The Legend of Broken

And so, my dear Gibbon, it is neither entirely my revulsion at this story’s more lurid aspects, nor my impatience with your historical prurience, as you may think, but rather my concern for your gifts and legacy as a Great Intellect and a Great Author, an Historian whose work will prove not only popular but seminal, that compels me to return the manuscript you have “discovered,” and urge you to destroy it at once; or, if your pointed interest in such strange subject matter, and in the ultimately disturbing and distasteful conclusions toward which the tale propels itself, force you to keep it, at least conceal the thing in a place where it cannot be discovered, and above all do not publish it, certainly not in any form that can be connected to your good name.

And if you will make an honest attempt to apprehend my concerns, I will in turn confess to my own personal prejudices: First, against the irreligious Nature and Lessons of such tales, with their Obscure and Vulgar Vices and their effective glorification of a kind of barbarism, all of which have been made the more offensive by the manner in which vain but clever men such as M. Rousseau† have popularized them; and, Second, against the ultimately unverifiable Nature of the tale, particularly the ambiguity concerning both the identity of the narrator and the time at which he composed the thing.‡ It seems to me that if we follow the only “logical” (a gross torturing of the word) paths in trying to determine any such identity, we are left with absurd choices: Was he a lunatic prophet, raving in the manner of the founder of this “kingdom of Broken”? Was he an equally implausible and tormented memoirist, “recalling” details of which he could not possibly have been in possession? Or was he, as seems most likely, simply a fatuous contemporary swindler, someone who had you, personally, in mind as the victim of his scheming — a plan which evidently succeeded, given your purchase of the manuscript?

For these and still more reasons, I ask you finally to think, now, of your own life, and its Parallels to this tale you have unearthed: such shared themes as Competing Religions, young men’s difficult relations to strict and sometimes Cruel Fathers, and the manner in which a forcedly Solitary Life can agitate one’s interest in perverse hedonism.† To most of your friends, and certainly to me, all these things make your attraction to this “legend of Broken” more than understandable; but these are the private circumstances of your life, which never should (and with wisdom never will) affect the Larger Publick’s conception of you as a Great Man of History, one who I remain proud to call colleague, nor of your masterwork, which, like your fame, will never be equaled or diminished — unless you yourself so detract from it, through such compromising fascinations as this.

— EDMUND BURKE TO EDWARD GIBBON,

February 4, 1791

3:{i:}

The journey to Okot of the party led by Yantek Ashkatar and Caliphestros (the latter traveling, as ever, atop Stasi), with Keera, Veloc, and Heldo-Bah close behind, had fast become a much more crowded procession than might have seemed necessary, once the column started south through the long, wide portion of Davon Wood that lay between the Cat’s Paw and the northernmost settlements of the Bane’s well-hidden central community. Word of the newcomers’ approach had spread among Ashkatar’s surprisingly numerous force; and it seemed that nearly every Bane officer or soldier wanted to get a look for her- or himself at the mutilated old man and the powerful beast atop whose back he rode, not as master, but as one half of a strange and mystical whole.

Not until the remainder of the night — or, more properly, of the earliest morning — of their first meeting has passed, does interest among the soldiers in the activities of the foraging party and Lord Caliphestros begin to wane; and this is only because the “sorcerer” continues to insist upon the peculiar practice of stopping every few hundred yards or so to dig (or rather, to have some few of Ashkatar’s soldiers dig) another in the series of holes in the Earth, in order to discover the nature of the ground or the rock beneath the surface of their route, and particularly of any and all signs of water. The old man still exhorts the digging parties not to make use of the small, clear underground pools and streams they find for drinking, or even for washing; and Heldo-Bah, of course — exempted from this labor by his part in finding and enlisting the aid of Caliphestros (although Keera and Veloc choose to assist in the effort) — cannot resist the opportunity to torment the toiling soldiers at every turn.

“You know,” he says at one hole in which Bane warriors dig, his mock earnestness particularly infuriating, “you people really should consider yourselves lucky. Fighting the soldiers of the Tall, or digging a hole for this ancient madman? I, personally, would take the latter, upon every possible occasion. As to what he looks for, why bother asking? He does not look to see your guts spilled upon Lord Baster-kin’s Plain, which should be reason enough, in itself, for obedience. And so, dig — dig, and be happy in your digging!”

As the work goes on, and early evening descends upon the forest, the northernmost huts of Okot begin to take shape in the scant, glowing light of the rising Moon. Ashkatar — curious about the digging from the start, but unprepared to question Caliphestros’s orders — finally forces his own uneasiness down his gullet, and approaches the white panther and the grey-bearded man who sits upon her shoulders, the latter patiently and carefully studying the work of one group of soldiers in the newest hole before him.

“My lord Caliphestros?” Ashkatar asks, as he goes down on one knee before the panther.

“Hmm?” Caliphestros replies, drawing himself out of some deep reverie and turning slowly. “Oh. Please — Yantek Ashkatar, do not feel the need to bow before me, nor before Stasi. I know, and she knew long before I did, that you are not a lesser tribe of men and women — quite the contrary. I pray you, then, speak freely, and as an equal.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Ashkatar replies, standing and assuming his far more characteristic position of proud command. “I only wished to know if you might be willing to share with me the purpose of all this activity concerning the water. For we are consuming much time, and my men were prepared for a fight, when you happened upon us: as I am sure you know, it is difficult to keep troops, particularly inexperienced troops, in a state of such readiness under any circumstances; and this obscure labor is sapping them of it. The goal behind all your searching, then, must be vital, indeed—” But Ashkatar is interrupted, at that moment, by two or three diggers in the newest pit, who make up one of several alternating crews that have by now become conversant with the agèd sorcerer who directs them. The interruption comes, at first, in the form of a whistle and then a low moan, at which Veloc shoots his filthy face and head up and over the lip of the hole. “There it is again, Lord Caliphestros — that occasional smell that reminds us of the fecal pits that the Groba fathers and the healers in the Lenthess-steyn have us dig and then slowly bury with lime outside Okot—” Veloc instantly silences himself when he suddenly notices his commander standing next to Caliphestros. “Ah! My apologies, Yantek Ashkatar — I did not see—”

“Veloc,” Ashkatar says sternly, “do you really think that it is appropriate to speak about fecal pits to Lord Caliphestros, whether I am present or not?”

Caliphestros himself steps in to settle the problem, as, on a rock some distance away, Heldo-Bah roars with triumphant, almost childlike laughter. “Please, Yantek,” the old man says, “it was I who told these diligent men and women — including my old friend Veloc — that they must be free with their language when addressing me, as it will be the quickest way of determining just what we are dealing with, in these waters that flow beneath Davon Wood.”

“I see,” Ashkatar replies; but, not yet settled in his mind, he cracks his whip once hard and shouts, “And you can stop your idiot’s laughing, Heldo-Bah, at once! I grow sick to death of it.”

“My apologies, Yantek,” comes Heldo-Bah’s only slightly less giddy response. “But, truly, I have not observed so comical a scene since — well, I cannot recall the last time I did!”

“Doubtless it was the last time you attempted to fornicate with a woman who was not blind!” Ashkatar shouts, forgetting his own decorum in the presence of Lord Caliphestros. The whip, too, snaps again, but this second time is one too many for Stasi, who begins to growl uneasily, making such moves as she would if preparing to spring upon some one of these little men. Seeing her unrest, and then watching Caliphestros almost magically calm her, Yantek Ashkatar takes a deep breath, turning to his guest. “I am — appalled, my lord, by my own behavior. Please find it in you to pardon me.”

