The Fire's Stone

Six

Naked, his hair still damp from the bath, Darvish leaned his forearms on the balcony railing and looked out at the world. The early morning light clearly delineated buildings, gardens, even Yasimina's One abandoned peacocks. It's like a mountain wine, he decided, turning his arms so that the beads of moisture glowed, a scattering of tiny crystals. A libation poured by the Nine onto their mother below. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the sun before noon.

He only saw it today because Lady Harithah had remembered her husband would be arriving this morning and had canceled their assignation. Unwilling to settle for second best, he'd been in his own bed reasonably early and practically sober.

Waking with a clear head... Darvish stretched and smiled. What an interesting concept. Maybe someday I'll try it again. Then he remembered that not only Lady Harithah's lord would be arriving today but also the first third of his bride's dowry.

His bride. The word was a bad taste in his mouth and a little of the light went out of the world. Consider myself betrothed. Thank you very much, O Most Exalted Father. Maybe he should tell her about the challenge he'd made to the whores of the city, male and female, last year in the middle of the market square. And if that doesn't disrupt Father's plans, Darvish smiled sardonically, I'll tell her how I almost won.

"Highness?"

He turned slowly. "Fadi."

"Highness, the healer says that she is busy this morning." The young dresser, keeping his gaze carefully level with the prince's knees, held out a squat clay pot securely stoppered with a round of cork. "She said..." He took a deep breath and felt his ears begin to burn. He just couldn't use the words the healer had used in front of his prince. Why did she keep doing this to him?

"She said as long as I was up I could spread that stuff myself?"

"Yes, Highness. Mostly." His prince sounded amused and for Fadi that was almost worse than anger. Except that Prince Darvish never got angry. He was difficult at times, but Fadi knew that was the wine, not his prince. His prince was the best master in the palace and all the things his friends had said would happen to him when he came to serve, hadn't. He was a little disappointed about some of that actually. His ears burned hotter as he felt sure the thought lay naked on his face for his prince to read.

If it did, Darvish chose to ignore it. "Thank you, Fadi."

As the pot changed hands, their fingers touched and the young dresser sighed. Managing to stifle a sigh of his own, Darvish's smile softened as he watched the boy hurry away. I was never that young.

Fadi's adoration depressed him at times. What remained to adore once the attraction of the flesh had been denied? And he'd made it very clear that Fadi was too young for that. Both to Fadi and to others. His smile iced as he remembered the expression on the Lord Rahman's face as that noble had been informed what would happen to his genitals if he ever spoke again of laying a hand on the prince's young dresser.

"And speaking of laying on hands..." Darvish worked the cork from the pot and sniffed at the pale green salve. It had a clean, fresh scent that cleared his head of the overpowering odor of jasmine rising up from the garden below. "...I suppose I'd best get this over with."

At the balcony door, the lord chancellor's man met him with a silver tray and a carafe of wine. "Highness." He bowed, his voice straddling the thin line between service and subservience. "Your wine."

Darvish watched a ruby drop trail a thin line of color down the chilled metal. It just didn't go with the morning. "No, I don't think so."

"But, Highness, you always have wine in the morning."

"Don't ever presume..." He clasped both hands tighter about the pot of salve in case one should play traitor and reach out, out of habit. "... that you know what I will always do."

"Highness." The dresser bowed again, the marks of his last beating still visible above the neckline of his vest. He expected another, the knowledge in his voice.

This, Darvish thought with a sudden rush of sympathy, is the one man in Ischia whose place I would not exchange for mine. "Don't you have something to do?"

"Yes, Highness."

Darvish watched the dresser scurry thankfully away. Perhaps the lord chancellor would have the man beaten later when he made his report—a pity, still, he wasn't going to drink unwanted wine to prevent it.

The old lord would, of course, see plots and machinations in the decision, but that was hardly surprising as he saw plots and machinations in anything. In everything.

