don’t think. Although the Left Hand—”

“Oh, that isn’t the whole of it. By themselves, the windows could bring me here, but couldn’t find you. I—”

“That’s a relief.”

“—had help.”

“Of?”

“Well, Kiera the Thief, for one.”

“Kiera. Yes.” I did not believe Kiera would betray me, or do anything she knew would put me in danger without a very good reason.

“She knew more or less where you’d be—what part of the Empire, that is. She said you’d been nursing a sick boy back to health, and that he lived in this district, and that she expected you to be escorting him to his home by now.”

“True enough.”

“And then, once I knew the general area, I got more help. Sethra Lavode.”

“Oh, her,” I said. The most powerful sorceress and wizard in the world, yeah, well, I wasn’t surprised she could find me. Es­pecially because a year or so ago, when we had run into each other near Northport, she had said something about –

“Loiosh?”

“Yes. She gave me a means of tracing him.”

“Well, is my face red.”

“Shut up.”

“So,” I said. “You had help from both Kiera and Sethra.”

“Yes.”

I watched her face, but if she knew anything, she betrayed nothing. Well, neither would I.

She said, “What happened to your hand?”

I looked at my maimed left hand, turned it over, and shrugged. “A sorcerer tried to eviscerate me from across a room, and either his aim was off, or I was too fast with Spellbreaker. Or not fast enough, depending on how you want to look at it.”

“How did this come about, Vlad?”

I shook my head. “Later, Teldra. We’re still hearing your story. For myself, I wouldn’t care, but you know how curious Loiosh gets.”

She flicked me her smile again; my familiar did not deign to make a rejoinder. Rocza, at that moment, flew off into the trees, probably thinking the breakfast scraps inadequate. Of the three of us, she seemed most happy to have spent the last few years away from cities.

“Shall I start now, or ought we to find Klava first?”

I’m not an Issola, but I can sometimes take a hint. “Sure,” I said, standing up. “This way.”

We hiked in silence at first; Teldra picking her way carefully, me just walking. I had, over the last few years, become some­thing of a woodsman, albeit unwillingly. It seems that Teldra never had, and I allowed myself to enjoy a certain feeling of superiority.

“Kiera never explained what happened to the boy,” said Teldra after a while.

“Not that much to tell,” I said. “If I were just a bit more cynical, I’d say it was a debt of honor. He was hurt in my service, so I tried to help him.”

“And you succeeded?”

“The Justicers are debating that one. I think so, at least in part.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back with his family, not far from here.” I recalled his fam­ily’s reaction to his return, and then their reaction to me, and refrained from giving Teldra any additional information.

We reached Appertown, with its post office, dry goods store, and inn. The latter, which boasted a faded sign that had once been red and seemed to have a chicken’s head painted on it, was almost deserted, but the three Teckla occupying a table in the back quickly looked away from Teldra while trying to glance at me covertly. If I had been wearing my Jhereg colors, instead of the nondescript leather I now affected, they wouldn’t have dared to look at me, either.

The hostess, a Teckla who was too thin to give me much confidence in the food, seemed a bit wary as she asked what we wanted.

“Klava, if you have any,” I said.

“Klava?” she repeated as if she’d never heard the word be­fore.

“If not,” said Teldra, “we should be glad of coffee.”

“We have a klava press somewhere,” she said. “But—”

“You must have eggshells,” I said. “Have you any vanilla bean?”

“Oh, I’m certain we have that. But I don’t know how to make the filter.”

“I do,” I said. “If you’ll allow me into your kitchen—”

“Vlad,” said Teldra softly. “I think coffee would do, wouldn’t it? As long as there is honey and cream.”

“Very well,” I said. The hostess sent Teldra a look full of gratitude and scuttled off for coffee. She brought back two mugs, along with a pitcher of thick cream and a jar of honey. Teldra gave her a smile that our hostess probably valued more than the money we’d leave with her later. Along with the coffee, she brought us each a sample of the house bread—a small, round loaf with a hole in the middle, cut horizontally and lightly toasted. I tried it.

“Not bad,” I said. “This would be good with smoked pinkfish and buttercheese.”

“And a bit of onion,” agreed Teldra.

As I mixed the proper proportions of my coffee, Teldra said, “How do you brew klava?”

“You don’t know?”

She smiled. “I can serve it with the best, but I’ve never needed to learn how to brew it.”

“You press coffee through a filter made of eggshells and wood chips with vanilla bean, then reheat it so it almost boils, then you pass it through a cloth to remove any oils brought out by the reheating.”

“Wood chips?”

“Hickory works well, also fegra, cherrywood, and crocra. It’s the wood, or combination of woods, that makes each version unique. Well, and how much vanilla you use. Also, some people add cinnamon, but I don’t; cinnamon is just as good if you add it later. Everyone has his own recipe. Valabar’s does it best, but they do everything best. I miss Valabar’s.”

“Is that all you miss, Lord Taltos?”

The expression on her face made it seem like light banter rather than an intrusive question, so I said, “Maybe one or two other things. And, even though we are enclosed by four walls, I still consider this the wilderness.”

She smiled. “Very well, Vlad.”

I took another sip of coffee and missed Valabar’s. This inn was a single-story building, stretching back quite a ways from the road, and built of molded brick with what had once been very nice woodwork around the windows; but now the wood was old, scratched up, and showing signs of dry rot. There was no actual bar, such as Adrilankha’s inns always had, but just various tables with glasses and bottles sitting on them. We sat near the front door; two doors led back, no doubt to various sleeping rooms, and another went back to the kitchen. I always notice the entrances and exits when I’m in a new place, although there haven’t been many times in my life when noticing actually did me any good. It’s just one of those things you do, like warming up your muscles before and after fencing practice. I once asked my grandfather, who taught me fencing, how, were I ever jumped by brigands, I could convince them to wait while I warmed up. He just rolled his eyes and gave me a flank strike, which I parried, causing the tip of his weapon to whip past my guard and leave a nasty welt on my forearm. After that I made my questions more serious.

“Would you like to share your thoughts, Vlad?”

“Have you ever had a practice saber whip around the bell of your weapon and leave a welt on your arm?”

“Why, no, I can’t say I have.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand.”

She laughed. You never know if an Issola is laughing to be polite. I resolved not to try to be funny around her.

“How long do you think that will last, Boss?”

We finished our coffee at about the same time and called for more, which was brought with a cheer and alacrity that showed the hostess had fallen under Teldra’s spell. No surprise there.

I said, “So Kiera told you how to find me, Sethra did the locating, and Morrolan let you go into his tower and use one of his Magical Mystical Powerful Transcendental Wizard Windows to get here. What I’d like to know—”

“Not exactly,” said Teldra.

“Oh?”

“Morrolan didn’t exactly let me use the window.”

“Go on.”

“Morrolan ... that is, I didn’t ask him.”

“You didn’t ask him.”

“I couldn’t. I didn’t—that is, I don’t know where he is.”

“I see. I begin to see. I think I begin to see.”

“Perhaps I should begin at the beginning.”

“Arbitrary. But still, not a bad choice.”

“Almost a minute, Boss. Good work.”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

“Well, to begin with, then, the world was made when the Gods created a ball of amorphia to hang—”

“Maybe we should let Loiosh make the jokes.”

“But you’re the only one who can hear him.”

“Believe me, Teldra, that’s a blessing for you.”

She smiled. She had dimples. I tried to remember how many Dragaerans I’d met who had dimples. Plenty of humans did, but I didn’t recall seeing many on Dragaerans.

“Early in the morning, four days ago,” she said, “I received a message from Her Majesty, the Empress, asking Morrolan to extend his hospitality to a certain Lady Marquana, House of the Athyra, who would be in the area on Imperial business.”

“What sort of Imperial business?”

“Does it matter?”

“Probably not, but asking questions makes me feel smarter.”

She dimpled again. “In point of fact, Vlad, I don’t know.”

I shrugged. She continued, “I went to find Morrolan, and he wasn’t in the library. I attempted psychic contact, and failed to reach him.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Unprecedented.”

“Really? He’s never been busy?”

“If so, he has told me in advance. The only time I have been unable to reach him is when he has been, well, off the world.”

“Off the world?”

She studied me. “You know something of those windows.”

“Ah. Yes. And this didn’t happen often?”

“Twice before, and both times he told me ahead of time he would be out of touch, and left instructions about what to do in case of trouble.”

“What were those instructions, Teldra?”

“To reach Sethra Lavode.”

“Not Aliera?”

“This was before Aliera had, uh, re-emerged. I agree that, now, Aliera would be the obvious person to speak with first.”

“And so did you speak with Aliera?”

Teldra tilted her head and smiled suddenly. “Why do you remind me so much of an Imperial Inquisitor?”

“Damn,” I said. “I was aiming for Third Floor Relic.”

“Who?”

“Ah ha.”

“Ah ha?”

“I’ve just proven that you’re not Sethra Lavode. Did you speak with Aliera?”

“She’s gone too,” said Teldra.

“My goodness,” I suggested. “Four days, you say?”

“Yes.”

“No message, no word, no communication?”

“No message, no word, no communication.”

“I see.” I tried to wrap my head around the idea that some­thing might have happened to Morrolan and Aliera. It was hard. They’d always struck me as, for all practical purposes, indestruc­tible. But Teldra had sought me out in the wilderness, and that meant, however unimaginable it might be, something serious had happened.

I forced my mind back to business. “So when did you make contact with Sethra?”

“As best I remember, Your Equitableness, it was—”

“‘Your Equitableness’? Are the Justicers really addressed that way, Teldra?”

“I thought you’d know.”

“I never had an advocate, so I’ve never heard the forms used.”

“Oh. I believe that’s the term.”

“It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Want more coffee?”

“Yes, please, Your Equitableness. If you don’t mind my ask­ing, why didn’t you hire an advocate?”

“Having an advocate makes one look guilty.”

“But the Orb—”

“The Orb is an awfully literal-minded thing, Teldra. They asked their questions, and I answered, and they looked at the Orb, and then they let me go. And, speaking of questions, I think I’d just asked one.”

“Very well, Your Equitableness.”

I sighed. “Okay, I get the point. I’ll just let you tell it.”

“After we get more coffee. If I were a Justicer, I’d require you to find a place that served klava.”

I signaled the hostess for coffee, which was supplied with oppressive good cheer.

Presently, Teldra said, “Morrolan and Aliera were gone, and with no message. I tried for psychic contact with each of them, and failed. After a day, I spoke with various people in the Cas­tle—Fentor, whom you know—”

“Yes.”

“And Surill, whom I believe you have not met.”

“Correct. Who is he?”

“She. She currently leads Morrolan’s circle of witches.”

I had heard that Morrolan had such a circle, though he rarely spoke of them and I never asked.

“They were unable to help, though Surill said she had tried to reach Morrolan through her own means as well. So I sent a messenger to Dzur Mountain, to Sethra Lavode.”

“A messenger? Why?”

“To get her a message.”

“But—”

“I don’t know her well enough for direct contact, Vlad. Not everyone does, you know.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling sheepish.

“She sent a message back asking me to visit her at Dzur Mountain, so I did.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s the old place holding up?”

Teldra gave me a look. “We had a long talk. Sethra ex­plained to me about Phoenix Stone, gold and black, and the blocking of psychic contact. She also, in my opinion, seemed worried.”

“To paraphrase Seapur,” I put in, “if Sethra’s scared, then I’m scared.”

“Yes,” said Teldra. “Your name came up.”

“How did that happen?”

“In connection with gold and black Phoenix Stone.”

I fingered the cords I wore around my neck, which had a sample of each. “Yes,” I said. Then, “What if they’re already dead?”

“They aren’t.”

“Who told you that?”

“The Necromancer.”

“Ah. Yes. Well. She’d know, wouldn’t she?”

“Sethra believes you can help find them.”

“Did she say how?”

“Not exactly. She mentioned something about Aliera’s Great Weapon, Pathfinder, and some sort of link between it and some artifact you carry.”

“Spellbreaker,” I said.

“She didn’t give it a name.”

“That’s the name,” I said. “What does she want me to do?”

“Return with me to Dzur Mountain.” I drank some coffee.

“Boss, it isn’t the same as returning to Adrilankha.”

“I know that, Loiosh.”

“If you’ll be safe anywhere—”

“I know, Loiosh.”

“And if there’s anyone you owe—”

“I know, Loiosh.”

“Sethra thinks I can help?”

“She does.”

“And she thinks Morrolan and Aliera might be in trouble?”

“She thinks it probable.”

I considered a little longer. Teldra was courteously silent. Exactly why I had to consider, I don’t know; certainly the idea of returning to any of my old haunts, when the Jhereg had a large price on my head, was scary; but there was never any doubt about how I would decide. I guess I just needed a few minutes to work it through my viscera.

I had just about decided when Teldra said, “Vlad, it would be wrong of me to put unfair pressure on you, but—”

“Oh, go ahead, Teldra. What is it?”‘

“Do you remember Sethra’s servant?”

“Tukko. Yes.”

“He knows how to brew klava.”

“He does? Verra! What are we hanging around here for?”

“I’ll pay the shot,” she offered politely. 2. Being a Good Listener

This is, I suppose, as good a time as any to tell you a little bit about myself. I was born human in a world of Dragaerans, an outcast in their Empire, so I learned how to get paid for killing them. Small, weak, and short-lived by their standards, I learned how to seem larger, stronger, and to stay alive. I became a part of a vast criminal domain within the Empire; got married, had my marriage fall apart, and so angered the Organization that, as I said earlier, they were now avidly hunting for me.

That’s enough for now; it’s too depressing to dwell on. Be­sides, I didn’t have much time to think about it, because soon we had walked beyond the edge of Appertown, and Teldra said, “If you would remove the Phoenix Stone, can you be teleported? That is, if it is still on your person?”

“Yes,” I said. “I keep a small box with me that I can put them in. It’s made of—never mind. As long as the stones are in the box, they have no effect.”

“Then, if you please, do so.”

I swallowed. I had no reason not to trust Teldra—I did trust Teldra. But it still wasn’t easy to bring myself to remove the artifacts that had protected and hidden me for the last few years. While I was hesitating, she was standing, motionless, with the air of one who expected to be waiting for a long time and had no trouble doing so.

I removed the cord from around my neck and secreted it away. The instant I closed the box, I felt horribly vulnerable. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I kept slipping into Loiosh’s mind to see, through him, if I smelled anything suspicious in the area.

“Relax, Boss. Even if they detect you instantly, they can’t—”

“I know.”

“I apologize,” said Teldra, “for the discomfort of the teleport.”

I didn’t say anything. In fact, thanks to an amulet I had of my grandfather, there would be no discomfort; were I an Issola, I’d have told her. But then, were I an Issola, I wouldn’t be in this situation.

Teldra closed her eyes. Her lips began to move soundlessly, which is something some people do when in psychic contact; presumably she was in touch with Sethra, but I couldn’t ask without interrupting her, and that, of course, would be rude. Presently her eyes opened. She nodded to me, accompanying the nod with a gracious smile, and beckoned. I took a step closer to her; there was a moment of disorientation, and I stood in a place I had thought never to see again: the Grand Hall of Sethra’s Keep high in. Dzur Mountain.

I’ve heard it said, “By his home shall you know him,” and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and the auxiliary verb in his sentence, so let me tell you a bit about the home of Sethra Lavode. A bit is all I can tell you, because I don’t know Dzur Mountain all that well. For example, I can’t tell you how far down into the mountain her dwelling extends. I’ve been told that the mountain is riddled with natural caves, caverns, and tunnels, and that some of these connect to the areas she has carved out for herself.

One of these was where I had first appeared, long ago, in the company of Morrolan. It had seemed then that I was deep in the heart of the mountain and had to climb a long stone stairway to its peak; I have since learned that I was close to the top, and that when I emerged in Sethra’s living area we were hardly closer: Dzur Mountain is very, very big.

She had a library, but somehow I had never gotten around to inspecting it, so I can’t tell you what she reads. On one side of the library are a few well if plainly furnished guest rooms, some of which I have used from time to time; on the other is a wide spiral stairway that leads up to the kitchen, or down to a hallway from which one can reach one of three dining rooms of various sizes, two of which I’d eaten in, and the third of which, the Grand Hall, I stood in now; a sitting room where I’d once insulted Sethra (an insult stopping just smoke’s weight short of mortal); and two doors that go I know not where. At the end of the corridor is another spiral stairway: I don’t know where this one leads to going down, or how it goes up, because it seems to me that it should lead directly up into the middle of the library, but there isn’t a stairway there.

There is little decoration. It is as if, over the millennia, she had lost patience for anything that attempted to brighten what was naturally dark, ornament what was naturally plain, enliven what was naturally severe. There were no bright colors in Dzur Mountain, yet nothing was rough; rather everything was sub­dued but smooth, as if her home were a monument to the effects of time. Her furnishings were all simple and comfortable, with cushions on hard stone chairs and light provided mostly by sim­ple oil lamps or candles. There was little to show her history; or, indeed, that she had a history—that is, her home was no­ticeably lacking in those oddities one picks up over the years as gifts from friends, or objects acquired from traveling, or trophies won from enemies. The one thing of that kind was in the library, where there was a device covered in glass, with spinning metal inside. I had asked her about it, but Sethra denied knowing what it actually was and refused to say how she had acquired it or why she valued it. Other than that, as I say, there was nothing to which one could point and say, “Sethra Lavode has this ob­ject because it means something to her.”

I admit that I have, from time to time, speculated on why she had arranged her home like that, but I kept coming up against the same question: Were I somehow to achieve her age, how would I want to surround myself? And to this question I could not know the answer, which would always end the spec­ulation, leaving me only observations.