“I will pardon it readily,” Caliphestros replies, with a gracious and respectful nod. “But do be careful with that whip of yours, in Stasi’s presence, Yantek. Memories in panthers — as in most animals, every bit as much as in humans — remain most vivid when they are associated with tragedy and loss; and when she hears that particular sound, especially when it comes amid other noises and sights of armed men, she is reminded of just so tragic a loss — that of her children.”

“‘Children’?” Ashkatar repeats, somewhat confused.

“Yes. For they were as much her children as human offspring are to those that have them. And Stasi lost all of hers — three to death, one to capture. It was, so far as I know, the last great panther hunt conducted by those you call the Tall in Davon Wood — that of the young man who would one day become, and yet remains, Lord Baster-kin. A story, I am sure, with which the Bane are only too well acquainted.”

“Baster-kin?” Heldo-Bah shouts, all amusement gone, as he suddenly jumps down from his rock and joins Caliphestros and Ashkatar. “That bloodthirsty pig? You did not tell us, old man, that it was he who caused your friend such heartache!” And both Keera and Veloc, along with Ashkatar and Caliphestros himself, are surprised when the gap-toothed Bane — whose strange mix of odors Stasi has by now begun to identify as his in particular — approaches the panther quietly, and gently strokes the fur of her neck, murmuring into her large, pointed ear, and causing the small black tuft atop it to twitch, as if she, too, understands the oddity of the moment: “So it was the great Lord Baster-kin who put that terrible song into your soul,” the forager says, remembering the sound Stasi made when she stood on the mountainside, just after the Bane’s first departure from Caliphestros’s cave. “Well, then, great panther, you shall join the ranks of those who will have vengeance upon the rulers of that foul city — and if I have anything to say about it, you in particular shall make him pay for his savagery!”

The great beast’s brilliant green eyes narrow, her throat begins to purr deeply, and then she turns to take two light swipes at Heldo-Bah’s hand with her rough, moist tongue. The most infamous forager appears quite shocked by this undeniably affectionate and tender action; yet he steps away only a little, letting his hand linger on Stasi’s neck just a moment longer.

“Baster-kin,” he says again, even more softly, but no less fiercely. “Imagine it. As if his list of crimes was not long enough …”

Caliphestros is also pleased by Heldo-Bah’s sudden display of sympathy and affection for his companion; but he is only allowed a moment to consider it, before Ashkatar speaks again: “As I was saying, my lord, this constant digging of holes and inspecting of wells and springs — we need to return to the Groba as quickly as we can, and if I could but know why we slow our passage, what intelligence you mean to present to them, I might be able to assist you in forming a plan as to how best to do so.”

“Did you not just hear, Yantek?” Caliphestros answers, pointing at the diggers in the hole. “Another spot at which the water that flows underground does not have the scent it should — that any water should, if one hopes to use it safely. And yet, at still other locations, apparently inoffensive water can be found. I am marking the courses of all these various natural pathways”—Caliphestros pats one of his bags, from which he removes a bound set of parchment sheets—“in this, because I seek to remember all we learn about the causes of your plague, in order to place such knowledge alongside those theories I have concerning a like illness that Keera and I have determined has now erupted in Broken.”

“In Broken?” Ashkatar echoes, astounded. “And yet, it was our opinion that the Tall brought the plague upon us deliberately.”

“And their opinion, no doubt — or at least, the opinion of many of them — that you brought it upon them,” Lord Caliphestros replies; and then he holds another demonstrative hand out to the hole in the Earth before him. “And to provide the answers to all such questions, water is the key. Or water which carries fever. Now, then — would I be correct in assuming that, as a general practice, the north and south sides of the town do not draw their water from the same sources?”

Ashkatar looks perplexed. “Aye, my lord. The southern parts of Okot take water from wells and streams fed by the mountain to the south — while the north—” And suddenly, in many faces at once, there is a look of comprehension.

“Yes,” Caliphestros says with a smile. “I thought it might be so.”

He looks to Keera, finding in her face, as he had hoped he might, the first real look of hope that she has yet manifested: not hope for her people, or any such expansively noble feeling, of which the old man knows the tracker to be capable, but personal hope, for the fates of her own children.

“I should have seen it,” Keera says, gazing at the ground with purpose; and even Caliphestros is forced to admire her new determination. She then lifts her gaze to cast it upon Ashkatar again, and continues, “It is, indeed, the water, Yantek. The northern parts of Okot are fed, at least in part, by those waters that drain from the Cat’s Paw. But we never would have conceived, as Lord Caliphestros’s mind has been expansive enough to do, that an entire river might become—contaminated …”

Ashkatar, in the meantime, his mind fixed on the statements that Keera has made, is suddenly startled, as are all those around him, by a cry of what seems discovery from one of his soldiers digging inside the nearby hole: “My lord!” the dirty-faced warrior then shouts coherently. “Yantek! See what we have come upon!” And in an instant, the warrior is up and out of the hole, several small objects in one hand.

“Be careful, there!” Caliphestros calls, producing a piece of rag and handing it along a chain of hands to the warrior, so intent on this task that he only now notes that the dirt-smudged courier is no youth, but an athletic, powerful young female warrior. “Wash those hands with lye, girl, when you have finished, and even burn your tunic, if you have in your hand what I fear!” The warrior takes Caliphestros’s bit of rag, wraps the objects in it, and walks determinedly to the old man, who, before he has even viewed what she carries, pronounces, “Although I may be able to tell you what most, if not all, of them are, Yantek.” He then turns again to his traveling companion. “As can Keera, I perceive.”

Keera is already nodding her head. “Aye, lord. Bones,” she murmurs. “Or rather, at this point, bits of bone. And, it may even surprise you, Lord Caliphestros, if I say that I doubt they are only the bones of the animals we saw dead and dying at the pool upriver — there may be some small fragments of human bone, as well. But they are all diseased, this much we know, and truly, they must be handled more cautiously even than the water in which they were transported.”

“But—” The young female discoverer twists her features in confusion. “Are they the cause of the plague then? Or are they part of some curse that has been worked by the priests and priestesses of the Tall, during their visits to the Wood to commit their many strange and evil acts—”

Caliphestros makes a small, slightly chastising sound. “We must all make one agreement, before we reach Okot,” he says, less with the berating of a pedant than with sympathy and warning. “Keera, what was it that I told you, when we discussed this very subject of curses and priests?”

Keera pauses to recall the words precisely: “That the only true ‘magic’ is madness,” she repeats by rote, but with intent and understanding. “Just as the only real ‘sorcery’ is science. My lord.” She moves through the crowd to gain a look at the objects that the warrior holds.

And they are just what both the tracker and Caliphestros had feared and predicted: The bones, Keera knows in her heart, of the smallest parts of children.

Taking in this look of comprehension in his young friend’s features, Caliphestros says: “So—you saw them, too, eh?”

Keera looks up at Caliphestros. “Yes, lord. As we left the pool. They were trapped in the outlet stream. But I admit that I did not think that you had seen them.”

“I was waiting for just this sort of moment to discuss the matter,” Caliphestros replies. “To see whether or not you would make true sense of the sight, as indeed you have.”

Veloc steps forward to put a proud and comforting arm about his sister. “If I am not mistaken—” Veloc says, turning his handsome features to face Caliphestros, “we not only may, but must obey Yantek Ashkatar’s imperative immediately, and return swiftly to Okot — but even before that, we must send runners ahead, must we not, Lord Caliphestros? To warn that no one in Okot take water from the questionable sources on the northern slope of the town?”