Aaron, sitting cross-legged on his pallet, set aside his empty breakfast bowl and reached for the large goblet of water that Kadira had insisted he drink with every meal. Black silk trousers set off the pallor of his skin and threw the circular pattern of scars into sharp relief. He looked up as Darvish came in, saw the prince had still not dressed, and quickly looked away. It did little good. Over the days of his healing he had seen the prince too many times for looking away to erase the sight from his memory. He felt the blood rise to his face and a pounding start between his ears. Men were not meant to gaze upon one another, the priests of his childhood had told him. That is the beginning of the path to the fire. He shifted just enough to pull at the scars, welcoming the pain as a distraction.

In the old days, he would have had anger to shield him but he had put that aside with his old life. He had nothing now unless this prince chose to give him death.

Darvish knew his nudity bothered Aaron so he went unclothed as often as he realistically could. Any reaction was better than none at all and that was the only reaction he'd seen evidence of. He watched the blush rise and fade, then he set his teeth and approached with the salve.

If he had known when he carried the thief from the Chamber of the Fourth that he carried a stone who, once the initial and still unexplained despair had faded, would sit staring at him from behind walls thicker than those that ringed the palace, he would have left him with the twins.

No, not that perhaps, but the last thing Darvish needed was a man who acknowledged him even less than his father did. His excesses meant nothing to Aaron; at least his father felt disgust.

He meant nothing to Aaron.

I saved your life, he wanted to shout. Don't I get anything in return? Apparently not.

Aaron made him uncomfortable in a number of ways. Darvish had thought himself an expert at merely existing from day to day, but the outlander made him appear a rank amateur. And Aaron did it without the wine.

One word and the thief would be there to bother him no more. Darvish knew he could never speak that word. If only to prove his father wrong.

"His life is yours. When you tire of him, he dies."

"The healer's busy." Darvish squatted by the pallet and dipped two fingers into the pot.

Aaron braced himself for the prince's touch. The salve smoothed over the jagged edges between the new skin and the old, but the easing was almost lost in the feel of the strong brown fingers that stroked it on. It seemed as though his heart began to beat to their rhythm. From under lowered lids he snatched a glimpse of the prince's face and the concern there surprised him—as much as it would have surprised the prince had he been able to see it.

The surprise drove a crack into the stone surrounding him and a question wailed free.

"What do you want from me, Darvish?"

Startled blue eyes met equally startled gray eyes for an instant, the question hanging in the air between them. Then the gray eyes cooled back to ice and only the blue acknowledged the question had been asked.

"What do I want from you?" Darvish repeated softly. He had seen, in that instant, a loneliness that matched his own, recognized it from a hundred thousand reflections in a hundred thousand mirrors. It stopped the glib answer and it stopped the leer.

What do you want from me?

Like ripples in a quiet pool, other questions spread out from the first.

Why did you save my life?

Why do you care?

Something...

Darvish remembered the look on Aaron's face the first night on the balcony, the pain that had nothing to do with the injuries that had brought him down. Maybe because his head was clear, without the usual insulation of wine, Darvish suddenly remembered his thoughts from that moment. This is someone who knows. He'd understand how I feel.

He looked at Aaron's face now and realized what he wanted.

What do you want from me?

I want you to be my friend.

But he wasn't going to say it. Even though he'd bought and paid for that friendship with Aaron's life. He couldn't take that risk. He asked for the one thing he knew he'd get.

"Nothing." Darvish shoved the cork back into the flared neck of the pot, his voice a soft contrast to the almost violent action. "I want nothing from you."

Aaron nodded, his fingers so tightly interlaced that the knuckles stood out bone white. "I can give you that," he whispered, relieved. One corner of his mouth twisted up and without really meaning to, he smiled. The wrong answer would have shattered him into little pieces. He could feel how close he'd come, but he was still whole.

Darvish stared at Aaron's face. He's smiling? Slowly, his own mouth began to curve and, shared, the moment stretched.

"Highness?"

Oham's quiet voice drew Darvish around and Aaron's face became expressionless once again, but a link, tenuous and unacknowledged, remained.

"Highness, His Most Imperial Majesty commands your presence in the small audience chamber. Immediately. He requires also that you bring the thief."

"When you tire of him, he dies."

It wouldn't be the first time His Most Imperial Majesty had changed the rules.