And that about concludes what I know about the home of Sethra Lavode—not much, considering how often I’ve been there. I’ve heard a great deal more, of course, running from the probable to the preposterous: labyrinths deep within the moun­tain where she conducts monstrous experiments; high towers in the very peak where she communes with the dead; hidden passageways to the Halls of Judgment; concealed rooms full of treasure; and so on. But I don’t know anything about these (except I can pretty well deny the passageway to the Halls of Judgment: if that really exists, she owes me an apology for sending me the hard way). Little is known, more is suspected, and much is guessed at.

And there you have Sethra Lavode as well, which ought to prove the point about reversing the subject and the auxiliary verb.

I didn’t see Sethra at once, so I turned around, and there she was: tall, pale, undead; she had forgotten more of sorcery, even the forbidden sorcery of the ancient world, than anyone else would ever learn. She was a vampire, but it didn’t seem to bother her much; and to those who told stories of her it was almost superfluous, like hearing that the guy who is going to cut your heart out plans to kick you in the shin when he’s done. Her origin was in prehistory, and some had come to believe that she was the living personification of the world itself, that it would end when she ended. I doubted this myself: I mislike the idea of a living personification being undead.

Her features were those of a Dragonlord, except that, if one looked for it (as I did), one could see hints of the Dzurlord in the shape of her ears and her eyes. She dressed in black, black, black—the only hints of color upon her today were a red stone about her neck, a yellow stone on a ring on her right hand, and the blue hilt of Iceflame at her hip. She wore enigma as if it had been created for her alone.

Teldra bowed to her very deeply—more deeply than I had ever seen her bow before. Sethra acknowledged it as if it were her due. I nodded, Sethra nodded back.

“Sethra Lavode,” I said. “It has been some time.” Now, there was an ambiguous remark for her to play with if she cared to.

She didn’t. She held out her arm, and Loiosh flew to her, al­lowed his chin to be scratched, and then, just to show his high regard for her, he bent his head to allow her to scratch the scales that concealed his ears: a special mark of honor, because jhereg are very protective of their ears. I don’t know if Sethra appre­ciated the honor. While she paid attention to Loiosh, I pulled the box from my pouch, opened it, and put the cord back around my neck. I felt better right away.

“Welcome to my home,” said the Dark Lady of Dzur Moun­tain. “Please come with me.”

“Always a pleasure,” I said, and we followed her up to the sitting room, where she asked if we cared for wine.

“Klava,” I said. “I was promised klava.”

Sethra smiled. “And you?” she asked Teldra. “The same?”

“If you please.”

Tukko emerged, shuffling, blinking, and twitching.

“Klava,” said Sethra Lavode.

Tukko did an imitation of a snake testing the air, gave a twitch that might have been a nod, and shuffled out again.

I watched him leave by a far door. “Just how old is he?” I asked.

“Younger than I am,” said Sethra.

I nodded. “I just asked to give you another chance to be enigmatic.”

“I know.” She studied me. “You are looking well, Vlad.”

“The outdoor life agrees with me,” I said.

She went through the motions of smiling, and said, “And you, Lady Teldra. It is good of you to come, and I thank you for bringing our wandering Easterner with you.”

“It was only my duty, Lady,” said Teldra. “I must, in turn, thank you for your help, and your hospitality.”

The mention of hospitality was Tukko’s cue to emerge with a tray bearing two mugs of klava, a jar of honey, and a pot of thick cream. Teldra received hers with a smile of thanks; she took her klava as it came. I fiddled with mine until it looked right. It tasted right, too. I had missed it even more than I thought I had.

“The simple pleasures of civilization,” I said. “I haven’t tasted klava since Northport.”

Sethra didn’t bat an eye at the mention of Northport, even though—never mind. She said, “Perhaps we should turn our attention to business. Or would you rather wait until you’ve finished your drinks?”

“No, no,” I said. “Drinking klava while talking business brings back all sorts of pleasant memories of happier days when I could sit around with like-minded fellows, contemplate my various af­fairs, and decide whose leg should be broken that morning.”

Neither of them gave me the satisfaction of reacting, but Loiosh said, “You’re so sentimental, Boss, that I almost can’t stand it,” and flew back to my shoulder, evening up the weight. Rocza, by the way, had not moved the entire time. Presently, Tukko returned, this time with a tray full of some kind of raw dead thing, and set it down on the stone table in front of me. Loiosh and Rocza flew down and began nibbling. Neither Sethra nor Teldra jumped when they flew down. This is significant because pretty much anyone will be startled by a winged thing suddenly flying right in front of him.

I noticed for the first time that Tukko’s hands always seemed to shake, but when he was carrying a tray, the tray never shook. I wondered if his various ills were an act, and, if so, why?

“I thank you on behalf of my familiar,” I said.

“You and they are most welcome,” said Sethra.

I sipped more klava. Damn, but I had missed that stuff.

“Morrolan and Aliera are both alive,” said Sethra abruptly. “Or, at least, they were alive yesterday. They have, therefore, achieved a state where we cannot communicate with them. That means they are either surrounded by gold Phoenix Stone, or they have left the confines of our world. And, until we know oth­erwise, we must assume they are being held against their will, and that must involve someone with a great deal of power—perhaps even a god, though I consider that unlikely. No, I fear what we are facing is rather more powerful than a god.”

“Good,” I said. “I wouldn’t want it to be too easy.”

“No, Vlad. Wrong response. You should say, ‘How can I help?’”

I snorted. “If I say that, you’re liable to tell me.”

“There’s that danger,” she admitted.

“What do you think happened?”

“I have no idea.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sethra.”

“Vlad!” said Sethra and Teldra together, in entirely different tones.

“Oh, stop it. Sethra, my whole lifetime has been less than the flap of a wing to you, but to me, I’ve known you for a long time. You wouldn’t have sent for me without knowing some­thing, or at least having a strong suspicion.”

“Vlad—”

“No, Sethra. Don’t even. Morrolan used to pull that stuff on me. Go, do this, but I’m not going to tell you any of the reasons behind it. My bosses in the Jhereg were experts at it: Kill this guy, you don’t need to know what he did. I’m done with that sort of rubbish. Where are Morrolan and Aliera, why are they missing, and what is all the other stuff you aren’t telling me?”

Lady Teldra opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “No,” I said. “I won’t go into it like this. I want to know.”

“Do you, then?” said Sethra, almost whispering. There was something in her voice I had never heard before: something chilling, and powerful, and very dark. I was in the presence of the Enchantress of Dzur Mountain, and I was daring to question her. For one of the few times since I’d known her, I felt the power of legend bearing down on me; I sat there, silent, and took it; I could say nothing, but I didn’t crumble, either. She said, “Do you really want to know, Vladimir Taltos, Easterner, Jhereg, and renegade?”

“Yes,” I said, though it took considerable effort; and even more effort to keep my voice level.

“And if I don’t tell you, what then? You’ll leave Morrolan e’Drien and Aliera e’Kieron to their fate? Is that what you’re telling me?”

I looked into her eyes, which I discovered I had been avoiding. They were black and went on far past forever; the focus on me was terrible. I controlled my breathing as if I were fencing, or reaching the climax of a spell. “Are you going to make this a test of wills, Sethra? Is that it? You will threaten to leave them to their fate if I won’t help, or I must threaten if you won’t answer my questions? Is that how you want to play this game?”

“I don’t want to make it a game, Vladimir Taltos.”

Looking into her eyes, I saw again Aliera’s face as I returned to life after the Sword and the Dagger of the Jhereg had taken me down; and I saw Morrolan in his Great Hall defending me from the Sorceress in Green, and, I recalled faces, incidents, and conversations that I didn’t want to remember. Then I cursed. “All right,” I said. “If you push it, you’ll win. You’re right. I owe them both too much. If one of us needs to back down, I will—I’ll go run your Verra-be-damned errand for you, like a two-orb street Orca hired to bust heads. But—”

“Then I’ll answer your questions,” said Sethra, and I shut my mouth before I made things worse. “I’ll answer you,” said Sethra, “because you’re right, you deserve to know. But I will speak of matters I have no wish to reveal so, damn you, be grateful.”

“I’ll be grateful,” I said.

Teldra stood abruptly. “I shall be in the library,” she said, “in case you—”

“Please,” said Sethra. “I wish you to stay.”

“I ... very well,” said Lady Teldra, and sat down again.

Tukko emerged, and I realized that my klava had gotten cold. He replaced it, freshened Teldra’s, and left.

“Where should I begin?” she mused. I held my tongue in check and waited.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I should ask: Who are the gods? No, I’ve already taken a false step. That is not the question: Ask, rather, What are the gods? What freaks of chance, what hidden talents, what cataclysmic events combined to produce those whom your people worship, and mine strive to emulate? What are they, why are they, what do they do? Is their power acquired only because there are those who worship them? Is their power, in fact, imaginary? There are no simple answers to the question you have asked, because everything is tied to everything else.”

I drank klava, and listened.

“Part of the answer to the question I have posed is this: The gods are beings who are able to manifest in at least two places at once, and yet who are not subject to the forcible control of any other being; this latter marking the difference between a god and a demon.” That much, actually, I knew already, but I let her continue. “An interesting ability, and one that implies many others. The Jenoine, for all their talents and skills, cannot be in two places at once. Many of the gods, of course, can be in many, many places at once. I don’t understand entirely how it works; I am neither god nor demon.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a demon,” I said. “Unless a certain Jhereg who goes by that name means it more literally than I think he does.”

“You have,” said Sethra. “The Necromancer.”

I stared. “She’s a demon?”

“Yes. But I suggest you don’t try to control her; she is liable to take it wrong.”

“I’ll take that advice to heart.”

She nodded and continued. “As I say, this one skill implies many others. How did they acquire this skill? Some of the younger ones have been taught by some of the older ones; I was once of­fered godhood. But this still begs the question: Whence came the oldest of the gods, and how did they acquire their abilities?

“We must go back a long way, Vlad. A long way even to me. Before the Empire, and even before the thirty-one tribes that became the Empire.”

“Wait. Thirty-one?”

“Yes.”

“Uh ... why thirty-one? I mean, is the number significant of anything?”

“Not as far as I know. It’s just the number of tribes there happened to be then. And please don’t interrupt; this is difficult enough.”

“I’ll try.”

She nodded. “Your people came first, my good Easterner. I imagine that doesn’t startle you, perhaps you guessed it, or were told something of the kind by Aliera, who indulges in much enlightened speculation. Well, I tell you now what is no guess: Your people predate mine. How they came here, I do not know, but I know they arrived, they were not produced by Nature, as were the dragon, the dzur, the jhereg, and the Serioli. Yet even these were changed by—but no, all things in their proper time.

“Your people were here, though in what state I cannot say, and the animals, and were found here by others, by those we call the Jenoine. I don’t know what they call themselves, and I don’t know where they’re from, except that it isn’t here. They came here, as your people came here, only later.”

Yes, I had known some of this before, too.

“There is so much we don’t know, Vlad; that we can’t know. I have said nothing of what I saw, what I later learned, what I have since deduced, because of all that I don’t know. Were those who came here representative of all Jenoine? Were their actions typical? What were their motives when they arrived, and how did these motives change? Is the word ‘motive,’ as we understand it, even meaningful when discussing them?”

That was a rhetorical question if I’d ever heard one, so I didn’t answer it.

“You have met Verra, her you call the Demon Goddess. That name—but never mind that now. She is of yet another species, and was brought to this world as a servant of the Jenoine. She was there when they began their experiments with the plants and the trees, and then with the animals, and then with the people who came to be called Easterners: changing some of them a little, some of them a great deal, some of them not at all. Improving, in certain cases, upon them: extending their lifespans and the abilities of their minds, and making into them the people who came to be called Human. Yes, Vlad, our beings and even our languages come from your people, and you can take whatever pride in that you care to. Aliera, of course, refuses to believe it, but it is true.”

I had a pleasant moment imagining taunting Aliera about that, but Sethra was still speaking.

“From what Verra has said, I would guess that they were, in their own minds, benevolent; but one must sift her words to dis­cover this, for she hates them. She was their servant, and they were not kind to her. For that matter, she was not kind to them, either. Of this, I know only what hints she has dropped, and a few words from Barlen, her consort, but it is clear that it was Verra, and a few others, who sabotaged their work, who created the Great Sea of Amorphia, who unleashed upon the world that which we call sorcery, who themselves became the first of those we know as gods, and who destroyed all of the Jenoine who then lived on this world.

“I have lived through Adron’s Disaster, in which those same powers were unleashed a second time upon the world, and the Lesser Sea was created. The Great Sea, in area, is seven times that of the Lesser Sea; I cannot, in my own mind, imagine the cataclysm of the moment when it came into being, that instant when for the first time the Unknowable took form.”

This was something I didn’t care to imagine.

“But,” continued Sethra before I had to mentally go there, “the Unknowable is, by definition, formlessness: the totality of content, with nonexistence of form. What happens when the Unknowable takes form? One answer is, it ceases to be unknow­able. As soon as there was a Sea of Amorphia, there had, sooner or later, to be a Goddess named Verra to codify and define the Elder Sorcery that could manipulate it; and a Serioli named Clylng Fr’ngtha that made the Elder Sorcery tangible by em­bodying it in objects blurring the distinction between animate and inanimate; and a Human”—she meant a Dragaeran—“named Zerika to craft an Orb that would make this power subject to any mind that could discipline itself to learn the patterns and codes by which the Orb translated the raw power of amor­phia into the fingers that shape reality. Now the Unknowable is knowable again, and it is a power such as exists, so far as I know and so far as the Necromancer has been able to discover, nowhere else in the universe—in any universe, for there is more than one, as the Necromancer has demonstrated.”

I had some trouble with this, but just sort of mentally stored it away for future consideration, and kept listening.

“So in our world, thanks to the gods, there exists this power, and, somewhere, are the Jenoine, filled with lust for the power, and hatred for those who destroyed their brethren—or so I be­lieve we might think of their feelings and not be too far from the truth.

“Who is it, Vlad, who might protect us from this jealous and angry species, who see us all as the rebellious objects of science—as test subjects placed in a maze who not only escaped it, but killed the observers and now in their arrogance operate the maze as they please and will not let those who built it so much as observe? Who might protect us from the Jenoine?”

I guessed what the answer was going to be, and I was right, but I didn’t interrupt.

“The gods,” said Sethra. “Above all else, that is their task.

“The place we call the Paths of the Dead sits, as I think you know better than most, both in and out of our world, and at its heart is the place we call the Halls of Judgment, because our legends tell us that this is where we go upon death to have our lives judged. And, as far as it goes, this is the truth. I know how your mind works by now, Vlad, and I see the glimmer of un­derstanding in your eyes; I suspect that you begin to glimpse the true purpose of the Halls of Judgment.”

I swallowed. She was right, I was getting a glimmering.

“Yes,” she said. “It is there that the gods sift souls as a Serioli sifts for gold in a mountain stream. The gods search for those who can be useful to them in their long war. It is in the Halls of Judgment that they sometimes glimpse pieces of what to us is the future, and try to interpret these glimpses, and prepare to meet each threat as it develops. And as they sit those who are considered worthy are brought to them, upon death, for this reason. It is a way of building the forces to protect their world.”

“Their world?” I said, catching significance in that.

She nodded. “Yes. Their world, not ours.”

“I see.”

“Yes. As they review the dead, some they have no use for; these are allowed to reincarnate, or are taken to be servants in the Paths of the Dead—those who wear the Purple Robes. Others have skills that might someday be useful, and those are held in the Paths of the Dead against that use, or reincarnated into circum­stances where their skills can develop. A few study for the Godhood themselves, and a tiny number are sent out once more, as Undead, because their usefulness in the world has not expired with their lives. I became one of these latter some years ago.”

I nodded. “Okay, I think I’m starting to get it.”

“Yes? But here is where it starts becoming complicated.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Stop it,” she said. “That expression is not your most en­dearing. Listen and try to understand.”

I sighed. “All right.”

She nodded. “I have told you about the gods and the Jen­oine, but there are other factors, and chief of these are the Ser­ioli. You have never met one, but—You have? I didn’t know or have forgotten. But I am sure you know little about them. I know little about them, though I have had more to do with them than any other human being in the world.

“The Serioli are native to the world, which neither your peo­ple nor mine are. In some measure, perhaps they resent us both, though most of them recognize that we are not responsible for what has been done to us. But above all, they resent the gods, be­cause the gods, in a very real way, rule the world. The Serioli did not evolve as a people to be ruled—who would so evolve?

“It was the gods who sent the dreams that inspired Kieron the Conqueror to gather the tribes and move east, and the vi­sions that led Zerika to create the Orb; thus it was the gods who created the Empire that drove the Serioli from their homes, that destroyed much of their culture, killed many of them in battles. They—and while it is hard to speak of a whole people as if they had a single voice, here I think I am not too wrong—they hate the gods. This does not always make them friends of the Jenoine, but it does make them the enemies of the gods. Do you see?”

“I think so,” I said slowly.

“And some of the Serioli believe that an enemy of their enemy must be their friend.”

I nodded.

“The gods,” she continued, “are forever seeking ways to seal our world, so the Jenoine cannot reach us. And factions among the Serioli keep searching for ways to allow the Jenoine access. And into this conflict come those Serioli who, years ago, crafted those half-living, half-inanimate artifacts called the Great Weapons, each of which is, in one way or another, obviously or not, directed against the gods.”

I blinked. “The Great Weapons are—but that doesn’t make any sense. Why—? Okay, never mind. Keep going.”

“I never said it would be simple.”

“Yeah.”

“Where was I? Ah, yes: the Great Weapons. Jenoine are very hard to kill, Vlad. We know of no poison that works on them, their internal organs are duplicated; they have no spine to sever, and they have an almost perfect natural immunity to the disrup­tive effects of amorphia. They regenerate when injured, and I have seen them, on more than one occasion, resist even powerful Morganti weapons, as if their very souls are hidden away from their bodies. But this cannot be, because the Great Weapons can kill Jenoine. The Great Weapons are the only reliable way to kill Jenoine—if you can survive long enough to find a way to strike, and if you don’t miss and if they fail to defend against it.

