The Anvil of the World

“He doesn’t really eat babies,” Lord Ermenwyr told her. “Very often, anyway. Ow.”

“And maybe everyone will come to their senses, and this whole thing will blow over when the weather turns cooler,” said Smith.

“Ah—not likely,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Things are going to get rather nasty, I’m afraid.”

“That’s right; you were saying that when all hell broke loose.” Smith got up and opened another bottle. “If my business is going to be wrecked, I’d at least like to know why.”

Lord Ermenwyr shook his head. He tugged at his beard a moment, and said finally, “How much do you know about the Yendri faith?”

“I know they worship your mother,” said Smith.

“Not exactly,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“Yes, we do,” said Willowspear.

Lord Ermenwyr squirmed slightly in his chair. “Well, you don’t think she’s a—a goddess or anything like that. She’s just a prophetess. Sort of.”

“She is the treva of the whole world, She is the living Truth, She is the Incarnation of divine Love in its active aspect,” said Willowspear with perfect assurance. “The Redeemer, the Breaker of Chains, the Subduer of Demons,”

“Amen,” said Balnshik, just a trace grudgingly.

“Yes, well, I suppose she is.” Lord Ermenwyr scowled. “All the Yendri pray to Mother, but she has someone she prays to in her turn, you know. You have to understand Yendri history. They used to be slaves.”

“The Time of Bondage,” sang Willowspear. “In the long-dark-sorrow in the Valley of Walls, in the black-filth-chains of the slave pens they prayed for a Deliverer! But till She came, there moved among the beaten-sorrowing-tearful the Comforter, the Star-Cloaked Man, the Lover of Widows.”

“Some sort of holy man anyway,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Resistance leader, apparently. Foretold the coming of a Holy Child, then conveniently produced one. Daddy’s always had his private opinion on how that happened.”

Willowspear was shocked into speechlessness for a moment before stammering, “She miraculously appeared in the heart of a great payraja blossom! There were witnesses!”

“Yes, and I saw a man pull three handkerchiefs and a silver coin out of his own ear over on Anchor Street this very afternoon,” Lord Ermenwyr retorted. “Life’s full of miracles, but we all know perfectly well where babies come from. The point is, when she was three days old the Yendri rose in rebellion. The Star-Cloaked Man carried her before them, and she was their—”

“Their Shield, their Inspirer, that day in the wheatfield, that day by the river, when grim was the reckoning—”

“And evidently in all the uproar of overthrowing their masters, the Star-Cloaked Man cut his foot on a scythe or something, and the wound could never heal because he’d broken his vow of nonviolence to finally start the rebellion. So he limped for the rest of the big exodus out of the Valley of Walls, lugging Mother-as-a-baby the whole way.”

“And flowers sprang up in the blood where he walked,” said Willowspear.

“I remember hearing this story,” Mrs. Smith murmured. “Oh, what a long time ago … There was supposed to have been a miracle, with some butterflies.”

“Yes!” cried Willowspear. “The river rose at his bidding, the great-glassy-serpentbodied river, and for the earth’s children it cut the way, the road to liberation! And they left that place and lo, after them came the souls of the dead. They would not stay in chains, in the form of butterflies they came, whitewinged-transparent-singing, so many flower petals drifting on the wind, the broken-despaired-of-lost came too, and floated above their heads to the new country.”

“Which means they followed the annual migration path of some cabbage moths, I suppose. It added a mythic dimension to everything, to be sure, and eventually they got as far as where the river met the sea,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “The ‘sacred grove of Hlinjerith, where mist hung in the branches.’ Just exactly what happened next has always been a matter of some speculation in our family.”

“Everyone knows what happened,” said Willowspear, looking at his liege lord a bit sternly. “The Star-Cloaked Man, the Beloved Imperfect, was sore afflicted of his wound, and his strength was faded, and his heart was faint. His disciples wept. But She in Her mercy forgave his sin of wrath.”

“Oh, -nonsense, she can’t have been more than six months old—”

“She worked a miracle for his sake, and from the foam of the river his deliverance rose—”

The song rose seemingly from nowhere, warbled out in a profound and rather eerie contralto. It was a moment before Smith realized that Mrs. Smith was singing, from within her cloud.

They all sat staring at her a moment before Balnshik pulled a handkerchief from Lord Ermenwyr’s pocket and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Smith indistinctly. “You could top up my drink, too, if you don’t mind. Your father used to sing that, young Willowspear.” She blew her nose. “When he was stoned. Mind you, we all were, most of the time. But do go on.”

“Daddy thinks that the Star-Cloaked Man died, and was quietly buried on that spot,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “But most Yendri believe some magical craft bore him away across the sea. And all the white butterflies went with him. The Yendri crossed the river with Mother and the rest of the refugees, and they settled in the forests.”

“But each year, in the season of his going, many of our people travel to that grove where the river meets the sea,” said Willowspear. “There they pray, and meditate. In sacred Hlinjerith, it is said, healing dreams come to the afflicted, borne on the wings of white butterflies.”

“And now, just guess, Smith, where your Mr. Smallbrass has decided to build his Planned Community,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“Oh,” said Smith.

“No wonder the greenies are having fits,” said Mrs. Smith, blowing her nose again.

“That’s awful!” said Burnbright, appalled. She looked up at Willowspear. “We can’t just go building houses all over somebody else’s holy place! Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

“My love, what could you do?” Willowspear replied. “You’re not to blame.”

“But it’s wrong,” she said. “And we’re always doing it, aren’t we? Cutting down your trees and moving in? We don’t know it’s wrong, but no wonder you hate us!”

“How could I ever hate you?” he said, kissing her between the eyes. “You are my jewel-of-fire-and-the-sun. And you are not like the others.”

“I am, though,” Burnbright said. Lord Ermenwyr cleared his throat.

“To interrupt this touching moment of mutual devotion—I haven’t told all yet.”

“It gets worse?” asked Smith.

“Yes, it does,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “As bad luck would have it, there was a prophecy made when Mother and Daddy got married, to the effect that one day the Star-Cloaked Man will return from over the sea, and that he’ll set the world to rights again. Daddy says it was propaganda put about by reactionary elements who disapproved of Mother no longer being quite such a virgin as she used to be.

“Nevertheless—that prophecy’s been dug out and dusted off. The Yendri are saying that the Star-Cloaked Man is coming back any day now. And when the White Ship comes sailing back and ties up at the Smallbrass Estates Marina, formerly Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches—well, the Star-Cloaked’ll be pretty cheesed off to see what’s happened to local property values.”

“But it’s only a legend, right?” said Smith.

“Not to all those denizens of the forest,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “And the first of your people to set an axe to the sacred grove will get his head split open. It’ll be all-out race war.”

“But the Yendri are nice. They don’t do things like that,” said Burnbright miserably.

“Some of them do,” said Balnshik. “Remember Mr. Flowering Reed?”

There was a silence at that.

“Of course,” said Lord Ermenwyr in a terrifically casual voice, “the clever thing to do would be to take a holiday in a happy seaside resort before all hell breaks loose and happy seaside resorts become a thing of the past, then skip out to a nice impenetrable mountain fortress ironclad with unbreakable protective spells.

“Even better would be persuading one’s friends to join one in safety. So one could watch the smoke rising from the former seaside resorts without getting all upset about one’s friends dying down there. You see?”

“Do you really think it’ll come to that?” said Smith.

“It cannot,” said Willowspear. He had another gulp of his drink and looked up from it with the fire of determination in his eyes. “My students listen to me. Perhaps I could form a delegation. If my people would only talk to yours—”

“What would it take to make anybody listen, though?” Smith looked uneasily at Willowspear. “And should you call attention to yourself? You’ve got a lot to lose if it goes wrong.”

“I have more to lose if no one makes the effort!” said Willowspear.

“More than you realize,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “There are other players in this game, my friend.”

“What do you mean?”

The lordling looked shrewd. “The Yendri aren’t the only people with colorful mythology. Burnbright, my sweet, have you ever told your husband the story of the dreadful Key of—”

His mouth remained open, forming the last syllable of what he had been about to say, his expression did not change in the slightest; but it was as though Time had stopped in a narrow envelope about his body. The others sat blinking at him for a moment, waiting for him to pick up his train of thought or sneeze.

“Master?” said Balnshik sharply.

“Is he having a seizure or something?” Mrs. Smith demanded.

“No, because he’d be jerking his arms and legs and foaming at the mouth and spitting out live scorpions,” said Burnbright. “There was this holy man in Mount Flame who used to—”

“Should he be glowing?” Smith inquired, leaning close to look at him.

Whether he should or not, Lord Ermenwyr had certainly begun to glow from within, as though he were a lantern made of opaque glass. It was an ominous green in color, that light, edged with something like purple, though it was steadily brightening to white—

“Hide your faces!” ordered Balnshik, in a voice none of them considered disobeying even for a second, though Willowspear had already pulled Burnbright down and dropped with her.

Smith found himself staring bemusedly at a pair of skeletal hands silhouetted before his face, which was odd because his eyes were closed … understanding at last, he gulped and rolled blindly off his seat, burying his face against the garden flagstones. The horrible light was everywhere still, but it had taken on a quality that was more than visual. It had a scent, a painful perfume. It was sound, a hissing, insinuating crackling like … like fire or whispering…

Voices. Something was talking. He didn’t understand the language. Was it being spoken, or played?

Abruptly it stopped, and the light went out. Smith heard Lord Ermenwyr say “Oh, damn,” quite distinctly. Then there was a crash, as though he had toppled backward.

“What the bloody hell was that?” said Mrs. Smith, from somewhere at ground level nearby.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Willowspear sounded agonized.

“He’s—ow—oh, the baby’s kicking—” said Burnbright, somewhat muffled.

“Come now, Master, this won’t do,” said Balnshik quite calmly, though with a certain distortion in her voice that suggested she might have altered her appearance just the tiniest bit, and was speaking through, for example, three-inch fangs. “Sit up and collect your wits. You’re not hurt at all. Stop frightening everyone.”

Smith opened his eyes cautiously. He could see again. No glowing afterimages, no clouds of retinal darkness. It was as though the light had never been. He got to his feet and peered at Lord Ermenwyr, who was sitting up in Balnshik’s arms. There was still a flicker of green light on the surface of his eyes.

“My lord has simply received a Sending,” Balnshik explained.

“Oh, is that all,” grumbled Mrs. Smith, struggling to stand.

“It’s a message conveyed by sorcerous means,” said Willowspear, helping her up. “My lord, are you well?”

Lord Ermenwyr had, in fact, begun to recover his composure and grope for his smoking tube; instead he sagged backward and closed his eyes.

“Feel—weak … Must… lie … down…” He moaned.

Balnshik pursed her lips.

“Smith…,” Lord Ermenwyr continued, “Willowspear… carry me up to my… my bed…”

Smith and Willowspear exchanged glances. Balnshik was perfectly capable of throwing her master over one shoulder like a scarf and carrying him anywhere he needed to be, and everyone present knew this, which was perhaps why Lord Ermenwyr opened one eye and groaned, with just an edge to his feebleness:

“Nursie dearest… you must see to … to … poor little Burnbright… Smith and Willowspear, are you going to let me die here on the damned pavement?”

“No, my lord,” said Willowspear hurriedly, and he and Smith raised Lord Ermenwyr between them. The lordling got an arm over both of their shoulders and staggered between them. He continued to make pitiful noises all the way up the hotel stairs and down the corridor to his suite, where Cutt and Crish stood like menhirs on either side of the gaping door.

“Help me … to the bed … not you, I meant Smith and Willowspear,” snapped Lord Ermenwyr. “So … weak…”

They dutifully carried him across the threshold and were well into the dark room before the ceiling fell in on them. At least, that was what Smith remembered it sounding like afterward.

Smith opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling.

Ceiling? It looked like the underside of a bunk. It was the underside of a bunk, and it was pretty close to his face. In fact there didn’t seem to be much room anywhere, and what there was, was pitching in a manner that suggested…

All right, he was in the forecastle of a ship. That might be a good thing. It might mean that the last twenty years had all been a dream, and he was going to sit up and discover he was youthful, flexible, and a lot less scarred.

Smith sat up cautiously. No; definitely not flexible. Youthful, either. Scars still there. And the cabin he occupied was a lot smaller than the forecastle of the last ship in which he’d served, though it was also much more luxurious. Expensive paneling. Ornamental brasswork. Fussy-patterned curtains at the portholes. Probably not a lumber freighter, all things considered.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and stood up, unsteadily, trying to find the rhythm of the ship’s movement and adjust. The immediate past wasn’t a complete void: he remembered confusion, voices, torchlight, lamplight…

The ship heeled over in a manner that suggested it wasn’t being crewed very well. Smith clung to the edge of the bunk, then lurched to the porthole, just in time to see a shapeless mass of nastiness falling past. On the deck immediately above his head, someone profoundly baritone attempted to make consoling noises, and an irritable little voice replied, “No, I don’t give a damn. Just don’t let go of the seat of my pants.”

Mumble mumble mumble mumble.

“Don’t be stupid, we can’t be in danger. The sky is blue, it’s broad daylight, and, anyway, the beach is right over there. See the surf?”

This remark, together with the realization that it had been spoken over a steady background din of clinking blocks and flapping canvas, sent Smith out of the cabin and up the nearest companionway as though propelled from a cannon’s mouth.

“Master, the Child of the Sun has awakened,” said Cutt in a solicitous voice, addressing Lord Ermenwyr’s backside. Lord Ermenwyr was too busy vomiting to reply, and Smith was too busy hauling on the helm and praying to all his gods to comment either, so there was a moment of comparative silence. The ship heeled about, throwing Lord Ermenwyr backward onto the deck, and her sails fluttered free.

“You! Whichever one you are! C’mere and hold this just like this!” Smith shouted, seizing Strangel and fixing his immense hands on the wheel. The demon obeyed, watching in bemusement as Smith ran frantically about on deck, making sheets fast, dodging a swinging boom, and crying hoarsely all the while, “Lord-Brimo-of-the-Blue-Water save us from a lee shore, Rakkha-of-the-Big-Fish save us from a lee shore, Yaska-of-the-White-Combers save us from a lee shore, two points into the wind, you idiot! No! The other way! Oh, Holy Brimo, to Thee and all Thine I swear a barrel of the best and a silver mirror if You’ll only get us out of this—”

“Rakkha-of-the-Big Fish?” Lord Ermenwyr mused from the scuppers.

Smith raced past him and grabbed the helm again.

“Wasn’t I holding it right?” Strangel inquired reproachfully.

“—Holy Brimo, hear my prayer, You’ll get a whole bale of pinkweed and, and an offering of incense, and, er, some of those little cakes the priests seem to think You like, anything, just get me off this lee shore please!”

“I think it’s working, whatever it is you’re doing,” Lord Ermenwyr said. “We’re not going wibble-wobble-whoops anymore. You see, lads? I told you Smith knew how to operate one of these things.”

The next hour took a lot out of Smith, though the ghastly roar of the surf grew ever fainter astern. He had no time to ask the fairly reasonable questions he wanted to ask with his hands around Lord Ermenwyr’s throat, but he was able to take in more of his surroundings.

The ship was clearly somebody’s pleasure craft, built not for sailing but for partying, and she was a galley-built composite: broad in the beam and shallow of draft, operating at the moment under sail, but with a pair of strange pannierlike boxes below the stern chains and a complication of domes, tanks, and pipes amidships that meant she had the new steam-power option too. The boilers seemed to be stone-cold, however, so it was up to Smith to get her out of her present predicament.

Once the ship’s movement had evened out, Lord Ermenwyr crawled from the scuppers and strolled up and down on deck, hands clasped under his coattails, looking on in mild interest as they narrowly avoided reefs, rocks, and Cape Gore before winning sea room. His four great bodyguards lurched after him. There was no one else on deck.

“Where’s the crew?” Smith demanded at last, panting.

“I thought you’d be the crew,” said Lord Ermenwyr, holding up his smoking tube for Crish to fill with weed. “I knew you used to be a sailor. Aren’t these new slaveless galleys keen? I can’t wait until we fire this baby up and see what she can do!”

Out of all possible things he might have said in reply, Smith said only, “What’s going on, my lord?”

Lord Ermenwyr smiled fondly and lit his smoke. “Good old sensible Smith! You’re the man to count on in a crisis, I said to Nursie.”

“Is she here?”

“Er—no. I left her in Salesh to look after the ladies. They’ll be absolutely safe, Smith, believe me, whatever happens. Do you know any other experienced midwife who can also tear apart armored warriors with her bare, er, hands? Lovely and versatile.”

Smith counted to ten and said, “You know, I’m sure you gave me a thorough explanation of this whole thing and got my consent, too, but I seem to have lost my memory. Why am I here?”

“Ah.” Lord Ermenwyr puffed smoke. “Well. Partly because you clearly needed a holiday, but mostly because you’re such a damned useful fellow in a fight. We’re on a rescue mission, Smith. Hope you don’t mind, but I had a feeling you might have objected if I’d asked you first. And I knew I could never get Willowspear to listen to reason, so I had to knock him out too—”

There was a drawn-out appalled cry from below. Willowspear rushed up the companionway, staring around him.

“Oh, bugger; now I’ll have to start the explanation all over again,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

Willowspear was much less calm than Smith had been. The few inhabitants of Cape Gore looked up from mending their nets as his shriek of “What?” echoed off the sky.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about my sister, Smith,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pouring out a stiff drink. He offered it to Willowspear, who had collapsed into a sitting position against the steam tanks and was clasping his head in his hands. Willowspear ignored him.

“No, I don’t think you have,” said Smith.

Lord Ermenwyr tossed back his cocktail and sighed with longing. “The Ruby Incomparable, Lady Svnae. Drop-dead gorgeous, and a gloriously powerful sorceress in her own right to boot. I proposed to her when I was three. She just laughed. I kept asking. By the time I was thirteen, she said it wasn’t funny anymore, and she’d break my arm if I didn’t leave off. I respected that; yet I still adore her, in my own unique way.

“And I would do anything for her, Smith. Any little gallant act of chivalry or minor heroism she required of me. How I’ve dreamed of spreading out my second-best cloak for her to foot it dryly over the mire! Or even, perchance, riding to her rescue. Suitably armed. With a personal physician standing by in case of accidents. Which is why I need the two of you along on this junket, you see?”

“So… the Sending was from your sister?” guessed Smith. “She’s in trouble and she needs you to save her?”

“I believe the word she used was Assist, but… it amounts to the fact that she needs me,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“My wife needs me, my lord,” said Willowspear hoarsely.

“She doesn’t need to see you stoned to death or torn apart by an angry mob,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “And it was clear you were getting heroic ideas, so I just stepped in and did what was best for you. And look at this lovely boat I was able to get on an hour’s notice, remarkably cheaply! I thought I’d call her the Kingfisher’s Nest. Aren’t those striped sails sporty? The kitchen’s even stocked with delicacies. Cheer up; you’ll be happily reunited once this is all over.”

“Where is your sister, then?” Smith asked, keeping a wary eye in the coastline.

“Ah, this is the clever part,” said Lord Ermenwyr, laying a finger alongside his nose. “She’s at the Monastery of Rethkast. Which is on the Rethestlin, you see? So if we’d set out on foot to rescue her, we’d have had to have hired porters and spent weeks trudging across plains and mountains and other dreary things.

“This way, we just sail along the coast to the place where the Rethestlin flows into the sea, and float up the river until we’re at the monks’ back door. The Ruby Incomparable descends to her little brother’s loving arms, he bears her off in triumph, and we all sail back to Salesh to pick up the supporting cast before going off on a pleasure cruise of indeterminate length.”

Smith groaned.

“You don’t have a problem with my beautiful plan, do you, Smith?” Lord Ermenwyr glared at him.