“You share your sister’s blood, Veloc, that much is evident,” Caliphestros replies, not quite so enthusiastically as the historian would have wished, as the old scholar replaces his various possessions in the small bags about his neck. He then looks to Ashkatar. “For now, however, Yantek — the tirelessness and diligence of your troops have made possible the answers to all immediate questions: anything that is left to explain should be discussed, I submit, in the place your tribe calls the ‘Den of Stone.’ And so, if you will alert your troops, as Veloc says, to send runners—”

Without thinking, the anxious Ashkatar raises his whip, which Caliphestros catches just before the black-bearded commander can bring it down again, silently giving the yantek an admonishing reminder, and looking to the now fully alert panther beneath him. “Avoiding all acts of foolishness,” the old man says, “now that we bear such precious evidence, which is the most accurate and valuable form of knowledge — and persuasion …”

“Send runners to the Groba!” Ashkatar orders, busily turning his attention to immediate matters, in part to hide his own embarrassment. “Let them know that more explanations will follow with us — but that they must heed our warning concerning the water in the northern wells!”

“Well said,” Caliphestros judges. Casting his eyes about the increasing darkness, and seeing a nearby hillock that is crowned with thick, obscuring undergrowth, he gives Ashkatar a nod. “Now, Yantek, I shall withdraw and attend to the needs of an old man’s body, and rejoin you in but a few minutes.”

“Very good, Lord Caliphestros — I shall have our escort ready to march by the time you return!” Moving back into his much more comfortable role of admonishing and administering commander, Ashkatar begins to sound out more orders, to both the units that will remain behind on guard and patrol, and to those who will go ahead to Okot. Caliphestros, meanwhile, urges Stasi toward the hillock—

At which Keera notices something odd: the old man has his eyes fixed, not on his destination, nor on the objects he carries, nor even on the powerful companion beneath him. He hurries Stasi along: a natural enough thing, if his old man’s need to relieve himself is as strong as he has suggested. Yet, Keera decides, there remains something not quite correct about his behavior …

Thus, with darkness now falling in its characteristically rapid fashion, in the springtime hours between bright day and Moonrise within Davon Wood, and with Ashkatar’s troops assembling their torches south of the hole at which the foragers, Caliphestros, and the Bane yantek have only just been standing — and most of all, knowing full well that her small scheme may lead to a moment of profound embarrassment between herself and the aging scholar she has come to so admire and trust — Keera puts caution aside and, backing slowly away from the others as they ready themselves for the last stage of the journey south, quickly and silently slips up the trunk and into the branches of one especially thick elm tree. The higher reaches of this gnarled giant offer connections to still other thickly leaved forest sentinels — maples, oaks, and firs — all of which ultimately lead up and over the hillock behind which Caliphestros quickly disappears.

3:{ii:}

It may seem implausible or indeed impossible, that a man or woman, however skilled, should be able to move through treetops every bit as stealthfully as those animals practiced in that form of undetected movement: birds, squirrels, and tree kittens.† And yet, with the wind on Keera’s side — blowing, as it so often does, in from the west and pushing both her limited scent and any excessive sounds of movement back toward Ashkatar’s noisy group of warriors — she is indeed able to achieve this feat, despite the added danger of Caliphestros’s continuing to search the branches above him, evidently looking for something or someone with whom he intends to meet.

The discovery of just who that someone is, when it comes, nearly destroys all Keera’s clever, silent tracking in the treetops. She hears the quiet chatter and quickly beating wings of a starling flying at night, and, correctly guessing who is on the way, turns about and smiles at the same speckled, rainbow-tinted bird that the three foragers encountered what seems a long time ago, when they first followed Stasi and Caliphestros back to the pair’s cave. The bird flits about the spot Keera currently occupies, in the middle of an oak limb, then alights on the limb next to her, staring intently upon the tracker’s human features. Keera is delighted to once again hear the starling’s approximation of Caliphestros’s name, which the bird chatters to her proudly; however, she is also deeply nervous that Caliphestros himself will spot the bird and thereafter lock eyes on her, and so Keera urges it along:

“Quietly, now!” she whispers, as softly as she can. Cupping her hands, she tries to urge the starling down the limb, but, as if in a moment of indignation, the feathered fellow simply flaps noisily into the air a few feet, and then lands directly atop Keera’s head. Now utterly at a loss as to what to do — for the bird is no longer making any sound, but rather settling in, as if he means to stay for a bit — she sits as still as her unnerved condition will allow: for Caliphestros has by now heard the starling, and is more quickly turning from one direction to another, imitating the sounds of the bird in an effort to persuade him to come down. When the speckled messenger finally does stir, however, neither of the humans present causes his action; rather, it is the sudden, utterly silent, yet swift and somewhat threatening passing, above, of an enormous pair of dark, gliding wings, which come close enough to the starling to make it shriek once in alarm and then flutter down to Caliphestros in a nervous dart, alighting upon his shoulder.

“Ah!” the old man says, turning to face the starling’s wide eyes. “What was all that business? And where is your associate, if I may ask?”

But the starling’s “associate” is otherwise engaged, for the moment, having swept down to take up the smaller bird’s position on Keera’s tree limb; the difference being that this creature — the same great eagle owl that has been only very occasionally and briefly visible, from time to time, in Caliphestros’s wake, as well as visiting with Visimar — stands every bit as tall as Keera, when she sits upon the limb they share. The tufts of feathers† that appear at once to be her ears as well as her stern eyebrows, and which ordinarily sit in a lower and more critical position than do those of the smaller males of the species, rise high above her enormous and severe golden eyes, for the moment, in the presence of this strange human who has ventured into the bird’s realm.

Upon hearing Caliphestros chatting with the starling below, however, the owl evidently feels that she has made whatever point she intended to impress upon Keera, and suddenly half-opens her wings, falling and then gliding in wide circles, with startling simplicity and silence, down toward the section of an ancient log upon which the great master of Nature and Science lectures his frenetic young student of language and diplomacy.

Only when the owl has left Keera’s tree limb does the tracker see that the great hornèd ruler of the air clutches tightly within one talon the same group of plants and flowers that Keera herself discussed with Caliphestros upon their return from his cave: again, not so long ago as events make it feel. Wild mountain hops, meadow bells, and woad, Keera considers silently; and, although I cannot now see, I would guess that these, too, were harvested by a sharp blade — does the fever then spread inside the frontiers of Broken?

As if in answer to this inward question, Keera hears Caliphestros begin to talk to both of the birds — whose arrival, she suddenly notices, has not raised the least reaction from Stasi.

“… and so,” Caliphestros says to the pair of birds, who are now perched upon two half-limbs that point skyward from a fallen maple trunk which lies close in front of their master’s seat. “It will be for you two to find them—” His expressions become much simpler and more deliberate: “Soldiers — with horses,” he says, repeating the phrase a few times more, until the starling suddenly cries:

“Sol-jers! Hors-es!” And then the little creature turns to the owl to add, “Ner-tus!”

If the two birds were children, it would be a clear baiting of the larger but less intellectually skilled sibling by the smaller and quicker of the two; and the starling darts from Caliphestros’s shoulder to the top of his skullcap, and back again, seeming almost to laugh. The owl’s glare, meanwhile, becomes the more severe, as if to warn, Do not gloat, little man, about your chatter, or I shall swallow you up! Caliphestros, sensing all this, inserts himself in the middle of it, placing a gentle hand around the starling, holding him before his face, and saying, “That is enough of that, Little Mischief”—for such, apparently, is his affectionate name for the starling—“and I have told you as much before. Taunting will get you eaten, and then where should Visimar and I be, eh?”

“Viz-ee-mah!” Little Mischief just manages to squeak out in defiance of Caliphestros’s grip, and the old man cannot help but laugh at his diminutive persistence.