“Do you see the contradiction, Vlad? Do you see the irony?”

“Yeah, I’m always good with irony.”

“I know. You always have been, even in the days before the Empire I remember that about you.”

“I ... okay.”

“Do you see it?”

I nodded. “The Great Weapons were created to destroy the gods, but now they’re being used to defend the gods. Cute.”

“Yes. We who carry the Great Weapons are the appointed of the gods—even those of us who, like Zungaron—”

“Who?”

“Never mind. Even those of us who have one only by accident and have not the least clue what it is for, or what to do with it. If we defy the gods, by intention or accident, we are likely to find life difficult. And yet, we are the only humans whom the gods have reason to fear, and to hate.”

I blinked. “I’ve never envied you, Sethra. Now I envy you even less.”

She smiled. “The result,” she said, “is that we must look out for each other—the reasons for that should be obvious.” I nodded.

“The gods hate our weapons and need us who wield them; the Jenoine fear our weapons and hate the gods. Do you understand?” I nodded again.

“Think back to your own past, Vlad: I know what Aliera told you about your past lives, so consider her words now. Millennia ago, back in the days when we were creating an Empire, though only Zerika knew that we were doing so, the seeds of all of this were planted. Consider those you know of who were once your family, and those who mattered to you in a time too faded in the mist for you to imagine, much less remember. Kieron is now, and remains in the Paths of the Dead awaiting his moment. I, who had some importance in the tribe, am here, watching the Great Weapons, observing the Jenoine, listening to the gods, and trying to see that nothing upsets the balance.

“I think we were all, even then, marked out by the gods. I can’t say I like it much, or that you should, but there it is. Now Aliera has been taken, and Morrolan as well. Who could and would take them both?

“A human agency? I wonder if there is anyone who could take two such as Aliera and Morrolan, and hide them from me. But, even if such a person exists, he could not hide them from the Necromancer. If there was a human involvement, then, it was in the service of someone more powerful.

“The gods? An unlikely possibility, but one that cannot be overlooked. I did not overlook it; I have ways of finding out such things, I used them, and I believe the gods have nothing to do with this; indeed, some of them are rather concerned by it. Perhaps a rogue god, and this could still be true, but such a one would have trouble hiding from Trout, who knows the motives of the gods. No, I do not believe it was any of the gods.

“A demon? No, the demons have their own lives, and no concern for our world, except when they are summoned; and that only begs the question of who did the summoning and why?

“The Serioli? I doubt it, because I have never heard of them doing anything of the kind, but I hope it is the Serioli, because if it is not them, then it is the Jenoine. The Jenoine, who wish the weapons to be used against the gods—which, after all, is what they were designed for.

“I know you, Vlad: you are uncomfortable with things like causes and reasons, however much you ask for them. And however much you protest, you are and always have been happiest when you had a single task you could accomplish, without worrying about the whys and the consequences. Well, but you asked, and so I answer. Our friends are in danger. And it may be that much else is in danger as well; until we know more, it is im­possible to say for certain if this is part of a move against the Empire, but we certainly must be aware of the possibility. You may be able to help ward off a threat to the Empire, you may have the means of helping those who are your friends and mine; it seems to me that you certainly have a duty to try, and I would have told you nothing except that, but you wanted the whole story. The whole story would have taken longer to tell than you expect to live, Easterner, but at least I gave you a piece of it. I hope you’re happy.” 3. Dropping in Unexpectedly

Once again I had allowed my klava to get cold; once again Tukko appeared and brought me more.

All right, so the Jenoine had taken short, cocky Aliera, and tall, arrogant Morrolan, her cousin. I confess that a little part of me was pleased that someone had shown them they weren’t as ultimately tough as they acted. But other parts of me couldn’t forget that, well, that we’d all saved each other’s lives more than once, and that they had both been kind to me when they had no good reason to, and that, however irritating I might find them, we had a lot of history among the three of us, and, though it hurt to admit it, even some affection.

I spent a moment reliving memories that I won’t share with you. Preparing and drinking the klava brought me back, at least to the point where I was able to speak. “Of course I’ll do what I can, but saving the world just isn’t my style, Sethra. I specialize in smaller things: breaking legs, collecting debts, knocking off the occasional squealer. You know, small stuff.”

Neither she nor Teldra replied. At length I said, “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

“There is a procedure,” she said, “that I believe might work. You must be the one to do it, however.”

“Uh ... if I ask why me, will I get an answer lasting less than an hour?”

“Because you have the chain you call Spellbreaker.”

“I see. Well, actually, I don’t.”

“Use Spellbreaker to make contact with Blackwand, then follow the link through one of Morrolan’s windows.”

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s it. Your artifact should be able to connect to the Great Weapon, even across necromantic boundaries, because Blackwand should always be able to sense, at some level, what is happening in those windows. Or so I think. It will either work, or it won’t.”

“Yeah, I imagine those are the options. The question is, what then? I mean, if it works, what do I do?”

“Improvise.”

“Improvise?”

“How can I say what to do, when I don’t know where you are going, or what you will find there?”

“You know I don’t care much for improvising.”

“I know. But you are good at it.”

“Thank you so much.”

“And you don’t rely on sorcery; you have other abilities.”

“Great. Once I open up the way, if it works, and I get there, if I do, will I have any help?”

“What about me, Boss?”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

“No,” said Sethra. “There will be none to give you.”

“I see. I just go in, and improvise. While I’m improvising. what will you be doing?”

“Waiting.”

“Can you, I don’t know, keep an eye on me? Maybe yank me back if I get in over my head?”

“I don’t know how. If I can’t reach them where they are, I don’t know how I’d be able to watch you there.”

“Uh ... magic?”

“If sorcery worked there, I don’t think we’d be having this problem, and I can’t think what other magic we might use. Un­like you, I’m not a witch.”

“If you’d asked, I could have taught you. But you’re saying that witchcraft will still function?”

“It should; that’s one reason I wanted you for this.”

“Witchcraft is not usually useful—”

“Have you forgotten the Paths of the Dead, Vlad?”

“I’ve tried to.” I had visited the place where the dead hang around like old Dragonlords with no battles to fight except the ones they’ve already lost, and, even though I was living at the time, I just didn’t enjoy the experience enough to dwell on the memory.

She didn’t answer. I said, “How about the Necromancer?”

She cocked her head to the side. “That is a thought, Vlad. And not a bad one at that.”

“See what a good vacation will do for the creative powers?”

“I’ll speak to her.”

I ran it through my mind. “Sethra, do you understand what you’re asking me to do?”

“Yes.”

Yes, of course she did. She was, to begin with, a Dragon; moreover she had led armies. She had no problem ordering peo­ple off to get killed—it was a way of life for her.

“Before I go jumping into this, tell me one thing: Do you have any reason to believe I might get out of this alive?”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” she said. “I have a high regard for your skills.”

“Ah. My skills. Well, that’s reassuring.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Vlad.”

Anything else I said would sound self-pitying, so I shut up; but Teldra said, “I will go along.”

Sethra and I looked at her. She had said it as if she were announcing the wine she intended to serve with dinner.

“Teldra,” said Sethra at last. “I am not certain you are qual­ified for this mission.”

“Perhaps I am not,” she said. “But I am not quite as helpless as you, perhaps, believe I am.”

“Nevertheless,” said Sethra. “This is the kind of activity that Vlad is trained for”—this, by the way, was news to me—“and you are not.”

“Are you certain of that, Lady?” said Teldra. “I speak not of Vlad’s training, but perhaps with what lies before us, my talents would not be useless.”

“I see,” said Sechra slowly, considering her words. Sethra had obviously picked up some meaning that had escaped me entirely “Yes, you may be right after all.”

I said, “Sethra, would you mind explaining this to me? I think I’m missing something.”

“Yes, I believe you are.” said Sethra.

“It is difficult to explain,” said Teldra. “But, if you wish—”

“I’m changing my mind about explanations,” I said. “Just tell me if I need to know.”

“You don’t need to know,” said Sethra.

Teldra said, “And then?”

“Yes, you ought to go along.”

“Then let us begin at once,” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Is there a reason to wait, Vlad, or is it that you need time to gather your nerve.”

“No, my nerve is far too scattered for mere time to gather it. But if I’m going to go off and get killed I’m going to finish my Verra-be-damned klava first. Now please give me some peace to enjoy it.”

Sethra smiled. “Do you know, Vlad, whatever happens to you, you do certainly remain yourself.”

“That’s good. I haven’t had as much practice being me as you have being you. But does that mean I get to finish my klava?”

“By all means,” said Sethra. “While you do so, I’ll attempt to reach the Necromancer.”

Sethra’s face went blank and I stopped watching her, because it is rude to watch the face of someone having a psychic conversation with another, and it was hard for me to be rude while Lady Teldra was sitting there. I drank klava. It really was very good.

“The Necromancer,” said Sethra presently, “will be there, and will attempt to monitor the proceedings, but she cannot guarantee her success.”

I grunted and drank the rest of my klava. I enjoyed it. I remain grateful that they permitted it. Sethra still seemed to be amused. I could not, of course, guess what Teldra was thinking. “Okay,” I said at last. “I’m done. Let’s go get killed. Is everybody ready?”

Sethra shrugged. “For now, I have nothing to do.”

“The teleport,” I said. “I’m a little out of practice.”

“Very well, I think I can manage that.” I hid the two specimens of Phoenix Stone, one gold and one black, in their box, and once more I felt naked, but I was too frightened by the idea of the Jenoine to let a little thing like the Jhereg worry me unduly. Isn’t it funny how the tiniest change in circumstances can alter all of your priorities?

“Ready, Loiosh?”

“Oh, sure, Boss. Couldn’t be better.”

“Ready,” I told Sethra. Teldra stood next to me, and Sethra, without, so far as I could tell, so much as furrowing her brow, caused the sitting to room to vanish, and the courtyard of Castle Black to appear around me.

I felt like saying hello to it; I had a lot of memories tied up in that place, and not all of them were even bad. It was big, and it was a castle, and it was made all of black marble shot through with veins of silver, and it floated a mile or so in the air, and no one except me thought there was anything strange about that.

I guess you could say similar things about Morrolan, if you wanted to return to an earlier theme. I replaced the cord about my neck.

“I propose,” I said, “that we head straight up the Tower and do this, or at least attempt it, because I don’t want to give myself time to think about it.”

“Very well,” said Teldra.

The familiar doors opened to us as we approached them. I said, “Are you not frightened at all?”

“Would you rather I were, Vlad?”

“Good question. I’m not sure.”

In and up and around and about; and add a few more prep­ositions to the mix, and eventually we were climbing the narrow metal staircase up to Morrolan’s Tower. I’d been there before. It was not one of the places I missed.

“There ought to be a guardian here,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“We shouldn’t be able to just walk up and do this. We ought to have to fight our way past some sort of legendary half-man half-monster that has guarded this place since the beginning of time, and cannot be harmed by any weapon, nor moved by any words, nor evaded by any motion.”

“I see,” said Teldra. “Why?”

“I don’t know. A warm-up for the rough stuff.”

“Do irony and grey laughter help ease your fears?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Was that a rude question on my part?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you on that.”

I pushed open the door over my head. It fell over with a boom and I caught the faint odor of formaldehyde, which I hadn’t remembered from before. I climbed up and looked around. From my previous experience, I knew better than to count the number of windows; besides, all of them except one were covered up. The view out the open one was of a deep purple with pinpoints of light dotting it here and there; it re­minded me a bit of the sky in the East. It actually took me a moment to realize that the Necromancer was already there, standing very still against the curtain between two of the win­dows, Teldra came up behind me and carefully shut the trap­door.

“Vlad,” said the Necromancer. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

I didn’t know how to respond to her; I have never known how to respond to her. In some ways, she was more enigmatic even than Sethra Lavode. She looked creepy; I imagine on purpose. She was thin, even for a Dragaeran, and dressed entirely in dull black, without even silver buttons, and she was very, very pale, and she was an expert in what I think of as death, but, from what I’ve picked up of her conversation, she sees as something entirely different; to her “place” doesn’t mean the same thing as it means to me, nor does “life” or “the soul.” What to the Athyra are issues of epistemology and ontology are to her matters of engineering. I made a fervent wish that I would never arrive in a circumstance where “place” and “life” and “the soul” became matters of engineering.

It is wishes like that that get you in trouble.

How in blazes had I gotten myself mixed up with weirdos like this in the first place?

“Your natural charm, Boss.”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

Once again, I removed the cord from around my neck, and put away the Phoenix Stones. This time, I remember feeling nothing in particular as I did so. I allowed Spellbreaker, a gold chain of small links, just less than two feet in length, to fall into my left hand from where it was coiled around my wrist. I looked at it. It was made of the same substance as the gold Phoenix Stone I had just put away, but it was different. Things had been done to it. Someone, some Serioli smith, I believe, had worked it, shaped it, and made it into something very special—exactly what, I had only gotten hints of over the years, like the Serioli who, when I asked if it was a Great Weapon, said, “Not yet.” Heh.

This time, the links of the chain were very small; perhaps a quarter of an inch long, which meant that there were more of them than on other occasions, when the chain had been, say, fourteen inches long and each link had measured an inch and a half. For some reason, I found the idea that the number of links changed to be more disconcerting than that the overall length of the chain would vary.

I turned my eyes to the window, then back to the chain. In my mind, I drew a picture of Blackwand, Morrolan’s weapon.

Or, rather, I tried to draw a picture of Blackwand; but it kept sliding away from me.

“Help, Loiosh.”

“I’m there, Boss.”

I pictured it in its sheath, though I had seen the damned thing naked. About five feet in length, it was: a longsword, as some called it, the hilt smooth and black, the guard a simple crosspiece, gleaming like silver; on top of the hilt a piece of smooth, glistening black stone, that stone called Verra’s Tears, which was obsidian that had been smoothed away by Black Wa­ter. The scabbard I had seen Morrolan use most recently—he had several—was very plain, and seemed to be leather, although there had to be more to it than that. It was an old sheath, and there were a few threads coming loose at the seams, and a slight tear in the leather near the very top.

With Loiosh’s help, the picture became clear, then very clear, then clear enough that I became frightened, then Lady Teldra was next to me in response to something I said, then there was a motion from around my shoulder, then I sent Spellbreaker out into the window in front of me.

And it all worked, just like Sethra Lavode had said it would.

Shame about that.

The window blurred and shifted, filled with lights, and dark­ness, and indistinct shapes. Herds of animals I didn’t recognize grazed upon green fields beneath a sky that was a peculiar grey; strange appendages like fingers worked upon a small metallic object, striking it with a tool; a mountain peak appeared below me, stark against a sky that was black, black, black; there was an ocean of green, waves that seemed huge and that crashed against the window but didn’t pass through; a young girl who may have been human or Dragaeran and who I might or might not have recognized made impossible eye contact with me; an athyra-like bird screeched horribly and fell along a wooded path, then vanished into nothing as it landed; violet sparks came from a wheel that spun at incredible speeds, though to no purpose I could imagine; a man with a pen made odd scratches on a long roll of parchment; deep under water, a strange creature with scales all of green and yellow worked upon a piece of red fabric, embroidering it with a thin silver needle and blue thread. And all of this with no trace of sound—that, perhaps, the most pe­culiar thing of all.

Now the window shows darkness pierced by flickerings of light as of a storm, the source of the light beyond the scope of my vision, but in those flickerings I see Blackwand, itself, only barely more real than in my vision, until suddenly I realize that, though it is concealed in its sheath, and that sheath attached to a familiar figure, I feel Blackwand; and that tiny portion of my brain, which remains free to have opinions and feelings regrets that we have been successful.

Teldra and I, in perfect unison, following Spellbreaker, took one step forward through the window. There was no sense of disorientation, the way there is when teleporting, nor was there the delay. In a way, I think this made it worse—the changes were sharper than any I had known before, and it was lucky that I didn’t have to defend myself at once. The first thing I noticed was that I felt heavier—perhaps the result of a general protection spell against anyone who doesn’t belong, or it might also be some natural property of the place. The air smelled funny, sort of sweet, with a queer kind of tang in it. There were no sounds; what had seemed to be a flickering light was some sort of dim lamp, forty or fifty feet away, that was hanging from the ceiling and swaying back and forth, and it was in this light that I saw Morrolan and Aliera, which was the second thing that struck me; but the first demanded my immediate attention.

“Loiosh, where is Rocza?” I was, to be honest, surprised at the sinking fear I felt in the pit of my stomach.

“I had her stay behind. I didn’t want to worry about her.”

I was equally surprised by the relief that flooded through me. “You could have told me.”

“It was a last-minute decision.”

I turned my attention to the Dragonlords we had come to rescue. They were both sitting on the floor against a stone wall, with what seemed to be iron manacles on their wrists, and they were both awake. Both had their weapons with them.

Morrolan cleared his throat and said, “Welcome. I find my­self filled with the desire to say something like, ‘What took you so long, Vlad,’ but I fear that you, Lady Teldra, might take it wrong, so I will refrain.”

“Damned decent of you,” I said.

“Hello, Vlad,” said Aliera. “I wondered who she would send into this trap.”

“It’s a trap?” I said. “Why, now, that’s hard to believe.”

Morrolan snorted.

I said, “How did they come to leave you your weapons?”

“Do you imagine,” said Aliera, “that they would be willing to touch them, or even come near them?”

“I see. So you have your weapons, but are unable to move.”

“Well, you probably noticed that you have no link to the Orb.”

“Uh,” I said, because, in fact, in all the disorientation, that little fact had escaped me. “Let’s see if we can get you out of those things.”