"Well now, Aaron," Darvish said with the false sincerity usually saved for social occasions and members of the court high in the king's favor. He tossed back his hair and stood, crossing the room and lifting the carafe with both hands. Hands that trembled, just a little. "It seems we had our talk just in time." The wine ran in crimson lines down from the corners of his mouth and over his chest. Breathing heavily, he tossed the now empty container onto the bed and grinned, his eyes too bright. "I guess I'd better get dressed."

You gave me his life, Father. At Darvish's sides, his hands curled into fists. I'll fight you if you try to take him from me.

Tension filled the small audience chamber, tension so palpable that Aaron almost raised a hand to brush it from his face. Like sheets of lightning before a summer storm, it radiated out from the four who waited for them and lifted the fine hair on the back of his neck.

As they crossed the room, the only noise the light slap of their sandals against the tile, Aaron took stock of the doors, the windows, the guards, the habits of years reasserting themselves. It would be a difficult but not impossible job and probably worth it for the heavy gold lamp brackets alone. Lastly, he noted the people.

The throne in the small audience chamber was rosewood, intricately carved and highly polished. The king, however, was still obsidian and between the gray of hair and beard his expression was black. To his right, the crown prince also showed anger, but it was equally mixed with speculation as he watched them approach. The shaven-headed priest was simply terrified and the lord chancellor—Aaron recognized the fat man immediately, Darvish's drunken ravings were quite accurate—had set his face in no readable expression at all.

From his position a pace behind the prince, Aaron watched Darvish drop gracefully to one knee and mirrored the motion a heartbeat later. His half-healed chest allowed him little grace and his thighs trembled as he rose, but he set his jaw and pretended he hadn't spent the last three nine-days flat on his back. As he lifted his head, a glare from the lord chancellor drew his gaze.

A man's ears don't stop hearing just because he no longer wishes to live, and while Aaron healed he'd listened. He'd listened to the words and to what was behind them. He knew who paid the third dresser.

You're a fool, he thought at the broad sweep of Darvish's back, while returning the lord chancellor's glare with a cold stare of his own, if you think this man is not dangerous just because he is fat and old. But then, he already knew Darvish was a fool.

From the expression on the lord chancellor's face, Aaron suspected that the obeisance made to the king by a thief was supposed to differ from that made by a prince. Tough.

"You requested my presence, Most Exalted?"

Darvish had thrown back two additional goblets of wine on the way through the palace and Aaron marveled at how little the amount of alcohol he'd consumed had affected him. His voice sounded clear and his hands hung steady by his sides. Nor did he appear affected by the tensions in the room. The muscles of his back were knotted, Aaron could see that clearly through the thin white silk of his shirt, but he'd brought that tension in with him.

The silence the followed Darvish's ritual words stretched and lengthened and the air became heavier still. It seemed that the colored tiles in the mosaic behind the throne grew both muted and more distinct. Aaron's eyes narrowed. He'd assumed, like Darvish, this meeting had been commanded to tell the prince his thief must die, but now he wasn't so sure. He ignored the faint taste of relief. He wanted to die. He waited to die.

And then the king spoke, thunder to herald the storm.

"The Stone has been taken."

"Nine Above..." Darvish breathed and Aaron silently echoed it. The Stone held the volcano. Without it, Ischia would die. "Who?"

Slowly, all eyes turned to Aaron.

"It wasn't me," Aaron said dryly, wondering how they expected him to have stolen anything when he could barely walk. "I was with him." He jerked a thumb at the prince and felt strangely pleased when, after an astounded moment, Darvish grinned and stepped back so that they stood side by side.

"That does not necessarily excuse you," the lord chancellor snapped.

"Are you accusing my Most Royal brother of taking The Stone?" Shahin's question was silk, but it was the silk of the garrote. Over the last few weeks, the heir had been discovering more and more how much he disliked his father's omnipresent councillor. That the man was devoted to the throne, he did not doubt, but some of the ways that devotion had been expressed he did not care for at all. In the opinion of the crown prince, the lord chancellor needed to be reminded of his place.

The lord chancellor recognized the tone and hurriedly bowed. "Oh, no, not at all, my prince. But he does share quarters with a known thief..."

"And we all know that if said thief had stirred at any time during the night you'd have known of it a heartbeat later. So let's stop this foolishness," the word was directed equally at the lord chancellor, Darvish, and Aaron, "and get to the point." The hooded eyes pinned Aaron to the spot. He felt not unlike a rabbit must, caught in the gaze of a great hawk. "You could not have taken The Stone, but you will know who did. Tell us."