And in the tree above, however, Keera’s face has gone puzzled: for the name Visimar is as well known in Okot as it is in the kingdom of Broken. Is the mysterious scholar’s acolyte, then, a part of his plan that he has not yet chosen to share with his Bane allies? And if so, why has he chosen to keep it a secret? For some sinister reason?

“Remember, now,” Caliphestros resumes, below: “It is required that you work together, you two, and so this bickering must stop! Visimar knows of the fever in the countryside and in the city, but he must now know of it in the Wood, so that he can tell Sentek Arnem.” All this elaborate talk again proving largely useless, Caliphestros stares at Little Mischief and says, firmly, “Fever—Wood.”

“Fee-vah Wood! Wood fee-vah!” the starling replies, now struggling to get a wing free of his human companion, who is finally satisfied that he will speak the correct words at the correct time, and releases Little Mischief to sit upon a nearby branch.

“Which leaves but one thing more,” Caliphestros says, reaching into his bag—

And from it he withdraws another golden arrow, indistinguishable from that which he and Keera took from the dead member of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard. The enormous owl immediately flies toward Caliphestros’s shoulder, shocking the human with her speed, then hovers a few inches above him in order to allow those talons that do not carry the flowers — and which are fully as large as human fingers — to snatch the arrow away from him: once again, no instructions would seem needed, but Caliphestros looks to the starling again, if only to be certain.

“The arrow, Little Mischief,” he says. “Also to Visimar.”

“Viz-ee-mah! Awhoh!” the starling repeats, again comically enough to cause Caliphestros to cradle his head in his hands and try to stifle a bout of chuckling, lest the birds think him anything but resolved and serious in his instructions to them.

As both Keera and Caliphestros will shortly be missed by the rest of their traveling party, she is happy to see Caliphestros wave his arms and send the birds off. They circle the little clearing behind the hillock where they have received their latest instructions, and then finally straighten their path of flight so that they head in the direction of the Fallen Bridge over Hafften Falls and, beyond it, the most likely place for the forces of Broken to make camp before any sort of engagement with Ashkatar’s army. Caliphestros then shifts his robe in order to relieve himself (his nominal purpose for coming to this removèd place) without shifting from the log, and finally urges Stasi to stand close by and lower her neck, so that he can slide from the log onto her shoulders easily. Keera takes the first indication of the old man’s personal actions as her signal to move back along the treetops that she traveled to reach her perch. In a matter of only a few seconds more, she hears her brother and Heldo-Bah calling her name, a distinct sense of worry in Veloc’s voice.

Even for the famous Keera, the marvelous manner in which she manages to move back through the treetops is a wonder; and it is not long before she is once again among the men and women who have collected for the last leg of their march, and coolly lying to her brother and Heldo-Bah by saying that, as Caliphestros had taken the opportunity to see to his private business, she thought that she would, as well.

“You might have told someone, Keera,” Veloc chides.

“Great Moon, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah bellows, “you would be a thousand times more likely to be taken off by some forest beast than Keera ever would — I really don’t know why you persist in playing this idiotic game of being the responsible brother. It’s almost as feebleminded as your insistence on your being an expert historian.”

“Do not go so far as considering a return to that subject, you two,” comes a new voice; and the three foragers all turn to see Caliphestros and Stasi appearing from the darkness. “The time for idiotic blather has passed,” he continues; but his orders cannot stop Veloc from trembling just a bit as he notes to himself what a truly ghostly apparition the white panther is, in this sort of rapidly fading light.

“Great Moon,” Veloc whispers to Heldo-Bah, “it’s truly no wonder the Tall fear her as they do — the animal appears as out of the night air!”

“Ah, ficksel,” Heldo-Bah answers calmly. “And you dare call me the superstitious one?”

At which point Yantek Ashkatar steps forward and declares, “All right, then — to those of you continuing on: I intend to be within the Den of Stone in two hours — and Heldo-Bah, if we fail to make it in that time, I shall know whose back my whip will cut, in return!”

“Brave words, when you have an army behind you, Ashkatar,” Heldo-Bah answers, nonetheless falling alongside the middling-long column of soldiers to keep pace with them. “But neither the Bane nor the Tall have yet made the whip that will cut my skin, I promise you that …”

Once again walking beside Stasi and Caliphestros as they move to catch up to Ashkatar, Keera shakes her head. “I promise you, my lord — there really are Bane tribe members who are not so devoted to bickering as are those two. Or three, I suppose, if you number Yantek Ashkatar among them, these three—”

“Oh, I am certain of it,” Caliphestros interrupts, an enigmatic smile entering his features. “Indeed, I have seen those among your people who can be almost silent — even as they dance along the treetops …”

3:{iii:}

On the morning that Sixt Arnem marches his full khotor of the Talons onto the section of Lord Baster-kin’s Plain north of the Fallen Bridge, he finds no evidence that the men from the Esleben garrison, who were to have met him there, have survived one or the other of the pestilences that Visimar has been able to determine are at work in Broken, during their march to the Cat’s Paw. Similarly, but far more surprisingly, there is no sign of the detachment of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard that has always been assigned to the northernmost boundary of the great family’s most arable and strategic piece of land; yet neither is there any visible token that these men met with some calamity. Instead, as the Talons make their way through the rough, high grass at the edge of the Plain and then south into the rich pastureland that has been chewed to a short and almost uniform length by the Baster-kin family’s renowned shag cattle, they encounter what is, in many ways, the most unnerving circumstance for soldiers who are on the march, full of questions, and far from home:

Nothing.

True, the cattle graze in their ordinary manner (or rather, most of them do, for there are clearly more than a few missing), and take little notice of the newcomers, save to move off to a safe distance; yet none shows any obvious sign of disease. Nevertheless, Arnem’s men are all aware that units of the Guard should be patrolling this part of the Plain: and so where are they? Arnem knows that action is the only cure for his own as well as his men’s bewilderment: thus, after ordering the establishment of a central camp, the sentek orders his scouts to employ their keen talents for detection as far as a dozen miles up and down the northern bank of the Cat’s Paw, reminding them, along with the rest of his men, that no water from the river is to be consumed, either by themselves or by their mounts, save from the several collecting ponds for rainwater that the Baster-kin family has constructed throughout the Plain over the last several years. Arnem’s central camp is hard by one such pool; and as his tent is erected, the sentek orders the establishment of an observation post near the southernmost of the these small sources of safe water, a post that, situated closest to the Fallen Bridge, offers a commanding view of both the river and the Wood beyond. Tents are pitched, there, campfires lit, watches scheduled, and the men are ordered to be ready at a moment’s notice.

As the sounds of the other fausten preparing their own tents around Arnem’s begin to resonate through the midday air north of the bridge, the sentek, Niksar and Visimar move their horses ever closer to the rough border of the Plain that lines its southern edge, Arnem’s eyes alert for any sign of Akillus or his men returning with news, and particularly for any sign of the missing members of Baster-kin’s Guard. The mood throughout the Plain grows more grim if determined with the passage of each hour, as does the bitterness over the advantage that the soldiers who were supposed to have been already positioned in the area might have offered.

“Damn them,” Arnem seethes softly, and neither Visimar nor Niksar have any trouble understanding who is the object of his ire. “I did not expect to find those brass-banded dandies alert and at their posts, but somewhere in the vicinity of those positions might have been of some use.”

“Would you expect jackals to become wolves, then, Sentek,” Visimar asks in reply, “simply because an air of danger presents itself?”