“Good luck,” said Aliera.

“Oh?”

I inspected them. There was a fair bit of slack—enough to reach the plain, white ceramic chamber pots a few paces from the wall (the contents of which I didn’t bother to inspect), but not much more. The chain was thick, and seemingly of some material a lot like iron, but smoother, and—

“There’s no lock. They don’t open.”

“Noticed that right away, did you?” said Aliera.

“Bugger,” I suggested. “How did they get them on you in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” said Morrolan.

I looked at them. “Well, so here you are, unable to move, to escape, or to act in any way. Good. There are a number of things I’ve wanted to say to you both over the years.”

“Funny, Vlad,” said Morrolan.

“I thought it was funny, Boss.”

Teldra said, “Do you think our arrival here has been de­tected?”

“I have no way of knowing,” said Morrolan.

“I’d have to assume so,” said Aliera.

“Well,” I said. “That ought to make things more interesting. Does anyone have a suggestion for getting you two out of those manacles?”

“You should have brought Kiera,” said Aliera.

“Yeah,” I said. “Right. What could I have been thinking of to have forgotten to have a Kiera in my pocket?”

I knelt down next to Morrolan and studied the manacles. They were completely smooth, as if they had been created, fully formed, around his wrists out of some material I had never encountered before; something very hard, dull grey, and at least as strong as iron.

“How did you get here?” said Aliera.

“The windows in my tower,” said Morrolan. “He used Spellbreaker to find Pathfinder.”

“Blackwand, actually, but yes.”

“So is the window still open?”

I said, “No,” at the same time Morrolan said, “Yes.”

I said, “Uh, I defer to your expertise.”

“Yes it is,” said Morrolan, “but I know of no way to reach it without using powers to which I have no access from here, so it may as well not be.”

Aliera said, “Have the Jenoine access to such powers?”

“Excuse me?” said Morrolan.

“Can they use your window to reach our world?”

Very softly, under his breath, Morrolan cursed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

“I should imagine,” I said, “that Sethra didn’t, either.”

Morrolan and Aliera were cousins, both of the House of the Dragon. Morrolan was the sort of fellow who would restyle his hair every week or so, and take great care of his nails; and in his youth, had put entire villages to the sword when the mood took him. Aliera was short for a Dragaeran (still taller than me, of course), compact, brilliant, and more fond of a good duel than of any other entertainment you cared to name. They were both better sorcerers than I’ll ever live to be, though a bit over­shadowed by their association with Sethra Lavode; but that only meant they were often underestimated.

They both carried Great Weapons; these were rarely under­estimated.

Morrolan didn’t hate Easterners as much as you’d expect; Aliera didn’t hate me as much as you’d expect. Exactly how I got mixed up with these two is a long story, and probably not worth repeating, but, over the years, it is possible my association with them had done me more good than harm at least up until now.

I studied where the chains from Morrolan’s manacles joined the wall, and there was nothing there to work on—it was as if the chains were built in when the wall was first constructed. The wall itself seemed to be made of stone, except there were no stones in it, just one solid piece, as if someone had carved it out of a mountain. Well, why not? Sethra did something like that. Of course, her walls weren’t so smooth as this.

“They don’t seem to be in a hurry,” I said.

“We can assume,” said Aliera, “until proven otherwise, that they are watching and listening, and, since they know they have us all trapped, they have no need to be in a hurry, and by listening might get useful information from us.”

“Such as the fact that they can use the window to reach our world,” said Morrolan, “which we were just kind enough to tell them.”

“And you are even now repeating, in case they missed it before.”

“As if—”

“Oh, cut it out,” I said. I flipped two fingers to the world in general, just in case they were watching and the gesture was universal, then noticed for the first time that there didn’t seem to be any doors in the room. I took some time to look around the room a little more, feeling all eyes on me, but seeing no need to explain myself. The room was about two hundred feet by a hundred and fifty feet, and empty, save for several tall metal objects that looked a bit like bookshelves, but were devoid of books. Most likely, this was some sort of storage room. And, as far as I could see, there was no way into or out of it. A good way to keep your property from being stolen. I’d have to remember that, in case I ever again had property to protect and the opportunity to protect it.

“There aren’t any doors,” I remarked.

Aliera and Morrolan gave me a look as if I’d just announced that knives were sometimes sharp. Teldra nodded solemnly, but I think she’d already noticed.

I thought about communicating with them psychically, but without the Orb it’s damned difficult, not to mention exhausting.

Morrolan closed his eyes for a moment, then touched the hilt of Blackwand. “No one is listening to us,” he said aloud.

Aliera’s head whipped around, and she stared at him. “How can you know that?”

“Blackwand is not without power, cousin. Nor, for that mat­ter, am I.”

Aliera looked dubious, but didn’t say anything more.

“Hey, Boss, do you think the Necromancer has been able to maintain contact?”

“I’d give whole worlds to know, Loiosh.”

Aloud I said, “Why don’t you guys tell me what happened?” They both started speaking at once, which I ought to have predicted; then they glared at each other. Finally, Aliera nodded toward Morrolan, who shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I was in the library, and then I was here, being used to ornament this wall.”

“I,” said Aliera, “was in my bedchamber.” She said this as if being snatched from the library ought to give Morrolan no cause for complaint.

“You have no idea how it happened?”

“None,” said Aliera. “I was there, then I was here, manacled. I had no sensation of time passing, or that I had lost conscious­ness, although that proves nothing. On the other hand, Path­finder has no sensation of time passing, and that, I believe, does prove something.”

“Blackwand and I had the same experience,” he said. “Which I hope means that they have the ability to transport us, instantly, off our world and into manacles chained to a wall; because if not, it means they have the ability to interfere with a Great Weapon, and then I should be worried.”

I chewed that over, then asked Morrolan, “You had no in­dication that, I don’t know, your security system had been breached?”

“No,” he said.

“Is this something they’ve been able to do any time, and just decided to now? Or do they have something new?”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” said Morrolan.

“This doesn’t give us much to work with,” I suggested. “And I don’t suppose either of you have any suggestions about getting out of here?”

They didn’t.

I studied the chains that held them, and was wondering what it would take to break them, and what to do once they were broken, when Aliera said, “If we could reach Sethra—” which is as far as she got before our hosts finally decided to grace us with their presence. 4. Making Acquaintances

I was looking at Morrolan and Aliera, and saw their eyes suddenly focus on something over my shoulder, so I turned just as Loiosh gave a sort of agitated, undefined psychic squeal. I don’t actually know that they appeared through the floor, but it seemed like it at the time; as if they sort of formed from the floor up. There were two of them.

I said, “Are those—?”

“Yes,” said Morrolan. “That’s what they look like.”

“Heh. They’re ugly enough, anyway.”

It is hard to say what my first impression of them was. I saw them emerge, and my memory supplies their image; I don’t know exactly what I noticed first. They were big—bigger than Dra­ins, I’d say more than nine feet tall, which I ought to have from the size of the ceilings, but that’s the sort of thing I always figure out after the fact. But whereas Dragaerans are at least compared to humans, the Jenoine were broad, heavy, strong-looking, with thick arms, ending in hands with reasonable number of fingers and one thumb per hand, but from where I stood they didn’t seem to have any wrists. Nor hair of any kind. It was hard to see their faces, either, but there seemed to be two large, round eyes, both facing forward, and a mouth of some sort. They were naked, and, as far I could tell, sexless.

And I’ll mention again, because it impressed me so much, that they were very big.

I hated the idea of trying to fight them. I felt Loiosh draw himself up and do the jhereg dance—which is what I call when he tries to make himself look bigger. It is one of the things I don’t make fun of him for, because I’ve caught myself doing the same thing in my own way, although just at the moment I’d have liked to make myself look smaller. Vanishing would have been even better.

“Don’t draw a weapon,” whispered someone, and it took me a moment to realize it was Teldra. I wasn’t certain what good a weapon would do me, so I saw no reason to argue with he Besides, if she had some inkling of an idea about what to do, she was a long way ahead of me. The thought did flash through my mind, in light of what Sethra had told me, to grab, say Pathfinder from Aliera’s side; but laying hands on another’s Great Weapon is as close to certain death as you can come without having Mario after you.

But the thought did make me realize that neither of the Jenoine appeared to be armed. It didn’t take a genius to realize that if they didn’t carry weapons, it was because they didn’t think they’d need any. This was not a comforting thought either.

At some point in there, it hit me that I was now in the presence of the Jenoine, of those half-mythological creatures that were spoken of in whispers, and the subject of as much ignorant speculation as Sethra herself. I had never truly believed in them, and now, here they were, and here was I, and typically I had to worry about what to do about it, and I didn’t have a clue.

Evidently, Lady Teldra did.

She took a step toward them, holding both hands in front of her, palms out, and emitted a series of sounds midway between a cat screeching and a hyena with hiccups.

“Be damned,” murmured Morrolan.

I could see that, whatever else was happening, she had their attention. One of them moved a step closer to her, and, in deep, rasping voice, spoke in the same language. If I could read the expression on that one’s face, I’d guess it was mildly startled—its eyes, at any rate, had widened a little. Do facial expressions translate among species? There was another question for later contemplation. I was getting quite a collection of them. Evidently, I had thought it a good idea at some point to put Spellbreaker away; it was once more wrapped snugly around my wrist. Amazing how light it felt that way, and how much heavier it got once I let it drop into my hand.

“Loiosh, why does my mind wander whenever I’m terrified?”

“It doesn’t, Boss; your mind wanders whenever you’re frustrated because you can’t do anything.”

“Oh.”

“Or maybe it just always wanders and I don’t notice it the rest of the time.”

Teldra spoke again, the Jenoine responded. I waited patiently, like a prisoner whose fate was being settled by a magistrate while he stood helpless. It was enough to bring on the headache. I feel very fortunate not to be subject to the headaches. There were many questions I should have liked to ask Morrolan and Aliera, but I was afraid it wouldn’t be polite to carry on a conversation while Teldra was involved in screeching and coughing with the Jenoine, so I remained patient and tried to look tough and imperturbable—not for the Jenoine, who probably couldn’t tell the difference, but for Morrolan and Aliera, who probably wouldn’t care.

The conversation continued. I couldn’t tell if Teldra was negotiating for our lives, laying down conditions to the Jenoine under which she wouldn’t lay waste to their world, or asking if they knew any good recipes for klava.

I was just wondering if I’d be willing to try their version of klava, when the two Jenoine and Lady Teldra abruptly vanished. No fading, as of a teleport, and none of the shimmering and twisting of form that accompanied necromantic transportation, so this was something else entirely, and what should be surpris­ing about that? Whatever it was, it was fast and neat—there wasn’t even the rush of displaced air that I’m used to, which indicates to me that natural laws were being suspended, and that didn’t surprise me, either.

“They’re gone,” said Morrolan, which was too obvious even for me to make a crack about how obvious it was.

“Now,” said Aliera, “might be a good time to get us out of these.”

“Good idea,” I said. “How do we do that?”

Morrolan ignored me. “If Teldra is involved in negotiations,” he said to Aliera, “we may jeopardize them by—”

“If Teldra is involved in negotiations,” said Aliera, “it is in order to give us time to get out of here.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Here we go,” said Loiosh.

“Lady Teldra,” I cut in, “did not leave our presence willingly.”

That stopped them, at least for a moment. “How do you know that?” snapped Aliera.

“She vanished suddenly, without saying a word about it. It was rude.”

“Good point,” said Morrolan.

Okay, Vlad, I told myself. Teldra has just been taken away by all-powerful, legendary demigods; Sethra and the Necromancer are so far away that the term “distance” is meaningless; and Morrolan and Aliera are chained to a wall by some no doubt magical substance impervious to everything. That leaves you to do something.

Morrolan and Aliera were looking at me, as if they expected the same thing. Well, fine. I tried to figure out what I needed to know, before I could even start formulating a plan. There were so many things. I didn’t know what powers and abilities the Jenoine had, or, except in the most general terms, what their goals might be. Of course, I knew a bit about what Morrolan and Aliera could do, and Teldra—now, Teldra was a nice little mystery herself. I should have insisted on an answer from Sethra about why she was along. What is it she knew, or what skill did she have that ... Hmmmmmm.

“Morrolan, would you mind telling me, just because I’m curious, exactly what Lady Teldra does for you?”

“I don’t understand, Vlad. You’ve seen her. She greets guests, she sees that they get where they are going within the Castle, and that I am informed about arrivals and departures. I thought you knew that.”

“I did. I do. What else does she do?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“No.”

He shrugged. “Well, that’s what she does, enough or not.”

I shook my head. “I’m missing something.”

“He’s an Easterner, Morrolan,” said Aliera. I bit back a smart remark, because Aliera’s observation seemed to elicit an “Oh” expression from Morrolan. He said, “That’s true.”

“Okay,” I said. “What is obvious to you that isn’t to me?”

“The gods,” said Aliera.

“What about them?”

“We consider them guests as well,” said Morrolan. “Permanent guests of our homes, at all times; I had forgotten that you don’t think of them that way.”

“I don’t see the point.”

“Teldra,” said Aliera, “is, in your terms, Morrolan’s High Priestess.”

“Ah ha.”

“Ah ha?” said Morrolan.

“That’s what I was looking for.”

“Why?” said Morrolan and Aliera together, and I felt Loiosh asking the same thing.

“I don’t know exactly. But I knew there had to be some connection there, and some reason Sethra agreed to send her, and because I need to understand all of these connections if I’m going to do anything useful.”

Morrolan shrugged again. “Okay.” he said. “Now you understand the profound truth that someone who knows how to be polite to a Dragonlord, a Teckla, or an Emperor might know how to be polite to a god as well.’’

“Not to mention a Jenoine,” I remarked.

“Yes, a Jenoine, too.”

“And she speaks their language.”

“Obviously.”

“What has that to do with her duties as High Priestess, or whatever?”

“Nothing,” he said. “But she knows many languages. Many Issola do. It’s a custom, such as Dragons knowing how to fight and Jhereg knowing.how to offer a bribe.” I let that go. He said “Is any of this important?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then, perhaps, you might turn your attention to doing something useful.”

“Two problems, Morrolan. First, I’m stumped. Second, Aliera said, if Teldra is talking to them, we may not want irritate them during her negotiations.”

“But as you said, Vlad, she didn’t leave willingly.”

“I know. But are you certain she can’t talk them around? She’s evidently used to dealing with beings who are far more powerful than she is; can you think of a better negotiator?”

He thought about that.

Loiosh said, “I don’t know if we ever want to cross them, Boss. I’m scared of those things.”

“They’re worth.being scared of,” I said. “They’d kill without second thought.”

“I hate to say this, Boss, but so would you.”

“Yeah, but I’m a nice guy.”

“Try Spellbreaker,” said Morrolan. I looked at him. “On the chains,” he said. “Try Spellbreaker.”

I looked at Aliera, who shrugged.

“Can’t hurt,” I said.

“What are you worried about, Boss?”

“Looking ridiculous.”

“It was his idea.”

I let Spellbreaker fall into my hand. It was only about a foot and a half long and the links were nearly an inch long. I took a step forward, and struck the length of chain connecting Morrolan’s right wrist to the wall. The ringing sound was loud, though hearing the sound made me realize the room didn’t echo much as I would have thought it should. Nothing else happened. I felt ridiculous. I wrapped Spellbreaker up again. Morrolan shrugged; evidently he didn’t feel ridiculous.

“If Spellbreaker is still changing, Loiosh, there’s something that is still happening, I mean, something magical, even though we’re no longer at home.”

“Seems reasonable, Boss.”

“And why am I so heavy? It’s like I have to work to lift my arms.”

“Yeah. Don’t expect me to fly anywhere.”

“So, okay, Sethra was wrong. There’s sorcery here. Or, if not sorcery, something else; something that can make us feel heavy, and makes it so hard to breathe. I’d really like to avoid having to fight here.”

“Okay, Boss. But just for the record, where is it you haven’t wanted to avoid fighting?”

That didn’t deserve an answer, so I didn’t give one. About then, I noticed something else, and cursed.

“What is it, Vlad?”

“I’m starting to get light-headed.”

“Oh, that.”

“What does ‘oh, that’ mean?”

Aliera said, “Try to take shallow breaths.”

“Uh ...”

“Try it. If you don’t, you’ll get dizzy.”

“If you say so.”

I tried to make my breaths shallow. At least it didn’t make things any worse. I said, “Are they poisoning the air?”

“Not on purpose,” said Morrolan.

“What does ‘not on purpose’ mean?”

“It seems to be the nature of the world. Just make your breaths shallow and you’ll be fine. Soon you’ll stop needing to think about it.”

“Oh, good.”

I took Aliera’s hand and weighed the manacle in it. It was heavy, and seemed not too dissimilar to cast iron, maybe three quarters of an inch thick. The chain seemed to have been made as one piece of it, and I saw no way to break it, or separate the chain. I studied where the chain joined the wall again, and still saw nothing. I probably would have started to get frustrated at that point, but before I had the chance Loiosh said, “Boss, they’re back,” which gave me other things to think about.

“They’re back” wasn’t entirely accurate; only one of the Jenoine was back, but Teldra was with him, looking none the worse for wear, and holding something small and black in the palm of her hand. I permitted myself to hope it was a key to the manacles.

I held my tongue as she walked up to us; there’s something about courtesy that’s contagious. She said, “I have negotiated with the Jenoine.”

I studied her face at that moment, I suppose feeling some­thing momentous about to occur, and I couldn’t get anything from her expression.

“They will release you, Morrolan and Aliera, if Vlad agrees to perform a task for them.”

“I can hardly wait,” I muttered, but either no one heard me or they all ignored me.

“They want Vlad to perform a killing, a murder.”