Aaron considered the other thieves of Ischia. He owed them nothing, after all.

"If The Stone is missing, what holds the Lady?" Darvish asked suddenly, a hint of fear appearing in his voice.

The priest spoke for the first time, her voice a clear, light soprano growing shrill with the strain of remaining calm. "Not even a living volcano constantly erupts. The wizards of both the temple and the palace focus power to block the smoke and smell, hiding the theft from the people. They stand ready should the worst occur."

Darvish nodded. "So the wizards know," he murmured, relieved. "Who else?"

"Only we six and a senior priest at the temple." Her fingers worked against the red and yellow tassels that hung from her belt of office, but her face remained impassive. "If the people find out..."

"If the people find out," Darvish repeated, "then the panic will destroy Ischia before the volcano has a chance."

"I'm glad to see the wine has not completely rotted your brain, little brother."

Under the sarcasm, Aaron was sure he heard approval in Shahin's voice, but before he had a chance to ponder it the king spoke again.

"Who has The Stone, thief?"

Aaron had weighed all the thieves of the city and found them wanting. "The thief came from outside Ischia."

The king's teeth flashed in the gray of his beard. Not for an instant did Aaron believe the expression was a smile. "You are very sure."

"I am." He uses his power like a sword, much as my father used his like a club. With the thought came memories—a huge red-bearded man, a dark-haired girl crouched at his feet, her blue eyes wide with terror—and with the memories came a storm of emotion—guilt, anger, terror, pain—too thick to breath through. NO! He slammed both memory and emotion back down behind the walls where they belonged. I am through with all that! He added denial to the walls until nothing remained but the void.

"Aaron?"

The void and Darvish. But Darvish he could deal with. He should never have left the prince's rooms. He should have stayed there, waiting to die.

Aaron avoided the prince's gaze—concern could break the walls again—and spoke directly to the king. "I could not have done it and I was the best."

"The best?"

The lord chancellor's words were a verbal sneer of disbelief.

Aaron merely replied, "Yes." They could believe him or not, he didn't care.

Plump hands spread and the lord chancellor smiled. "And just look where you are."

"That is hardly his fault," Darvish snarled.

"And this is hardly to the point," the priest broke in. "Squabbling like children will not help us to recover The Stone." She suddenly recalled whom she chastised and flushed. "Begging your pardon, Most Exalted."

Aaron barely heard the argument. Hardly his fault? "What do you mean, that was hardly my fault?" He'd failed. Who else could bear the blame?

Keeping a wary eye on his father, Darvish turned and glanced down at the younger man. "Didn't I tell you? Bugger the Nine," he ignored the gasp from the priest, "I thought I had. Your grappling iron had been deliberately flawed. It couldn't have happened by accident and it couldn't have borne your weight."

Deliberately flawed. Deliberately flawed. Cold fury rushed in to fill the void—fill it and overflow it. Aaron didn't see Darvish step back. He didn't see king, prince, priest, and lord chancellor watching him, faces wearing nearly identical apprehension. He saw a fat face, smoke-stick bobbing on one full and greasy lip.

When he spoke his voice came out like shards of ice.

"There's only one place in Ischia The Stone can be."

Not even the strong breeze off the harbor could sweep away the mixed smells of rot and dirt and too many people in too little space. Darvish fought against the urge to breathe through the fabric of his sleeve, as many young nobles did when one thing or another brought them down to this part of town. He scowled at a whining beggar, stepped over a pile of garbage—the bloated flies nearly covering it were so well fed they ignored him—and wondered if the volcano might not be preferable.

Behind him, he could hear the three guards muttering obscenities, they liked this place even less than he did. He, at least, knew they were here for a reason. They thought only that their prince had sold something he shouldn't have, the prince's pet thief knew where it was, and they were the muscle in case he had trouble getting it back. Not exactly a shining purpose to ease a walk through the worst slum in Ischia.

"Will three be enough?" Darvish had asked.

"Do you ever travel with more than three?"

"No."