Niksar nods slowly. “He speaks truly, Sentek,” the linnet murmurs. “Given that this would be the first prize that the Bane would likely attempt to seize during any attack on the kingdom, we might have expected that the Guard would have withdrawn. The sole questions being, in which direction, why, and under whose authority …”

“‘Authority,’ Niksar?” Arnem asks. “You think that they had orders to remove themselves from the field? Such orders, I trust you realize, could only have come from one source.”

Visimar desires with all his heart not to be the one to respond to this statement, and so is delighted when he hears the handsome young linnet reply, “Sentek — I do not intend this as anything other than what it is: an observation of what I see as undeniable facts, as well as an attempt to honor my brother, and to question the peculiar way in which Donner’s plight was consistently ignored by our superiors, our civilian superiors, during his time at Esleben; surely this situation suggests that Lord Baster-kin, whatever your former respect for him, is not the man you have so often trusted him to be.”

“Perhaps, Niksar—perhaps,” Arnem replies; then, after consideration, he adds, “Although I can but hope that you understand how wary we must be of even considering such conclusions. I do realize that we have not yet found a common thread that runs through all that we have seen, experienced, and felt. But the suggestion that such a thread is treachery on the part of the Merchant Lord — I am not at all certain of as much. The officers and men of the Guard share more than enough perfidy and cowardice to explain what has happened — and we must, I fear, leave matters at that. At least for the moment.”

At this rebuff from his commander, Niksar — his brother’s death still fresh in his thoughts — rides further south alone for a moment, while Arnem and Visimar grow silent once again, Visimar studying the commander of the army of Broken for some few moments before quietly asking, “When did you last sleep, Sentek? Properly, that is?”

“When did any of us?” Arnem replies, not sharply, but still with some irritation. “The men need to establish a schedule of watches and rest, the horses need some similarly sustained hours of feeding, or at least of grazing on decent grass such as will fill out their bellies, and sleep, to say nothing of grooming … And Kafra’s stones, the skutaars look as though they will all be felled by exhaustion at any moment. Can I rest before I know that all of these — men, animals, youths — are safe enough from either fatigue or pestilence to undertake their task? Tell me how, sorcerer’s acolyte, and I shall put my head to my bedroll as fast as any man who marches with us. For of one thing I am certain—” The cool, steady eyes scan the southern riverbank, and Davon Wood beyond it. “The Bane have been watching all that we have been through. From afar, perhaps, but … They are out there, and know at least a little — and likely far more — of our troubled state.”

It is not until hours later, when daylight is growing golden with late afternoon, that Arnem is informed that the first of the scouts — not surprisingly, the ever-reliable Akillus — has been sighted rushing at a great speed back to the Talons’ camp.

Indeed, by the time Akillus’s mount thunders across the Plain and reaches Arnem, the lately returned Niksar, and Visimar, Akillus is still riding so hard that he overshoots the three, and must circle back, bringing light laughter from the sentek, his aide, and his advisor — until they see the grave expression upon the rider’s face.

“Akillus,” Arnem says in greeting, when the scout finally reins up alongside the other three men and their horses. “Something, I gather, is too important for you either to wait for this evening’s council, or to wash off the mud of your long ride before you make your report.”

Looking down at the dried brown splashes that cover his flesh, tunic, and armor, Akillus does not laugh or so much as smile in the manner that he so often displays, even in the most dangerous or embarrassing situations — which is Arnem’s first hint that the scout has gathered intelligence from his mission which is sinister, indeed. “You have seen something, then,” Arnem says. “Along the riverfront?”

“I–I was not alone in seeing it, Sentek,” Akillus answers unsteadily. “Every scout, regardless of whether he was in a party that went upriver or down, glimpsed the like.”

“Well, Akillus?” Niksar says, his face again attaining some of the gravity it exhibited at Esleben. “What is it that you have seen?”

“A scene to rival Daurawah?” Visimar asks, anxiously and knowingly.

“Aye,” Akillus replies, “just so — but far greater in scale, although I would not have thought such possible.” Finally looking up at his commander, Akillus bravely attempts composure, and states, “You would think that some sort of battle had taken place upon the river, Sentek, save that we have never known the Bane to use ships, nor to attack the river traders. And certainly, the number of unarmed women and children among their dead does not speak of a conflict — not a formal one, at any rate. But they are all there together, along with the missing patrols of Baster-kin’s Guard; the dead of every age and both sides, and those not quite dead, as well — although they wished us to grant them death, so painful were their conditions.”

“‘Conditions’?” Visimar repeats. “You mean, they displayed signs of both of the sicknesses that we have witnessed: on the one hand, the rose fever—”

“And the fire wounds, as well,” Akillus continues, “which have spread among the animals seen by the scouts further upstream. Sentek, the Cat’s Paw has become a river of death, from one end to the other!”

“Steady, Linnet,” Arnem says, quietly. “And you could find no one free of disease?”

“But one,” Akillus replies. “A young member of the Guard, wandering alone. Strangest of all, he was as terrified of the possibility that we might be his own comrades as of the thought that we might be the be Bane. He says he was left behind by the main force, to keep watch over those of Lord Baster-kin’s cattle that his detachment usually guards, in the northern part of the Plain — but when the hour grew late, and then an entire night passed, he went to see what progress his comrades had made, and found — just what we have found. He is half-mad with fear.”

“You have him in camp?” Visimar says, alarm bleeding through his words.

“Just outside,” Akillus replies. “He appeared to be untouched by disease, but after what we have seen …”

“Wise, Akillus,” Arnem breathes in relief, glancing at Niksar. “As ever.”

“But—” Visimar is still puzzling with an earlier statement. “‘What progress his comrades had made’? Which comrades? And in what endeavor?”

“An ambitious one,” Akillus replies. “Involving far more than the usual patrols on the Plain. A full khotor of Guardsmen, it seems, were dispatched from the city while we were on our way here from the east, tasked with entering the Wood before we would be able to, and destroying any and all Bane that they discovered.”

Arnem reins the nervous Ox to a stunned halt. “What?”

“Aye, Sentek,” Akillus replies. “Most strange, as I say — for this was to be our mission, we all knew that. But apparently, Lord Baster-kin—”

“Baster-kin sent them?” Arnem says, again looking to Niksar, but now with an aspect of apology. “But why? Why send us to finally destroy the Bane and then send his own men to do the job separately?”

“Because,” Visimar murmurs discreetly, “it was not anticipated that the Talons — and especially you, Sentek — would survive their trip east. Baster-kin is attempting to use the terrible events in those provinces as a path by which he may consolidate his control over all instruments of force in the kingdom: in order for the regular army to become his instrument, the Talons and their commander would have to be removed, and what tidier way to make this removal seem accidental — or better still, the work of the Bane — than to deliberately send them into that portion of the kingdom that is rife with disease?”

Akillus has evidently seen enough along the river to find Visimar’s explanation plausible: “Indeed, Sentek. To judge by what this Guardsman has said — and you may ask him about it, yourself — it was the tenor of your own reports that made the Merchant Lord believe that he must send men more … personally loyal to both himself and the God-King to undertake the conquest of the Bane, in the event that we either never reached the Wood, or chose not to attack once we did.”

Niksar says nothing, but casts his commander a look that says he, too, has reached the same conclusion.

“And there is more, Sentek,” Akillus says, his voice now growing even more uneasy. “It would seem — according to this young pallin — well, it would seem that rebellion has broken out in the Fifth District of the city.”

Again, a look which indicates that Visimar already knows the answer to his own question enters his face as he asks, “Aye? And who leads this ‘rebellion,’ Linnet?”