“Did you explain that I’m no longer in that line of work:”‘

“I made no agreement of any kind,” she said. “I merely spoke to them, and they stated the conditions.”

“And otherwise we’ll be killed, I assume,” said Aliera, as if she were being threatened with not being allowed to dinner.

“That wasn’t specified.”

“That’s why we were taken,” said Aliera, giving me a look. “In order to coerce Vlad into doing what they want.”

“You’d think,” said Morrolan, “that if that was true, they’d have taken Cawti, or better yet—” He broke off abruptly and scowled.

“They’re separated,” said Aliera.

“So?” said Morrolan. “Who knows how the Jenoine think, and what they know? They may not know much more of our customs, not to mention emotions, than we know of theirs.”

“They know enough to have us here, bait for Vlad. You’ll notice he’s here.”

“Makes me wonder what they would have done if you hadn’t been along, Lady Teldra.”

“Some of them speak our language,” she said.

I cleared my throat. “I notice none of you are asking the obvious question.”

“You mean,” said Morrolan, “who is it she wants killed? It’s obviously either Sethra, or a god, and you certainly aren’t going to do it, so what difference does it make?”

“I should think a god,” said Aliera judiciously. “Probably Verra.”

Teldra bowed to her.

“Verra?” I said. “They want me to kill Verra?”

“Yes,” said Teldra.

“Well, I have been annoyed with her now and then. I mean, can’t say I haven’t thought about it.”

“It isn’t a joking matter, Vlad,” said Morrolan.

“I think it is, Boss.”

“That’s two of us, if it comes to a vote.”

“Did they have any suggestions as to how I was to accom­plish this task?”

She held out the object in her palm. It was a small, black cube, perhaps an inch on a side. It didn’t seem to reflect any light. “I am told,” she said, “that this will bring you to the pres­ence of the Goddess.” With her other hand, she took from her belt a sheathed knife I hadn’t noticed before. “This is a very powerful Morganti dagger; it will be sufficient to, as they put it, prevent the Goddess from manifesting on our world.”

“That means kill her,” said Morrolan.

“Not exactly,” said Aliera.

“Close enough.”

I made some sort of grunting sound; I’m not sure what it meant, because I’m not sure what I was thinking. Teldra set the two objects down at my feet, then stepped back. There was something of ritual about how she did it; as if she were saying, “Here, now my work is done, and I say nothing about your work, what it is, or if you ought to do it.”

I stared at the black cube and at the Morganti dagger I could feel its emanations even from its sheath.

I said, “Teldra, do you trust them?”

“Vlad!” said Aliera. “You aren’t considering doing it!”

“Yes,” said Teldra. “I think they were telling the truth.”

I grunted again.

“Look on the bright side, Boss: you’ve done a king, now you’ll be able to say you’ve—”

“That’s not the bright side. The bright side is the pleasure of rescuing Morrolan and Aliera. They’ll never live it down.”

Morrolan was staring at me. “Vlad, you can’t be thinking, about it. Think! Verra, the Demon Goddess. Your ancestors have worshiped her—”

“Leave it alone, Morrolan.”

“Leave it alone? She is my goddess, too. How can I let you destroy her to save me?”

I laughed. “How can you stop me?”

“Vlad—”

“Oh, be still, dammit. I don’t want to hear anything from anyone for a while, okay? Except you, Teldra, I want you to answer a question or two: Did they say anything about how long I had to make up my mind?”

“It wasn’t mentioned,” she said.

“Did they say anything about feeding us?”

“No.”

Aliera opened her mouth to make another passionate and irritating plea, so I turned and walked away to the far side of the room. What I needed was time to think; usually needing time to think only happens when you haven’t got any, but this time I at least had the chance to work a few things through in my head: Aliera and Morrolan wouldn’t subject themselves to the indignity of yelling across the room, Teldra was too polite to say anything, and, for a miracle, even Loiosh gave me some peace.

So I ran a lot of stuff around my brain, for whatever that would do. The fact is, I don’t think all that well when I’m just standing and thinking; I need to be talking, or doing something active, then the thoughts flow. But I did my best, and eventually sorted the matter out into several categories of things that I didn’t understand. This was progress.

Categories, if you’ll excuse a brief digression, are a useful way to get a handle on things you don’t understand, as long as you don’t get too attached to them and forget that things like to pop out of one category and into another, and that sometimes the whole category turns itself inside out and becomes something different. It’s useful, for example, to categorize your target as a sorcerer, if he is one; but if you get too attached to your category it’ll leave you embarrassed when he suddenly pulls a knife on you.

Just thought I’d share my reflections on categories.

In this case, I broke the unknowns down into: the abilities of the Jenoine, the plans of the Jenoine, and the nature of this world we were in.

I decided to start with the latter. I walked back.

“You have no link to the Orb, correct?”

Morrolan and Aliera nodded.

“Your Great Weapons seem to be behaving normally?”

They nodded again.

“What about time?”

“Excuse me?” said Aliera.

“I know time works differently in different places. I’ve been to the Paths of the Dead. Exactly how differently does it work here?”

“As far as I know,” said Morrolan, “an hour here is an hour at home.”

I shook my head. “No, I know that isn’t true. How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know,” said Aliera. “Several hours.”

“Several days,” I told her. “Five, to be exact.”

They look properly startled. Before they could respond, I said, “What about Verra’s Halls? How does time work there?”

“What difference does that make?” asked Aliera.

“I’m just curious.”

Morrolan looked suspicious, and like he didn’t want to answer. I glanced at Teldra, who said, “I don’t know. I assume time flows the same there as it does at home, but I don’t actually know.”

“Okay,” I said.

The reason that assassins make so much money is that, first of all, there aren’t many who have what it takes to dispassionately murder someone; and, of those, there aren’t many who can get away with it. I used to be one of them. Whatever there is in me that made me able to shove the knife, I still had. What made me able to get away with it so many times—sixty-three to be exact—was that I understood the key ingredient: knowledge. You have to know things. You have to know everything there is to know about your target, about the environment, about your weapons, about your own abilities. Then you can make a plan. A plan built on ignorance can be worse than charging in with no plan at all; if you have no plan, you might get lucky.

I gestured toward the cube on the floor. “How do you use that thing?”

“All you need to do is hold it,” said Teldra.

“Vlad—” said Aliera.

“Oh, stuff it,” I said. “Morrolan, if I get you two out of those things, will you be able to get us out of here? Back home?”

He hesitated, then looked disgusted and shook his head. “Maybe,” he said, “but probably not.”

Aliera said, “Can you get us out, Vlad?”

“I’m still thinking about that,” I said. “But even if I can I don’t know how much good it will do.”

“I would rather,” she said, “be free to act, no matter what happens after.”

“I understand that,” I told her.

Either way was a gamble—picking up the cube, or attempting to free Morrolan and Aliera. I don’t like gambling, especially when I don’t know the odds; or at least the stakes. When possible, I’d rather be running the game than playing it. But now the Jenoine were running it, and I didn’t even know the rules. I didn’t know how to free them, and I didn’t know if I could kill Verra. Freeing them might accomplish nothing; killing my Demon Goddess was not high on my list of ways to spend an afternoon.

I reached down and picked up the Morganti dagger; stuffed it into my belt. It wasn’t easy to do—I’d never liked those things, and I could tell instantly that this was a particularly nasty one. Well, I suppose it would have to be, if they expected me to kill the Goddess with it.

Morrolan snapped, “What are you doing, Vlad?”

“Can always use a good Morganti dagger, right?”

“Boss, you’re not going to—”

“I’ve got to do something. I’m bored.”

“Oh. You’re bored. Well, that’s a good reason—”

“Drop it.”

So I didn’t have a plan. I did, as I stood there, start to get seeds of what might, sometime, become a vague step generally in the direction of an intention. I may be stating that too strongly.

I took a good look around the room, noting the tall, thin metal shelves; the flat grey look of the walls; the height of the ceiling. I tried to fix it in my mind. I could not imagine what circumstances might lead me to try teleporting here, but that is the sort of thinking that goes with paying attention to details, in case you’re curious about how my mind works.

My chest hurt. I tried to keep my breathing shallow, and to forget about how heavy I felt. It would be impossible to exert myself without taking deep breaths. I felt Aliera and Morrolan watching me. One step, and I was committed, and I still just didn’t have enough information. But the only other option was standing around doing nothing, and that would only be effectie for so long.

No, if I was going to do something, I had to have information, and there was no one here who could give it to me, which left only one option.

I reached into my pouch and pulled out two pieces of gammon. I handed one to Aliera and one to Morrolan. “If you’re going to be helpless and miserable,” I said, “at least you can eat a little.”

They both accepted it, and they both looked like they were trying to decide if they should thank me, but neither said anything. I flexed my fingers.

All right.

“Lady Teldra,” I said, “would you come here, please? Take my hand, if you would.”

She did so, asking no questions but looking curious. Her hand was dry and cool. I reached down with my other hand, not letting her go, and picked up the small black cube.

Aliera said, “Vlad, what are you doing?”

The cube was very heavy for its size, but didn’t seem to do anything except make the walls of the room turn a dull, ugly white. Or, at any rate, that was my first reaction; it took a moment to realize that Teldra, Loiosh, and I now stood in the Hallsof Verra, the Demon Goddess. 5. Pleasantries with Deities

Everything was too big and too white. The ceiling too high, the walls too far apart, the pillars spaced along the walls too big around, and everything the same uniform, ugly, chalky, pasty color. It was huge. It was only a hallway.

The next thing I noticed was that it was easier to breathe, I didn’t feel as heavy and sluggish as I had a second ago. It was only then that I realized that the little black cube had, after doing its job, neatly vanished.

“I got to get me one of those,” I remarked. My voice sounded funny; it took me a second to realize it was because there was no echo—it was as if the corridor was absorbing the sound.

“I’ll pass one along next time we get a shipment,” said Teldra. Her voice sounded odd, too.

I had to look at her before I knew she was kidding. It was a very un-Teldra-like remark; I guess she was rattled too. She said, “Where are we?”

“Where we’re supposed to be. Or where we’re not supposed to be, depending on how you look at it. But this is the home of Verra. I’ve been here before. Straight up ahead there, through those doors, is where I’ve seen her.”

“You’ve been in her presence, then?”

“Yes, a couple of times. Once here, once elsewhere. Or maybe more often than that, if you use ‘presence’ loosely enough.”

“We are surrounded by the color of illness; not very en­couraging.”

“I think it means something else to her.”

“I suspected as much. But what?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Is it important?”

“It is something I ought to have known.”

“As Morrolan’s High Priestess, you mean?”

She nodded. “Something like that can be important. And just in general, the more I know of the gods, the better.”

“You must already know a great deal; maybe there are things you ought to tell me about Verra, before we go through those doors.”

“Perhaps there are,” she said. “But one thing I know, my dear Easterner, is that to you she is the Demon Goddess, and to me she is Verra, and we know her differently. Whatever I know might not be useful; indeed, it might mislead you.”

I grunted. “Are the walls white?”

“Yes.”

“I see them that way, too.”

“Point taken.”

“Then let’s hear it.”

“On the other hand,” she said, smiling a little, “it may be that I can’t tell you anything useful, and you’re just procrastinating, because you aren’t in a hurry to go through those doors”

“Point taken,” I said, and started walking toward the doors.

“Wait,” she said.

I waited.

“A god,” said Lady Teldra, “is the living, sentient embodiment of a symbol.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that clears up everything.”

“Your people, Easterners, might speak of a god of life, a god of death, a god of mountains, and so on. Isn’t that true?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “I think so. My education was a bit spotty.”

“Those are all symbols.”

“Death is a symbol?”

“Certainly. Very much so. Death, in fact, is a very powerful symbol because it defines life.”

There were many things I could say to that, but I settled for, “All right, go on.”

She looked around, gesturing to the walls. “We stand in the halls of a very powerful being; one with skills and abilities that surpass those of any mortal. By tradition, she represents the random arbitrariness of life.”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Well, look around. Does her home appear random and arbitrary?”

I grunted, because I don’t like giving obvious answers to pointed questions. “What are you getting at?”

“That she isn’t just a symbol, she’s also a person.”

“Uh ...”

“The tradition isn’t wrong,” said Teldra, “it is merely imprecise. She—” Teldra stopped and frowned, as if looking for the right words. “Your goddess,” she said at last, “is capricious. At any rate, that is her reputation. It may be only that we expect being with her power to behave with a certain consistency and decorum, whereas she follows her whims as much as any of us do. But don’t depend on her.”

“I shan’t,” I said. “I never have.” That wasn’t strictly true. At one time I did, but I had learned.

“Then that is all I can tell you,” said Teldra.

“All right,” I said. “Thanks. Let’s go.”

And we went, for several paces, until we reached doors that made Morrolan’s look diminutive, and there we stopped, because, unlike Morrolan’s, these didn’t open as we stood before them.

“Maybe we’re supposed to say something,” I suggested.

“Maybe we aren’t supposed to go in,” said Teldra.

I studied the massive doors, and the corridor behind me. “Last time I was here,” I told her, “there was a sort of fog in the hallway. Now there isn’t. Do you suppose it means something?”

She shook her head; the sort of head shake that comes in answer to a question one doesn’t know the answer to. I cursed under my breath, and, just because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, clapped at the door.

Nothing happened.

“Too bad, Boss. She’s not home. Guess we’d better—”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

I then pushed at the door, because I’d have felt stupid if they opened inward and weren’t secured. It didn’t work, leaving me feeling stupid. The doors were filled with designs, all white-on-white, abstract designs reminiscent of embroidery from my ancestral homeland. All very nice. There were no handles on the doors. The space between the doors was wide enough to admit a pry-bar, or a knife blade, but I didn’t have a pry-bar, or a blade with me that wouldn’t snap from the weight of those doors. On the other hand, I had some spare knives. I pulled a stiletto from my boot, and was about to insert it between the doors when Teldra said, “Vlad.”

I turned my head without moving the knife. “Yes?”

“Are you quite certain that breaking in is a good idea?”

“You’re afraid I’ll offend her?”

“Well, yes.”

“You don’t think killing her will offend her?”

She showed me a smile. “Vlad, we both know you have no intention of killing her.”

“Do we know that, Boss?”

“Well, Teldra does, at any rate.”

I turned back to the door, slipped the knife in, put some pressure on it, and promptly snapped the blade. The sound was dull and, like our voices, didn’t echo. I stared at the hilt and the inch and a half of of blade left in my hand, shrugged, and discarded it. It made more of a thump than a clatter as it fell to the floor.

“Okay,” I said. “Next idea.”

“You could pray to her,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “But what if she answered?”

“Do the gods answer, when you pray?”

“Sometimes. I’ve had her answer once, at any rate, and maybe twice. Or there may be other occasions I’m forgetting

about. That’s the sort of thing I’d like to forget. How do we get in here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You’d know better than me; you’ve had personal contact with her.”

“Yeah. From which I know nothing except—” I put my face up against the door and yelled, “Verra! It’s me, Vlad! You’ve had your joke, now open the bloody damn door.”

The door began to swing inward. The last time I’d been here, the doors had opened outward. At least, I think they did. But this time they opened inward, and mists and fogs rolled out; the mist that had been in the corridor last time was now in the room.

“You can get the same effect with dry ice,” I told Teldra.

“What’s dry ice, Vlad?”

“It is an Eastern secret for keeping things cold. I learned of it from Valabar’s.”

“Witchcraft?”

“I guess so.”

She nodded. “Shall we go in? I believe we’ve been invited.”

“Yeah, sure, all right,” I said, and stepped into the fog.

I walked forward with more confidence than I felt. I walked a long time, reminding myself that distances seem greater when you can’t see, and the room was plenty big without help.

“Wall, Boss.”

I stopped and cursed under my breath. Then I said, “Verra—”

There was a chuckle that seemed to come from all around me, and the fog cleared away and vanished—not going anywhere, just thinning out until it was gone, a process that took about five seconds. I was standing at the far end of the room; Verra sat on her chair, or throne, or dais, about twenty yards to my left and behind me. I made my way to the front of it and, while Teldra made some sort obeisance, I said, “What was that all about?”

She gave me an ironic indulgent look, if you can imagine such a thing. On the throne on the dais (all of white), she looked even taller than she was. She wore a hoodless robe that was mostly pale red with black embroidery. Her fingers were long and had an extra joint to them. Her hair, this time, was shoulder-length and wavy: a subdued brown with red highlights, and very thick, so it seemed to have an iridescent quality. Her eyes didn’t glow, but it seemed like they ought to have.

She was my God—insofar, at least, as I had one. When I was a child, my grandfather had spoken of her, but given few details of the sort that might be useful, and my father never mentioned her at all, but it had been impressed upon my young mind that one made the proper observances at the proper times of the year. More than that, her power and presence were so deeply ingrained in me that all through life my thoughts would flash to her briefly at times of danger, or in moments of despair; and even in moments of great joy or triumph I would think of her, sending her my gratitude and the hopes that I would not be punished for enjoying my happiness.

When I had first met her in person, so many years ago, the shock had been so great that I couldn’t assimilate it. At other times, I had felt her presence, but didn’t know how often this feeling was only supplied by my imagination, and how often she had truly been with me. There were occasions, such as my one experience as a soldier of the line, when I could not imagine how I had survived without her having some hand in the matter, but she had never told me she actually did. Of course, I hadn’t asked, either.

To know her as real—that is, a flesh-and-blood individual with whom I had spoken—was something I could never rec­oncile with the idea of a presence watching over me; perhaps watching me at times I didn’t want to be watched. I had buried my own reactions, only to have them emerge as hatred some time later when she had visited misfortune upon my head, or maybe allowed misfortune to visit me, whichever. Since then I had tried not to even think of her, but in this I had failed, and now here she was, and to rescue my friends, I had to destroy her.

“Well?” I said. “Why the games?”