"Then more will cause suspicion. Questions will be asked and the more questions the greater the chance the people will find out and panic." The priest shook her head, dark stubble a shadow against her scalp. "Above all else, the people must not find out that The Stone is missing."

"How fortunate for us all, Darvish, that your reputation allows you access to such people without raising the type of comments that would lead to questions. You'll have your sword," Shahin added. "Perhaps you'll have a chance to prove you can use it as well as a bottle."

Aaron's eyes were too cold to be human. "Herrak has no guards about him—he would have to share his treasures, then. He has the best wards his money can buy. But I have been through Herrak's wards before, they know me. And Herrak thinks I'm dead."

His most exalted father wouldn't have been depending on him, Darvish knew, if he had any other choice. But he didn't, for the priest was right. Above all else, the people must not know. It was Shahin Darvish didn't understand; his words had been almost more a challenge than a dismissal.

Aaron stopped in front of a townhouse that looked as though it were about to collapse under its own weight. Each of the three stories was sinking at different angles and the stone, which might have been white once, now barely held its shape in infinite shades of gray. Only one piece of the obsidian inlay that had long ago made this building the showpiece of the neighborhood remained, tucked up under the perch of a crumbling gargoyle.

The recessed door opened directly onto the filthy street. In its shelter, Aaron spoke practically his first words since leaving the palace; "They stay out here."

As one, the three guards turned to the prince.

"You might as well," Darvish agreed. "If he wanted to kill me, he could have done it easier last night." One of the guards turned a snigger into a sneeze. Darvish ignored him. He knew what they thought. "You're not needed inside and I'd prefer not to exit into any surprises."

Body blocking the exact motions, Aaron worked his fingers against the latch, twisting them with an agility that suggested the manacle scars had not destroyed his skills. The door opened just enough to allow him to slip inside. Darvish, larger and heavier, squeezed through behind with more difficulty. The guards philosophically settled down to wait. This wasn't the first time His Royal Highness had gone into a strange house leaving them to secure the door.

"Course, they're usually not quite so..." The first guard let the comment trail off, moving his foot away from a small unidentifiable mound of gray.

"Yeah? Well, you weren't along when his nibs tucked inta Black Sal's." The second smiled with satisfaction as she added, "They tossed him out just before dawn. We hadta carry him home. Yep, he's bin in places worser than this and come out again. Got the Nine's own luck up his ass does our royal master." She hacked and spit, scoring a direct hit on a roach.

The third guard only watched the now closed door and hoped that her prince wouldn't need her.

"Stand still." Aaron's voice cut the small anteroom into smaller pieces still. "Don't touch anything."

"When will Herrak know we're here?"

"We crossed the first ward at the mouth of the alley. He's known for some time."

"Oh." The outside door slid silently shut and Darvish discovered that the termite ridden boards facing the street were only a thin veneer over solid oak planks. "Aaron, you can't open this door from the inside." Nor, given the lack of maneuvering room, did he think he could break it down. The trapped air was hot and heavy and Darvish had the sudden uncomfortable thought that they stood in an inescapable oven.

"I can open the outside door." Aaron lifted his hand to knock on the inner door of the anteroom, "but we're going in." As his knuckles brushed the polished wood, the heavy door swung silently open.

"Unlocked?" Darvish asked, loosening his sword in its sheath.

"Shouldn't be," Aaron grunted.

"Right." Perhaps Herrak had already run with The Stone. Perhaps they were walking into a trap. Darvish pulled the scimitar free.

Moving cautiously, they entered a corridor barely wider than the prince's shoulders. The towering walls were composed of Herrak's treasures stacked haphazardly to the ceiling. The hanging lamps, guttering as they used the last of their oil, were almost worse than no light at all. Shadows leapt and lunged and a myriad of dark nooks and crannies drew the eye. An oppressive smell of mold and decay contributed to the claustrophobic feeling and dust motes danced in a glittering fog that thickened every time they moved.

Aaron stopped suddenly, his head up, his expression demonic in the half light. "This is wrong."

Breathing shallowly through his teeth, Darvish dropped into a fighting stance. And how can you tell what's right in a place like this? Above his head a lamp sizzled and sighed into darkness. "What's wrong?" he asked, ears straining for a sound, any sound, they weren't making themselves.