Appearing more reluctant than ever, Akillus says, “Perhaps it will be better if you question this man yourself, Sentek …”

“I am questioning you, Akillus,” Arnem replies, quietly but darkly. “Who leads this ‘rebellion’?”

“He says—” And finally Akillus simply utters the words. “He says that it is Lady Arnem, Sentek. Supported by veterans from throughout the district, in addition to — well, in addition to your eldest son.”

This news, again, does not come as such to Visimar; but Niksar draws back in no little shock. “Sentek Arnem’s wife and son? Hak—this is nothing but malicious gossip, being spread by members of the Guard.”

“Such were my thoughts, Niksar,” Akillus replies. “But the boy does not seem to have been in the Guard long enough to have quite become—infected by their behavior.”

“But — Sentek! The Lady Isadora and Dagobert?” Niksar questions, bewilderment in his every word. “What can have led them to such actions?”

Arnem himself is far too confused to make any reply; and so it is for Visimar to say, “If I am not mistaken, they have been left no choice, faced with just the sort of death and disease that we have seen, and having now heard still more of …”

“Aye, Sentek,” Akillus answers. “The cripple is right about that much. They say that plague is loose in the district, and that, when Lady Arnem’s appeals for help to Lord Baster-kin and the Grand Layzin went unanswered, rebellion was the result.”

“Such — would not be a unique cause of such events,” Niksar says, still puzzling with the report, but at the same time provoking a scowl from Arnem, who tries to maintain the evenness of his voice, even as he answers with no little anger:

“It would be unique if it involves my family, Niksar …” The young aide can only swallow hard; and then, working hard to regain his full composure, Arnem continues, “But let us leave this subject, for now, until we have this Guardsman before us. What of the rest of this business? Dispatching a khotor of Baster-kin’s own men into the Wood — he gave you no further details of what lay behind this action?”

“He gave us such details as he believes he knows,” Akillus replies. “Which were precious few. The most important being that the men from the city and the patrols on the Plain together rushed headlong across the Fallen Bridge, apparently, as soon as the khotor arrived. Which means, it would seem, at night.”

All the faces of Akillus’s audience darken: for such would be almost inconceivably foolish arrogance. “Nay,” Arnem whispers. “Even the Guard cannot have been so stupid.”

“But were, it seems,” Akillus replies. “You can imagine the result. The force was cut to pieces by the Bane, and their wounded, along with their dead, thrown to the mercies of Hafften Falls and the Ayerzess-werten; although most of those wounded had their suffering ended by the dauthu-bleith before their bodies were thus dispensed with.”

“Sentek,” Niksar asks, both genuinely bewildered and attempting to repair some of the ire brought out of his commander by his last remark. “What can it all mean?”

“I am not in the least certain, Reyne,” Arnem replies, “and I suspect that we shall all remain uncertain, until we have a chance to question this Guardsman. And so — lead us to him, Akillus, and then get to my tent, and tell the officers that this evening’s council will be delayed some little time. Or perhaps longer …” Arnem looks ahead in the darkening evening. “For I fear this story may take some time to tell …” The sentek is about to spur the Ox on up the incline of the Plain, when Akillus says:

“There is yet another fact that I suspect you will find accounts for this man’s terror, Sentek.” Arnem pauses, and Akillus rides up beside him. “Although it is a difficult tale to credit. He claims …” And once more, Akillus finds it difficult to choose his words carefully.

“Well?” Arnem demands. “Out with it, Akillus.”

“Yes, sir,” the scout replies, finally dispensing with any attempt at tact: “Apparently, last evening, while looking for any trace of his comrades, the Guardsman came across a most extraordinary sight lit by the Moon: the First Wife of Kafra, sister to the God-King himself, moving north toward Broken through the Plain — without a stitch of clothing upon her, and leading a large male Broken bear by a golden cord. The animal behaved as if it were no more than an obedient dog. The lad said that he knew her features because the Guard has sometimes been called upon to accompany her out of the city and down the mountain.”

Arnem looks to each of his companions in turn, finding comprehension only in Visimar’s face. “It is indeed possible, Sixt Arnem,” the cripple says. “For my master maintained that he knew only one person who could so enthrall such beasts — and my master, you must recall, was an expert in understanding those same creatures. But the sister of the God-King Saylal — Alandra, she was called — had a more mysterious, even unsettling, ability to reach them.” Visimar clearly knows more of this tale, but he withholds it, waiting for a time when he will be able to speak to Arnem alone.

As for the sentek, he has turned his face up to the sky. “Kafra’s stones,” he murmurs. “What is happening, in this place …?” Suddenly, Arnem spurs his great mount forward: “Well — we shall not find out here,” he says, urging the others on, obviously desperate to learn what lies behind the incredible stories that he has heard — and how much danger his own family is truly facing …

3:{iv:}

It is without doubt true that the sight of the legless sorcerer Caliphestros riding into the Bane town of Okot on the shoulders of the famed white panther who had long roamed the mountains southwest of Okot, inspiring both respect and fear in the tribe of outcasts, would ordinarily have caused astonishment bordering on panic in the central square. But their arrival in Okot on this occasion, however, had been preceded a full half-day by Ashkatar’s messengers, who had already warned the tribe that the plague that had struck their people was not the result of magic or a curse inflicted by the Tall, but was a poison contained in the water of the wells on the northern side of the community. This warning had almost immediately arrested the progress of the disease, and even lessened its terrible impact. No secret had been made of the fact that it was Caliphestros who determined the details of this problem and its solution — although, as the old man insisted on saying from the moment he reached even the most outlying parts of Okot, there were no divinations or visions involved in his calculations, but rather purely scientific investigations. Such was an explanation that was difficult for many Bane to understand, although most in the town remained grateful, whatever the degree of their comprehension; it was not until the returning heroes and their guests made their way through the crowds gathered at the town’s center and entered the Den of Stone to meet with the Groba, as well as with the Priestess of the Moon and her attending Lunar Sisters and Outragers, that they were met with anything like stern or skeptical questioning.

Ashkatar led the way through the long, dark stone passageway, with its carved reliefs of important moments in Bane history, which Caliphestros paused to admire: not for their accuracy, in every case, but for the skill of their execution. Veloc, meanwhile, used the time to quietly urge Heldo-Bah not to rouse the ire of the Priestess of the Moon, a sentiment echoed by Keera, who rejoined her friends only when she had made certain to quickly dash to her parents’ home after first arriving in Okot. There she had discovered to her wild joy that all of her children were well or recovering, little Effi having been reunited with her brothers, Herwin and Baza, after the boys were released from the Lenthess-steyn following a quick recovery — a recovery made possible by the information brought by Ashkatar’s runners.

“Beautiful carvings, are they not, Lord Caliphestros?” Ashkatar asked the old man, indicating the walls of the passageway.

“Indeed,” Caliphestros answered, attempting scholarly detachment as Keera passionately embraced Stasi out of both joy and gratitude, not daring to do the same to the panther’s companion. “Most residents of Broken,” the old man continued, “would think them quite beyond the abilities of your tribe’s artisans.”

“Yes,” Veloc agreed, his voice growing more hushed as the group approached the entrance to the Den of Stone. “Of course, the tales most of the reliefs tell are as much nonsense as the great tapestries in Broken. But they are no less attractive to look at.”

Caliphestros laughed, briefly and quietly. “Is there any part of the city on the mountain that you have not dared enter, Veloc? You haven’t, for example, penetrated the Inner City, I trust?”

“Oh, no, of course not, no,” Veloc quickly replied.