“No,” said Smith, wishing Balnshik were there to give the lordling the back of her hand. “I have a lot of problems with your plan. See those sails on the horizon? The purple ones? Those are warships, my lord. They belong to Deliantiba. It’s got a blockade on Port Blackrock just now. We can’t sail through, or they’ll board us and confiscate our vessel, if we’re lucky.”

“Oh. And if we’re not lucky?”

“We’ll hit a mine, or take a bucketful of clingfire or a broadside of stone shot,” Smith told him.

Lord Ermenwyr stared at the purple sails a long moment.

“There’s a ship merchant in Salesh who’s going to find that seven hundred of his gold pieces have suddenly turned into asps,” he said. “The smirking bastard. No wonder he had so many of these recreational vessels up for sale.”

“And even if the blockade wasn’t there,” Smith continued, “what makes you think that the Rethestlin is navigable?”

Lord Ermenwyr turned, staring at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“He doesn’t know about the falls. He can’t read maps,” said Willowspear with venom. “His lord father had a geographer captured especially to teach him, but he wouldn’t learn. He was a spoiled little blockhead.”

Now Lord Ermenwyr turned to stare at Willowspear, and Smith stared too. Willowspear looked back at them with smoldering eyes.

“Why, my old childhood friend and family retainer,” said Lord Ermenwyr, “is that Resentment I see in your face at last? Yes! Let it out! Revel in the dark side of your nature! Express your rage!”

Without a word, and quicker than a striking snake, Willowspear stood up and punched him in the mouth. Lord Ermenwyr tottered backward and fell, and his bodyguards were beside him quicker than Willowspear had been, snarling like avalanches.

“You have struck our Master,” said Stabb. “You will die.”

But Lord Ermenwyr held up his hand.

“It’s all right! I did ask for it. You may pick me up, however. I have to admit I was no good at maps,” he added, as his bodyguards lifted him and dusted him off with solicitous care, “I just wasn’t interested in them.”

“Really?” said Smith, too struck by the surrealism of the moment to come up with anything better to say.

“He defaced his tutor’s atlas,” snapped Willowspear. “He crossed out the names of cities and wrote in things like Snottyville and Poopietown. I could not believe Her son would do such things.”

“Neither could Daddy,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “I thought he was going to toss me off a battlement when he saw what I’d done. He actually apologized to the man and set him free. I had got it through my nasty little head that the blue wriggly lines meant water, though. And where there’s water, you can float on it, can’t you? So how do we have a problem, Smith?” He narrowed his eyes.

“Do you know what a waterfall is?” Smith watched the purple sails.

“Of course.”

“How do you sail up one?”

Lord Ermenwyr thought about that.

“So … sailors don’t have some terribly clever way of getting around the problem?” he said at last.

“No.”

“Well, we’ll figure something out,” said Lord Ermenwyr, and turned to look at the warships. “Aren’t those things getting closer?”

“Yes!” said Willowspear, undistracted from his fury.

“Do you think they’ve seen us?”

“It’d be a little hard to miss the striped sails,” said Smith.

“All right, then; we’ll just go around their silly blockade,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “It’ll delay us, I suppose, but it can’t be helped.”

Smith was already steering a course out to sea, but within the next quarter hour it became clear that one warship was breaking from its squadron and making a determined effort to pursue them. Lord Ermenwyr watched its progress from the aft rail. Willowspear stalked forward and prayed ostentatiously, like a gaunt figurehead.

“I think we need to go faster, Smith,” the lordling remarked after a while.

“Notice how they’ve got three times the spread of canvas we have?” said Smith, glancing over his shoulder.

“That’s bad, is it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, can’t we just do something sailorly like, er, clap on more sail?”

“Notice how they’ve got three masts, and we have one?”

“I know!” Lord Ermenwyr cried. “We’ll light the boiler and get the invisible oarsmen going!”

“That would probably be a good idea,” Smith agreed.

“Yes! Let them eat our dust! Or salt spray, or whatever.”

Smith nodded. Lord Ermenwyr fidgeted.

“Ah … do you know how to get the mechanism working?” he asked politely.

The boiler took up most of a cabin amidships, and it had been cast of iron in the shape of a squatting troll, whose gaping mouth was closed by a hinged buckler. Fortunately for everyone concerned, its designer had thoughtfully attached small brass plaques to the relevant bodily orifices, marked LIGHT BURNER HERE and FILL WITH OIL HERE and RELIEVE PRESSURE BY OPENING THIS VALVE.

“How whimsical,” Lord Ermenwyr observed. “If I ever have to transform a deadly enemy into an inanimate object, I’ll know what form to give him.” He shuddered as Smith yanked open the oil reservoir.

“Empty,” Smith grunted. “Did your ship merchant sell you any fuel?”

“Yes! Now that you mention it.” The lordling backed out of the cabin and opened the door to the cabin opposite, revealing it to be solidly stacked with small kegs. “See?”

Smith sidled through and pulled a keg down to examine it. “Well, it’s full,” he stated. “Good stuff, too; whale oil.”

“You mean it’s been rendered down from whales?” Lord Ermenwyr grimaced.

“That’s right.” Smith tapped the image stenciled in blue on the keghead, a cheery-looking leviathan.

“But, Smith—they’re intelligent. Like people.”

“No, they’re not; they’re fish,” said Smith, looking around for a funnel. “Mindless. Here we go. You hold that in place while I pour, all right?”

“Promise me you won’t throw the empties overboard, then,” said Lord Ermenwyr, reaching out gingerly with the funnel. “Certain mindless fish have been known to stalk fishermen with something remarkably like intelligence. And a sense of injury.”

Smith shrugged. When the oil reservoir had been filled, when the water pump had been opened, when the burner had been lit with a handy fireball and the troll’s eyes begun to glow an ominous yellow behind their glass lenses, Lord Ermenwyr stood back and regarded the whole affair with an expression of dissatisfaction.

“Is that all?” he said. “I was expecting a rush of breathtaking speed.”

“It has to boil first,” said Smith.

There came a thump and clatter on the deck above their heads.

“Master,” said a deep voice plaintively, “that ship threw something at us.”

Smith swore and sped up the companionway.

The bodyguards were standing in a circle, staring down at a ball of chipped stone that rolled to and fro on the deck. Willowspear, who had retreated as far forward as he could get, pointed mutely at the warship that was by then just over an effective shot’s length astern, close enough to see the blue light in the depths of the cabochon eyes of its dragon figurehead.

“Was that a broadside?” inquired Lord Ermenwyr, worming past Smith to glare at the ship.

“No. That was a warning,” said Smith.

Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel all bent at once to pick up the stone ball, and butted heads with a noise like an accident in a quarry. After a moment of confused growling, Cutt got hold of the ball. He turned and threw it at the warship, in a titanic stiff-armed pitch that struck its foretop and broke the yard, sending it crashing to the deck in a tangle of rigging.

Lord Ermenwyr applauded wildly.

“That’ll slow ’em down! Good Cutt!”

“What if all they wanted to do was speak with us?” cried Willowspear. “Do you realize we may have just lost any chance of resolving this peacefully?”

“Oh, you’re no fun at all.”

“The best we could have hoped for was being boarded anyway,” said Smith. “They’d have confiscated the boat and stuck us in a holding prison for civilians while they sorted us out. If we were lucky, we’d have seen the light of day after the war’s over.”

“But—”

“They’re cranking back their catapult for another shot,” warned Lord Ermenwyr.

Smith saw that this was indeed the case, and that the warship’s crew, which had been going about their business on deck in an unhurried way until the strike and only occasionally glancing out at their quarry, was now assembled all along the rail, staring at the Kingfisher’s Nest as a hawk stares at a pigeon.

The fighters among them held up their oval shields, bright-polished, and began to tap them against their scaled armor in a slow deliberate rhythm, clink and clink and clink, and the common sailors took up the rhythm too, beating it out on the rail. On bottles. On pans. The ratcheting of the great arm echoed it too as it came back, and back—

“Hell! Here it comes,” said Smith, and prepared to drop flat, but the shot went high and fell short, sending up a white gout of water.

“We don’t have anything we can shoot back with,” fretted Lord Ermenwyr.

“If you’d told me about this trip ahead of time, we might have,” Smith retorted, watching the activity on the enemy’s deck. Now there were sailors swarming in the rigging, hauling up a replacement yard and cutting lines free, and there was a team busy adjusting the placement of the catapult. The moment it was set again, however, all hands paused in their work, all faces turned back to the Kingfisher’s Nest, and once again they began to beat out the rhythm, clink and clink, even the clinging topmen striking out their beat on the dull blocks and deadeyes.

But as the catapult’s arm moved back, inexorable, there came a sound to counterpoint it: clank, and splash, and clank and splash, and clanksplash clanksplash—

“Hooray!” Lord Ermenwyr made a rude gesture at the warship. “We have oarsmen!”

And oars did seem to have deployed out of the panniers astern, jutting and dipping with a peculiar hinged motion, like a team of horses swimming on either side. The Kingfisher’s Nest did not exactly surge ahead, but there was no denying it began to make way, in a sort of determined crawl over the choppy swell. Over on the warship they launched their shot, and it arched up again and hung for a moment in the white face of the early moon before plummeting down in another fountain, approximately where Smith had been standing two minutes earlier.

“Now they’ll see,” gloated Lord Ermenwyr. “We’ll leave them all befuddled in our, er—”

“Wake,” said Smith.

“Yes, and after dark they won’t have a chance, because we’ll slip silently away through the night and evade them!”

“I don’t think we’re going anywhere silently,” said Smith, shouting over the clatter of the mechanism. “And there’ll be moonlight, you know.”

“Details, details,” Lord Ermenwyr shouted back, waving his hand.

They fled south, keeping the coastline just in sight, and the warship followed close. Its smashed yard was replaced in a disconcertingly short period of time, so the Kingfisher’s Nest lost some of its lead again. The whole chase had a bizarre clockwork quality Smith had never seen in a sea battle before. The Kingfisher’s Nest paddled on, puffing steam like a teakettle, while the warship’s crew kept up its clattering commentary. Were they trying to intimidate? Were they being sarcastic?

They never gave it up in any case, all the way down the coast, past a dozen fishing villages, past Alakthon-on-Sea, past Gabekria. The sun sank red, throwing their long shadows out over the water, and the white foam turned red and the breasts of the seabirds that paced them turned red as blood. When the sun had gone they fled on through the purple twilight, still pursued, and the warship lit all its lanterns as though to celebrate a triumph.

“Aren’t they ever giving up?” complained Lord Ermenwyr. “What did we ever do to them, for hell’s sake?”

“They’re chasing us because we’re running,” said Smith wearily. “I guess they think we’re spies, now. It’s a matter of money, too. We got off a shot at them and did damage, so we’re a legitimate prize if we’re taken.”

Lord Ermenwyr lit his smoking tube with a fireball. “Well, this has ceased to be amusing. It’s time we did something decisive and unpleasant.”

“It has never occurred to you to pray to Her for assistance, has it?” said Willowspear in a doomed voice. His lord pretended not to hear him.

“It would help if we had a dead calm,” said Smith. “That would give us the advantage. Could you do something sorcerous, maybe, like making the wind drop?”

“Hmf! I’m not a weather mage. Daddy, now, he can summon up thunder and lightning and the whole bag of meteorological tricks; but I don’t do weather.”

“In fact, I don’t think I ever saw you praying at all, not once!”

“Could you summon us up a catapult that’s bigger than theirs, then?” Smith inquired.

“Don’t be silly,” said Lord Ermenwyr severely. “Sorcery doesn’t work like that. It works on living energies. Things that can be persuaded. I could probably convince tiny particles of air to change themselves into wood and steel, but I’d have to cut a deal with every one of them on a case-by-case basis, and do you have any idea how long it would take? Assuming I even knew how to build a catapult—”

Smith hadn’t heard the shot, but he caught the brief glint of moonlight on the stone ball as it came in fast and low, straight for the glowing point of the lordling’s smoking tube. Without thinking, he dropped and yanked Lord Ermenwyr’s feet out from under him. Lord Ermenwyr fell, the ball shot past. It smashed into the nearest of the boiler domes, where it stuck. The dome crumpled along one riveted seam and began to scream shrilly, as steam jetted forth.

“Those bastards!” Lord Ermenwyr gasped. “That could have been me!”

“It was meant to be,” said Smith. “But please don’t call them names when they board us, all right? We might get out of this alive.”

“They’re not boarding us,” said Lord Ermenwyr, scrambling to his hands and knees. “I defy them!”

“Notice how we’re slowing down?” said Smith. “See the steam escaping from the boiler? It’s like, er, blood. It’s the vital fluid that makes the clockwork oarsmen row. And, since it’s leaking out—”

“Dead meat!” bellowed Crish, wrenching the ball loose. He turned and shot-putted it straight into the bows of the oncoming warship, where it did a lot of damage, to judge from the hoarse screaming that followed.

“This isn’t helping—” groaned Smith.

“I’ll show them dead meat,” said Lord Ermenwyr, in a voice that made Smith’s blood run cold. He looked up to see that the lordling had risen, and had thrown off the glamour that normally disguised him. His pallor gleamed under the moon; he seemed an edged weapon, a horrible surprise, and there was something corpselike and relentless in the stare he turned on the warship.

He leaned sidelong over the rail and reached a hand toward the water. Smith’s eyes blurred, he winced and blinked and turned his face away: for Lord Ermenwyr was warping size and distance, somehow, effortlessly dipping his hand in the moon-gleaming sea though it lay far below his arm’s reach, swirling the water idly, as though the sea were no more than a basin.

He said something that hurt Smith’s ears. He called. He persuaded. Smith found himself compelled to look back and saw a light rising under the waves. The warship was perilously close, pistol bolts were hissing across the short space of water that they had not crossed, thudding and clattering home. The lordling ignored the bolts, though he turned his head slightly as the shadow of the bow loomed black in the moonlight. Smiling, he raised his hand full of water, and the light under the waves came closer upward, and grew brighter. He spoke a Word.

Something emerged from the water and kissed the lordling’s hand, and that was all Smith registered before his brain refused to accept the geometry of what he saw. But it was bright, glowing to outshine the moon with the green phosphorescence of the depths, and it had a sweetish scent, and it made a high fizzing kind of sound that might have been speech. Smith trembled, felt a seizure beginning, and shut his eyes tightly.

But he could hear the screaming on the other ship.

He heard the wrenching and snapping of wood, too, and the full-throated and triumphant howling of Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel. He heard Willowspear’s footsteps swift on the companionway, and his pleading voice. Smith swallowed twice before he was able to mutter; “Have mercy on them, have mercy on them, o gods…”

The shouting was going on and on. There was a bubbling, a rush of air and displaced water. There was still shouting. The smell diminished, the bubbling too, but the shouting continued.

Smith opened his eyes and looked full into the moon. For a moment he glimpsed the double image of a towering shape below it that dwindled, solidified, patted its mundane form about it like a garment, and was only Lord Ermenwyr after all. Smith scrambled to his knees and peered over the railing.

The warship was still there, though falling astern and foundering. Its bowsprit with the dragon figurehead, in fact much of its forecastle, was missing. Boats were being flung over and men flung themselves too, swimming desperately to get free of the wreck and of the brightness under the water.

But the bright thing sank, and diminished, and a moment later there was no light but the moon and the now-distant lanterns of the ship, though they were going out one by one. No clattering any more, of any kind, for the first time in hours. Smith’s ears rang in the silence.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Oh, you really don’t want to know,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “They broke my toy, so I broke theirs.”

A wind came across the sea and bellied out their sails. The silence filled gradually with the long-familiar creaking of the ship under way. Lord Ermenwyr took up his smoking tube again and relit it, shielding it against the wind with both hands. Smith steadied his trembling legs, got to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said, “for not having them all killed.”

“Well, aren’t you the magnanimous soul?” said Lord Ermenwyr, regarding him askance. “I couldn’t see myself facing Mother again if I’d given them what they deserved. Her stare of reproach could take out a whole fleet of warships.”

“My lord, we must go back and rescue them,” said Willowspear.

“No!” Lord Ermenwyr bared his teeth. “What do you think I am, a nice man? It won’t do them any harm to paddle across the briny deep looking fearfully over their shoulders for a while, expecting any moment some unspeakable creature to rear up out of the primordial oozy depths and … and … Oh, bugger all, I’m getting seasick again. Help me to my cabin, Willowspear. I want my fix, and I need to lie down.”

Willowspear glowered at him.

“I’m doing this for your Mother’s sake,” he said, and helped Lord Ermenwyr to the companionway.

“Fine. Smith, you can stay up here and mind the steering-wheel thing. Boys, stand guard. Perhaps you can get Smith to teach you how to belay the anchor or some other terribly nautical business…”

His voice retreated belowdecks.

Smith staggered to the wheel and clung there, breathing deeply. Distant on the headland were the tiny yellow lights of a village. There was a fair wind; the stars were washed out by light, the night sky washed to a soft slate-blue, and the moon rode tranquil above the wide water. If anything unwholesome traveled below, it kept to its deeps and troubled the air no more.

He brought his gaze back to the deck, and met eight red lights in a line. No; they were four pairs of eyes. Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel were watching him, unblinking as towers.

“What is an anchor, Child of the Sun?” asked Strangel.

What the hell, thought Smith.

“All right,” he said. “You’re going to learn to crew this ship. Understand?”

The demons looked at one another uncertainly.

Smith woke on deck in the morning, sprawled in a coil of hawser, and—sitting up—felt every year of his life in the muscles of his lower back. Gritting his teeth, he stood and surveyed the deserted bay wherein the Kingfisher’s Nest lay anchored. It had seemed like a safe harbor by moonlight; he was gratified to see no other sail and a clear sky without cloud.

“Child of the Sun.”

He turned his head (feeling a distinct grinding in his neck) and saw the four demons standing motionless by the rail, watching him hopefully.

“Are we to pull up the anchor now?”

Smith ran his hands over his stubbly face. “Not yet,” he said. “See all these pistol bolts sticking in things? Pull ’em all out and collect ’em in a bucket. Find a wood plane and some putty and get rid of the splinters and the holes, all right? And I’ll go see if I can find a wrench so I can start taking the boiler dome apart.”

The demons looked at one another.

“What is some putty, Child of the Sun?”

It took no more than an hour to show them what to do. Smith had discovered that the demons were not actually stupid; just terribly literal-minded. By the time Lord Ermenwyr came on deck they were scraping and filling industriously, as Smith sat in the midst of the disassembled boiler dome, tapping out the dent and realigning the seam.

“Oh, good, I hoped you’d be able to fix that,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pacing forward and surveying the horizon.

“I can patch it together enough to work,” Smith shouted after him. “It would be nice to have some solder, though.”

“You’ll manage,” the lordling assured him.

“Where’s Willowspear?”

“Fixing us breakfast.” Lord Ermenwyr paced back in a leisurely fashion and stood regarding Smith’s efforts with mild interest.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Smith said, around the rivet he was holding in his teeth at that moment. He spat it out, smacked it into place, and resumed tapping. “You’ve annoyed him a lot, you know. I didn’t think he was capable of hitting anybody.”

“Neither did he.” Lord Ermenwyr snickered. “Another step in his journey toward self-knowledge. Now he’s decided to make amends by cooking for us on this jaunt.”

“Does he know how to cook?”

“He’s dear Mrs. Smith’s son, isn’t he? Bound to have inherited some of her culinary genius.” Lord Ermenwyr hitched up his trousers and squatted on the deck, staring in fascination as Smith worked. “And what a splendid job you’re doing! It just comes naturally to you, doesn’t it? You people are so good with—with hammers, and rivets, and anvils and things. It would really be a shame…”

Smith waited a moment for him to finish his sentence. He didn’t. When Smith looked up he was staring keenly out to sea, pretending he hadn’t said anything.