"The lamps. He has a servant to tend them."

"Do you think he's left with The Stone?"

The thief barked with derisive laughter. "What? And leave all this?" As suddenly as he'd stopped, he sprinted forward.

Darvish scrambled to catch up.

The narrow corridors didn't change although the building materials did from time to time. Here, almost ten feet packed with bales of clothing. There, furniture jammed tight between floor and ceiling. At the top of a flight of stairs, a statue of a sad-faced man that could only have come from the Nobles' Garden. No rooms, no halls, only the neverending maze of Herrak's possessions. The lamps continued to die.

How much farther? Darvish wondered. He couldn't ask aloud, he didn't have the breath to spare. Keeping up with the thin figure of the thief took almost all he had. Worse news—over the sound of his labored breathing he could hear an inhuman wail, rising and failing, permeating the maze like smoke. I may have to fight that. For now, he fought the tremors that shook his body and threatened to shake his blade like a leaf in a storm. He needed a drink to steady his arm.

Then the walls began to change. Bookcases now, jammed with racks of scrolls and heavy leather-bound tomes. Then the walls stopped. The wailing grew louder,

Weapon ready, Darvish traced the sound to its source.

Tucked up against the base of a heavily laden desk was a small man, dressed all in dark gray, staring wide eyed at the stubs of his hands. His sleeves had fallen back and the jagged ends of his forearm bones jutted charred from flesh that eased from black to red, angry red lines disappearing under the fabric of his shirt. Blood dribbled from holes chewed out of his lips and his chest heaved with the breath necessary to keep up the constant keening wail.

He shouldn't be conscious. Darvish closed his throat against the urge to vomit and took a shaky step forward. As he drew closer, unable to look away, a little more of the blackened flesh dissolved. There was no smell of burning or rot, just, very faintly, the bitter scent of the volcano. When he was close enough, he lifted the man's chin with the flat of his sword—the eyes were completely and totally insane.

It took two blows to get the head right off. Panting slightly, Darvish wiped his sword on the body. At least the wailing's stopped.

But the room was not quite silent and dreading what he'd see, he turned to face the source of the moaning. Over by one of the bookcase walls, Aaron stood staring at an immensely fat man, his face expressionless and cold. The fat man moaned, the sound rolling around the great echo chamber of his belly before being released to thrum against the heavy quiet. His hands cupped the air in front of the circle of his face, red to the wrist, the tip of each finger crowned in black.

"Apparently," Aaron said without turning as Darvish came to stand by his side, "there is a price for touching The Stone."

"Where is it?" Darvish slapped Herrak's hands down with the flat of his blade. He wanted out of this place. "Where is The Stone?"

Herrak's eyes showed yellowish white all around and his hands rose back up as though pulled by an invisible puppeteer.

"Answer, you fat fool!" Darvish slapped the hands down again and this time the edge of his sword drew across Herrak's palm. The red flesh parted, but no blood welled up to fill the wound. "Tell me, where is The Stone?"

"Gone," Herrak moaned from behind his rotting fingers.

"Gone where?"

He had to repeat the question a second and a third time before Herrak responded, moaning, "The mirror took it."

"What mirror?" Darvish rubbed his face. It was very hot in Herrak's hidey-hole and the blood of the thief, soaked onto the layers of carpeting, added its signature to the dust and mold and dead air.

Aaron pointed, his long finger appearing whiter than ever.

Almost hidden by Herrak's bulk, was a three-foot oval that Darvish had taken to be a slab of framed obsidian. A closer look and he saw it was a black mirror, its surface absolutely nonreflecting.

One more step and the edge of his sword was at Herrak's throat. Close enough to smell terror, sharp and strong, he breathed the question into the fat man's face. "Where. Is. The. Stone?"

"The wizard has it."

"Wizard?" Bugger the Nine! We've lost it! A slight movement of the sword brought another spate of information. Darvish couldn't understand why. Given what Herrak faced alive, death had to be welcome.

"The mirror came to me from the streets..."

"Who brought it?" Aaron snapped.

Herrak's eyes searched the past for a name. "Yaz," he said at last. "Yaz brought it."

"Where did she get it?"