“An odd question,” she said. I had forgotten the peculiar sound her voice had: not exactly an echo, but more as if there were two of her speaking, mostly in unison, but sometimes they’d fall a bit out of synchronization. She continued, “How can you complain of my treatment of you, when you are only here to assassinate me?”

“There is that,” I agreed. “Goddess, may I be permitted to put a question?”

“Very well, assassin,” said the Demon Goddess.

“Was this all your doing?” And, for a second, I actually had made Verra look astonished. Then the expression was gone. I continued, “The last time, if you recall—”

“Yes, Taltos Vladimir, I remember. But no, this was none of my doing. I did not arrange this, nor expect it. I did not expect you to arrive here; I did not think you would be able to do so without my assistance. Tell me, how did you manage that? I can’t believe the Issola standing next to you accomplished it for you.”

I wanted to say something like, “It’s a trade secret,” but even I have limits beyond which I won’t go.

Teldra said, “Goddess, it was the Jenoine.”

Verra nodded, slowly. “Yes,” she said. “It had to be. Do you know who? Or which faction?”

“I was unable to learn, Goddess. I can tell you that one addressed the other by the honorific ‘ker.’”

“Well done, Issola. It is a term used by what among the Jenoine is the equivalent of the military. It is useful information.”

“I am only too happy to be of service,” she said.

The Demon Goddess narrowed her eyes a little at this pronouncement, and said to me, “And you, little Easterner. Are you, also, only too happy to be of service?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said. “How many places can you be at once?”

“Well,” she said. “You’ve been studying. Sethra Lavode, I take it?”

I grunted. “Yes, but I knew that much, at least, from a long time ago.”

“Many,” said the Goddess, in answer to my question. “Bui there is one place I cannot be, and your countrymen are responsible for that.”

“An ancestor?”

“No. It was a blood prince, and you are of peasant stock.”

That stung. “All right,” I said. “Thanks for the compliment I still want to know.”

“I cannot appear among the Jenoine, Vlad, which is what you’re really asking, isn’t it?”

“Supernatural powers, immortality, and clever, too.”

“Don’t try my patience, Fenarian. I mean that.”

I swallowed and nodded.

“Goddess,” said Teldra, presumably breaking in to take me off the hook, “our friends are being held captive. Can you and will you help us?”

“Sit down here at my feet,” she said, “and we’ll talk.”

Teldra sat on the dais as if there was nothing distasteful about doing so; I did my best to emulate her but I don’t think I managed to keep the scowl entirely off my face.

“Speak,” said Verra, and Teldra did so. I occasionally filled in a detail or speculation. Verra remained silent the entire time. She must have known some of what was going on, to judge from her comment about my being there to assassinate her, but she just listened and gave no hint about what she had known.

“There is more to this,” said the Goddess when we were finished, “than you are aware of.”

“No shit?” I said.

She gave me an indulgent smile, which did nothing to improve my mood. I felt Teldra’s hand on my arm; if it had been anyone else, I’d probably have bit it.

Verra said, “I do not, however, intend to explain everything to you.”

“Well, there’s a new experience for me.”

“Little Easterner,” said Verra, “you seem determined to express your displeasure to me in more and more obvious ways until I take notice. Very well, I take notice. You are wroth with me because I have used you; because I have offended against your innate right to be a useless cyst on the hindquarters of life. Yes, well, you may continue to be wroth with me, because I intend to continue making you useful. You may attempt to kill me, in which case I will destroy you; or may continue to annoy me; in which case I will cause you sufficient pain to make you stop; or you may shut up and accept the inevitable.”

I opened my mouth, Teldra squeezed my arm, I shut my mouth.

“Say, ‘Thank you, Teldra,’” said Verra.

“Thank you Teldra,” I said.

“Boss, where did this self-destructive streak come from?”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

Verra said, “I have been waiting for some time, and so has Sethra, for the Jenoine to put their plans in motion, without knowing exactly what form they would take, or, indeed, what those plans were. But we knew they were preparing something. Now they have begun, and we are only able to respond and react until we know more about their intentions.”

I said, “Sethra once tried to explain to me about offensive-|defensive strat—”

“Keep still,” she said, and I suddenly felt like someone was I driving a spike into my head. I gasped, and the pain went away.

“Very convincing,” I said, when I could speak again.

“They have made the first move,” said Verra, as if nothing had happened. “We don’t yet know what it means. The Jenoine are, in some ways, not unlike the Yendi; they will have antici­pated our response, and worked it into their plans. They will have secondary and tertiary responses to our moves. Their ob­jective will be concealed under layers of illusion and misdirec­tion.”

I bit back a suggestion that she let me know when she had the problem wrapped up; I was learning. She continued, “There are some things, however, that we can be certain of: one is that they must find a way to neutralize Sethra, Morrolan, and Aliera, among others whose names you don’t know.”

“They have two of them; why haven’t they killed them?”

“You know how hard it is to kill the wielder of a Great Weapon.”

“I remember a Jhereg who managed it, once.”

“So Morrolan told me. Yes, it can be done, by a judicious combination of sorcery, surprise, and more sorcery. But even then, had Morrolan not been returned to life, Blackwand would have continued to guard his soul. And it might have done far more than that; the Jhereg assassin was a fool. By now, Vlad, you should begin to understand something about the Great Weapons.”

That shut me up. I remembered some of the tricks those things can do. Once I had seen Aliera—but never mind.

“But can they continue to hold Morrolan and Aliera captive?”

“It seems they can. I hadn’t thought so, and I still don’t know how.”

“Probably with help from the Serioli,” I suggested.

She actually looked startled. At least, she sat back in her chair and stared at me. That was twice in the same conversation; I felt smug.

“Well, well,” she said after a moment. “You know more than I should have thought.”

I shrugged.

“Yes, it may be the Serioli,” she agreed. She frowned, and seemed lost in thought. It flashed through my mind that I had never before seen her lost in thought, and the idea of that powerful mind bending its energies in some direction made me feel more puny and pathetic than all the pyrotechnics she had displayed before. What was I doing here, anyway?

“Don’t you remember, Boss? You’re going to kill her.”

“Oh, right. That.”

Verra finished her thought. “It is complex,” she announced. “They are playing a deep game, and there is no way to under­stand all of it at this stage.”

I stared at the ceiling, which was white, and very high over my head. I said, “Isn’t it a pain when you have to come up with a plan based on incomplete information?” No one responded. I said, “Goddess, do you have a guess about what killing you has to do with it? I mean did they think I actually could, and would, or was it just a complex piece of subterfuge?”

She said, “Oh, anything they can do to make me uncom­fortable is all to the good, as far as they’re concerned; it may be nothing more than that. If it is part of something deeper, then I don’t know what. Yes, it is very possible that they expected you to march in here and kill me. Or perhaps they hope merely to confuse me, and hinder my efficiency.”

“‘The ways of the gods are mysterious,’” I quoted.

“Yes.”

“Also annoying, capricious—”

Teldra gave my arm a squeeze, and I shut up.

“Goddess,” said Teldra. “Can you tell us what we are to do?”

“What to do?” she said. “In order to accomplish what? In order to serve whom? Me? Aliera? Morrolan? Sethra?”

“I was thinking of the Serioli,” I said. “At least, no Serioli has ever annoyed me. That makes them unique on the list.”

Verra snapped her head toward me, and I couldn’t keep myself from flinching. She noticed it and smiled, and I felt myself flushing.

“If you please, Goddess,” said Teldra, “you were telling us what we ought to do.”

“Yes,” she said. “I was. The problem is not only that we do not know everything; it is also that we do not all have the same interests. This makes the problem complicated.”

“Simple things are never problems,” I told her. “Unfortunate, maybe, but if it isn’t complicated, it isn’t really a problem.”

The Goddess nodded. “Very good, Vlad; I didn’t expect such wisdom from you.”

I grunted and didn’t tell her I was quoting my grandfather; I’d rather she stayed impressed.

“The Jenoine,” said the Goddess, “have achieved access to your world on several occasions, most recently just a few years ago. We have beat off attacks on the Great Sea of Chaos, on the Halls of Judgment, on the Imperial Palace, and, lately, on Dzur Mountain. Their efforts have not been successful. I will share with you some of my thoughts.”

I almost said, “Thank you so much,” but caught myself.

She continued, “I cannot think why they are making this effort so recently after their last failure. Two possibilities come to mind: the attack on Dzur Mountain was part of something larger, and this is another piece of it; or they have had a sudden and unexpected opportunity.”

“If they were looking for an opportunity, why didn’t they make their move during the Interregnum?”

“What makes you think they didn’t?” said Verra.

“Oh,” I said.

We fell silent, then, in the Halls of Verra; and for the first time I wondered where we were. Up in a mountain? Beneath the ground? Floating in the air like Castle Black? On another world?

“First of all,” said the Goddess suddenly, “you must free Morrolan and Aliera.”

“No,” I said. “That’s just what they’re expecting us to do.”

“You are jesting,” she said. “But are nevertheless correct.”

I shrugged. “All right. How?”

She frowned. “Describe for me how they are held.”

I did so, and she said, “Very well. I am familiar with the substance. Here is what you must do,” and she told me.

“Oh,” I said. “And that will work?”

“I believe so.”

“You believe so? What if you’re wrong?”

“Then perhaps the Jenoine won’t kill you for trying.”

“Great. All right. Say it works. What then?”

“If Morrolan cannot reach through to his portal, then it is because the Jenoine are preventing him from doing so. You must force them to stop.”

“Force them?”

“Yes.”

“And just how do I go about doing that, or are you going to express confidence that I’ll come up with something?”

“Come, my little Easterner. Have all your years in the Jhereg been wasted? Do you not even know how to threaten and in­timidate?”

Just then, I felt about as intimidating as a norska. I said, “Usually, Goddess, in order to make a threat, one requires the power to carry it out. At least, one requires this in cases where the threat won’t be believed.”

“Very good, little one. You search for the general law that applies to the specific case. You have become a philosopher.”

I hadn’t known it was that easy.

She said, “Once Morrolan and Aliera are free, Pathfinder and Blackwand ought to prove a sufficiently intimidating threat, don’t you think?”

“Okay,” I said. “I mean, they intimidate me.”

“Well, there you have it,” said the Goddess.

“But don’t tell them I said so. What do we do then? I mean, after I’ve released Morrolan and Aliera, threatened the Jenoine into letting us go, and let Morrolan bring us home. I mean, that’s just enough to get us warmed up; you must have a whole plan after that.”

“You will then return to Castle Black and await my orders.”

I opened my mouth to object, and then shut it. Yes, if there was one place I’d be safe, it was Castle Black—there are reasons for that going back to ancient history, but I won’t go into them now.

“All right,” I said. “Sure. No problem. Except that the Jen­oine will have anticipated this, won’t they? And they’ll have made plans for it.”

“Yes,” said the Goddess.

“So you’re saying that this will all be a trap.”

“Probably.”

“But we’re not worried about the trap, because we’ll have secret weapon prepared for them.”

“What secret weapon is that, little one?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“Your courage, wits, and skill at improvisation, little one. That is our secret weapon.”

“Oh, good.”

“And, my dear Easterner, do not make the mistake of thinking that I jest; I am quite serious.”

“Oh, better.”

“There is no question in my mind that you can do it.”

“Oh, best.”

“Do you doubt me, Taltos Vladimir?”

“Perpetually, Demon Goddess.”

She gave a short barking laugh. “Go now. Make trouble for the Jenoine instead of for me, and I, I will do as I have been doing: watching over your family.”

That was a low blow—there just wasn’t anything I could say to it. I wanted to ask how my grandfather was doing, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“All right,” I said.

“Lady Teldra,” said the Goddess. “You may stay here, if you wish.”

“Thank you, Goddess, but I will accompany my friend.” There was something so matter-of-fact about the way she

called me her friend that it caught me up short.

“As you wish,” said Verra. Then she frowned. “Of course, I’m not entirely certain how to get back to Morrolan and Aliera.”

I sighed. “I suppose you could return us to Castle Black, and we could do it all over again.”

“What exactly did you do, little one?”

So I told her that, and her eyes narrowed. “Let me see this chain,” she said, so I let it fall into my hand and held it out to her but instead of just lying there like it was supposed to, it twisted and curled in my hand until it was hanging in midair, my hand providing a base, coiled like a snake about to strike—in particular, about to strike Verra, who drew back with a sharp intake of breath. I almost let go of the chain, but didn’t quite. It had never done that before. “Goddess,” I said. “I didn’t—”

“I know,” she said. She gritted her teeth and said, “You have no idea, do you?”

“I –”

“Never mind.”

She reached out and made motions in the air with her forefinger, and where her finger had been there was a dark line in air, roughly the size and shape of a sword. It quickly filled and I was staring at the image of Pathfinder, hanging in the air in front of me.

“Go ahead,” said the Goddess. “Do it.”

I hated to sound like an idiot, but, “Do what?” I said.

“Make contact between your toy and Aliera’s.”

I swallowed. I wasn’t entirely happy with the way my “toy” behaving, but I couldn’t think of any good way to get out of doing what she wanted. I started to take a step forward to bring the chain into contact with the image, but it was ahead of me—it reached out on its own, and seemed to grow longer. No, dammit, it did grow longer. The end of it wrapped around the image of Pathfinder’s hilt. I braced myself for something to happen when they made contact, but I felt nothing. I concentrated most of my energy on trying to look as if I wasn’t at all disturbed by any of this.

“All right,” said the Demon Goddess. “I’ve found them.”

Teldra came up next to me and put her hand on my right arm.

The Goddess gave an aimless gesture with her right hand, and a rectangular shape appeared to my left—like the frame of a door, glowing a sort of dull red, and just sitting in the middle of the room. The other side of it looked exactly like this side of it, just showing more of Verra’s pasty-white hall.

“Step through,” said the Goddess. “And good luck.”

“Thank you so much,” I said, and, Loiosh on my shoulder and Teldra at my side, walked through the doorway into nothing. 6. Trading at the Market

The worst part of that means of transportation was that nothing happened. When I teleport, even without the waves of nausea, there is still the time-delay, and the twisting sense of movement in some inexplicable direction. And then there’s Morrolan’s window—however that works: you may not feel anything, but you at least see that you are stepping through something, from one place to another, and if there is no reason for those places to be near each other, well, you can use the window to fool your mind. But with this there wasn’t even that: one instant I was standing before the Demon Goddess, in her Halls, wherever they were, and then everything was different—I weighed more, the air smelled funny, and the walls were different—that much I approved of. It’s damned lucky I didn’t have to do anything as I arrived, because I was in no condition to defend myself from a playful kitten.

And, on top of it, I had an instant of terror before I realized that I was, in fact, back in the same place I’d left Morrolan and Aliera, just in a different part of the room and facing a different direction; but turning around, I saw them, across the room and still attached to their wall. My heart rate returned to normal, leaving only the lingering question of what I’d have done if Verra had misplaced me.

Some questions demand answers; others one prefers to just put away and not think about.

Aliera and Morrolan were looking at me. I gave them a jaunty salute from across the room, and walked up to them.

Aliera said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Vlad—”

“Oh. The Demon Goddess? I killed her, of course.”

They both immediately glanced over my shoulder at Teldra, who must have given some sign, because Aliera gave me a disgusted look, while Morrolan said, “Your sense of humor, Vlad, leaves something—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Save it. Have our hosts been back ‘“

“Not yet.”

“Well, we should expect them any time.”

Aliera gave Morrolan a glance that I interpreted as, “Look who’s the strategist now?” “And then we’ll do what?” asked Morrolan.

“What happened with Verra?” asked Aliera.

I answered the second question. “The Goddess and I discussed politics,” I said. “And, in fact, I failed to so much as draw this ... thing.”

It hung at my hip, that thing. I had avoided studying it, or really looking at it, but I did so now. It had a shiny black polished hilt, with a simple silver crosspiece, knobbed on the ends. The pommel was also silver: a round ball that would hurt like a bitch if I cracked it on someone’s head. The hilt was a bit smaller than usual with Dragaeran weapons, but that was okay, because my hands are small, too. It was very smooth and cool to the touch, I remembered. The blade, which I hadn’t yet seen ­would be of that ugly, dull, grey-black metal that Morganti blades always have, and might have a blood-groove in it; I didn’t take it out to look. It was long for a knife and short for a sword. Impractical in every way, and was probably not even balanced all that well, most likely being a bit blade-heavy. This, of course, was useful for chopping away in battle—military-issue swords are often blade-heavy—but chopping away in battle was not something I did much of.

And it was very strong. I could feel it, even through the sheath—a sort of presence in the back of my mind, whispering its hunger. It wanted to kill, and couldn’t care a copper penny who or what it killed; as vicious as a Dragon in the heat of rage, as heartless as a Dzur on a spree; as cold as an Orca closing a deal.

I hated it.

I had used Morganti weapons before, but I had never liked them, never had any interest in being near them. Once, I had had to stand in a room with more of them than I could count; I still sometimes have bad dreams that I can trace to that experience. And this one really was damned powerful. I had taken it along only because I feared the Jenoine might be observing me, and if I didn’t have it along, they might have stopped me from traveling to Verra. I no longer wanted it, but didn’t feel comfortable just throwing it into a corner of the room, either. I mentally cursed it, and wished that it and all its siblings would get lost somewhere.

I turned my eyes and my mind away from the weapon at my hip, and back to Morrolan and Aliera, who shared some traits with the thing, but at least had a few redeeming virtues. I stood over them, and, in an effort to think about something else, re­turned to studying, yet again, the manacles, the chains, the spot where they joined the wall, and all the rest. The slightly sweet, slightly bitter taste of the air reminded me that I had to keep my breathing shallow.

“You’re scowling,” said Morrolan.

“Yeah,” I said. “You do it better, but you’ve had longer to practice.”