“Just before you got hit by the Sending,” said Smith, “You were saying a lot of ominous stuff about the collapse of civilization and dropping dark hints about other people getting involved.”

“Was I? Why, I suppose I was,” said Lord Ermenwyr in an innocent voice.

“Yes, you were. And you said something about a Key.”

“Did I? Why, I suppose I—”

“Breakfast, my lord,” said Willowspear, rising from the companionway with a kettle. He sat down cross-legged on the deck and began to ladle an irregularly gray substance into three bowls. Smith and Lord Ermenwyr watched him with identical appalled expressions.

“What the Nine Hells is that stuff?” Lord Ermenwyr demanded.

“Straj meal, boiled with a little salt,” Willowspear told him calmly. “Very healthy for you, my lord.”

“But—but that’s nursery food! We used to fling it at each other rather than eat it,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “And when it dried on a wall, the servants had to scrape it off with wire brushes.”

“Yes, I remember.” Willowspear lifted his bowl and intoned a brief prayer. “Your Mother lamented the wastefulness of Her unappreciative offspring.”

Smith stared at them, remembering the smiling inhuman thing that had summoned a horror from the deeps, and trying to imagine it as an infant throwing its porridge about. “Er … I usually have fried oysters for breakfast,” he said.

“This is a wholesome alternative, sir. Better for your vital organs,” Willowspear replied.

“All right, I know what you’re doing,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? In a sort of passive pacifistic Yendri way?”

“No, my lord, I am not.” Willowspear lifted a morsel of the porridge on two fingers and put it into his mouth.

“And I’ll bet the meal has been sitting in bins down there for months! There’s probably weevils in it. Listen to me, damn you! I had that larder stocked with nice things to eat.

Everything the merchant could cram in there on an hour’s notice. Jars of pickled sweetbreads and amphorae of rare liqueurs and candied violets. Fruit syrups! Plovers’ eggs in brine! Runny cheeses and really crispy thin fancy crackers to spread them on! That’s what I want for breakfast!” Lord Ermenwyr raged, his eyes bulging.

“Then I suggest, my lord,” said Willowspear, “that you go below and prepare your own meal.”

He raised his head and looked his liege lord in the eye. Smith held his breath, and for a moment it seemed that the very air between them must scream and burst into flame. At last Lord Ermenwyr seemed to droop.

“You’re using Mother’s tactics,” he said. “That’s bloody unfair, you know.” He sagged backward into a sitting position and took up the bowl. “Ugh! Can’t I even have some colored sugar to sprinkle over it? Or some syrup of heliotrope?”

“I could prepare it with raisins tomorrow,” Willowspear offered.

“I haven’t even got my special breakfast spoon.” Grumbling, Lord Ermenwyr helped himself to the porridge.

Smith took a cautious mouthful. It was bland stuff, but he was hungry. He shoveled it down.

“My lord?” said a voice like a hesitant thunderstorm. Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel stood watching them eat.

“What?” Lord Ermenwyr snapped.

“We have not tasted blood or flesh in three days,” said Strangel.

Lord Ermenwyr sighed and got to his feet, still dipping porridge from the bowl. As he ate, he scanned the horizon a moment. At last he sighted a fin breaking the water, and a pale shape gliding below the surface close to shore. He pointed, and through a full mouth said indistinctly, “Kill.”

His bodyguards were over the rail and into the water so quickly that Smith barely saw them move.

Moments later, cosmic retribution caught up with a shark.

“So there was this Key you mentioned,” said Smith, as he fitted the boiler dome back into place.

“So I did,” said Lord Ermenwyr a little sullenly, staring out at the whitecaps that had begun to appear on the wide sea. He ignored Willowspear, who was carefully setting up a folding chair for him.

“Well? What were you talking about?”

“The Key of Unmaking.”

Smith halted for a moment before picking up the wrench and going on with his work.

“That’s just a fable,” he said at last. “That’s just, what do you call it, mythology.”

“Oh, is it?” Lord Ermenwyr jeered. “It’s in your Book of Fire. You’re not a believer, then, I take it?”

Smith went on bolting down the dome. He did not reply.

“I am familiar with the Book of Fire,” said Willowspear hesitantly. “Though I confess I haven’t studied it. It’s your, er, religious history, is it not?”

“It’s the legends from the old days,” said Smith, getting to his feet. He wiped his hands clean with a rag.

“You’re not a believer,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “Very well; but you must have heard the story of the Key of Unmaking.”

“I haven’t,” said Willowspear.

“I’ll tell you about it, then. Long ago, when the World was uncrowded and the personified abstract archetypes supposedly walked around on two legs, there was a God of Smithcraft, which was a pretty neat trick given that black-smithing hadn’t been invented yet.”

“Shut up,” Smith growled. “He was the one who worked out how to make the stars go up and down. He made the swords and tridents for the other gods. He designed the aperture mechanism that rations out moonlight, or we’d all be crazy from too much of it.”

“You do remember, then,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“And he … well, he fell in love,” said Smith reluctantly. “With the fire in his forge. But he knew the flames were only little images of True Fire. He watched her blaze across the sky every day, but she never noticed him. So he put on his sandals and his cloak and his hat and he walked in the World following after True Fire, always going west, hoping to get to the mountain where she slept every night.

“He took his iron staff with him and, uh, things happened like, when he walked through the Thousand Lake country near Konen Feyy the ground was muddy, and his staff end left holes in the ground that filled up with water, and that’s how the lakes got there. And up in a crater on top of a mountain he found True Fire at last.

“He courted her, and they became lovers. And they wanted to have children, but she—well, she was True Fire, see? So he made children for her, instead, out of red gold. And she touched them with holy fire and they became alive. Perfect mechanisms that could do anything other children could do, including grow up and have children themselves. And they were the ancestors.”

“Some of your ancestors, Willowspear, on your mother’s side,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Isn’t that an odd thought?”

“And … True Fire made islands rise up out of the sea, and the Children of the Sun lived on them,” said Smith. “Those were the first cities.”

He threw down the rag and squinted up at the sky. “We should get moving again,” he said. “Make sail and weigh anchor!”

The demons, who had been sprawled out in sated repose, clambered to their feet. Two set to with the capstan bars and the anchor jumped up from the depths like a fishhook, while two mounted into the dangerously creaking shrouds.

“There’s more to the story, though, isn’t there, Smith?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“Yes,” said Smith, taking the helm. “All right, you lot, remember where the anchor goes? Right. Coil the hawser like I showed you.”

“Clever lads!” Lord Ermenwyr called out. “But Smith can’t sail away from the story. Pay close attention, Willowspear, because this is where it all went wrong. If the Children of the Sun had stayed on their islands, all would have been well for the rest of us. Unfortunately, they were clever little clockwork toys and invented all this ship business. Halyards, lanyards, jibs, and whatnot. Which enabled them to spread out and colonize other people’s lands.”

“That was ages before the Yendri even came here, so you can’t blame—”

“The demons were here, though. They matter too.”

“We travel because our Mother travels,” said Smith. “That’s what the stories say. That’s why we’re always moving, the way She moves across the sky.”

“Yes, but you don’t exactly bring us light, do you?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

At the wheel Smith narrowed his eyes, but said nothing as he guided the ship out of the bay.

“Burnbright is the light of my world,” said Willowspear. “They are capable of great love, my lord.”

“And that’s the other problem!” said Lord Ermenwyr. “They breed like rabbits. Even their own legends say that soon there were so many of them running about the world that the other personified abstract archetypes got upset that their own children were being crowded out, so they went to the Smith god and complained.”

“There was a council of the gods,” said Smith. “They told the Father he had to do something. So he made … so he is supposed to have made this Key of Unmaking.”

“The opposite of a key that winds mechanisms up, you see, Willowspear?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“No,” said Willowspear.

“It shuts us off, all right?” said Smith. “Or it’s supposed to. It’s only a myth, anyway. The stories say that the gods used it to bring on calamities. The first time they used it was when the Gray Plague came. Everybody died but a handful of pregnant women hiding in a cave, that’s what the story says. And then everything was all right for ages, and the cities came back.

“And then… Lord Salt is supposed to have used it when he burnt the granaries of Troon, and famine came, and the Four Wars broke out at once. In the end there was just a handful of fishing villages along the coast, because inland the ghosts massed on the plains like armies, there were so many angry dead. Nobody could live there for generations.

“And people say…” Smith’s voice trailed off.

“What people say” said Lord Ermenwyr, “is that one day the Key of Unmaking will be used for the third time, if the Children of the Sun can’t learn from their mistakes, and there will be no survivors.”

“But it’s just a story,” said Smith stubbornly.

“I have news for you,” said Lord Ermenwyr, taking out his smoking tube and tapping loose the cold ash. “It’s real.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I beg to differ. What’s the Book of Fire say about it? Let’s see what I can recall… (Mother made us study comparative religions, and Daddy always said they were good for a laugh, so I applied myself to the subject)… ‘The Father-Smith sorrowing sore, on the Anvil of the World, Forged his fell Unmaking Key, Deep in the bones he hid it there, Till Doomsday should dredge it up. Frostfire guards what Witchlight hides.’ ”

“It’s a metaphor,” said Smith.

“How can you disbelieve your own Scripture?” Willowspear asked him, dismayed.

“It’s different for you,” Smith replied. “Your history is still happening, isn’t it? His mother is still writing letters to her disciples and running the shop, isn’t she? If you have a question of faith, you can just go to her and ask her.”

“Though Mother says nobody listens to her anyway,” said Lord Ermenwyr parenthetically.

“But Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches will still be sacred though a thousand years pass, and the White Ship will still have put forth from its shores. The passage of time can’t make truth less true,” argued Willowspear.

“You’re missing the point, my friend,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “It doesn’t matter whether Smith believes in the Key of Unmaking or not. Other people do, and they feel it’s high time it was used again.”

“What kind of people?” asked Smith, feeling a chill.

“Oh … certain demons have felt that way about your race for years,” said Lord Ermenwyr, with an evasive wave of his hand. “But that’s never been much of a threat, because no two demons can agree on the color of the sky, let alone a plan of action. I’m afraid this whole Smallbrass Estates affair has made things worse, though.”

Smith shuddered. But, “So what?” he said. “There isn’t actually any real literal Key.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Lord Ermenwyr said. “If you don’t think there’s any real danger, Smith, why should we greenies worry?”

He leaned back in his chair and gazed out at the bright sea sparkling.

“I’m getting a headache from all this glare,” he said after a moment. “Willowspear, fetch me a parasol. And perhaps my spectacles with the black emerald lenses.”

The third day out dawned clear and bright, but far to the south was a glacier wall of fog, purple in the morning sun, blinding white at noon. By afternoon they had come close, and it loomed across half the world. Under it the blue sea faded to steel color and green, with a pattern like watered silk, and distance became confused. Rocks and islets swam into view, indistinct in the gloom.

Smith struck sails and proceeded with caution, relinquishing the helm to Willowspear every few minutes to take soundings from the chains. He sighed with relief when he spotted a marker buoy, a hollow ball of tin painted red and yellow, and ran aft to the wheel.

“We’re at the mouth of the Rethestlin,” he told the others. “And the tide’s with us. This is where we go inland, right?”

“Yes! Turn left here,” said Lord Ermenwyr. He shivered. “Chilly, all this damned mist, isn’t it? Cutt, I want my black cloak with the fur collar.”

“Yes, Master.” Cutt went clumping down the companion-way.

“The water has changed color,” observed Willowspear, looking over the side.

“That’s the river meeting the sea,” Smith told him, peering ahead. “Maybe we should anchor until this fog lifts… no! There’s the next buoy. We’re all right. You ought to thank Smallbrass Enterprises for that much, my lord; this would be a lot harder without the markers.”

Willowspear scowled. “Surely they haven’t begun their desecration!”

“No,” said Smith, steering cautiously. “They can’t have got enough investors yet. These were probably put down for the surveying party. So much the better for us. Weren’t we supposed to be racing to rescue your sister, my lord?”

“She’ll hold off the ravening hordes until we get there,” Lord Ermenwyr said, allowing Cutt to wrap him in the black cloak. “She’s a stalwart girl. Once, when Eyrdway was tormenting me, she knocked him down with a good right cross. Bloodied his nose and made him cry, too. Happy childhood days!”

The tide swung them round the buoy, and another appeared. A smudge on the near horizon resolved into a bank of reeds; and the thump and wash of surf, muffled, fell behind them, and the cry of a water bird echoed. The roll and pitch of the sea had stopped. They seemed stationary, in a drifting world…

“We’re on the river,” said Smith.

The fog lifted, and they beheld Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches.

It was a green place, a dark forest coming down to meadows along the water’s edge, cypress and evergreen oak hung with moss that dripped and swayed in long festoons in the faint current of air moving upriver. Deeper into the forest, towering above the green trees, were bare silver boughs where purple herons nested.

Three tall stones had been set up in a meadow. Yendri signs were cut deep into them, spirals of eternity and old words. Around their bases white flowers had been planted, tall sea poppies and white rhododendrons, and the bramble of wild white roses. Willowspear, who had been praying quietly, pointed.

“The shrine to the Beloved Imperfect,” he said. “That was where he stood, with the Child in his arms. There he saw the White Ship, that was to bear him over the sea, rise from the water. This water!” He looked around him in awe.

Lord Ermenwyr said nothing, watching the shore keenly. Smith thought it was a pretty enough place, but far too dark and wet for Children of the Sun to live there comfortably. He was just thinking there must have been a mistake when they saw the new stone landing, and the guardhouse on the bank at the end of it.

“Oh,” said Willowspear, not loudly but in real pain.

It was a squat shelter of stacked stones, muddy and squalid-looking. Piled about it were more of the red-and-yellow buoys and a leaning confusion of tools: picks, shovels, axes, already rusted. There were empty crates standing about, and broken amphorae, and a mound of bricks. There was a single flagpole at the end of the pier. A red-and-yellow banner hung from it, limp in the wet air.

The shelter’s door flew open, and a figure raced out along the bank.

“Ai!” shouted a man, his hopeful voice coming hollow across the water. “Ai-ai-ai! You! Are you the relief crew?”

“No, sorry,” Smith shouted back.

“Aren’t you putting in? Ai! Aren’t you stopping?”

“No! We’re headed upriver!”

“Please! Listen! We can’t stay here! Will you pick us up?”

“What?”

“Will you pick us up?” The man had run out to the end of the pier, staring out at them as they glided by. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“We’re on a bit of a schedule, I’m afraid,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Can’t do it.”

“Oh, please! You don’t—look, the wood’s all wet. We can’t cook anything Bolter and Drill are sick. And at night—” The man cast a furtive glance over his shoulder at the forest.

Smith groaned. “Can’t we give them some oil, at least?” he muttered.

“Would some oil help you?”

“What? Oil? Yes! Just pull in for a minute, please, all right?”

“Bring up a keg,” Lord Ermenwyr ordered Stabb. He raised his voice again to call out in a bantering tone, “So I take it you’re not happy in Beautiful Smallbrass Estates?”

“I wouldn’t live here if you paid me a thousand crowns!” the man screamed, panic in his eyes as he realized that the Kingfisher’s Nest was truly not going to stop.

“Maybe we can pick you up on the return trip!” Smith cried.

“Damn you!” The man wept. Smith grimaced and turned away, watching the river. He heard the splash as Stabb hurled the keg of oil overboard. Turning back, he saw the man wading into the shallows, grabbing desperately at the keg as the eddy carried it close. To Smith’s relief he caught it, and was wrestling it ashore when the tide carried them around a bend in the river, and dark trees closed off the view.

“There, now, he can get a nice fire started with the oil,” said Lord Ermenwyr, watching Smith. “And there’ll probably be a relief crew arriving any day now.”

“What’s in those woods?” asked Smith. “Demons?”

“No!” said Willowspear. “This is a holy place. They brought their terrors with them. This is what happens when men profane what is sacred. The land itself rejects them, you see?”

Smith shrugged. He kept his eyes on the river.

They made hours and many miles upriver before the tidal bore gave out, then moored for the night in a silent backwater. In the morning they lit the boiler again, and thereafter the Kingfisher’s Nest progressed up the river in a clanking din that echoed off the banks, as the dipping ranks of oars worked the brown water. Birds flew up in alarm at the racket, and water serpents gave them a wide berth.

On the fifth day, they ran aground.

Smith had relinquished the helm to Cutt while he downed a stealthy postbreakfast filler of pickled eel. He swore through a full mouth as he felt the first grind under the keel, and then the full-on shuddering slam that meant they were stuck.

He scrambled to his feet and ran forward.

“The boat has stopped, Child of the Sun,” said Cutt.

“That’s because you ran it onto a sandbank!” Smith told him, fuming. “Didn’t you see the damned thing?”

“No, Child of the Sun.”

“What’s this?” Lord Ermenwyr ran up on deck, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. “We’re slightly tilty, aren’t we? And why aren’t we moving?”

“What’s happened?” Willowspear came up the companionway after him.

“Stop the rowers!” Smith ran for the boiler stopcock and threw it open. Steam shrieked forth in a long gush, and the oars ceased their pointless thrashing.

“You have hyacinth jam in your beard, my lord,” Willowspear informed Lord Ermenwyr.

“Do I?” The lordling flicked it away hastily. “Imagine that. Are we in trouble, Smith?”

“Could be worse,” Smith admitted grumpily. He looked across at the opposite bank. “We can throw a cable around that tree trunk and warp ourselves off. She’s got a shallow draft.”

“Capital.” Lord Ermenwyr clapped once, authoritatively. “Boys! Hop to it and warp yourselves.”

After further explanation of colorful seafaring terms, Smith took the end of the hawser around his waist and swam, floundering, to the far shore with it, as Cutt paid it out and Strangel dove below the waterline to make certain there were no snags. After four or five minutes he walked to the surface and trudged ashore after Smith.

“There is nothing sharp under the boat, Child of the Sun,” he announced.

“Fine,” said Smith, throwing a loop of cable about the tree trunk. He looped it twice more and made it fast. Looking up, he waved at those on deck, who waved back.

“Bend to the bloody capstan!” he shouted. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb started, and collided with one another in their haste to get to the bars. Round they went, and the cable rose dripping from the river; round they went again, and the cable sprang taut, and water flew from it in all directions. Round once more and they halted, and the Kingfisher’s Nest jerked abruptly, as one who has nodded off and been elbowed awake will leap up staring.

“Go, boys, go!” said Lord Ermenwyr happily, clinging to the mast. “Isn’t there some sort of colorful rhythmic chant one does at moments like these?”

The demons strained slightly, and the Kingfisher’s Nest groaned and began to slither sideways.

“That’s it!” Smith yelled. “Keep going!”

The Kingfisher’s Nest wobbled, creaked, and—

“Go! Go! Go!”

—lurched into deep water with a splash, and a wave rose and slopped along the riverbank.

“Stand to,” said Smith. As he bent to loose the cable, he became aware of a sound like low thunder. Looking up over his shoulder, he pinpointed the source of the noise. Strangel was growling, glaring into the forest with eyes of flame, and it was not a metaphor.

Smith went on the defensive at once, groping for weapons he did not have. As he followed Strangel’s line of sight, he saw them too: five green men in a green forest, cloaked in green, staring back coldly from the shadows, and each man wore a baldric studded with little points of green, and each man had in his hand a cane tube.

Strangel roared, and charged them.

Their arms moved in such perfect unison they might have been playing music, but instead of a perfect flute chord a flight of darts came forth, striking each one home into Strangel’s wide chest.

He kept coming as though he felt nothing, and they fell back wide-eyed but readied a second barrage, with the same eerie synchronization. The darts struck home again. They couldn’t have missed. Strangel seemed to lose a little of his momentum, but he was still advancing, and smashing aside branches as he came. Not until the third flight of darts had struck him did his roar die in his throat. He slowed. He stopped. His arms remained up, great taloned hands flexed for murder. Their forward weight toppled him and he fell, rigid, and rolled over like a log rolling.