“Although, based on the form of that First Wife of Kafra,” Heldo-Bah added, “the woman you called Alandra, I rather regret that we did not …”

Keera quickly noticed, even through her joy, that Caliphestros not only failed to reply, but displayed the same pained expression that he did when the woman’s name was first mentioned at the outset of their woodland journey: pained, and something else as well. “Heldo-Bah, you imbecile!” she hissed. “Have you no sense of—”

Further discussion was cut short, however, when the three foragers, along with the rest of their party, heard the sharp voice of the Groba Father:

“Yantek Ashkatar! The Groba invites you and your esteemed guests to enter!” And then the Father added, in far less enthusiastic words that Veloc knew referred to himself and to Heldo-Bah: “Along, I suppose, with the rest of your party …”

Veloc had expected that the faces of the Groba, the Priestess of the Moon, the Lunar Sisters, and the Outragers would likely display suspicion when Caliphestros and Stasi, accompanied by Ashkatar, the foragers, and their guiding Elder, entered the Den of Stone: but the handsome forager had not expected that the ten faces before him, which had always been supremely confident when dealing with the likes of himself, Keera, and Heldo-Bah, would be so full of uneasiness bordering on fear when the party made their entrance, a reaction that delighted both himself and Heldo-Bah.

Veloc made the perfunctory introductions, and the Groba Fathers all bowed their heads in great respect to Caliphestros, while the Priestess of the Moon, her Lunar Sisters, and the two Outragers standing in the shadows beside them were far less deferential in their silent greetings. Seeing this, Heldo-Bah began glancing about the Den with a look of dissatisfaction that seemed directly aimed at the Priestess, although his words addressed the head of the Groba:

“Must it always be so dark in here, Father?” the sharp-toothed forager asked with no little impertinence. “You see, it makes Stasi — our friend, the panther, here — a little nervous. Am I not right, Lord Caliphestros?”

Caliphestros recognized what the gap-toothed Bane was attempting to ensure: that a correct order of relationships be established, from the start.

“Indeed, Heldo-Bah,” the famed scholar lied (for in truth, Stasi was a creature of the darkness); and then, to the man in the tall chair at the center of the Elders’ table, he continued, “Perhaps, Esteemed Father, one or two of these gentlemen”—and without looking at them, he indicated the Outragers—“might be persuaded to fetch another torch or two. Their presence is not required for our conference, and so they will not be missed.”

“I beg your pardon?” the Priestess of the Moon said incredulously. “Those men happen to be my personal servants, members of the Order of the Woodland—”

“Of the Woodland Knights, Eminence, yes,” Caliphestros interrupted, pleasantly enough. “Although they have other names, in other places — names perhaps more befitting their activities. Then, too, I have never actually seen one of them in the ‘Woodland.’”

The Priestess eyed Caliphestros with a resentful stare. “The correct terms to use when addressing me, sorcerer, are either ‘Divine One’ or ‘Divinity.’ Please note it.”

“Perhaps if one is of your faith,” Caliphestros replied evenly, “such are the correct terms. I, as it happens, am not.”

The Priestess looked more shocked than ever. “We have allowed a Kafran into the Den of Stone?”

But the old man held up a hand. “Nay, Eminence. I assure you, my hatred for the Kafran faith could not be more obvious.” He indicated his legs. “But my own faith is, I suspect, not one which I could explain to you quickly. Suffice to say that my own correct title, whatever your faith, is scholar.”

The Groba Father weighed the matter for a moment. “My lord Caliphestros speaks truly, Divinity. His actions have proved the faith he keeps with our people, and take precedence over titles and words, as well. Thus, he may call you ‘Eminence,’ and to you he will be ‘scholar.’”

“But, Father—!” the Priestess objected.

“That is my decision, Priestess!” the Father declared.

“A wise decision, too,” Heldo-Bah said.

“Do not make me regret it, Heldo-Bah,” the Father declared. “Now—” The Father deliberately looked past the Priestess, and gave a sharp order to the Outragers: “One or two more torches, and get them in haste.” He pulled a collection of parchment maps close and, beginning to study them, said, “We have much to do, and with so many more participants, we can well use the additional light …”

Knowing that he was risking serious conflict, Heldo-Bah added quietly to the Outragers as they passed, “And perhaps a few more sticks of firewood, as long as you’re going. She does like to bask in the warmth of a good fire, does this panther …”

The Father nodded at the departing Outragers impatiently, and they, looking furious, proceeded upon their servants’ errands.

“Now, then, my lord,” the Father announced, indicating that Caliphestros should draw nearer, which the old man did, sliding from Stasi’s shoulders with the foragers’ help, and then into his harness and crutches. “I do not know just how much Yantek Ashkatar has told you of our intelligence concerning the Tall’s planned attack into the Wood, but—”

“He has told me much,” Caliphestros said, studying the rough but accurate Bane maps. “And almost all of it, I think the noble Yantek will concede when he hears what I have to say, is inaccurate. Although understandably so. My own and Keera’s investigations, together with communications I have exchanged with several … associates of mine, indicate that the Talons are embroiled in terrible matters between Broken and Daurawah, matters concerning their kingdom’s internal integrity — to say nothing of their own lives. They are only now turning toward they valley of the Cat’s Paw, whereas the troops that are presently bearing down upon you are, in fact, a khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard.”

To a tableful of blank faces, Caliphestros reached over to pull a crude tracing of the course of the Cat’s Paw from the pile of parchment, then turned when the Outragers reentered the Den. “Ah, good. We need the light. Place the torches here, by the maps, Outrager—”

“He is not your servant, to be ordered to perform such menial tasks,” the Priestess of the Moon almost shouted. “Nor is the term ‘Outrager’ a recognized form of address!”

“Well, Eminence,” Caliphestros replied coolly. “Perhaps if they spent less time butchering Broken farming families, it would not be, but I can assure you that outside this chamber, it is only too common—”

It was for the Groba Father to step in again: “With all respect, my lord, further bickering will gain us nothing.” And then, to the Outragers: “Set the torches near the table, one of you, while the other feeds and stokes the fire. Then return to your mistress, that we may continue learning what is happening near the Cat’s Paw.”

“You need only look at what is happening in it, Learnèd Father,” Caliphestros replied. “Members of your own tribe choosing to end their lives, terribly, in the very waters that made them ill to begin with — yet more, besides. Surely your own foragers have reported large numbers of dead and dying animals, especially upstream — for Keera and I saw as much, ourselves.”

“Yes, our people have seen these things,” the Father replied, watching in wonder as Heldo-Bah led the great white panther to the hearth before the great fire, stroked her neck and whispered in her ear, and at last urged her to lie down on the warm stones. Then, with no trace of fear, he himself lay beside her, his head upon her ribs. “But,” the Father continued, astounded and only half-aware of what he was saying, “we thought it simply part of the same plague that the Tall had loosed upon us …” Regaining his dignity and composure, he turned back to Caliphestros, “We shall all do our best to cooperate in whatever endeavor I sense you are about to propose to us.”

“Your reputation for wisdom is deserved, indeed, Father,” Caliphestros said with a nod. “I do wish to propose a plan, to yourselves and to Yantek Ashkatar; a plan that may allow us, not only to turn the disease in the Cat’s Paw to our advantage, but to entrap those men of the Merchant Lord’s Guard who, I believe, will shortly cross into Davon Wood. And, by so doing, we will forestall any need to engage the Talons in combat, once they arrive, and can invite them to parley under a flag of truce, instead.”

The Groba Father was momentarily at a loss for words; and it was for another Elder to speak further: “Your—goals are without question desirable, Lord Caliphestros,” the Elder commented. “Yet they seem, at the same time, extreme, and to contradict themselves. If the rose fever has indeed struck across a broad region of Broken, for example, why should we think that they do not know its source, when we now know it, ourselves?”