I knelt down for yet another, closer look, convinced that if kept staring I’d see something. Years ago I wore an assassin’s cloak with all sorts of goodies in it, including a bit of oil which might have allowed me to slide the manacles off. But I didn’t carry those things anymore.

“It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway without breatking her hand.”

“Aliera,” I said, “do you mind if I break your hand?”

“If that is the only way to get me out of these,” she said, “no, I don’t.”

I hadn’t expected that answer, although I should have.

“That goes for us both,” said Morrolan.

Of course it does, I thought but didn’t say.

I had killed people without examining them this closely. The manacles were fairly tight, but there was a bit of room between iron and skin.

“What are you thinking, Vlad?” said Morrolan.

“I’m meditating on helplessness as a way of life, and captiv­ity as an expression of artistic fulfillment.”

“What are you thinking, Vlad?” he repeated patiently.

I shrugged. “I’m wondering how much time we have. I assume the Jenoine know I’ve returned. But they never seem to be in much of a hurry. They don’t behave the way I expect captors to behave. That confuses me.”

Morrolan shrugged. “Have you ever been held captive?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, have you ever been held captive by someone other than the Empire?”

“Yes,” I said, and didn’t elaborate. To avoid dwelling on a memory that wasn’t entirely pleasant, featuring, as it did, far too much potato soup, I considered what the Goddess had told me. She had said I’d be able to ... Okay, maybe. It’s hard to argue with one’s Goddess.

During this interval, I had continued to study wall, chains, manacles, and wrists; and, I suppose, I had continued to scowl.

“You have an idea, don’t you?” said Aliera.

I grunted. “I don’t know how much fun it will be for you.”

“Do it,” she said.

“It might be painful.”

“Do it,” said Morrolan.

“It might be dangerous.”

“Do it,” said Aliera.

“You may not survive.”

“Do it,” said Morrolan.

“It might mean the end of civilization as we know it.”

Aliera gave me a disgusted look.

I shrugged. “Just wondering how far you’d go.”

“Do it,” he repeated.

I was convinced. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Morrolan and Aliera agree on anything; how could I fail to go along?

“If they agree, Boss, it must mean it’s a bad idea.”

“Probably true.”

I pulled off my jerkin. The room was suddenly chilly. Mor­gan and Aliera looked away from my bare chest, which seemed a bit funny. I took a knife from my belt, and began cutting strips of leather from what had been a shirt only seconds before, but now merely a supply of fabric. Funny how quickly things can change, isn’t it?

“What are you doing, Vlad?” asked Aliera.

I didn’t answer. Not answering Aliera when she asks ques­tions like that is one of the pleasures that I had missed since I’d been away.

When I had four strips cut off, I worked them around Aliera’s and Morrolan’s wrists, between manacle and skin. Aliera was easy; Morrolan had thicker wrists and it took me a while, but I managed. I probably hurt him a little while I was doing it, but, of course, he wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of letting me know if I had.

When I was done, there turned out to be enough of a jerkin left to do some good, so I put the remainder back on; it made my stomach seem even colder than it had been.

I sat down cross-legged in front of and between Morrolan and Aliera. I really wanted this to work. Not only was it nec­essary to accomplish my mission and save the world or whatever the hell I was trying to save, and very possibly the only way for me to get out of this alive, but, more important, if I managed to rescue Aliera and Morrolan it would be something I would never let them forget; the pleasure would be almost too sweet. On the other hand, if I accidentally amputated both of their hands, I’d feel bad. And that was, in fact, a possibility, even though the Goddess hadn’t seemed to doubt that I could pull it off; hence the addition of the strips of leather; for one thing, they were symbolically important as barriers, and symbols are very important in witchcraft. And for another, well, maybe, if all else failed, the leather would give their wrists some protection from what I was about to do to them.

“Morrolan,” I said, “give me your right hand. Aliera, your left.” They did so, clanking. Crazily, it entered my head to won­der what my friend Aibynn, who was a musician, would have said about the note the chains gave off—I mention this as an example of how one’s mind works at such moments. Or maybe as an example of how whacked my friend Aibynn is, I don’t know.

Teldra said, “Is there anything useful I can do?”

“No, but thanks for asking. Just stay out of my line of vision so you don’t distract me.” She obligingly backed up a couple of steps.

“Okay, Loiosh. Help me out.”

“Sure you know what you’re doing, Boss?”

“Of course not. Now help me out.”

“Okay.”

I started to get light-headed again, and reminded myself to take shallow breaths; that actually had seemed to help, now that I thought about it. Getting dizzy in the middle of this spell would not be in any of our best interest.

“I’ll keep track of your breathing, Boss.”

“Good. Let’s start, then.”

Connecting to them came easily; I knew them well by now “Energy” is a term that I can’t define, at least as I’m using it now: it is uncomfortably vague, and can be twisted into all sorts of bizarre meanings. I’ve heard it used by sorcerers in a very precise, no-nonsense way, as something they could measure and portion out in precise increments; they even have a word for an increment, though I can’t recall it at the moment. I’ve also heard “energy” used in casual conversation as a way of making something vague and meaningless sound precise and full of significance: “I knew she was mine when I felt the energy pass between us.” I’ve heard natural philosophers use the word much the way sorcerers do, and fools of various flavors use it the way lovers do.

But, whatever it means, energy lies at the heart of witchcraft.

When you have understood the piece of the world you want to change, and aligned your will with the world as it actually is, then and only then can you begin to change it; not to hit the point too hard, but I suppose this is true even in what one does with one’s more mundane abilities. The difference is that, when practicing the art of the witch, one can actually feel the alignment, feel the changes taking place. I call this feeling energy, because I can’t think of a better term for it; inside of myself, it comes with a quickening of the heartbeat, a sense of being, for a while, a little more alive, and a sureness of one’s convictions. Outside of myself, well, stuff starts happening.

So, yes, connecting to Morrolan and Aliera came easily, and the energy began to build.

Every skill—certainly every physical skill—really consists of learning which muscles ought to be tense, and which relaxed, and when. Increased skill comes with strengthening certain muscles, and, even more, with achieving finer control of the particular muscles used. In the Eastern science of defense, for example, one must learn to keep the proper amount of tension in the thumb, fingers, and wrist, so that the point of the weapon stays in line: too little tension and the weapon can be knocked out of your hand, which is embarrassing; too much and one responds too slowly, which is equally embarrassing. In fact, to show you how picky it can be, your first step in actually mastering the art is when you get control of your ring finger. Later, one learns the proper amount of tension for the forward knee and the rear foot, and so on. It is a training of mind and of muscle, which in the novice are constantly at odds with each other, and in the expert are so strongly united that it is impossible to separate conscious decisions from those made by trained muscles. This state is what we talk about when we refer to “reflexes,” which can tell you a lot about yourself.

I say this to make the obvious point that the art of the witch is very similar, except that the “muscles” in question all exist within the mind of the witch. With the simplest spells, all that is needed is the concentration of power; with the more complex spells, a subtlety and flexibility of mind is required. Typically, a witch will use all sort of tools, herbs, and amulets, because these help to focus the mind onto the required path; but when necessary, the swordsman forgets about proper form and technique and takes the opening that desperation requires and opportunity presents.

Now that I think about it, most of my life has consisted of taking the opening that desperation required and opportunity presented.

I did without tools, herbs, and amulets; instead I built them as metaphors in my mind. I imagined the manacles as four burning pyres, with visible heat patterns emerging from them that I then turned into strips of cloth—not to be confused with the actual strips of leather, which were metaphorically walls keeping the heat from their arms, which were, oh, never mind. I took hold of the metaphorical cloth, not the real leather, and I pulled, throwing it carelessly to my metaphorical side. Fortunately, there was no one in the metaphorical way.

“Loiosh, look to their wrists; make sure I don’t hurt them.”

“Got it, Boss.”

I pulled, and pulled, and it seemed as if I were pulling fabric from an endless spool. Somewhere far, far away, there was conversation; I imagine Morrolan or Aliera or both were making comments or asking questions, but none of it registered—fortunately for all of us. Morrolan, at least, ought to have understood that conversation was a bad idea; that I needed to concentrate or Bad Things would happen. This was a thought I had later; at the time, I was, well, concentrating.

Eventually it became harder to pull, and the flames from the pyres were almost extinguished. I continued because I didn’t know just how far I’d have to go.

“Boss, I can’t keep it all away from them.”

“Are they being hurt?”

“A little.”

“A little more, then,” I said, and kept going, though it was pretty tough, and slow, and I realized I was becoming exhausted. It was what they call the point of diminishing returns when they want to sound all fancy and technical; to me it was Ia signal that I was about done.

“Boss—”

“Okay,” I said. “That will have to do,” and I pulled out of my metaphors and symbols and use of energy as a precise vagueness, and came back to the world; whatever world it was, at any rate.

“... very cold,” Aliera was saying. She and Morrolan looked be all right, so I just grunted at her, thought about using Spellbreaker, but didn’t know if it might have some additional effects, and I didn’t want any additional effects just then. I pulled from behind my back a knife with a particularly strong, heavy hilt. I flipped the knife, caught the blade, and raised it over my head, then got a good hold on Aliera’s left arm.

“What are you doing, Vlad?” asked Aliera as I brought the knife down as hard as I could on the manacle, being careful not touch the bitter cold metal with my hand. It shattered with a sound like broken pottery, rather than iron, and her wrist was free. I repeated the process on her other arm and broke the hilt of the knife as well as the manacle, leaving me staring at a blade and a tang, with a bit of bone hilt still clinging to it. Oh, well. I had more knives.

I pulled another and used it on Morrolan’s right arm, breaking the knife’s hilt and doing nothing to the manacle. I scowled and pulled yet another, wishing I carried as many as I used to, but this one turned out to do the job: there were now four lengths of chain hanging from the wall. Morrolan and Aliera stood up.

Hot damn.

“Good work, Vlad,” said Morrolan, alternately rubbing each wrist with the opposite hand. “I’ll take over now.” Figured.

I couldn’t really object; I didn’t have any energy to object with. It wasn’t the sort of exhaustion you get when you’ve just run half a mile; my breathing was easy, and I was even remembering, with occasional nudges from Loiosh, to make my breath shallow. And it wasn’t sleepiness: I wanted to lie down, but I was nowhere near sleep. No, it was its own thing, the aftermath of a spell. A lethargy that I can only compare to the aftermath of sex, and that is too obvious an analogy, and has been used too often in books on witchcraft, for me to want to push it, so let’s just say I was too tired to object.

Morrolan rubbed each wrist in turn, as if to warm them up, or to assure himself that they were still there. Then did some thing quickly with his hands, and he was suddenly holding a thin, black, polished stick in his right hand. It was about five feet long, had rounded ends, a few silver tracings on it, and I’d never seen it before.

“What is that?” I managed to say.

“My wizard’s staff,” said Morrolan. “I am a wizard. We have staves, you know. They go with the office.”

“And I’ve never seen you use it before because ... ?”

“In my own world, Blackwand has pretty much replaced it, but here, there are limits to what Blackwand can do, so I revert to my earlier skills and implements.”

“I suppose it is immensely powerful and you can do all sorts of amazing things with it.”

“Naturally.”

“And you’ve had it with you all along?”

“I always have it with me.”

“Then please explain to me why, by Verra’s skinny ass couldn’t you have—?”

“While I was fettered,” he said, “its power was nullified. The Jenoine are rather skilled in counterspells. Now I am unfettered, and, if there are no objections, I propose to use it. You don’t mind, do you, Vlad? Or have you other questions?”

“If that means you intend to get us out of here,” I said, “then I’m all for it. If you have some other plan, we’ll have to negotiate.”

“That’s my plan,” said Morrolan.

“Not, however, theirs,” said Aliera, sweetly. I followed the direction of her gaze, and saw that the two Jenoine were back.

“So,” I said to no one in particular. “I guess it comes down to negotiation after all.”

I looked at the Jenoine, then glanced back, and saw, heard, felt Pathfinder and Blackwand being drawn from their

sheaths, Morrolan first transferring the staff to his left hand. Then he set the staff spinning; it seemed very light in his hand. I hoped he was doing more than showing off how good he was at making a stick spin.

The wizard’s staff was spinning at his side, he held Blackwand in his other hand, and next to him stood Aliera, holding Pathfinder, with its point at the Jenoine’s face. In the Jhereg, we call this “negotiating from a position of strength.” I suspect the Dragons have a similar term.

I didn’t have a position of strength. I didn’t draw a weapon, because I wasn’t sure what to draw, and because I was in no condition to wield a flyswatter.

Teldra barked, coughed, grumbled, and chattered at them; one of them replied similarly. I strained to guess the tone of the conversation, then gave it up as hopeless.

“Any idea, Loiosh?”

“Sorry, Boss. Not a clue.”

“I hate sitting around while other people decide what’s going to happen to me.”

“Well, you can always do something stupid.”

“No, I think I’m over that, for the moment.”

“Note down the date.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Morrolan and Aliera took a step toward the Jenoine; Teldra kept talking.

The big, ugly thing just stood there, not appearing to notice the Great Weapons, much less the wizard’s staff, or the cold blooded, highly skilled Easterner assassin who was bravely cowering next to the Dragonlords.

“Do that thing’s eyes remind you of something, Boss?”

“Yes, Loiosh. Fish eyes. Is it important?”

“Probably not.”

From my position, I couldn’t see Morrolan’s face, but I had a partial view of Aliera’s: there was a gleam in her eye, and a sort of twisted grin on her lip. Morrolan, I was sure, was scowling. He scowled well. Aliera grinned, Morrolan scowled, and I sneered. There you have it.

They closed with the Jenoine, and I suddenly thought of the Morganti dagger in my belt. Well, I could join them. I mean, it wasn’t a Great Weapon, but it was a Pretty Good Weapon. I might do some good. I might be able to help. I might prefer to cower as far back in a corner as I could.

“Good plan, Boss. Let’s go with it.”

“Sold,” I told him. I managed to stand up, then took a step backward, stopped, drew the Morganti dagger, and went up to stand next to Morrolan.

“Boss—”

This had happened to me before—going forward into danger that wasn’t at all my type of danger, when I knew I ought to stay back, and I hadn’t then understood why I did it, and I didn’t know this time. Bugger. The Morganti dagger seemed alive in my hand. Yes, it was a dull, grey color. Yes, it did have a blood-groove. It was a narrow blade, very light and useful-feeling in my hand, about eighteen inches long, and not nearly as blade-heavy as I’d suspected it would be. It was also hungry, and, as I’d suspected, it was very powerful; I felt it and hated it.

And worried about it, as well. The Jenoine had given it to me, and now I was going to use it against them. Wouldn’t they have thought of that? Was that what they wanted me to do? Could it hurt them, in any case? According to Verra, no it couldn’t. But if not, then I didn’t have anything that could.

The Jenoine took a step forward, and extended its left hand; I felt the sick tumble in my stomach that accompanies the realization that action, and a sort of action I hate, is now inevitable: The maybes had dissolved into the dust, the I hopes taken wing, the alternatives had narrowed to one, which was the same as vanishing to none at all—I’ve never understood the arithmetic of that.

All right, then. If Morrolan could fight with two weapons at once, so could I; I let Spellbreaker fall into my left hand.

“Tell it,” said Morrolan, still spinning his staff, “that it will permit us to leave at once, or we shall destroy it.”

Teldra said, “Lord, that’s what I’ve been telling her, though I have perhaps phrased it differently.”

“And?”

“She is considering her options.”

“How rational,” said Aliera.

“Was Aliera being ironic, Boss? Or was that an insult?”

“We’ll probably never know, Loiosh.”

“Vlad,” said Morrolan. “I can feel the gate. Are you ready to go through it?”

“Sure,” I said. “But now, what’s the plan. Are we trying to escape, or do we want to kill this thing?”

The thing we were talking about kept looking at us; I had impression it was holding itself ready for action, and that it didn’t seem terribly worried.

“Kill it,” said Aliera, and, at the same time, Morrolan said, “If we can get out cleanly, we should.”

“I’m with you, Morrolan.”

Aliera sniffed disdainfully.

Then things happened too fast for me to follow—it was one of those. I can’t tell you who attacked first, or what form the attack took. I can’t tell if the Jenoine’s response was physical, magical, or some combination. I only know that, suddenly, everyone was moving, and I was lost in the combinations of limb, steel, and spell. I know that I was looking for an opening to use the Morganti dagger I held, and I know that I was trying to keep Spellbreaker in between me and anything nasty that it might send at me, and I know that I failed miserably at both efforts.

I can’t tell you what Morrolan, Aliera, and Teldra were up to, but my part in the affair was mercifully brief—I lost consciousness within a matter of seconds. And, while I couldn’t be sure what their situation was after it was over, at least mine was easily and readily understood when I awoke: I was manacled to the wall in almost exactly the same spot Aliera had occupied before. Teldra was next to me, unconscious, blood trailing down from the corner of her dainty mouth.

Well, Morrolan and Aliera were now free, in exchange for an Issola seneschal and an Easterner ex-assassin. A neat two-for-two swap. I wondered who had come out ahead on the trade I was pretty sure it wasn’t me. 7. Asking for and Receiving Assistance

“Think you can wake her up, Boss?”

“Don’t know, Loiosh. Any reason why I should?”

“Uh ... I’ll get back to you on that. Think you can break these manacles the way you broke the other ones?”

I hefted them ... they were lighter than they seemed.

“I hate repeating a trick,” I told him. “But I’m willing to make an exception this time.”

“That’s big of you, Boss.”

“But I’m going to wait, if you don’t mind; I don’t think I could manage a sleep spell right now.”