His snarling features seemed cut from stone. The lights of his eyes had died.

The Yendri stared down at him in astonishment.

Smith turned and dove into the river.

He was scrambling over the rail of the Kingfisher’s Nest when the first dart struck wood beside his hand. He felt Willowspear seize his collar and pull him over, to sprawl flat on the deck, and he thought he saw Lord Ermenwyr running forward. Cutt, Crish, and Stabb gave voice to a keening ululation, above which very little else could be heard; but Smith made out the clang that meant someone had closed the stopcock, followed by a tinkly noise like silver rain. He looked up dazedly and saw poisoned darts hitting the boiler domes, bouncing off harmlessly, and Lord Ermenwyr on his hands and knees behind the domes.

“Rope! Rope!” he was shouting, and Smith realized what he meant. The Kingfisher’s Nest had been borne backward on the current, stopped only by the cable that he had not managed to loose in time. It swung now on the flood, its cable straight as a bar. Smith dragged himself forward to the tool chest by the boiler domes, and, groping frantically, there he found a kindling hatchet.

He rose to his knees, saw two Yendri directly opposite him on the bank in the act of loading their cane tubes, and took a half dozen frenzied whacks at the cable before diving flat again. The darts flew without noise. But he heard them strike the domes again, and one dart bounced and landed point down on his hand. He shook it off frantically, noting in horror the tarry smear on his skin where the dart had lain. Someone seized the hatchet out of his hand and he rolled to see Willowspear bringing it down on the cable, bang, and the cable parted and they shot away backward down the river, wheeling round in the current like a leaf.

The oars had begun to beat again by the time Smith could scramble to the helm and bring her around, thanking all the gods they hadn’t grounded a second time.

“Was anybody hit?” he cried. The demons were still howling, hurling threats palpable as boulders back upriver. “Shut up! Was anybody hit?”

“I wasn’t,” said Willowspear, picking himself up. “My lord? My lord!”

Smith spotted Lord Ermenwyr still crouched behind the boilers, his teeth bared, his eyes squeezed shut. Sweat was pouring from his face. Smith groaned and punched the wheel, and Willowspear was beside his liege lord at once, struggling to open his collar; but Lord Ermenwyr shook his head.

“I’m not hit,” he said.

“But what’s—”

“I lost one of them,” he said, opening sick eyes. “And Mother’s right. It hurts worse than anything I’ve ever known. Damn, damn, damn.”

“What can I do for you, my lord?” Willowspear lowered his voice.

“Help me up,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “They need me to do something.”

“Who were those people? What happens now?” Smith asked, steering downriver.

The lordling did not reply, but steadied himself on his feet with Willowspear’s help. He brushed himself off and marched aft to Cutt, Crish, and Stabb. By the time he reached them he was swaggering.

“Now, boys, that’s enough! What good will shouting do?” he demanded.

They fell silent at once and turned to him meekly, and Smith was astonished to see their hideous faces wet with tears.

“Now we are no longer a set of four, Master,” said Cutt.

“Of course you are. Look! I’ve caught old Strangel right here.” Lord Ermenwyr held up a button he’d plucked from his waistcoat. “See? There’s his living soul. I’ll put it in a new body as soon as ever we’re home. But what does he need now?”

The demons stared at him, blank. Then they looked at one another, blanker still.

“Revenge!” Lord Ermenwyr told them. “Lots of bloody and terrible revenge! And who’s going to be the hideous force that dishes it out, eh?”

“…Us?” Stabb’s eyes lit again, and so did Cutt’s and so did the eyes of Crish.

“Yes!” Lord Ermenwyr sang, prancing back and forth before them. “Yes, you! Kill, kill, kill, kill! You’re going to break heads! You’re going to rip off limbs! You’re going to do amusing things with entrails!”

“Kill, kill, kill!” the demons chanted, lurching from foot to foot, and the deck boomed under their feet.

“Happy, happy, happy!”

“Happy, happy, happy!” The planks creaked alarmingly.

“Kill, kill, kill!”

“Kill, kill, kill!”

A while later they had come about and were steaming back up the river again, at their best speed.

“Half a point starboard!” Smith called down from the masthead. Below him, Willowspear at the helm steered to his direction cautiously, glancing now and then at the backs of his hands, where STARBOARD was chalked on the right and PORT on the left. On either side stood Cutt and Crish, shielding him each with a stateroom door removed from its hinges. Lord Ermenwyr sat behind him in a folding chair, shadowed over by Stabb with yet a third door. The lordling had his smoking tube out, but its barrel was loaded with poison darts gleaned from the deck, and he rolled it in his fingers and glared at the forest gliding past.

They drew level with the place where they had been attacked, and there was the cut cable trailing in the water; but of their assailants there was no sign.

“Two points to port,” Smith advised, and peered ahead.

The fogbanks of the coast lay far behind them; the air was clear and bright as a candle flame. From his high seat he could see forest rolling away for miles, thinning to yellow savanna far to the north and east, and he knew that the grain country of Troon was out beyond there. Westward the land rose gradually to a mountain range that paralleled the river. Far ahead, nearly over the curve of the world perhaps, the mountains got quite sharp, with a pallor nastily suggestive of snow though it was high summer.

And in all that great distance he could see no house, no smoke of encampments, no castle wall or city wall, and no other ship on the wide river. He saw no green men, either; but he knew they would not let themselves be seen.

“One point to starboard,” he cried, and his voice fell into vast silence.

By evening they had gone far enough, fast enough, for Smith to judge it safe to drop anchor off an island in the middle of the river. Crish and Stabb were left on deck to keep watch, and Curt blocked the companionway like a landslide.

“This is a good wine,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked, emerging from the galley with a dusty bottle. “Nice to know there are still a few honest merchants left, eh?”

Smith sighed, warming his hands at the little stove… He looked around the saloon. It was quite elegant. More polished brass and nautical curtains, bulkheads paneled in expensive woods, not one whiff of mildew. And nothing useful. No weapons other than in potential: a couple of pointless works of art in one corner, a dolphin and a seagull cast in bronze, slightly larger than life and heavy enough to kill somebody with. They didn’t suit Smith’s tastes, as art. He preferred mermaid motifs himself, especially mermaids with fine big bosoms like—

“Here,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pressing on him a stoneware cup of black wine. “A good stiff drink’s what you want, Smith.”

“I’ll tell you what I want,” Smith replied, taking the cup and setting it down. “I want to know who killed Strangel.”

Lord Ermenwyr shifted in his seat.

“He isn’t really dead,” he said hastily. “Not as we think of being dead. Really. With demons, you see—”

“They were the Steadfast Orphans,” said Willowspear. “Those of our people who refused to accept the Lady’s marriage and … and subsequent offspring. They are an order of fighters, Smith. They will kill if they believe it’s justified.”

“Like Flowering Reed,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “He was one of them.”

“Hell,” said Smith, with feeling. “Are they after you again?”

After an awkward pause, Lord Ermenwyr said, “I don’t think so. They might have been on their way to Hlinjerith.”

Smith thought of the pleading man on the landing, and his horror registered on his face.

“They wouldn’t harm those men,” Willowspear assured him. “Especially not if they were ill. The Orphans are stubborn and intolerant and—and bigoted, but they never attack unless they are attacked first.”

“So as to have the moral edge,” sneered Lord Ermenwyr. “Mind you, they have no difficulty hiring someone else to kill for them. And they’ll go to great lengths to arrange ‘accidents,’ the hypocritical bastards.”

“Strangel charged them, so they took him out,” said Smith. “All right. But what’d they go after me for?”

“I think they’d probably spotted me on deck by then,” the lordling replied, “and it’s open season on me all year round, you know, what with me being an Abomination and all.”

“But they worship your mother, don’t they?” Smith knitted his brows. “I’ve never understood why they think she won’t mind if they murder her children.”

“They worship Her as a sacred virgin,” Willowspear explained. “And it is thought that Her … defilement, hm, is a temporary state of affairs, and if, hm, if Her husband and children cease to exist, then the cosmic imbalance will be righted and She will be released from Her, hm, enslavement and return to Her proper consciousness.”

“It doesn’t help that Daddy’s a Lord of Darkness,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Complete with black armor and other evil clichés. But the fact is, the Orphans simply don’t like anybody. They despise people like Willowspear for not holding to the Old Faith. They don’t like demons just on principle, because chaos isn’t in line with their idea of cosmic harmony. And they really hate your people, Smith. Especially now. Which is unfortunate, because nobody else likes you much either.”

“Oh, what did we ever do to anybody?” Smith demanded. He was cold, and tired, and starting to feel mean.

Lord Ermenwyr pursed his lips. “Well… let’s start with acting as though you’re the only people in the world and it all belongs to you. The rest of us get relegated to ‘forest denizen’ status, as though we were another species of beast, or maybe inconvenient rock formations. It never seems to occur to you that we might resent it.

“Then, too, there’s the innocent abandon with which you wreck the world, and I say innocent because I really can’t fathom how anybody but simpletons could pour sewage into their own drinking water. You cut down forests, your mines leave cratered pits like open sores, and—have you noticed how expensive fish is lately? You’ve nearly fished out the seas. I might add that the whales are not fond of you, by the way.”

“And the other races never do anything wrong, I suppose,” said Smith.

“Oh, by no means; but they don’t have quite the impact of the Children of the Sun,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “You’re such ingenious artificers, you see, that’s part of the problem. Yet I do so love your cities, and your clever toys, like this charming boat for example. I’d be desolated if I had to live in the forest like the Yendri. Do you know, they didn’t even have fire until Mother taught them how to make it? I can’t imagine dressing myself in leaves and living in a bush and, and having nasty tasteless straj for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” He glared at Willowspear, who rolled his eyes.

“It is a simple and harmonious life, my lord,” he said. “And it harms not the earth, nor any other living thing.”

“But it’s damned boring,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Give me the Children of the Sun any day. If only they would learn to use birth control!” He looked back at Smith imploringly.

“Sex is good for you,” said Smith. “And you don’t get a baby every time, you know. If we have more than anybody else, it’s because we’re made better than other people, see? Physically, I mean, and no offense to any races present. But you can’t ask people not to make love.”

“But—” Lord Ermenwyr pulled at his beard in frustration. “You could use—”

“They don’t know about it, my lord,” said Willowspear.

“I beg your pardon?” The lordling stared.

“They don’t know about it,” said Willowspear quietly, gazing into his cup of wine. “My Burnbright was as innocent as a child on the subject. She didn’t believe me when I explained. Even afterward, she was skeptical. And, of course, with our baby on the way, there has been no opportunity—”

“Oh, you’re lying!”

“I swear by your Mother.”

Lord Ermenwyr began to giggle uneasily. “So that’s why prostitutes always seem so surprised when I—”

“What are you talking about?” Smith demanded, looking from one to the other of them. Lord Ermenwyr met his stare and closed his eyes in embarrassment.

“No, Smith, you’re a man of the world, surely you know,” he said.

“What?”

“Oh, gods, you’re old enough to be my father, this is too—it really is too—you really don’t know, do you?” Lord Ermenwyr opened his eyes and began to grin. He set down his drink, wriggled to the edge of his seat, and leaned forward. Swiftly, in terse but admirably descriptive words, he told Smith.

Smith heard in blank-faced incomprehension.

“Oh, that’d never work,” he said at last.

On the seventh day, they came to the falls.

Smith had been expecting them. He had heard the distant rumble, seen the high haze of mist and the land rising ahead in a gentle shelf.

“You’d better fetch his lordship,” he told Willowspear, who was standing at the rail between Cutt and Crish, scanning the riverbank. So far there had been no sign of the Yendri.

“What is it?”

“We’re going to run out of navigable river up ahead, and he’ll have to decide what he wants us to do next.”

“Ah. The Pool of Reth,” said Willowspear.

“You knew about it?”

“The monastery is not far above. Three days’ journey this way, perhaps. His Mother corresponds with them often.”

“Fine. What are we going to do about the waterfall?”

Willowspear spread his slender hands in a shrug. “My lord assumed you would think of a way. You people are so clever, after all,” he added, with only the faintest trace of sarcasm.

Smith spun the wheel, edging the Kingfisher’s Nest around a dead snag. “Funny how everyone thinks we’re the worst people in the world, until they need something done. Then we’re the wonderful clever people with ideas.”

Willowspear sighed.

“You mustn’t take it personally.”

“All I know is, if you put a naked Yendri and a naked Child of the Sun down in a wilderness, with nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep, the Yendri would sit there and do nothing for fear of stepping on a blade of grass. The Child of the Sun would figure out how to make himself clothes and tools and shelter and—in ten generations the Child of the Sun would have cities and trade goods and—and culture, dammit, while the Yendri would still be sitting there scared to move,” said Smith.

“If I were going to argue with you, I would point out that in ten more generations the Child of the Sun would have wars, famine, and plague, and the Yendri would still be there. And in ten more generations the Child of the Sun would be dead, leaving a wrecked place where no blade of grass grew; and the Yendri would still be there,” said Willowspear. “So who is wiser, Smith?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lord Ermenwyr, climbing up on deck. Stabb followed him. “But the only way anyone would ever win this stupid experiment would be to make the naked Yendri and the naked Child of the Sun of opposite sexes. Then they’d think of something much more interesting to do. What’s that noise up ahead, Smith?”

“You’ll see in a minute,” said Smith. They came around a long bar of mud alive with basking water snakes, yellow as coiled brass, and beheld the Pool of Reth.

It opened four acres of forest to the sun, and the water was clear as green glass endlessly rippling, save at the edge where the Rethestlin thundered down in its white torrent from the cliff, along a wide shelf the height of a house. Green ferns taller than a man leaned from the bank, feeding on the air that was wet with rainbows. Tiny things, birds maybe, flitted across in the sunlight, and now and then one of them would make an apparently suicidal plunge into the cascade.

Willowspear pointed silently. On the bank to one side was an open meadow, and two tall stones stood there, carved with signs as the three at Hlinjerith had been carved. The same flowers had been planted about their bases, but in this more sheltered place had grown to great size. Rose brambles were thick as Willowspear’s arm, poppy blooms the size of dishes, and the standing stones seemed smaller by comparison. A trail led from them to the base of the cliff, where it switchbacked up broadly, an easy climb.

“Here the Star-Cloaked faltered,” said Willowspear. He drew a deep breath and sang: “ ‘Leading the unchained-lost-amazed, holding the Child, the blood of his body in every step he took; this was the first place his strength failed him, and he fell from the top of the cliff. The Child fell with him. The people came swift down running lamenting, and found Her floating, for the river would not drown the Blessed-Miraculous-Beloved; and in Her fist She held the edge of his starry cloak, as in Her hand She now holds the heavens and all that is in them.

“ ‘And so he was brought into the air, the Imperfect Beloved, and the people wept for him; but the Child pulled his hair, and he opened his eyes and lived. And he was stunned-silent-forgetful a long while, but when he spoke again it was to praise Her. And the people praised Her. In this place, they first knew She was the Mother of Strength and Mercy, and they knelt and praised Her.’ ”

Lord Ermenwyr grimaced, and in a perfectly ordinary voice said, “So, Smith, how do we get up the falls?”

“Oh, that’ll be easy,” said Smith, guiding the Kingfisher’s Nest into the Pool. “You just arrange to have a team of engineers brought in, with a small army and heavy equipment. We could work out a system of locks and dams that’d get us up to the top in ten minutes. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of years to build.”

“Ha-ha,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “No, Smith, really.”

“Drop the anchor!” ordered Smith, and opened the stopcock as the demons obeyed him. Steam shot forth white, adding more rainbows to the air as it gradually subsided. The ever-clanking sound of the oars stopped. “Really,” he said.

“Look, I happen to know the Yendri get up this river all the time,” said Lord Ermenwyr heatedly.

“Not in one of these galleys, they don’t,” said Smith.

“Well, can’t you do something with one of those, what are those things called, levers? One of my tutors, another one of your people by the way, told me you could move anything with a lever.”

“Why, yes. All we need is a lever, say, ten times the length of the keel, and a place to balance it, and a place to stand … oh, and tools and materials we don’t happen to have,” said Smith.

“You’re being unnecessarily negative about this, aren’t you?”

“Why don’t you use sorcery, then, your lordship?”

Willowspear cleared his throat.

“The Yendri,” he said, “travel in small light craft. When they arrive here, they get out and carry the boats up that path, and so along the bank above until they can set sail and push against the current again.”

“Portage,” said Smith. “The only trouble being, this vessel weighs a lot more than a canoe.”

“Coracle.”

“Whatever.”

Lord Ermenwyr looked hopefully at his bodyguards. “What do you think, boys? Could you carry my boat up there?”

The three demons blinked at him.

“Yes, Master,” said Curt, and they all three dove overboard and a moment later the Kingfisher’s Nest rocked in the water as her anchor was dragged along the bottom.

“No! Wait!” shouted Smith, tottering backward, for the bow was rising out of the water. “This won’t work!”

“You don’t know demons!” cried Lord Ermenwyr gleefully, wrapping his arms around the mast.

The stern was free of the water, and to Smith’s astonishment the whole vessel lurched purposefully up the shore—

And abruptly there was a most odd and unpleasant noise, and her bow went down.

Willowspear, who had been clinging to the rail, peered over to see what had happened. He said something horrified in Yendri.

“Master,” said a mournful voice from beneath them, “I am afraid that now Crish will need a new body too.”

Lord Ermenwyr blew his nose.

“No,” he said wretchedly, “it has to be me. But I’m damned if I’m going to do it with these clothes on.”

He yanked at one of his boots manfully and ineffectively, until Willowspear arose and went to him and took the lordling’s foot in his hands.

“Pull backward,” he advised.

“Thank you.”

They sat in the lee of the Kingfisher’s Nest, looking vast as a beached whale where it had settled on the shore. Smith had built a small fire and was adding sticks to it now and then, but it wasn’t able to do much against the damp and the growing darkness. Lord Ermenwyr disrobed quickly once his other boot was off. He stood shivering and pale in the purple twilight.

“Right,” he said, and picked his way along the edge of the Pool until he found a broken branch of a good size. Stripping the leaves and twigs away gave him something that would pass for a staff. Muttering to himself, he walked a certain number of paces, turned, and began to sketch the outline of a body in the mud.

He worked quickly, and did not take great pains with detail. The result was a squared-off blocky thing that did not look particularly human, with a scored gash for a mouth and two hastily jabbed pits for its eyes. But it did look remarkably like Cutt and Stabb, who sat like boulders in the firelight, watching him.

“There’s old Strangel,” he said, nodding with satisfaction. “Now for Crish.”

He marked out another figure of the same size and general appearance.

“So he can really … re-body them?” Smith asked Willowspear in a low voice. Willowspear nodded. “How’s he do that?”

“It is his lord father’s skill,” said Willowspear, in an equally low voice, though Cutt and Stabb heard him and genuflected. “His lord father can speak with the spirits in the air. He binds them into his service, and in return he gives them physical bodies, that they may experience life as we do.”

Smith poked the fire, thinking about that.

“Did his father, er, create Balnshik?” he asked.

“Long ago,” said Willowspear. “Which is to say, he sculpted the flesh she wears.”

“He’s quite an artist, then, you’re right,” said Smith.

“My lord is still young, and learning his craft,” said Willowspear, a little apologetically, glancing over his shoulder at Cutt and Stabb. “But he has the power from his father, and he is his Mother’s son.”

“So’s Lord Eyrdway,” said Smith. “How d’you reconcile somebody like him being the offspring of Goodness Incarnate?”

Willowspear looked pained. “My Lord Eyrdway was, hm, engendered under circumstances that… affected his development.”