"I don't know. It didn't seem important. I wanted it, you could see eternity in it."

Together, Aaron and Darvish looked again at the mirror. They could see exactly nothing.

"Spelled," Aaron grunted. Darvish nodded.

"You could. You could." Herrak protested. "I saw it. I saw eternity. Then he came."

"Who came?"

"The wizard."

"He came here?"

"No. To the mirror." A spasm of pain twisted Herrak's face and his fingers twitched and danced and grew a little blacker. When it passed, he needed no prodding to continue. "He said he would trade me a thousand precious things for The Stone of Ischia. A thousand for one." For a second he peered out from between rolls of fat, eyes hard, and Darvish caught a glimpse of the power that had made Herrak king of his own small part of the city. He realized that the man barely held on to a tiny fraction of his mind and would shortly be as insane as the dead thief. Suddenly Herrak twisted and fell to his knees, his whole body quivering from the impact. "He sent the thief through the mirror last night," he gasped. "I had The Stone just before dawn. Had to kill Jehara."

"His servant," Aaron supplied.

"She said we killed Ischia." The grimace almost became a smile. "A thousand precious things for one. I passed it through the mirror. I held it." His fingers were black to the second joint. "The thief had already begun to scream." The last word rose in volume until it was almost a scream itself.

The Stone, the heart of Ischia, was gone.

"The wizard," Darvish grabbed Herrak's shoulder and shook him viciously, "where is he?"

"In the mirror!"

Darvish's grip sank deep into the dimpled flesh.

"Where is the other side of the mirror?"

"I don't know!" Herrak wailed. One of the nails on his left hand curled off and drifted silently to the carpets.

Darvish let the fat man go. Ischia was doomed. He lifted his sword.

"No."

The very calm and control of Aaron's voice, so much in contrast to his own raging thoughts and Herrak's tortured whimpering, stopped the scimitar's downward swing.

"The thief is from Ytaili." He held out a small amber teardrop, the thong threaded through it sticky with blood. "This type, this color is found only in Ytaili, near Tivolic, the capital city. The royal family favors it."

"How do you know," Darvish snorted, not willing to accept a new hope quite so quickly.

"I stole one once."

Ytaili. Six days at sea with good winds. A day to find The Stone. Six days back. A nineday and a half. Surely the wizards can hold the volcano for that long. Perhaps Ischia can live. The relief that came with that conclusion left Darvish feeling physically weak. Then he remembered. Ytaili. Where Yasimina's brother was king. He stood for a moment, scimitar point resting against the carpets and watched three nails fall from Herraks' hands. The whimpering had become a constant background noise.

They had the answer, and yet, there was something more. He looked past Herrak to the mirror. Many wizards preferred to scry in mirrors, it wasn't a skill tied to any of the disciplines, but he had never heard of a wizard who could move things through a mirror. A wizard who can move a solid object through a solid object... A sudden fear stroked cold fingers down the prince's spine and he allowed himself to be distracted by the fat man rather than search out its source.

We have all we'll get from him, Darvish thought, shifting to a two-handed grip and lifting his sword again.

"No." For the second time, Aaron's cold voice stopped the beheading swing before it had begun. "What has he done to deserve mercy?"

What indeed? Herrak had been responsible for the theft of The Stone. And the loss of The Stone would destroy the Ischia Darvish knew. The nobles could get clear, they had the means and estates elsewhere to retreat to. But Darvish's people, the whores, the wine merchants—he shot a quick glance at Aaron—the thieves would die, if not in the panic, then boiled alive by the rivers of molten rock that would soon follow. And Herrak would have killed them.

Darvish sheathed his sword.

Herrak had done nothing to deserve mercy.

His face blank, Aaron turned silently to lead the way back out through the maze.

They had barely started between the first of the bookcases when Darvish realized that Herrak was trapped. He was far, far too fat to make it through the narrow aisles of his own house. His treasure boxed him into that one small room and probably had for years.

"He has poison in that room," Aaron said quietly as though he'd been following the line of Darvish's thoughts. "A quick death if he has the courage to take it." His voice was bitter and the line of his back so straight and hard that Darvish felt it would ring like steel if he tapped it.

They were halfway down the first set of stairs when the screaming began.