While I waited and recovered, I did a quick check, and found to my surprise that the Jenoine had left me all my weapons. Why would they do that? The Morganti weapon was lying on the floor, no doubt right where it had fallen; they hadn’t even taken it. Why would they capture me, but leave me all my weapons? They weren’t supposed to do that. Maybe I should get them a copy of the rules.

Teldra stirred next to me.

“Good morning,” I told her.

She squeezed her eyes shut without ever opening them, then did so again, and again. I waited.

“Any idea what that thing did to me, Loiosh? Why I lost consciousness?”

“No, Boss. It happened too fast. I didn’t notice it even looking at you—you just went down.”

I looked at Teldra again; she was working on becoming conscious, but it was taking a while.

“Okay, let’s make a note not to underestimate the Jenoine.”

“Right, Boss.”

I leaned my head back, started to take a deep breath, and caught myself. I hate it when I need to take a deep breath but I can’t—I’d have to find a different psychological crutch.

I caught an echo of my familiar’s psychic snicker.

“You aren’t helping any.”

“What happened?” said Teldra.

“To begin with,” I said, “the world was created from the seeds of amorphia spread from the droppings of a giant... no, I guess you aren’t awake enough to appreciate my wit. I don’t know what happened, Teldra. We’re right where Morrolan and Aliera were, but I’m assuming our friends got away. Well, I don’t know; maybe I shouldn’t assume that. I hope they got away. I don’t know. Tough bastards, those guys.”

She chuckled. “Morrolan and Aliera, or the Jenoine?”

“Well, yeah.”

Teldra nodded.

“How do you feel?” I asked her.

She stared at me. I recognized the look; I’d been on the other side of it often enough.

“Sorry,” I said. “Stupid question.”

She flashed me a Lady Teldra smile.

“It seems she’s all right, Boss.”

“Guess so.”

Teldra seemed about to speak, but I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall behind me, and she held her peace. The wall was smoother than it looked. I relaxed, prepared myself, and considered what I was about to do. After several minutes, Teldra said, “You’re going to do something, aren’t you?”

“Eventually.”

“Can I help?”

I stirred, opened my eyes, looked at her. “Any training in witchcraft?”

She shook her head.

“Then I’m afraid not,” I said.

I closed my eyes again and muttered, “Trágya.”

“Legalább,” she agreed.

My head snapped around. “You speak Fenarian?”

“Why yes,” she said.

I grunted, wondering why I was surprised. “How many lan­guages do you speak, Teldra?”

“Several,” she said. “And you, Vlad?”

I shook my head. “None well. A bit of Fenarian. A smattering of a few other Eastern languages. But not enough to actually think in any of them—I always have to translate in my head.”

“I see.”

“How do you do that? How do you learn to think in another language?”

“Hmmm. It isn’t an all or nothing thing, Vlad. You say you don’t think in Fenarian, but what would you say if I said, Köszönöm?”

“Szivesen.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Why did you say that?”

“You said, ‘Thank you’; I said, ‘You’re welcome.’”

“But did you make that translation in your head, or was it automatic?”

“Ah. I see.” I thought about that. “Okay, you’re right. It was automatic.”

“That’s the beginning of thinking in the language.”

“Like whenever I make a comment, Boss, and you say—”

“Shut up, Loiosh.”

“Okay,” I said. “You make a good point. But if I’ve got the basics, the rest is awful slow to follow.”

“But it will get there if you keep speaking it. It starts with rote responses, such as thank you and you’re welcome.”

“Basic courtesy,” I said. “Maybe all languages have rote responses for those: hello, how are you, that sort of thing. I wonder.”

“They do,” said Teldra.

“Are you sure?”

“The languages without courtesy built into them didn’t survive long enough for us to remember them. Because, of course—”

“Yes,” I said. “I see.”

I pondered this linguistic profundity for a moment.

I considered what I had just done, and was soon going to do again. “Is witchcraft a language?”

“Hmmm. I don’t know. I should imagine it is. I know that sorcery is.”

“Witchcraft,” I said, “does not have courtesy built into it.”

She laughed. “All right. If we’re counting, you’ve scored a point. If we are going to call those languages, and we might as well, they don’t have built-in courtesy.” She frowned suddenly “Unless we consider ... no, that’s too far-fetched.”

I didn’t want to encourage her to go wherever she had been about to go, so I said, “How did you and Morrolan meet, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It was out East,” said Teldra. “During the Interregnum, in a village whose name translated to ‘Blackchapel.’ This was before he knew who he was, and—”

“Before he knew who he was?”

“Before he knew he was human.”

I blinked. “I think you’re going to have to explain that.”

“I didn’t realize you didn’t know,” said Teldra. “Certainly, it is no secret.”

“All right.”

“The Lord Morrolan was brought to the East, beyond his ancestral homelands, as an infant, just around the time of Adron’s Disaster. His parents didn’t survive, and so he was raised by Easterners. He grew up thinking he was simply an extraordinarily tall Easterner.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, my lord.”

“Well I’ll be—really? He thought he was human? I mean, Easterner?”

She nodded.

I shook my head. “Amazing.”

“Yes.”

“Most extraordinarily tall,” I reflected. “How did he find out?”

“It couldn’t be concealed forever,” she said. “In any case, I was also in the East, and of much the same age. We met at about the time he was completing his pact with Verra, in which I was able to be of some service to him, and I was also of some help when he was gathering his Circle of Witches.”

I nodded. I knew this circle existed—they occupied the East Tower, but I had never had occasion to go there, and still didn’t know exactly what he used them for. But, no doubt, I would never know all there was to know about Morrolan.

I shook my head, trying to get used to the idea of Morrolan being raised as an Easterner.

“Where in the East was he?”

“There are—or, rather, were—a series of small kingdoms near Lake Nivaper, just south of the Hookjaw Mountains.”

“Yes, I know them. They speak Fenarian in some of them.”

She nodded. “His name at the time was Fenarian: Sötétcsilleg. ‘Morrolan’ is just the same thing, rendered into the ancient tongue of the Dragon.”

“Amazing,” I said. “All right, so you helped him sacrifice villages of Easterners to the Demon Goddess. Then what?”

She smiled. “That was later, and they were Dragaeran villages. Eventually, he returned to reclaim his ancestral homeland, and he was gracious enough to give me residence. I was poor, of course, and had nowhere else to go. I remain very grateful to him.”

I nodded, wondering what she was leaving out. Most likely, anything that was to her credit or Morrolan’s discredit. She was like that. It sometimes made me a little uncomfortable to never know exactly what she was thinking, but, on the other hand, it was nice to know that there was at least one being in the world who wouldn’t say anything nasty about me.

“You’re awful sensitive for an assassin, Boss.”

“You’ve said that before, Loiosh.”

We returned to silence; I waited to recover and hoped I’d have time to do so; in the meantime my mind wandered, starting with the rather remarkable revelations about Morrolan and proceeding from there. I don’t remember most of what I thought about—the sort of flitting, random thoughts that can only just barely be called thinking. But then I did eventually have a real, true thought, and it brought me up so sharply that it burst out of my mouth before my brain had entirely finished processing it: “Aw nuts. If Morrolan and Aliera did escape, I’ll bet they’re going to want to rescue us.”

“Of course,” said Teldra.

“Ready to start, Loiosh?”

“Boss—”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Boss—”

“If I’m still chained to this wall when Morrolan and Aliera show up, I’ll almost certainly die of shame. The chances of messing up the spell are much less.”

I got the impression Loiosh wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t either.

“Teldra,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind. You can help.”

“Yes?”

“You saw what I did with the knives?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” I said, and reached to hand her some—and only then realized that the Spellbreaker was back around my wrist I stopped, hand in midair, and looked at Teldra.

“What is it, Vlad?”

“Loiosh,” I said, “how; did it get back there? Last I remember it was in my hand, and I was waving it around like an idiot. I can’t believe the Jenoine not only let me keep it, but were kind enough to put it back around my wrist for me.”

“They didn’t, Boss.”

“Talk.”

“It sort of slithered over to you, and, uh, it kind of crawled up your arm.”

“On its own?”

“‘Fraid so, Boss.”

Well. Wasn’t that interesting?

I handed Teldra my last three daggers, pulling them out of various places. I hoped they would be enough—I used to carry lot more.

“You know what to do?”

“I know what to do, but not when to do it.”

“I’ll try to say something. If I seem to lose consciousness, that would be a good time. Oh, give me one back for a second, need to expose some more skin first.”

She didn’t ask, and I didn’t explain; I just cut away four more strips from my jerkin. The air was even colder with still more of my belly exposed. I handed two of the strips to Teldra, asking her if she knew what to do with them. She nodded. She didn’t appear at all nervous, which I attribute to acting ability, probably inherited; stupidity would be the only other possible explanation, and I didn’t think she was stupid.

When we had managed to get the leather between the manacles and our wrists, she nodded at me, as if signaling that she was ready. I gave her back the last knife. I was now as close to unarmed as I’d been in some time. My rapier—“Where is my rapier?” I said.

“Across the room, I think.”

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know.”

I considered the matter further, saying aloud, “If they know how we got out the last time, they might have done something to prevent this from working.”

“I know,” said Teldra.

“But they keep not behaving the way captors are supposed to.”

“They probably weren’t raised on the right sorts of bedtime stories and songs.”

“And bad theater,” I agreed. “But I’m starting to think they have a whole other plan in mind.”

“What sort of plan?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, which was not an outright lie, at any rate. “All right, then. Let’s try it.”

She said, “Vlad, do you think we’re doing what they want us to?”

I paused, then sighed. “I wish I knew. Are you willing to go through with it anyway?”

She smiled. “Of course. It would be rude not to,” proving that even Issolas are capable of self-directed irony. This, while maybe not an important discovery, was, somehow, a pleasing one.

“Let’s do it, then.”

She nodded. I held out my hand, and she took it; her hand was dry and cool.

I began.

You don’t need to hear about it again, do you? I knew better than to let my fear interfere with what I had to do. Loiosh was his usual steady self, and, to make a long story short, I turned out to be sufficiently rested not to destroy myself.

The big difference between doing it on someone else and doing it on myself was that the coldness from my wrists became more and more insistent, and there was an awareness somewhere deep inside me that I could be seriously hurting myself. I had to trust Loiosh.

I was used to trusting Loiosh; over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

I concentrated, and pulled at imaginary skeins of fabric until it rolled over me, covered me, and I felt like I was going to drown in it; the chill on my wrists beginning to feel like heat, and insisting more and more on my attention; but I still had a bit left in me when the whole thing was shattered—quite literally—and I was pulled back to a hazy sort of half consciousness, vaguely pleased that my wrists were now free, noting that Teldra’s were as well, and hoping that I wouldn’t have to do anything strenuous like moving for at least a year or so.

She said something, but I didn’t quite catch it. I tried to ask her to repeat it, but that, too, was beyond me.

In case you’ve missed it, I was more than a little exhausted. I closed my eyes, leaned against the wall, and concentrated on keeping my breathing even and shallow.

“I imagine,” I said after a while, “they ought to be showing any second.”

“The Jenoine?” asked Teldra. “Or our friends?”

“Both, I should imagine. At the same time, presumably, it’s how it ought to work out.”

“You’re just saying that, Boss, because you know if you say it it won’t happen that way.”

“I’m an Easterner, chum. I can be superstitious if I want to.”

I rested, and recovered, and felt hungry. I found some more dried gammon in my pouch and offered some to Teldra, who gratefully accepted; then I watched her attempt to eat it daintily. She succeeded. I’d have been more astonished if I could have spared the energy for astonishment.

“Well,” I said, “the longer it takes them—any of them – to show up, the better for us.”

She nodded, and continued being dainty with dried gam­mon.

I wondered why she didn’t make me feel rude and uncouth, but I suppose that was part of her talent. Or magic. You can always say it’s magic if you don’t understand it; and, who knows, you might be right.

While we stayed there—free of the chains but unable to move (in my case, unable to move for a number of reasons)—my imagination took flight. I wondered what Morrolan and Aliera were doing. They must be with Sethra, talking things over, making plans. Had they made contact with Verra? Was she going to take an active role in this? How about the Necromancer?

I pictured the lot of them, sitting in the library at Castle Black, or in one of the sitting rooms at Dzur Mountain, or in Verra’s Hall; planning, scheming, debating.

Or maybe they’d all just gone and decided to take a nap, figuring, hey, what’s one Issola and one Easterner? Maybe they’ll just leave us here.

Or maybe they were eating, the bastards.

Meanwhile, in this structure, or near it, perhaps the Jenoine were coming up with their own schemes, or chuckling about how well this one had worked (did Jenoine chuckle? I couldn’t imagine it). Perhaps they, too, had forgotten us. Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, we didn’t matter. Verra had as much as told me that I mattered because she was going to make me matter. I had mixed feelings about this.

Eventually, various needs brought me to my feet; I carried one of the chamber pots into a corner of the place and relieved I myself, feeling like a drunk who’s just staggered out of Coriaton’s Public House. Then I made it back, drank some water, and waited.

Time dragged, and my imagination soared, and I considered my Fate. Teldra remained silent, perhaps aware of my thoughts and not wishing to disturb them, or perhaps she was busy with her own thoughts. Even Loiosh remained still.

But considered who I was, and whether, when all was said and done, I would make a difference in the world. I had rarely had such thoughts—lately I hadn’t had time for them, and before that they had never occurred to me.

But had Fate included me in its plans?

Did I even believe in Fate?

“Teldra, do you believe in Fate?”

My words shattered the stillness, like a sorcerous explosion, but she hardly blinked.

She said, “In a sense.”

“Yes?”

“I believe in paths and choices. I don’t believe in an inescapable fate, but I believe we are each given several possible directions, and sometimes we choose one without being aware of having made the choice.”

I nodded. “I think I understand.”

“But at other times, we know. Sometimes you realize you cannot stand still, and to move forward, or move back, or move to the side will set you on a new path.”

“Does it matter to you if you make a difference in the world?”

“I do make a difference, Lord Taltos.”

“Vlad.”

“Very well. Vlad. I make a difference whether I wish to or not. I hope to make a good difference, if only in a small way.”

“I wonder,” I said. “I wonder whether a small way is enough for me. And I wonder if a big way is too much.”

“Hmmm. What brought this up, if I may ask, Vlad?”

“I don’t know. Too much time on my hands, boredom, and remembering my conversation with Verra.”

“What about your conversation with Verra?”

“What she said about me being a tool.”

“Oh,” said Lady Teldra. “There is another thing about the Goddess.”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes, when she speaks to us, we do not hear the same thing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It has been said that she speaks in words we can each understand, and that we will each understand her in our own way.”

“Isn’t that true of everyone?”

“Perhaps. But I didn’t hear anything about you being a tool; I heard ... well, it doesn’t matter what I heard.”

“Hmmmm,” I said wisely, and didn’t press the matter, though I wanted to badly. “I think,” I said, “that I may be approaching one of those decision points you were talking about.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I suspect, my lord, that you made your decision some time ago, and are just now beginning to understand its significance.”

I let that one float around for a bit, then felt myself snarling “All right, there’s only so much of this I can take. I need to be doing something.”

“You’re feeling better, then?”

I considered, then said, “Yes, in fact, I am.”

“Well then,” said Teldra, “I am ready. But I don’t know what we ought to be doing.”

“It’s not like I have a plan or anything,” I said. “But it seems to me that, if we aren’t going to just wait for our friends or our enemies, we should see if we can get out of this room.”

“But then, will they be able to find us? Our friends, I mean.”

“I hope so.” I shrugged. “One would think that they could reach us psychically, if they were close enough.”

I stood up, moving slowly and carefully, and walked across the room to where my rapier lay, all unnoticed and neglected. I checked it—it was fine. I returned it to my sheath. Then I walked over to the Morganti dagger. I thought for a while, made a decision, then hesitated because I didn’t want to, then made myself pick it up and put it into its sheath.

“I don’t see any doors,” said Teldra.

“Of course not,” I told her. “That would make everything too easy.”

I stretched a bit—pleased to be up and around and walking. Teldra walked next to me, Loiosh on my shoulder, a rapier at my hip, a very strong Morganti dagger in a sheath next to it, Spellbreaker around my wrist, and my remaining couple of daggers concealed about my person. I felt ready for anything, as long as it wasn’t too threatening.

We walked around the big, almost empty room, looking at walls, floor, and ceiling. It took a fair bit of time, but I didn’t mind; I was pretty much recovered—though I felt generally sore and rather tired, and Loiosh had to keep reminding me to take shallow breaths. Except for the empty shelves placed here and there, seemingly at random, there wasn’t much to see. Everything was very plain, flat, featureless—depressing.

Eventually we made it back to the place where we had been shackled. I said, “There’s no way out.”

Teldra nodded.

“Which answers the question about whether the Jenoine have sorcery, I imagine.”

“Sorcery,” agreed Teldra, “or, at any rate, something very much like it. But I thought that had been answered when they first appeared.”

“Yeah. Or when they knocked me out. Okay. So, now what?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t say, “Coming up with plans is your job,” but I had the feeling she was thinking it. I didn’t scowl, but she probably had the feeling I wanted to.

I said, “If I felt able to perform a spell, I might test the solidity of the wall.” I pushed against the nearest wall, demonstrating, then said, “Hmmmm.”

“What?” She pushed against it too. “What is it, Vlad? It feels like a wall.”

“Yes, but what if it isn’t everywhere?”

“Illusory walls?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I was thinking real walls, but a doorway made to look like a section of wall.”

“Oh. Yes, that would be possible.”

“You go that way, I’ll go this way.”

She nodded agreement, and we went around the room, pushing at the walls everywhere. If they were illusion, the illu­sion included the tactile, and didn’t give when pushed.

“So much for that,” I said, when we were back to where we had started.

She nodded. “Next idea?”

“You sure it isn’t your turn?”

Her smile flicked on and off.

“You know, Boss, they don’t actually have to have a doorway at all.”