“Too much magic, eh?"—"Perhaps. He is a tragaba, a… moral idiot. Like a beast, he cannot help what he does. Whereas my Lord Ermenwyr knows well when he is being an insufferable little—”

“I ought to make a couple of others, don’t you think?” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice came floating out of the darkness.

“Good idea,” Smith called back, but Willowspear turned sharply.

“Is that wise, my lord?”

“It is if we want to get any farther upriver,” was the reply.

“What’s the matter?” asked Smith.

“It is no easy process,” said Willowspear, “giving life.”

They sat in silence for a while, and Smith let the fire die back a little so they could see farther into the darkness. They watched as the pale figure moved along the edge of the Pool, crouching in the starlight beside each of the figures he had drawn. One after another he excavated, digging with his hands along each outline, scooping away enough mud to turn a drawing into a bas-relief, and then into a statue lying in a shallow pit. Finally, they saw him wandering back. He was wet and muddy, and no longer looked sleek; his eyes were sunk back into his head with exhaustion.

“Wine, please,” he said. Smith passed him the bottle from which he had been drinking, but he shook his head.

“I need a cup of wine,” Lord Ermenwyr said. “And an athalme. A boot knife would do, I suppose.”

Smith fished one of his throwing knives out of his boot top and handed it over hilt first, as Willowspear poured wine into a tea mug they’d brought out of the galley.

“Thank you,” Lord Ermenwyr said, and trudged away into the night again. They heard him muttering for a while in the darkness, and could just glimpse him pacing from one muddy hole to the next. Willowspear averted his eyes and added more wood to the fire.

“He’ll need warmth, when this is over,” he said. “I wish, in all that indigestible clutter of pickles and sweets he brought, that there was anything suitable for making a simple broth.”

The night drew on. They heard him chanting a long while in the darkness, and then as the late moon rose above the forest canopy they glimpsed him. He was standing motionless, his arms upraised, staring skyward. As the white light flowed down onto the bank and lit the Pool of Reth, his voice rose: smooth, imperative, somehow wheedling and desperate too. He was speaking no language Smith knew. He was making odd gestures with his hands, as though to coax the stars down…

The air crackled blue over the first pit. It became a mass of brilliant sparks that settled down slowly about the figure there. Smith held his hand up before his eyes, for the whole clearing was lit brighter than day, and hollow black shadows leaned away from the tree trunks clear across the Pool as another mass of light formed above the second pit, and then the third, and then the fourth. Flaring, they drifted down, and the four recumbent forms caught fire.

Whoosh. The fire went out. There was blackness, and complete silence. Even the sounds of the night forest had halted, even the relentless thunder of the falling water. Had the river stopped flowing? Then a shadow rose against the stars beside Smith, and he heard Willowspear call out in Yendri. Sound began to flow back, as though it were timid.

“It’s all right,” was the reply, sounding faint but relieved.

Willowspear sat down again but Cutt and Stabb rose, staring forward through the dark.

“Seems to have worked, anyway.” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice was nearer. “Come along, boys. One-two-one-two. That’s it.”

By the returning moonlight Smith saw the lordling, staggering rather as he led four immense figures along the edge of the pool.

“See, boys? Here’s our Crish and Strangel again,” he said, laughing somewhat breathlessly. “Just as I promised you.”

“Now we are a set of six!” said Cutt, in quiet pride.

“Master, what is our name?” said one of the giants.

“Yes, you must have names, mustn’t you, you two newlings?” Lord Ermenwyr reached the Kingfisher’s Nest and looked down sadly at the ashes of the fire. “Oh, bugger. No! No! Let’s not name anybody that!”

Giggling, he turned back to his servants and raised a shaking hand to point at them in turn.

“Your name is, ah, Clubb! And your name is … Smosh, how about that?” His whole body was trembling now, as he whooped with laughter. “Isn’t that great?”

Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he pitched forward into the mud.

Nothing would rekindle the fire, so they made a bed for him in one of the tilted staterooms, stacking mattresses against what was for the moment a floor, and on Willowspear’s advice swaddling him tight in blankets.

“He’s taken a chill,” said Willowspear, looking at him unhappily.

“He should have kept his clothes on,” grumbled Smith, crawling along the bulkhead to fetch more blankets and another bottle of wine.

They bundled up on either side of the lordling, cramped and close but warm, and lay there in the dark listening to the night sounds.

“So … if something happens to him, what do we do?” said Smith at last. “Turn around and go home?”

He heard Willowspear sigh.

“If the Lady Svnae is truly in danger, it’s my duty to come to her aid.”

“But you’re a married man,” said Smith. “You’ve got a baby on the way. Don’t you miss your wife?”

“More than you can imagine,” Willowspear replied.

“Though I suppose it’s a little cramped in that attic room with the two of you…” Smith did not add, And the sound of Burnbright’s voice would have me shipping out after a month.

“No.” Willowspear stretched out in the darkness, folding his arms behind his head. “It’s a paradise in our room. In summer it’s so hot… one night, we … there was a box of children’s paints in the storeroom. A guest had left it behind, I think. We took it and painted each other’s bodies. Orchids and vines twining our flesh. Unexpected beasts. Wings. Flames. Rivers. The stars shone down through the holes in the slates, and we pretended we were seeing them through the jungle canopy. The whole house slept silent in the heat, but we two were awake, exploring … the night insects sang and our sweat ran down and the paint melted on her little body, and she plundered me, she was a hummingbird after nectar … and afterward we ran downstairs hand in hand, naked as ghosts, and bathed in the fountain in the garden. We pretended it was a jungle pool. Oh, she said, wouldn’t it be awful if anybody saw us like this? And her eyes sparkled so…”

He fell silent. Smith drank more wine, remembering.

“Have you ever been in love like that?” Willowspear inquired at last.

“Not really,” said Smith. “I never stayed anywhere long enough. My mother died when I was a baby, so… my aunt’s family took me in. And I had to work for my keep, so I was apprenticed out young. And one night I was coming back from delivering an order and … some thieves jumped me. I killed all three of ’em. Standing there with bodies all around, scared out of my wits at what I’d done. So I ran away to sea. And later I was in the army. And later still •… so, I was never any place to meet the kind of girl you settle down with. Lots of women, but, you know … you both just get down to business. It isn’t especially romantic.”

A silence fell. Finally, Smith said, “You could go home. I could go on and rescue the lady. I haven’t got as much to lose, and I’m better with weapons.”

“I don’t doubt that,” said Willowspear. “But what would my mother say, Smith?”

“You think Fenallise would miss me?” Smith blinked. It had never occurred to him.

“Of course she would,” Willowspear replied. “And I am still bound by honor. Lady Svnae’s Mother raised me, Smith. She guided me on the path that brought me to my own mother and my wife. If Her daughter is in danger, how can I walk away?”

“I guess you couldn’t,” Smith agreed.

“It may even be,” Willowspear said dreamily, “that this is a quest, and She means me to travel on. She knows the journey of each star in the heavens, and all the journeys of the little streams to the great sea; and each man’s path through life, She knows, Smith. Even yours. Even mine.”

A hollow voice spoke out of the darkness.

“You won’t leave off worshipping her, will you?” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Give me some of that wine.”

“Yes, my lord.” Willowspear propped him up. Smith tilted the bottle. Lord Ermenwyr drank, and settled back with a sigh.

“ ‘Yes, my lord,’ he says. Why should I be your lord? All my life, even when I was a snotty little thing in long clothes, there you were all big-eyed watching my family like we were kings and queens,” said Lord Ermenwyr hoarsely. “You and the servants. Yes, my lord, Yes, Master, Kneel to your Lady Mother! All her damn disciples climbing our mountain on their knees, expecting her to solve all their problems for them!”

“But She always did,” said Willowspear.

“That’s the worst part,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “She does. You know what it’s like, growing up with a mother who knows everything? You, you look in her eyes, and you see—everything you really are—”

He went into a coughing fit. Willowspear scrambled away, returning unsteadily through the darkness with his medicine kit and the box containing Lord Ermenwyr’s medication. He drew a sealed glass jar from the kit and gave it a vigorous shake. To Smith’s astonishment, it at once began to glow with a chilly green light.

“I thought you couldn’t do magic,” he said.

“I can’t,” Willowspear replied. He fitted a medicine cartridge into the hummingbird needle and gave Lord Ermenwyr an injection. “Have you ever seen a phosphorescent tide? It works on the same principle. Lie still now, my lord.”

The lordling subsided and lay breathing harshly, looking even more like a corpse in the unearthly light.

“Oh, put it out,” he demanded. “I want to sleep.”

“At once, my lord.” Tight-lipped, Willowspear set the jar in the box and closed the lid.

“And you can just get that look off your face.” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice floated out of the abrupt darkness. “You know I have insomnia. Did you know that, Smith? Chronic insomniac, ever since I was a baby.”

“Really.” Smith lay down again, drew up his blanket.

“Nothing helped but sleeping with Mother and Daddy. I hated the night nursery. Eyrdway came and took horrible shapes at the foot of my cot, until Svnae got up and hit him with her wooden dragon. I ran out the door, down the long dark halls, right between the legs of the guards. I scrambled into bed with Mother and Daddy.

“Daddy growled, but Mother was ever so gentle in that ruthless way of hers and explained I couldn’t stop in their bed, but she’d take me back and stay with me until I was asleep. The servants made her up a bed by my cot. She told me we were going to go to sleep. I closed my eyes tight, but I could hear my heart beating, and that always scared me, because what if it stopped?

“So I opened my eyes at last. Mummy was asleep.

“And I thought: Mummy knows everything, even Daddy’s servants say so, and she is all the Good in the world. And she’s asleep. What happens to the world when Good sleeps?

“I’ll bet you never wondered about that, did you, Willowspear?”

“No, my lord, I never did.” Willowspear sounded exhausted.

“Well, I did. I’ve been scared to sleep ever since.”

“My lord,” said Smith. “We’ve got hard work to do tomorrow.”

A sullen silence fell, and remained.

Once or twice there were screams in the forest, brief ones. Smith told himself it was animals, and went back to sleep.

He was cautious when he crawled out in the dawn, all the same.

“Child of the Sun.”

Smith met the gaze of six pairs of red eyes, at the level of his own before he swung himself over the rail and dropped to the ground. He nearly landed on a motionless body, and staggered back; but it was only a wood deer, or had been, for its head had been torn off and it had been clumsily, if thoroughly gutted.

“We hunted,” said Cutt. “Now our master can have broth.”

“That was a good idea,” said Smith, looking up at Cutt. He gaped as he saw the single green dart that protruded from between Cutt’s eyes. “Hold still.”

Very carefully indeed, he reached up and pulled the dart out. Cutt made a strange noise. It was something like a deep note played on a bowstring, and something like the distant boom of ice breaking in polar seas.

“We hunted,” he repeated, in a satisfied kind of way.

By the time the sun had risen above the trees, it looked down on the Kingfisher’s Nest inching its way up the portage trail on the massive shoulders of Cutt, Crish, Clubb, Stabb, Strangel, and Smosh, preceded by Smith and Willowspear hacking madly away at the nearer edge of the forest canopy to make them room. Smith had only the kindling hatchet and Willowspear the largest of the carving knives from the galley, so the work was not going as quickly as it might have done.

Nevertheless, before the sun stood at midday they had arrived at the top of the bluff, sweating and triumphant, and by afternoon the Kingfisher’s Nest was clanking away upriver at last. Her owner, who had made the whole remarkable journey in his bunk, fastened in with sheets like a dead chieftain in a particularly splendid tomb, was sound asleep and hence unconscious of his good fortune.

But he was sitting up in bed and smoking by the time Smith moored that evening and went below.

“Well done, Smith,” he called cheerily. “I must remember to buy you a nice big shiny machete of your very own when this is all over. One for Willowspear, too.”

“So you didn’t die again, eh?” Smith leaned against the bulkhead. His arms felt as though he had been hammering steel all day. “Great.”

“Must be all this damned fresh air,” Lord Ermenwyr said, and blew a smoke ring. “Our humble servant Willowspear actually handled meat to prepare me a cup of broth, can you believe it? And he grilled the ribs of whatever-it-was for you. They’re in the kitchen.”

“Galley,” said Smith automatically.

“In the covered blue dish,” Willowspear called.

With a grateful heart Smith hurried in and found that Willowspear had indeed inherited his mother’s ability to cook. He carried a plate back to the lordling’s stateroom.

“How much farther is this monastery?” he inquired, slicing off a portion with his knife. “I went aloft three times today, and I couldn’t spot a building anywhere.”

“Oh, well, it’s not what you or I would think of as a building,” said Lord Ermenwyr dismissively. Willowspear looked indignant.

“The brothers live in bowers, open to the air,” he said. “They need no more than that, because they own nothing the air can hurt.”

“Except for writings,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“They have a library,” Willowspear conceded.

“So they do have one building?” Smith inquired through a full mouth.

“No; the library is housed in a deep cave,” Willowspear explained. “All the Lady’s epistles are archived there.”

“So … will I have any way of knowing when we’re close?”

“Oh, you can’t miss, it,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “There’s this whacking great rock spire, and the river goes behind it through a gorge. There’s even a landing.”

“Great,” said Smith. “The sooner we can get this over with, the better.”

He told them about the dart he had found on Cutt. Lord Ermenwyr scowled.

“Nine Hells. I’d have thought the Steadfast Orphans were all at Hlinjerith for the big race war by now. Well, perhaps the boys got them all.”

“We have to go past Hlinjerith on our way back!” said Smith.

“Don’t get excited! I’ll be downstairs here, well out of sight. If you just sail past, they shouldn’t bother you,” Lord Ermenwyr said. “Other than shooting at you a little.”

“They would do no such thing,” said Willowspear severely. “They’re surely going there to protect a sacred place and for no other purpose.”

“But if you time it right with the, er, tide and all that nautical business, they’ll be past before you know it,” Lord Ermenwyr assured him.

Mounting aloft the next day, as a hot wind filled the sails with the scent of forest and plain, no least hint of sea, Smith beheld Rethkast.

It looked like a fist of rock standing in the land, an improbable mountain upthrust alone, towering and strangely streaked with colors. Smith could see no sign of habitation at first, though as he stared he thought he could make out a certain regularity of green along the valley floor below the rock, in long lines. He watched it until a range of hills rose to obscure everything but the rock, and told Willowspear about it when he came down.

“That would be the orchards, and the garden,” said Willowspear, looking pleased.

“What do they grow there?” Smith inquired.

“Healing herbs,” Willowspear replied. “The Lady sends them seeds and cuttings with Her letters, cultivars of Her own creation, whose purpose it has not yet pleased Her to reveal to us. They have kept this garden for thirty years in Her name, in this open land where the air is mild and warm.”

“Thirty years?” Smith was astonished. “We can’t grow anything longer than two years, before the land goes dead.”

“What do you mean, goes dead?”

“Well, you know. The first year your cabbages come up fine, then the second year they’re not so big, and the next year all this chalky stuff comes up out of the ground, and the cabbages are tiny and yellow,” said Smith. “Nothing for it then but to move on. The only place that doesn’t happen is in the grainlands around Troon, because the barley grows itself. We don’t do anything but harvest it.”

“You’ve never heard of crop rotation?”

“What’s crop rotation?”

Willowspear turned and stared at him, saying nothing for a moment. At last he said, “Merciful Mother of All Things, no wonder your people go through the world like locusts!”

“What the hell’s crop rotation? Does it have anything to do with irrigation? Because we know how to do that; our aqueducts will take water anywhere,” said Smith defensively. “We’ve made deserts bloom, you know. Just not for more than two years.”

“But you can’t—” began Willowspear.

He turned and staggered away from the helm, and Smith jumped into place at the wheel. “We know how to steer, too,” he snapped.

Willowspear collapsed on a barrel, holding his head in his hands. “All this time, I thought—”

“That you’re better than us,” said Smith. “I know.”

“No! I’ve been trying to teach your people the Way of the Unwearied Mother. I’ve been teaching them meditation and prayer. What I should have been teaching them all along was simply how to garden,” said Willowspear.

Smith shrugged. “I never thought it was as easy as just saying the Green Saint’s name over and over again, whatever you told me.”

“If you only took the filth you dump into the sea and put it on your fields instead—” Willowspear rose and paced to and fro on the deck in his agitation.

“So I guess interracial orgies aren’t the answer, either?”

“You don’t—there must he love. There must be tolerance, and faith. But—there must be much more, or none of it will do any good! It’s complicated.”

“Well, nothing is simple, son,” Smith told him. “Not one damned thing in this world is simple.”

Willowspear did not reply, staring ahead at the spire of Rethkast.

“It’s just as well you figured this out now, since you’re going to be a father soon,” Smith added. “By the way … was that sorcery the other night, that cold light in the jar?”

“No,” said Willowspear. “It was the powdered bodies of certain insects in a solution of certain salts. Mix them, and the mixture glows. When the powder precipitates out, the glow fades and dies. The Lady’s invention.” He looked oddly at Smith. “But She must purchase the jars from your people. The Yendri have never learned how to make glass.”

As they drew nearer, yet they were driven back; for now the river narrowed between high hills, and the current had greater force. Yet the Kingfisher’s Nest put on all her canvas, and with a fair wind and the steam oars going at full speed they made way at last, and moored in a backwater where a landing pier did indeed welcome them.

“So where’s this back door?” Smith inquired, staring upward at the sheer rock wall.

“We have to climb up and knock,” said Lord Ermenwyr, setting his hat at a rakish angle. “How’s this look? Suitably adventurous? An appropriate ensemble for sweeping a lady off her feet?”

“I guess so. How do we get up there?”

“There’s stairs, concealed with fiendish cleverness,” the lordling replied.

“Here,” said Willowspear, pointing, and after Smith had looked for a moment, he spotted them: rough steps cut out of the rock, angled in such a way as to be nearly invisible in the crazy-swirled colors in the strata. They moved up at a steep angle. There were no handholds, nor any rail that Smith could see.

“Boys, you’ll wait here,” Lord Ermenwyr told his bodyguard. They nodded gloomily and stood to attention on the deck.

“What about this threat we’re rescuing your sister from?” Smith inquired. “Wouldn’t they be useful if we have to fight somebody?”

Lord Ermenwyr checked his reflection in a pocket mirror. “I have to admit, Smith, I may have exaggerated just the tiniest bit about the amount of danger Svnae is in,” he said. “It’s actually more sort of an awfully embarrassing fix, to be honest.”

“I see,” said Willowspear, in tones of ice.

“No, you don’t, and don’t go all peevish on me like that!” said Lord Ermenwyr. “All will be revealed in good time. For now let’s just mind our own little businesses and obey our liege lord, shall we?”

He started up the stairs. After looking at each other a moment, Smith and Willowspear sighed and followed him.

They climbed steadily for several minutes, as the stairs zigzagged first left and then right, but Smith was unable to spot anything resembling a doorway or even a cave mouth.

“Can’t imagine who carved out all these fiendishly concealed stairs,” he grumbled, “unless it was one of us poor benighted Children of the Sun. We’re so clever with little engineering feats like this.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Lord Ermenwyr, gasping for breath. He leaned on the wall at a slightly wide place and motioned them past him. “Go on, damn you. But you’ll wait at the top until I get there! I get to knock on the door.”

“I have had an epiphany, Smith,” said Willowspear, as they ascended.

“Really?” Smith panted.

“There is a parable the Lady tells. I will translate it for you. The trevani Luvendashyll is traveling through the forest, he comes to a village, he sees a woman lamenting. ‘How can I help you?’ he asks her, ‘What is wrong?’ and she says, he thinks she says, ‘Oh, kind sir, I need wisdom!’

“He says, ‘My child, you must travel a long road to find wisdom, for it is not easy to get. You must struggle, and suffer, and speak to all you meet and study their ways, learn what is in their hearts; and even then you will only have begun to find wisdom,’ and the woman says back, ‘No, no, that can’t be right! Can’t you give me wisdom?’

“And Luvendashyll says, ‘I have a little wisdom, my child, but it cannot be given so easily. You would have to become my disciple, and give all you owned to those who are less fortunate than you are, and travel with me to the ends of the earth, and hear me disputing with other trevanion; and perhaps in twenty years I could give you a little wisdom. Or it may be that the wisdom of other trevanion would seem better, and you might leave me and apprentice yourself to them for a score of years, in order that they might give you wisdom.’

“And the woman is angry, she says, ‘That’s ridiculous! Why should I have to do all that to get a little wisdom?’ So Luvendashyll is offended, and he says, ‘Impatient woman! You do not know what I had to go through for the wisdom I possess. I studied with my master from my earliest childhood, for his wisdom. I spent many days lying in a dark place listening to the Seven Stories of Jish, repeating them for my master until I knew them by heart, to obtain his wisdom. I fasted and prayed and stood on one leg in the bitter cold of winter, that I might be worthy of his wisdom. I walked on cinders and scored my back with a knotted thong, and yet in the end I was granted a little wisdom only, for my master did not like to part with his great wisdom.’

“And the woman says, ‘Look, all I want is wisdom, because the one I have has a hole in it and my acorns keep falling out!’ ”

“Huh?” said Smith.

“The trevani Luvendashyll has misunderstood the woman,” Willowspear explained. “It’s a funny story in Yendri, because he thinks she has asked him for wisdom, trev’nanori, when all along she asked only for a new basket, ’tren atnori’e.”

“Oh,” said Smith.

“And your confusion adds a further dimension to the parable, because you don’t speak Yendri in the first place,” said Willowspear, taking great strides upward in his enthusiasm. “And for the first time, I see the hidden meaning in it!”

“I never thought it was all that funny,” said Lord Ermenwyr sullenly, struggling along behind them. “I mean, so the trevani is deaf, so what? Or maybe the woman is missing a few teeth.”

“The point is that the woman needed a simple thing,” said Willowspear, “but the trevani did not comprehend simplicity, and so he wasted her time—” He scrambled up on a wide flat landing, and turned back to pull Smith after him, “wasted her time with advice, when what he ought to have done was simply taken reeds and made her a basket! And I, Smith, will make baskets for your people. Figuratively speaking.”

He pulled Lord Ermenwyr up as well, and turned to gesture triumphantly at the shoulder of the mountain they had just reached. “When we go up there, Smith, we will look out upon the Garden of Rethkast, and I will show you your future.”

“All right,” said Smith. He plodded after Willowspear flat-footed, envying the younger man his energy.

“The door is this way,” Lord Ermenwyr shouted after them, pointing to a cave.

“One moment, my lord,” Willowspear promised. He scrambled up to the crest. “Now, Smith behold the—”

Smith climbed up beside him and stood, gazing down at the wide valley below the mountain. He frowned. Regular lines of green, stretching to the near horizon…

“Those are tents,” he pointed out.

“But that was—” began Willowspear, and his eyes widened in horror as he saw the piled mounds of cut trees far below, that which had been the bowers of Rethkast, fast yellowing.

Smith was distracted by a slight sting in his foot. He shifted his weight in annoyance, thinking to kick the wasp away. How had he been stung through his boot? He looked down and saw the tuft of green feathers sticking in his foot, and father down the mountain the Yendri who had shot him, clinging to a precarious handhold. There were others below him, like a line of ants scaling a wall.

He had a rock in his hand before he knew what he was doing, and had hurled it down into the Yendri’s glaring face. There was some sort of horrific and spectacular chain reaction then, but he didn’t have time to notice it much, because yanking the dart out of his boot took all his concentration. Then Willowspear pulled him away from the edge, and they were staggering back the way they’d come. Lord Ermenwyr was at his elbow suddenly, dragging him into the cave.

There was a dark passage running into the heart of the mountain, but not far, because they came at once to a sealed door. Lord Ermenwyr was pounding on it, yammering curses or prayers. Smith could hear Willowspear weeping behind him.

There was a calm voice in Smith’s head saying: Some of the poison may have stayed in the leather of your boot, and after all you survived a much stronger dose, once before, and there is always the possibility you’ve built up some immunity. On the other hand…

But he was still conscious. He was still on his feet, though events had begun to take on a certain dreamlike quality. For example: When the door opened at last, he beheld the biggest woman he’d ever seen in his life.

She looked like a slightly disheveled goddess, beautiful in a heroic kind of way, gorgeously robed in purple and scarlet. A bracelet like a golden serpent coiled up one graceful biceps. Smith thought she ought to be standing on a pedestal in a temple courtyard, with a cornucopia of fruit under her arm…

“Did you bring him?” she inquired.

An instinct Smith hadn’t used in years took over, and he found himself turning and running back the way he’d come, without quite knowing why. At least, he was trying to run. In actuality he got about three steps before collapsing into Willowspear’s arms, and the last thing he saw was the young man’s tear-streaked face.

Smith was walking along a road. It was winter, somewhere high among mountains, and the hoarfrost on the road and the snow on the peaks above him were eerily green as turquoise, because it was early morning and a lot of light was streaking in under the clouds. There were mists rising. There were shifting vapors and fogs.

He was following his father. He could see the figure Walking ahead, appearing and reappearing as the mist obscured him. He only glimpsed the wide-brimmed hat, the sweep of cloak; but clearly and without interruption he heard the regular ring of the iron-shod staff on stone.

He tried to call out, to get his father to turn and stop. Somehow, the striding figure never heard him. Smith ran, slipping on the patches of black ice, determined to catch his father, to ask him why he’d never…never…

He was lost in a cloud. The gloom enveloped him, and all he could see was a sullen red glow—

He was holding a staff. It rang, struck sparks from the rock as he swung it. He could not stop, he could not even slow down, for he was following True Fire though he could not see her, and she would not wait for him.

You bear my name.

I do? No, I don’t, it’s an alias. How could you be my father? I never knew my father. My aunt always said he might have been a sailor. This is a dream.

You walk in my footsteps.

You don’t leave footsteps! You never leave a trace. Not one shred of proof. Damn you anyway for never being there.

You kill like a passing shadow, just as I had to kill.

Never liked it. Never wanted to. Never had a choice, though.

Neither did I.

Things got out of hand.

Things got out of control.

I just wanted a quiet life. Why can’t people be good to one another?

Why didn’t they learn? I should have made them better.

Whose fault is it, then?

You bear my fault.

Like hell I will.

Try to put it down.

Smith attempted to fling the staff away, because somehow it had become the fault, but it wouldn’t leave his hand. Instead it shrank, drew into his arm, became part of him.

I don’t want this responsibility.

It’s your inheritance. And now, my son … you’re armed.

He tried to run away, but his feet were frostbitten. The right one, especially. He slipped, skidded forward and crashed into a painful darkness that echoed with voices…

“I didn’t know you were really in danger!” Lord Ermenwyr was saying.

“Neither did I, until I looked out the window and there they were,” a woman was saying in a bemused kind of way. She had an alto voice, a red velvet voice. “Things became rather horrible after that; but until then, I was enjoying myself with the puzzle.”

“How the Nine Hells did they know you were here?” Lord Ermenwyr demanded, panic in his voice. “How did they know it was here?”

The woman’s shrug was audible.

“Spies, I suppose.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“Hold them off as long as we can.”

“Hold them off? You, me, and a handful of monks hold off an army?” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice rose to a scream. “They’re fanatics who’ll stop at nothing to see my head on a pike! Yours too!”

“It’s not as though we can’t defend ourselves. We’re demons, remember?” The woman’s voice grew bleak. “The Adamant Wall ought to keep them out for another week. And if the poor man dies, they won’t even be able to get what they’ve come for. Is he likely to die, Willowspear?”

“Probably not, my lady.” Willowspear was speaking very close at hand, speaking in a voice flat with shock. “He’s responding to the antidote.”

“That’s something, anyway.” Lord Ermenwyr seemed to have got up. Smith could hear his pacing footsteps. “As long as we’re here, let’s have a look at this spell of yours.”

“It’s a terribly old Portal Lock,” said the woman, and she seemed to be rising too, her voice was suddenly coming from a long way up. “That was why I thought of you at once. You were always so much cleverer at that kind of composition.”

Their voices were moving away now; with their echoing footsteps. Smith could hear Lord Ermenwyr saying, “Ah, but you were always better at research,” and the woman was saying something in a tone of chagrin when the echoes and distance made it impossible to hear more.

Silence, a crackle of fire, breathing; several people breathing. A hesitant male voice; “Brother Willowspear?”

“Who is that?”

“Greenbriar. I made the Black Mountain pilgrimage five years ago. You brought us bedding in the guest bowers.”

“I remember.” Willowspear’s voice still sounded unnatural. “She was teaching Fever Infusions that season.”

“Will She come to us, at the end? When we are killed?”

“You must trust Her children’s word that we will withstand the siege,” Willowspear replied, but he sounded unconvinced himself.

“I don’t know how I can face Her,” the other man said, with tears in his voice. “We failed Her trust. They came like a grass fire, they wouldn’t even talk to us, they just laid waste to everything! Brother Bellflower tried to save the orchard. He stood before the palings and shouted at them. They shot him with darts, then they marched over his body and cut the trees down. Thirty years of work killed in an hour…”

“It’s an illusion,” said another voice, too calmly. “She will bring the garden back. She can do such things. They have no real power over us.”

“They are madmen,” said a third voice. “You can see it in their eyes.”

“One can forgive the Children of the Sun, but these people…”

“We must forgive them too.”

“It was our fault. How could we keep the secret from Her own daughter?”

“Pray!” Willowspear’s voice cracked. “Be silent and pray. She must hear us.”

They were silent.

Smith was regaining the feeling in his limbs. Surreptitiously, he experimented with moving his fingers. He squinted between his eyelids, but could make out nothing but a blur of firelight and shadow.

He was moving his left hand outward, a fraction of an inch at a time, groping for anything that might serve as a weapon, when he heard the echoing voices returning.

“…right about that. I wouldn’t reach in there for an all-expenses-paid week in the best Pleasure Club in Salesh.”

“This was probably a bad idea,” said the woman, sighing.

“Well, I’m sure our poor Smith would prefer you should get hold of it than the Orphans,” said Lord Ermenwyr briskly. “We can make much better use of it.”

“I only wanted to study it!”

“My most beloved sister, it’s Power. You don’t study Power. You wield it. I mean, it pays to study it first, but nobody ever stops there.”

“I would have,” said the woman resentfully. “You really don’t understand the virtue of objective research, do you? Even Mother isn’t objective.”

“Mother especially,” said Lord Ermenwyr. His voice drew close to Smith. There was a pause. “Poor old bastard, he’s in a bad way, isn’t he? I suppose you can’t use him if he’s unconscious, either? If all you need is his hand—”

Instinct took over again in Smith, and if it had been able to make his body obey, it would have propelled him out of the room with one tigerlike spring. Unfortunately, his legs were in no mood to take orders from anyone, and he merely launched himself off whatever he was lying on before dropping heavily on his face on the floor.

There was a stunned silence before Lord Ermenwyr asked, “What was that? Premature rigor mortis?”

Smith felt Willowspear beside him at once, turning him, lifting him back on the cot in a sitting position. They were inside a cavern whose walls were lined with racks of bound codices. There were hundreds of volumes. He saw the light of a fire, and Lord Ermenwyr and the stately lady standing before it, staring at him. There were robed Yendri in the near background, seated in attitudes of meditation, but even they had opened their eyes and were staring at him.

He glared back at them.

“You lied to me,” he told Lord Ermenwyr, in a voice thick with effort and rage.

The lordling looked uncomfortable, but he lit his smoking tube with a nonchalant fireball, and said, “No, I didn’t. I just wasn’t aware I was telling the truth. Here’s my sister, see? Svnae, meet Smith. Smith, you are privileged to behold the Ruby Incomparable, Lady Svnae. And she is in mortal danger. It was uncanny precognition, gentlemen.”

“You lied to us both,” said Willowspear quietly. “You brought Smith here for some purpose. My lord, I will not see him harmed.”

The lady looked chagrined. She came and knelt beside Smith, and he was acutely aware of her perfume, her purple-and-scarlet draperies, her bosom, which was on a scale with the rest of her and which could only be adequately described in words usually reserved for epic poetry…

“It’s all right,” she said kindly, as though she were speaking to an animal. “Nobody’s going to harm you, Child of the Sun. But I need you to perform a service for me.”

Smith labored for breath, fighting an urge to nod his acceptance. He believed her without question. For all that she was dressed like the sort of wicked queen who poisons the old king, turns her stepchildren into piglets, and exits with all the palace silver in her chariot drawn by flying dragons, there was something wholesome about Lady Svnae.

“Tell me—” Smith demanded. Lord Ermenwyr flipped up his coattails and squatted down beside his sister, looking like an evil gnome by comparison, perhaps one the wicked queen might keep on the dashboard of her chariot as a bad luck mascot.

“There’s something hidden in this rock, Smith—” he began.

“It’s the Key of Unmaking, isn’t it?” Willowspear stated.

“Yes, actually,” replied Lady Svnae. “Good guess! Or did Mother tell you about it?”

“Erm … I’ve been trying to explain this to them a bit at a time,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Giving them hints. Well, Smith, what can I say? The damned thing’s worth a lot right now. I want it.”

“I want it,” said his sister firmly.

“But we can’t get it. It’s sealed in the rock, and only one of your people can reach in there and get it. That’s why you’re here, Smith.”

“You’re asking him to betray his people,” said Willowspear. “My mother’s people. My wife’s people.”

“Don’t be an idiot!” said Lord Ermenwyr sharply. “The thing’s not safe here any longer, don’t you understand? The Steadfast Orphans are waiting their chance out there and if they get their hands on it, they will use it, Smith.”

“All I want to do is learn how it works,” pleaded Svnae. “If I knew that, I might discover a way to disarm it.”

“Well, let’s not be too hasty about that—”

“It’s not real,” said Smith at last.

The lordling sat back on his heels. “You don’t think so? Come have a look, then.” He stood and made a brusque summoning gesture to the monks. “Bring him.”

Greenbriar came forward and, between them, he and Willowspear got Smith to his feet and supported him. They followed the lord and lady down a corridor cut in the rock, lit only by the firelight behind them and a faint flickering red light far ahead.

“You people didn’t make this place,” said Smith.

“We found it,” said Greenbriar wretchedly. “We came to here to make a garden. The earth was warm, there was plenty of water … but in the caves we found the piled bones of Children of the Sun. Terrible things happened here, long ago. And in the deepest place, we found the thing.

“We told Her about it. She gave us wise counsel. We buried the bones, we made this place beautiful to give their souls peace. We labored as She bid us do. And then, Her daughter came and asked to see the thing… and we thought no harm…”

“There wouldn’t have been any harm if the Steadfast Orphans hadn’t shown up,” said Lady Svnae, her voice echoing back to them.

“You really ought to do something about your household security,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “I’ll interrogate your servants, if you like.”

“As though I’d let you anywhere near my chambermaids!”

“Well, how do you think the Orphans knew where it was?”

“They probably sat down and read the Book of Fire, the same way I did. There are perfectly blatant clues in the text, especially if you happen to find one of the copies that was transcribed by Ironbrick of Karkateen. But there are only three copies known to exist…”

Smith tuned out their bickering and concentrated on making his legs work. Unbidden he heard a voice years dead: that of the old blind man who used to sit on the quay and recite Scripture, holding out his begging bowl, and Smith had been no more pious than any other child, but the sound of it never failed to make him shiver, all the same …the dead on the plain of Baltu were not mourned, a hundred thousand skulls turned their faces to Heaven, a hundred thousand crows flew away sated, in Kast the flies swarmed, and their children inherited flesh…

…on the Anvil of the World, Forged his fell Unmaking Key, Deep in the bones he hid it there, Till Doomsday should dredge it up. Frostfire guards what Witchlight hides…

“It isn’t real,” he muttered to himself.

“Here we are,” said Lady Svnae, as though they had come to a particularly interesting shop window.

Smith raised his head and flinched, averted his eyes. Frostfire. Witchlight. Doomsday…

All he had really glimpsed was an impression of a spinning circle, the same eerie color as the snow in his dream, and sparks flying within it as though they were being struck from iron. But the image wouldn’t fade behind his eyes. It grew more vivid, and to his horror he felt a solid form heavy against his palm, the weight of the iron staff.

He opened his eyes, stared. It wasn’t there, but he could still feel it.

“It’s only a little recess in the wall,” said Lady Svnae soothingly. “The lights and things are just illusions, you see? All you have to do is reach in your hand and take it.”

“He’s not an idiot,” said Willowspear.

“Uh-oh; temperature’s dropping in here,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Come on, Smith.” He looked at Smith, followed Smith’s stare down his arm, saw the fingers clenched around a bar of air. “What is it?”

“I—my arm’s moving by itself,” said Smith.

“It is?” Lord Ermenwyr went pale. The arm and hand were turning, as though to direct the invisible bar like a weapon…

Lady Svnae reached into her bosom and pulled forth what looked like a monocle of purple glass. She peered through it at Smith for a moment.

“He’s got a Cintoresk’s Corona,” she announced in a calm voice, and lunged forward and caught Smith in her arms. The next thing he knew he was being dragged backward up the tunnel at high speed, gazing back at Lord Ermenwyr, who was running along behind, knees up and elbows pumping. It was suddenly much warmer.

They emerged into the firelit cavern again, and Willowspear and Greenbriar came panting after them. The other monks, who had now given up any attempt to meditate, watched them fearfully.

“What happened?” Willowspear asked.

“We all came very close to getting killed,” said Lord Ermenwyr, wheezing as he collapsed on the cot.

“Get off of there,” said Lady Svnae, shoving him as she set Smith down. She took out the monocle once more and examined him closely through it. “Tell me, Child of the Sun, are you experiencing any unusual symptoms not related to the poison? Perhaps voices in your head?”

“No,” said Smith dully. He watched as she raised his left arm cautiously, palpitated along it as far as the hand. “It felt as though I was holding something cold. An iron bar.”

“You think he was being possessed?” Lord Ermenwyr asked his sister, looking speculative. “Because of proximity to the Key?”

“I think I need to study the Book of Fire again,” said Lady Svnae. “I think I might have missed something crucial.”

“Well, this is a fine time to figure it out,” said Lord Ermenwyr pettishly, groping for his smoking tube.

“Better now than thirty seconds later, when we all might have been blasted with balefire,” she retorted. “Child of the Sun—”

“Smith,” he said.

“Interesting choice of an alias. Well, Smith, have you had any strange dreams recently? Any kind of psychic or spiritual conversation with your ancestors?”

Smith was unwilling to talk about his dream, but she looked earnestly into his eyes. Her own were wide, dark and lovely. Unwilling, he found himself saying: “I might have. But it didn’t make any sense.”

“No, I don’t suppose it would,” she said, and patted his cheek. “That’s all right. You just lie down here and rest, now, Smith. And if you feel the least bit odd, especially in that hand, please tell us. Will you do that, Smith dear?”

“All right,” he said, too dizzy to be annoyed by her tone of voice. He sank back on the cot and closed his eyes.

He heard the rustle of her gown as she went somewhere else, and the faint thump and crackle as someone added wood to the fire. He heard Lord Ermenwyr settle down, muttering to himself, and a noise suggestive of a boot flask being uncorked and drunk from…

Sound went away, and he was flying over a plain, and he knew so many terrible things.

There below him was the city of Troon. Burning in the air above it was the formula for its destruction: a certain smut introduced into the barley, four ounces of a certain poison poured into its central well, one letter containing a certain phrase sent anonymously to its duke, one brick pried loose from the foundation of a certain house. These things accomplished, Troon would fall. And then…

Here was Konen Feyy-in-the-Trees. One water conduit casually vandalized and one firebrand tossed into a certain tree, hung with moss, would begin the sequence of events that would kill the city. And its survivors might flee, but not to Troon, and then…

Here was Mount Flame City, seething, pulsing, so overripe with clan war that all it would take would be one precisely worded insult painted on a certain wall, and all four of its ruling houses would lie in ashes. And so would the great central marketplace of Mount Flame, and so would all the little houses who depended on it.

Here was Karkateen: a brick thrown through a window. A suggestion made to a shopkeeper. A rumor spread. A sewer grating removed. These things accomplished, in a certain order and at a certain moment, and Karkateen would be gone, and with it its great library, and with the library all the answers to certain desperate questions that would soon be asked in Troon, in Konen Feyy, in Mount Flame. Deliantiba and Blackrock were already in the throes; they’d need only the slightest push to complete their own work. And Salesh…

But wasn’t it grand, to have secret knowledge of such terrible things?

His arm hurt.

But wasn’t it a finer destiny than he had ever supposed he was intended for, high and lonely though it might be? Being the Chosen Instrument of the Gods? His arm hurt but he was flying high, beside a sharp version of himself that was cool and clever as he had always wanted to be, an elegant stranger made of diamond and chrome, the Killer, sneering down from a great distance at the insects crawling below. Stupid bastards. Wasteful. Quarrelsome. Banal. Ignorant and proud of it. And every year more screaming brats born to swell their numbers, and every year more urban blight on the land to house them all. Better if the whole shithouse went up in flames. Everyone said so. His arm hurt.

“Heavens, what’ve you done to your arm?” Mrs. Smith was peering at it.

“It really hurts,” he told her, obscurely proud. “It’s turned into blue steel. Isn’t it fine and lonely?”

“You ought to run that under the cold tap, dear,” she advised.

“No!” he said. “Because then it’d rust. It’s better to burn than to rust. Everybody says so.”

She just laughed sadly, shaking her head.

Smith sat up, gasping, drenched with cold sweat, and saw Lord Ermenwyr scrambling to his feet. The monks were hastening out of the chamber. Someone, somewhere, was shouting.

“What’s happening?” Smith asked.

“The Steadfast Orphans have called for a parley,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” the lordling replied. “They don’t want to talk to us. I think we’d best eavesdrop, though, don’t you? Just in case the holy brothers allow themselves to be persuaded, and we have to make a hasty escape?”

“Can we do that?” Smith got to his feet and swayed. The room spun gently for a moment, and he found Willowspear beside him, keeping him upright.

“He should rest,” Willowspear told his lord, who shook his head grimly.

“Not alone. He needs someone to keep an eye on him, don’t you, Smith? We’re not going far. I found a nice little spy hole while you were asleep. This way, if you please.”

They set off down another of the winding corridors in the rock. Smith walked without much help, and was mildly surprised that his foot wasn’t giving him trouble. He had a feeling that if he took his boot off, he’d never get it back on; but who knew how much longer he’d live, anyway? His arm, however, was still throbbing.

They rounded a bend, and he was temporarily dazzled by what seemed a blaze of illumination at the end of the passage. As they approached, it resolved into wan afternoon light, coming through a barred and partially shuttered opening in the rock. Closer still and he saw that pigeons had nested in here for generations, and the last few feet of the passage were chalky with ancient guano, littered with feathers and bits of old nest.

“Phew.” Lord Ermenwyr drew out his smoking tube and lit it. “Nasty, eh?”

He stuck the tube between his teeth, clasped his hands together under his coattails, and stood scowling down through the bars. Smith and Willowspear edged closer, treading with care, and looked down too.

They saw the ranks of green tents, and the assembled Yendri standing in tight formation before them, tall unsmiling figures each in an identical baldric, each one bearing a simple cane tube. A shimmer in the air, a faint haze only, betrayed the presence of the Adamant Wall that kept them from coming closer; now and again a hapless bird or insect struck it, bouncing away stunned or dead. Close to the Wall stood the Yendri leader, cloaked in green sewn with white stars, and he was addressing someone unseen, speaking at great length.

“I can’t understand him,” said Smith.

“He’s speaking Old Yendri,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “Nobody’s used it in years. It’s an affectation. They speak it to show how pure they are.”

“Pure!” Willowspear glared down at them. “After what they’ve done?”

“What’s he saying?” Smith asked.

“Oh, about what you’d expect,” Lord Ermenwyr replied, puffing smoke. “Hand over the abominations, that we may cleanse the world of them and so bring the Suffering-Deluded-Ensorcelled Daughter so much closer to sanity and blah blah blah. I think he’s just warming up to his main demand, though.”

Someone else was speaking now: Greenbriar, out of sight directly below them. He sounded angry, accusatory.

“Good for him,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked. “He’s telling them off properly. Asking the Grand Master how he dares to wear the Star-Cloak. And … now he’s just said he can’t drop the Adamant Wall. And … ha! He just said something that doesn’t really translate, but the closest equivalent would be, ‘Go home and simulate mating with a peach.’ ”

There was a crunch of twigs. Svnae came up behind them, bending low and holding the train of her gown up out of the debris. She had slung a bow and a quiver of arrows over one shoulder.

“I’d never have thought he’d use that kind of language,” she said in mild surprise, peering over Lord Ermenwyr’s shoulder at the scene below. “However would a monk learn about the Seventeenth Shameful Ecstasy of—” She noticed Smith and broke off, blushing.

The cloaked man spoke again, quietly, with implacable calm. Before he had finished, Greenbriar shouted at him in indignation. It was the closest Smith had ever heard to a Yendri being shrill.

“What’s going on now?” he asked.

Lord Ermenwyr snorted smoke. “He says it’s all our fault,” he replied. “That we made the destruction of the garden inevitable by taking refuge here. They are not responsible. And Greenbriar just called him—well, you’d have to be a Yendri to appreciate the full force of the obscenity, but he just called him a Warrior.”

“Well, isn’t he?” Smith inquired.

“Yes, but ordinarily they hire mercenaries from your people,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “They don’t like getting their own hands dirty. This is some kind of elite force, I suppose.”

“You know what this reminds me of?” said Svnae in a faraway voice. “Watching the grown-ups through the stair railings when we were supposed to be in bed.”

“Staying awake to see whether Daddy’d drink enough to discover the eyeball I’d hidden in the bottom of the decanter,” Ermenwyr agreed fondly. Then his smile faded. The man in the cloak was speaking again. He spoke for a long while, and the lordling listened in silence. So did Willowspear and Svnae.

“What is it?” Smith asked at last.

“He’s calling on them to put aside their differences and rise against a common enemy,” Lord Ermenwyr replied at last, not looking at Smith. “He means your people, Smith. He’s talking about Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches now. He says it’ll be profaned if they don’t act. And he … I thought so. He knows the Key of Unmaking is here. He says he’ll spare them if they’ll deliver up the Key to him. Now we know why he didn’t bring mercenaries from your race, Smith.”

Greenbriar had been making some kind of reply.

“And he’s telling him no, of course,” Lord Ermenwyr went on. He fell silent as the voices went on down below. He turned to regard Smith with a cold thoughtful stare. Lady Svnae turned too, and though there was a certain pity in her gaze, it too was terribly thoughtful.

“What’re they saying now?” Smith stammered.

Willowspear cleared his throat. “Er … the Grand Master of the Orphans is saying that the brothers have been deceived. He just told them that all the high-yield cultivars and medicinal herbs they’ve been growing here have been intended to help the Children of the Sun, not the Yendri. He said Mother betrayed them.”

“Why would your mother want to help us?” asked Smith.

“She has her reasons,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Now… he’s saying there have been signs and portents that the Star-Cloaked Man is returning to this world. He will be the … hm … the Balancer. He will bring harmony. They are confident he will come in wrath to take by her hair the disobedient—” He stopped, aghast.

“What?” Smith asked.

“Just something really nasty about Mother,” said Lord Ermenwyr briskly, though he had gone very pale. “And I’ll have to kill him. Perhaps not today, though. Sister mine, I have a getaway boat and six big bodyguards watching it for me. Are you positive there aren’t any other hidden back doors to this place?”

“We could make one,” Svnae replied.

“I’ve got a remarkable rock-melting spell.”

“An explosion might be quicker.”

“Just what I was about to say.”

“We can’t just leave!” said Willowspear. “What about the brothers? What about the Key of Unmaking?”

“The brothers will be fine as long as the Adamant Wall holds, and as for the Key—Smith, old man, I’m sorry, but your race will have to take their chances. I make it a point never to try to pinch anything that belongs to a god, especially when he’s paying attention.”

“If it’s too dangerous for us to take the Key out of there, it will be even more dangerous for the Orphans to try,” said Lady Svnae. “Cheer up! Perhaps nothing very bad will happen after all.”

“Other than a race war?” Smith demanded.

“Well, er—” Lady Svnae was searching very hard for a response both reassuring and noncommittal when there was a shout from beyond the window.

They all turned to look. The shout had been a summoning.

From the back ranks of the Yendri came a very young man, striding confidently to the front. He halted before the Grand Master and made deep obeisance. The man put his hands on the boy’s head in a gesture of blessing. Then he turned and addressed Greenbriar.

They listened at the window in silence. Suddenly, Lady Svnae put her hands to her face in horror. Lord Ermenwyr’s smoking tube fell out of his mouth.

“That tears it,” he said. “Willowspear, Smith, we’re going now. I hope the monks have the sense to run.”

“Why?” Smith peered out at the boy, who was standing proudly beside the man in the cloak.

“They’re going to take out the Adamant Wall,” Lord Ermenwyr replied over his shoulder, for he had already grabbed his sister by the arm and was pulling her down the passageway with him. “Come on!”

Willowspear seemed to have taken root where he stood, so Smith caught his arm and began to stagger after the lordling and his sister. “Let’s go, son.”

Willowspear turned his face away and ran. “Innocent blood,” he said. “Willingly offered. The boy will let them behead him, and his blood will break the Wall.”

Smith could think of nothing to say in reply. He concentrated on following Lady Svnae, just close enough to avoid stepping on the train of her gown. He congratulated himself on the fact that he was able to run so well, all things considered. Thinking about that, and watching where he put his feet, kept him from dwelling on the fact that his hand was cold as ice and turning blue.

Down and around they went, through long echoing darkness pierced now and again by the light of a distant barred window. The air was a roar of echoes. Something was echoing louder than their footsteps. Something was loud as surf on a lee shore—

The train of Lady Svnae’s gown stopped moving.

Smith cannoned into her. She felt like a warm and beautifully upholstered wall. He staggered backward and collided with Willowspear, who cried, “What is it?”

It was a moment before anyone answered him, but the silence was amply filled by the thunder of their beating hearts and the other sound, the louder sound. Smith, who had been a mercenary, knew what it was. He felt a sharper pain in his hand and, looking down, saw that he had pulled a stone from the wall. He hefted it, getting the balance, knowing exactly where it should be fractured to make an edged weapon.

“The battle cry sounds familiar,” said Lady Svnae.

“Nine Hells,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “It’s Daddy.”

Lady Svnae turned on her heel decisively. “This way,” she said, and they followed her up yet another tunnel, one with quite a lot of daylight at the end. It was bright because it opened out on a gallery of stone, lower in the face of the rock than their previous vantage point but still well above the floor of the valley. It had clearly been cut from the rock for persons wishing to enjoy a spectacular view. The view now was indeed spectacular, if not exactly enjoyable.

The Adamant Wall was still in place. The order of the previous vista had been destroyed, the neat green ranks broken up by a chaos of black and silver that was streaming over the hill to the south. An army, liveried and fearsome, had arrived.

It was like no battle Smith had ever seen. More horrible, if possible, because many of the Yendri stood straight and let themselves be cut down by the invading force, but it appeared that they did so to enable their comrades to advance on their targets without interference.

They made for three targets.

One ran with the demon-army in its black plate and silver mail, and he was a white stag of branching antlers, silver-collared. He bounded, feather-light, across the tips of their spears. He dropped like a bolt of lightning on the Yendri. Where he struck his hooves slashed, his antlers raked. Yet the Yendri fought one another to get at him, though they fell bleeding at his feet and were trampled. He dodged the green darts and danced on the bodies of the slain, belling his frenzy, exulting.

One had come alone over the hill to the north, a solitary figure. He wore no armor, he carried no blade. He had only a long staff, but in his long hand at the end of his long arm it cleared a wide space around him as he came, and where the steel-shod end of the staff connected, his opponents fell and did not rise again. Smith could hear the skulls cracking from where he stood; still the Yendri came scrambling over the dead to reach that lone fighter, ignored the armored host that hacked them to pieces as they advanced.

All these died willingly, that they might get close enough to strike a blow, even in vain; but more aimed themselves at the one who stood on the southern hill, overlooking the brief contest.

The man wore black. He watched impassively as the banner guard kept off his enemies. He bore two long blades in a double scabbard on his back, and not till the end, when the Grand Master himself fought close, did he draw steel over his shoulder.

He said one word, and his guards parted to let the man through. The Yendri vaulted forward, pipe to his lips, sending his poisoned dart flying. One blade cut the dart out of the air; its backstroke cut the pipe from his hands. Then he disappeared under a tackle pile of guards, as he screamed at the dark man.

And then it was over, and the field was silent.

Willowspear left the gallery. They heard him being quietly sick in the corridor.

Nobody said anything.

There came a wind off the field. It brought the groans of the wounded, though only the armored fighters; none of the Yendri were left alive to cry for help, save their leader. The survivors were stepping carefully across the devastation. Near the Adamant Wall lay the boy who would have been sacrificed. He had died fighting, his blood spilt to no purpose, his holy destiny unfulfilled. Was his death cleaner?

The man in black was giving orders, in a low voice, and stretchers were being made and his guard were moving out to collect the living. But they kept well away from the white stag, which was still bounding and trampling like a mad thing, tossing the dead on its antlers. It clattered all the way to the Adamant Wall, and collided with it; danced back, snorted its rage, and stamped.

The solitary figure with the staff had been making his way to the Wall also. He came to it and extended his hand cautiously, stopping just short of the surface. Ignoring the stag, he looked up at the gallery.

He had a long plain face, austere and dignified. He looked more like a high priest than a warrior, and his eyes were sad.

“Svnae,” he called.

The stag noticed him. It threw its head up in surprise, rearing on its hind legs. They lengthened, the antlers shrank and vanished, its whole body altered; and Lord Eyrdway strode along the perimeter of the Wall.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Mother sent me,” said the other. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m being Daddy’s herald.”

“I didn’t hear you offering terms.” The other gestured at the mounded dead.

“I didn’t bother. But the fight’s over, so you can turn right around and go back home.”

“Are you at all concerned with how our sister fares?”

“You’ll observe that neither one of them has deigned to notice me,” Lord Ermenwyr remarked to Smith.

“She’s fine,” said Lord Eyrdway. He turned, waved at Svnae, turned back and went on, “I know what you’re really here for, you know. You won’t get it. Not if Daddy wants it.”

The plain man looked up at the gallery again. “Svnae, let me through. I must speak with you.”

“Who’s that?” Smith inquired.

“That’s our brother Demaledon. Demaledon is good and kind and wise and brave and clean and reverent,” muttered Lord Ermenwyr. “The only reason he isn’t a bloody monk is because he kills people once in a while. But only bad people, you may be sure.”

“You can damned well speak to me from out there!” Lady Svnae shouted, clenching her fists. “This is none of Mother’s business!”

“Yes, Svnae, it is,” said Lord Demaledon. “Mother knows why you’re here. You should have come to her for counsel first.”

“My entire life has been one long session of Mother giving me counsel,” Lady Svnae replied sullenly, “and Mother knowing exactly what I’m doing and why, and Mother always being right, and Svnae being wrong.”

“Hey, look, isn’t that, what’s his name, Smith?” said Lord Eyrdway. “The Child of the Sun? Hello, Smith!”

Lord Demaledon looked up and spotted Smith. He murmured something in a horrified tone of voice.

“Thank you for asking, I’m miraculously unharmed!” Lord Ermenwyr screamed.

Lord Eyrdway grinned at him and pulled out the corners of his mouth with two fingers, stretching his grimace a good yard wide before letting it snap back.

“Did you hear a fly buzzing, Demmy? I didn’t. But you may as well collect Svnae and her baggage and escort her home, because Daddy is taking over here. He wants the Key of Unmaking.”

“Well, he can’t have it,” Lady Svnae said, looking arch. “Not even Daddy knows everything.”

“Stop it, both of you! Svnae, why is the Child of the Sun here?” Lord Demaledon asked.

Lady Svnae flushed deeply and dropped her gaze.

“I had him brought,” she admitted. “I, er, didn’t have quite all my facts straight at the time, and I didn’t realize how dangerous it was. But we stopped—”

“Oh, who cares? Look, Smith, I’m sorry about this, but you have to admit your people have needed thinning out lately,” said Lord Eyrdway. “And Daddy has nothing against Children of the Sun personally. But if anyone’s going to own an ancient weapon of fabulous destructive power, it ought to be Daddy. So drop the damned Wall!”

“Shut up, you idiot! You don’t understand!” cried Lord Demaledon. “Svnae, when did you stop?”

“Well—” Lady Svnae bit her lower lip.

“You know, Smith, I think it’s time we got the hell out of here,” said Lord Ermenwyr sotto voce. He glanced over his shoulder at the battlefield, then did a double take. “Uh-oh. Too late.”

The man in black was walking to the Adamant Wall, unhurried. He looked up at the gallery. His gaze was blank and mild as a sleepy tiger’s. When he spoke, his voice was very deep.

“Daughter, come down,” said the Master of the Mountain.

He towered over his sons. Given all that Smith had heard of him over the years, he had expected someone about whom dark rainbows of energy crackled, a walking shadow of dread, faceless. All Smith saw, however, was a very large man with a black beard, who folded his arms as he waited for Lady Svnae’s reply.

“Daddy, I really can’t let you in here,” said Lady Svnae.

He extended one gauntleted hand in a negligent gesture, and the Adamant Wall melted into a curtain of steam that blew away.

“Then you come down to me,” he said. “And bring the man Smith.”

Moving deliberately, Svnae took her bow and nocked an arrow. Smith gaped at it, for it was not the kind of sporting gear one would expect a lady to use. The arrow was tipped for armor-piercing.

“Daddy, go away,” she said, and in an undertone added, “Ermenwyr, get out. Take Smith and get away down the river as fast as you can.”

“I can’t blow the hole in the damned wall by myself!” hissed her brother.

The Master of the Mountain did not smile, but something glinted in his black eyes.

“Child, you are your mother’s daughter,” he said.

Svnae gritted her teeth. “That was just exactly the wrong thing to say.”

She fired. Lord Ermenwyr shouted and grabbed her arm belatedly, but the Master of the Mountain smiled. He put up his hand and caught the arrow an inch from his throat. In his hand it became a black-red rose.

“And you are also my daughter,” he said, sounding pleased. Svnae reached for another arrow, but found her quiver full of roses. Glaring, she took the bow and hurled it at him as hard as she could.

“Damn you!”

“Stop this nonsense and come down,” said the Master of the Mountain. “Your mother is going to have a great deal to say to you about this.”

Lord Ermenwyr groaned, and Lady Svnae went pale.

“We’d better do as he says now,” she said.

“Is it painful?”

“Yes, it is,” Smith said, gasping. “It hurts a lot.”

The Master of the Mountain regarded Smith’s arm, which was colder and more blue than it had been. Below the elbow it looked as though it was turning to stone. It was in no way stiff or swollen, however. Shaking his head, the other man dug a flask from a camp chest and offered it to Smith.

“Drink. It may help.”

Smith accepted it gratefully. “Thank you, my—er—lord.”

“The name’s Silverpoint,” said the Master of the Mountain. “Most of the time. Though my son calls himself Kingfisher, doesn’t he?”

“Lord Ermenwyr?” Smith nodded. Mr. Silverpoint poured himself a drink and sat down in the chair opposite Smith’s.

“Lord Ermenwyr,” said Mr. Silverpoint, with only the faintest trace of irony. He stared at the hanging lamp and sighed, shaking his head. “He’s a costly boy. Doctors, tailors’ bills, theater tickets. Brothels. Health resorts. And now I understand he’s bought a slaveless galley.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When I was his age, I’d never seen a boat, let alone a city.” He looked at Smith, raised an eyebrow like a black saber. “And I owned nothing. Not even myself.”

“You were a slave?” Smith asked.

The other man nodded. “Until I killed my masters. I broke my own chains. I owe no miracle man for my salvation.

“But I owe you a debt, Smith. You’ve made a habit of saving my children. They haven’t been as grateful as they should. I’d like to help you.”

“I’m not sure you can,” said Smith. He drank. What was in the flask was white, and it did dull his pain a little.

Mr. Silverpoint did not reply at once. He sipped his own drink, considering Smith. The lord’s pavilion was made of rich stuff, black worked with silver thread, but it was spare and soldierly within. Without, the camp sounds had tapered off; only the creaking of insects now, and the occasional challenge and password from the guard.

“I’ve been following your career with a certain amount of interest, Smith. Tell me: How long were you an assassin?” Mr. Silverpoint inquired.

“Ten years, I guess,” said Smith, a little dazedly. He hadn’t expected to be discussing his personal history. “I tried being a soldier. I tried a lot of jobs. But it always came back to killing. It just—happened.”

“You were good at it,” stated Mr. Silverpoint.

“Yes.”

“You never trained with a master-at-arms. You never studied weapons of any kind.”

“No, sir. My aunt never had the money for that kind of an education,” Smith explained, drinking more of the white stuff.

“But the first time you ever found yourself in danger, you acted without even thinking and—”

“And they were dead,” said Smith wonderingly. “Three of them, in an alley. Two throats cut with a broken bottle and the other killed with a five-crown piece, and I’m damned if I remember how. Something about hitting him with it in exactly the right place to make something rupture. I don’t know where I learned that trick.”

“But you didn’t like the work.”

“No, sir, I didn’t. So I kept trying to quit.”

“You were an orphan, weren’t you?”

“What? Oh. Yes, sir.”

“And Smith is an alias, isn’t it? A name you selected purely by chance?”

“Well, it’s very common, sir.”

“Interesting choice, all the same. What is your real name?”

The question was uttered in a tone of command, not loud but swift as a green dart. And Smith knew perfectly well what folly it was to tell one’s true name to a mage, especially one with Mr. Silverpoint’s reputation, but he felt the reply rising so easily to his lips! He fought it until he sweated, with those quiet eyes regarding him all the while.

“I’ll tell you my first name,” he said. “What about that?”

“You are strong,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “Very well, then.”

“My mother died when she had me,” Smith said. “She looked up at the door as they were wrapping me in a blanket, and she said there was a shadow there. That was the last thing she ever said. So my aunt named me Carathros. That’s how a priest would say, ‘The shadow has come.’ ”

Smith stared into the past. Mr. Silverpoint watched him. At last, “I’ve heard what Ermenwyr thinks is the truth,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “Insofar as he’s ever capable of telling the truth. Svnae and Demaledon have told me what they know. Now, you tell me: there is no Key of Unmaking hidden in Rethkast, is there?”

“There is, sir,” said Smith. “I saw it. It was in a hole in the rock.”

Mr. Silverpoint shook his head.

“That’s the keyhole,” he said. “My daughter didn’t realize the truth until it was too late. Your Book of Fire says that the Key of Unmaking was hidden, but not in the bones, not in a place full of bones. Not in the charnel house of Kast. There’s an error in the text, you see.

“What it actually says is that the Key was hidden in the bone, in the sense of flesh and bone. Descendants. Heredity. A trait passed on in the blood. Something that would lie dormant, until the Father of your people decided to use it.”

Smith looked at his arm. It was iron, and ice, and it knew exactly how to put an end to the cities of his people. He had dreamed its dreams. It had always killed for him, all his life, gotten him out of every dark alley and tight corner in which he’d ever found himself, earned him a living with what it knew. But now it knew its purpose.

“I’m the Key of Unmaking,” he said.

Mr. Silverpoint was watching him.

“A courtesy to the children of other gods,” he said.

“When there are too many of you, a slaughterer is born on the Anvil of the World. His destiny is to bring on a cataclysm. What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t want this,” said Smith, though he knew that what he wanted no longer mattered.

“It seems a shame,” Mr. Silverpoint agreed. “But you’re stuck with it, aren’t you?”

“Can you help me?”

“I don’t meddle with gods,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “All I can do is witness your decision. Whatever you do, though, you’d better do it soon. That’s my advice, if you want any control over what happens at all. The pain will only get worse; until you obey.”

“I have to go back in that room, don’t I?” said Smith sadly.

Mr. Silverpoint shrugged. Setting his drink down, he rose and selected an axe from a rack of weapons in the corner.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he said, holding the tent flap open.

They stepped out into the night, and the guards on duty came to attention and saluted. Mr. Silverpoint nodded to them.

“At ease,” he said. “This way, Smith.”

He walked to the near pavilion that had been set up for Lady Svnae. Taking a torch from its iron socket, he cleared his throat loudly outside the entrance.

“Daddy?”

“Rise and come with us, Svnae,” he said. “You’re being punished.”

She stepped out a moment later, wrapped in a dressing gown. She looked lovely, frightened, young and—next to her father—small. On any other night of the world, Smith would have been profoundly interested in her state of undress.

They stopped at the next pavilion, and Mr. Silverpoint said, “Come out of there, son.”

There was no answer. Mr. Silverpoint exhaled rather forcefully and tore open the tent flap, revealing Lord Ermenwyr. The lordling was still fully dressed, sitting bolt upright on the edge of a folding cot. He looked at his father with wide eyes.

“You’re being punished, too,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “Come along.”

He led them away through the night, across the day’s field where a banked fire still smoldered, the bones of the slain falling into ashes in its heart. Guards fanned out and walked with them at a discreet distance.

They came to the rock, and Mr. Silverpoint nodded at Svnae, who led them in. The chambers and corridors were deserted; the monks had withdrawn to the camp to tend the wounded. They climbed through the darkness, and their passage echoed like an army on the march.

The pain in Smith’s arm grew less with every step. It was still so cold he imagined waves of chill radiating from it, but it felt supple as it ever had. He looked up at the barrel-vault ceiling as they walked along, wondering who among his ancestors had cut these tunnels. The charnel house of Kast….

What had taken place, here, that the Yendri had found it crowded with the dead? It must have been in Lord Salt’s time, so long ago it was nearly fable. What had been the cause of the war? Why had the granaries of Troon been put to the torch? That was never clear in the stories; only the great deeds of the heroes were sung about, how they drove the vanquished before them like wraiths, how they enacted wonders with their swords and war hammers, how they triumphed in the last day of glory before the gods had been sick of them and wiped them out of existence.

And only a handful of people had survived, crouching in fishing-huts at the edge of the land, terrified of something in the interior.

Yet from those wretched ashes they had risen, hadn’t they? And built a fine new civilization on top of the old, better than what they’d had before? What other race could do such a thing?

What other race would need to?

It was true that they multiplied until they must build new cities, and it was true that crime and war and famine followed them inexorably … and now there were others in the world, other races who might be more worthy to inherit.

His arm felt fine now. Better than fine. Superior to dull flesh and blood. It was the part of him that belonged to the gods, after all.

Smith heard the sound of footsteps behind him, running, and Willowspear caught up with them.

“Where are you going?” he gasped. “What is he going to do?”

Mr. Silverpoint’s voice floated back to them along the tunnel. “Nothing, boy. I’m only here to observe.”

They emerged into the chamber. Mr. Silverpoint set the torch in a socket by the door. “Here we are,” he said. “What happens now, Smith?”

Smith blinked at the Keyhole, at the whirling fire before it. He knew that he could raise his cold blue arm and thrust it through that barrier and feel no pain at all. He knew he could grasp the dimly seen objects beyond and draw them out. They were only vials of poisons, and small ingenious devices. Still, once he had them, there would be no stopping him ever again.

He felt History pulling at him, like a tide sucking sand from beneath his feet. All that he had been, all the mundane details of his life, were about to be jettisoned. Once he reached through the fire, he would be purified, perfect, streamlined down to his essential purpose. He would bring a sinful race to its ordained end. It was the will of the gods.

Smith, the old Smith that was about to be cast off like a garment, looked away from the whirling fire.

The others were watching him. Mr. Silverpoint’s gaze was blank, enigmatic. Lady Svnae was biting her nether lip, her dark eyes troubled. Lord Ermenwyr stood with arms folded, doing his best to look nonchalant, but he was trembling. And Willowspear was staring from one to the other, and at the bright fire, and horror was slowly dawning in his face.

Why was the boy so upset? Ah, because he had a wife, and a mother, and a child on the way. Personal reasons. The concerns of mundane people, not heroes.

Clear before his eyes came an image of little Burnbright disconsolate on her perch in the kitchen, and of Mrs. Smith singing in her cloud of smoke. Fenallise.

Smith flexed his hand.

“I need to borrow your axe,” he said to Mr. Silverpoint. That gentleman nodded solemnly and handed it over.

Smith knelt.

He laid his blue arm out along the rock and struck once, severing his hand and arm just below the elbow.

There was one moment of frozen time in which the arm lay twitching in its pool of black blood, and the severed end reared up like a snake and something looked at him accusingly, with glittering black eyes. It told him he had failed the gods. It told him he was a commonplace and mediocre little man.

Then time unfroze, and there was a lot of shouting. Lady Svnae had torn the sash from her dressing gown and knelt beside him, binding it on the stump of his arm, pulling tight while Willowspear broke the axe handle and thrust it through the tourniquet’s knot. There was blood everywhere. Smith was staring full at Lady Svnae’s splendid bare bosom, which was no more than a few inches from his face, and only vaguely listening to Lord Ermenwyr, who was on his other side saying, “I’m sorry, Smith, I’m so sorry, you’ll be all right, I’ll make you a magic hand with jewels on it or something and you’ll be better than new! Really! Oh, Smith, please don’t die!”

Smith was falling backward.

“You see?” he told no one in particular. “It was just a metaphor.”

“I’m impressed,” said Mr. Silverpoint, nodding slowly.

Smith lost consciousness.

He spent the next few days in a pleasant fog. Willowspear never left him, changed the dressings on his arm at hourly intervals and kept him well drugged. Lord Demaledon came often to advise; he and Willowspear had long sonorous conversations full of medical terms Smith didn’t understand. Smith didn’t mind. He felt buoyant, carefree.

Lady Svnae brought him delicacies she had prepared for him herself, though she was not actually much of a cook, and she kept apologizing to him in the most abject manner. When he asked her what she was apologizing for, she burst into tears. When he tried to console her, he made an awkward job of it, having forgotten that he no longer had two arms to put around anybody. So then he apologized, and she cried harder. Altogether it was not a successful social moment.

Lord Ermenwyr came several times to sit beside his bed and talk to him. He chattered nervously for hours, filling the tent with purple fumes as he smoked, and Smith nodded or shook his head in response but couldn’t have got a word in with a shoehorn. Principally the lordling discussed magical prostheses, their care and maintenance, and the advantages of complicated extra features such as corkscrews, paring knives, and concealed flasks.

And there was an afternoon when Smith lay floating free on a tide of some subtle green elixir that banished all care, and watched through the opened tent-flaps as a drama unfolded, seemingly just for his entertainment. Mr. Silverpoint was seated in a black chair, with a naked blade across his knees. The Yendri war-leader was brought before him in chains.

A lot of talk followed, in words that Smith couldn’t understand. Most of the Yendri leader’s lines were badly acted, though, he seemed given to melodrama, and Smith would have jeered and thrown nutshells at him but for the fact that he couldn’t spot a snack vendor in the audience, and no longer had an arm to throw with anyway.

Then there was a thrilling moment when the action came right into his tent, and everyone was staring at him, and Mr. Silverpoint explained gravely that the Yendri had admitted to conspiring to exterminate the Children of the Sun. As the only member of his race present, what was Smith’s judgment? Smith thought about it, while everyone, the Yendri included, watched him.

Finally he said he thought it was a bad idea.

But do you condemn him to death? everyone asked.

Smith knitted his brows and puzzled over the question until he realized that he was free of all that; he’d never kill anybody again. He just lay there laughing, shaking his head No.

Then the drama retreated to the stage again, and a lot of other accusations were made. The word Hlinjerith was spoken several times, and the Yendri stood tall and said something proudly, and there was a gasp of horror from a lot of people watching. Willowspear, beside Smith, groaned aloud and buried his face in his hands. Smith asked him what was wrong and Willowspear said that the Orphans had done something dreadful. Smith asked what they had done. Willowspear, mastering himself with difficulty, said that they had made certain that Hlinjerith would never be desecrated by the Children of the Sun.

So the Yendri was condemned to die after all. The three lords stepped forward, Eyrdway, Demaledon, and Ermenwyr. Each one presented some argument, and Mr. Silver-point listened with his head on one side. Then there was a wonderful bit of sleight of hand where he pulled three rods of blue fire from the air and held them out in his fist, and the three brothers each drew one. Lord Demaledon got the one that was longest.

A circle formed, though people were considerate enough to leave a space so Smith could see. The Yendri’s chains were struck off. He was given a staff. Lord Demaledon stepped into the circle with his staff, too. Smith became terribly excited and struggled to sit up so he could see better, but by the time Willowspear had arranged the pillows behind him it was nearly over. Clack, whack, crash, two stick-insects fighting, and then CRACK and the Yendri was down with his head caved in, and that was all.

Smith was disappointed, until Willowspear injected him with more of the elixir, and he floated away into happiness again… the body was dragged offstage, the crowd dispersed, the curtain flaps fell, and he tried to applaud. But that was another thing he couldn’t do anymore.

One morning they told him he was going to be taken back to the boat, and he watched as they bound him into a litter and four of Mr. Silverpoint’s soldiers hoisted him between them. Their mail and livery was identical, but otherwise they were monstrous in exuberant variety: scales, fangs, fur, unlikely appendages. Still they carried him gently through the rock, out the new waterside entrance and so to the landing.

And there was the Kingfisher’s Nest, anchored as safe as though the siege and battle had taken place in another world. Cutt, Crish, and company were lined up ashore like a row of bollard posts, looking proud of themselves insofar as they had expressions. They greeted their master with howls of joy and abased themselves before Mr. Silverpoint when he came down to see them off.

He loomed over Smith.

“My son will take you back to Salesh now,” he said.

“Thank you, my lord,” said Smith.

Lord Demaledon and Lord Eyrdway loomed too, one on either side of their father.

“I still can’t believe what you did,” said Lord Eyrdway, a little sulkily. “All that power, and you threw it away! Don’t you know what you could have done?”

“He knows, son,” said Mr. Silverpoint.

“I’ve given Willowspear salves for the wound, Smith,” said Demaledon. “Don’t try to seal it with boiling pitch, whatever your physicians tell you. Yours may be a race worthy to live, but your grasp of medicine is … inadequate.”

“All right,” said Smith vaguely, looking around, blinking in the sunlight. There were others of the demon-host loading chests of something heavy on board the Kingfisher’s Nest. The Master of the Mountain followed his gaze.

“Gold specie,” he explained. “Readily convertible anywhere. It ought to get you through the next few years.”

“Oh. You mean … the race war and all that?”

“No,” said Mr. Silverpoint, scowling briefly. “There will be no race war, now. Not over Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches. Nor will your people be destroyed this time, since you have broken the Key of Unmaking. But you’re owed some compensation, after what my children did to you.”

“Oh, well…” Smith racked his brains for something polite to say. “I guess I would have come here sooner or later anyway. If it was the will of the gods.”

Mr. Silverpoint grinned, a flash of white in his black beard.

“Yes, of course, we must respect the will of the gods.” He leaned close and spoke in a low voice. “You be sure to take my son for the most expensive prosthesis on the market, understand? If he wants to buy you one that tells the time and plays “The Virgins of Karkateen,” you let him. The little devil can’t bear feeling guilty.”

The journey back was dreamlike and very pleasant for Smith, who had nothing to do but sit under a canopy on deck and watch the scenery flow by. Everyone else was either preoccupied—like Willowspear, who was now obliged to man the helm—or quietly miserable, like Lord Ermenwyr and Lady Svnae. Even the portage descent to the Pool of Reth went smoothly.

And it was in that place, as Willowspear navigated the clear green water, that they saw the first of the white butterflies.

“Hey, look, there’s your spirits,” observed Smith, pointing to the two tall stones. White wings fluttered in a long shaft of sunlight, like poppy petals in the wind. Lady Svnae, who was arranging cushions and a lap robe for Smith, looked up and caught her breath.

“I’ve never seen butterflies like that,” she said.

“That’s because they’re cabbage moths,” said her brother, pacing. He regarded them sourly, shifting his smoking tube from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“It is a good sign,” said Willowspear, guiding them into the river.

“They’re following us, too,” said Smith, and he was right; for as the Pool of Reth fell astern, the butterflies drifted along after them, or settled on the spars and rigging like birds.

“Get away, you little bastards!” Lord Ermenwyr cried.

“Oh, leave them alone. They’re pretty,” Lady Svnae told him. “What can I bring you, dear Smith? Ortolans braised in white wine? Sugared pepper tarts? Rose comfits? Tea with Grains of Paradise?”

“Tea sounds nice,” said Smith. She raised a silver pitcher cunningly wrought with peacocks and adders chased in gold, and with her own fair hands poured the long stream of tea into a cup of eggshell-fine porcelain, costly and rare. Smith watched as she took Grains of Paradise from a tiny golden box with silver tweezers, unable to find a tactful way to tell her he preferred his tea plain.

Some days later, after a supernaturally quick journey, at the Sign of the Three Hammers…

Mr. Smallbrass sat at his desk, chewing on the end of his pen as he studied his account books. He wasn’t very good at accounts—he was more of an idea man—but he had had to let his accountant go, along with his personal secretary, his chair-bearers, his masseur, and some of his better furniture.

He heard a commotion in the courtyard below his office and peered out a window, wondering if he should bolt his door and pretend he wasn’t in. But it wasn’t the collections clerk from Redlead and Sons Contractors, nor was it Mr. Screwbite the architect, also unpaid these six weeks. It was a very large man in very well cut clothing, accompanied by equally large liveried servants who took up posts at the entrance to the courtyard.

Mr. Smallbrass watched until he was certain the large man was ascending the staircase that led to his particular office, then he became a blur of frenzied motion. Unpaid bills were swept into a drawer. Threatening letters were stuffed under the carpet. Other items that might tend to detract from the impression of success went into a closet. When the knock on the door sounded, Mr. Smallbrass straightened his tunic, took a deep breath, and waited until the second knock before opening the door.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the man who stood without. “My clerk’s just stepped out to make an immense bank deposit. Your name, sir?”

“Silverpoint,” said the man, in an oddly smooth bass. “Aden Silverpoint. I have a proposition for Mr. Smallbrass.”

“Really?” said Mr. Smallbrass. “I am he, sir! Business is brisk at the moment, but I can certainly spare you a moment—or two—” He edged backward into the room, reaching out hastily to shut his accounts book. Mr. Silver-point followed him, and so did two more of the liveried servants, who carried a chest between them.