“It was my understanding that age brought wisdom, in this chamber,” Heldo-Bah called out. “Use your eyes, Elder, if your mind is of no help — you’re looking at the reason the Tall do not know the source of the disease, and why our own healers do. Lord Caliphestros is a master of the sciences that have given our own healers the advantage — the same sciences that bred such great distrust of him among the Tall that they took his legs.”

“Science?” said the Priestess disdainfully. “If we are to be delivered from this crisis, it will be faith, and not science, that will be our salvation. Science is no more than the blasphemer’s term for sorcery.”

Yantek Ashkatar looked first to Keera and then to Caliphestros in some embarrassment “With all respect, Divinity,” the gruff, bearded soldier said, never daring to engage the Priestess’s gaze. “I fear that your statement may be … incomplete—”

“May be idiotic,” Heldo-Bah murmured quietly, causing the Priestess to slam her young fists down upon the Groba’s table and cry:

“That is more than I can tolerate—!” But another low growl from Stasi, who this time lifted up onto her forelegs, as well, was all that was needed to quiet the sacred maiden; and, while this silence was of a sullen variety, it was also continued. Heldo-Bah, in the meantime, coaxed Stasi back to the stones of the hearth by stroking the rich fur of her neck and whispering into the enormous, pointed ear that faced him:

“Save your anger, Great Cat — she is not worth the effort. The time for killing will be upon us soon enough. And so — save your anger …”

And again Keera was amazed that Stasi complied with Heldo-Bah’s suggestions, the two seeming to have, against all probability, developed not only some newfound affection, but a means of communication.

“Let us hear Lord Caliphestros out,” the Groba Father announced at length. “We owe him at least that much, and no one in this tribe, however high or low, can say they are exempt from that debt.” General agreement to this appraisal having been reached once more, Caliphestros pressed forward:

“I do not wish to discount the role that faith will play, in the coming days,” the old man conceded graciously, although his words did not mollify the High Priestess as greatly as they should have. “For in times of war, such faith is a great comfort to those soldiers and common folk who are made to suffer most. In our own case, Yantek Ashkatar has told me that, whichever forces of Broken arrive on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain in the hours to come, it is his desire to draw them into the Wood, where they will be unable to execute their maneuvers, and will instead become confused and terrified, and therefore may be defeated piecemeal — perhaps even annihilated. An admirable opening move.” The old scholar studied the Groba Fathers in turn once again. “But there are ways in which the fight can be further weighted in the Bane’s favor — if you will but avail yourselves of methods I have developed.”

“Methods of science,” the Priestess declared distastefully.

“That’s the limit,” Heldo-Bah suddenly pronounced, rising from his place at the fire. “Don’t even try to explain, Lord Caliphestros — one demonstration will do the work of hours of argument.”

As he crossed toward the Priestess and the Outragers who stood behind her, Heldo-Bah drew the blade that he had been given by Caliphestros in Stasi’s den, causing the two Woodland Knights to suddenly move in front of the young woman. At this, the panther got to her feet, growling deep within her throat again, and letting her teeth show for a moment in a quick snarl.

“Heldo-Bah!” Keera said as he passed her by. “Be careful what you begin!”

“I begin nothing,” answered the angry forager. “Instead, I will finish all this useless talk.” Then, to the Outragers, he challenged, “Go ahead, either of you — or both. Hold your blades forth, try to thwart me.”

The Outragers moved farther in front of the woman whose life they were sworn to protect, their blades yet before them, as Caliphestros and Keera moved to restrain and calm the panther. The Priestess looked supremely confident, seeming to believe that she was at last on the verge of witnessing the impertinent Heldo-Bah’s death, when suddenly:

With two resounding clashes of metal upon metal, Heldo-Bah left the Outragers holding mere pieces of their blades; and the expressions on their faces were even more awed than Heldo-Bah’s had been in Stasi’s cave.

“There,” said Heldo-Bah, sheathing his blade, wiping at his forehead, and returning to Stasi. “I don’t know what you’d like to call that, Priestess, but your ‘knights’ carry blades taken from Broken soldiers — this much is known. So you go on explaining how we can ignore such advantages, if you must — or let us proceed, in the name of your precious Moon, to go about the business of exploiting them …”

Hobbling back to his place before the Groba, Caliphestros pronounced, “Heldo-Bah’s methods are perhaps crass, but his conclusion is wise. This is the sort of result that my scientific arts can offer you — this and more, if you will only allow me to assist you.”

“But—” The Groba Father was still staring at the Outragers, who were in turn staring at the pieces of blades in their hands. “But how?” the Father asked at length.

“I can explain it,” Caliphestros replied, “although I would recommend that we do so as we undertake the work of preparation.” Glancing at the cave walls about him, which were so much like those in his own longtime home, Caliphestros continued, “These chambers of yours contain internal passageways that will be ideal for the work that we must do — and, if my experience is any guide, the chambers atop the mountains higher above us will suit our purposes even better.”

“You believe you truly can produce this superior steel in our mountains?” the Father asked, with an urgency none of the foragers had ever heard him employ.

“Within their highest caves,” Caliphestros replied, “as I learned to do during my years of exile far to the west. For we will be harnessing the winds that blow and are channeled through the passages in these stone walls, just as they draw the smoke of your fire instantly from this chamber. Not even the great bellows that power your Voice of the Moon can direct such prodigious winds onto any one specific point.”

The Groba Father shook his head. “These matters are quite beyond me, as I dare say they are beyond all of us — though perhaps you will tell the tale of their discovery as we begin our work.”

Caliphestros nodded in grateful relief. “I shall be pleased to—as we work. But work we must, and quickly. As it is, we shall not have time to so arm all of your warriors — Yantek Ashkatar must choose his very best troops, and even at that, it will be a close-run affair.”

The foragers and Caliphestros began to rise, Keera helping the old man to remove his walking equipment, so that he was able pull himself onto the white panther’s powerful shoulders as she dipped her neck to receive him.

“It seems to me,” the Priestess of the Moon declared, “that we are being asked to put faith that would better suit a god than a man in ‘Lord’ Caliphestros.”

Veloc bravely stepped forward, a trace of uncertainty nonetheless present in his words. “We ask you only to believe the words of a man who has made as much of a study of these matters as you have all made of the power and workings of the Moon.” There was no member of the Groba who was able to protest to this, and Veloc was encouraged to press on: “And now, I would ask your most honored and revered persons to allow us to withdraw and to host Lord Caliphestros at our family’s home. Keera has had but a few minutes’ reunion with her children, and my lord Caliphestros has had a most arduous journey to Okot—”

“A fact to which I can attest,” Yantek Ashkatar said, nodding certainly. “The journey of Keera’s party has been an arduous one, indeed — why, even Heldo-Bah—”

But Ashkatar was interrupted, and further explanation was made unnecessary, when the loud sound of Heldo-Bah’s snoring came from the direction of the hearth of the enormous cavity that was the Den of Stone’s fireplace. The moment might have been cause for still more argument and insult, and the Priestess of the Moon looked ready for both; but the Groba Father quickly stepped in to offer Veloc a moment to go and kick his friend awake, and to let the troublesome forager gather himself for departure, as the man who occupied the chair surmounted by Moon horns inquired:

“Are you certain there are no more splendid quarters we can offer you, Lord Caliphestros? Keera and Veloc come from good, honest stock, who were generous enough even to have taken so troubling a boy as Heldo-Bah into their home, for many years; yet they are humble people, as is their home, and we can certainly arrange—”

“It shall not seem humble, to me, Father,” Caliphestros replied. “For it has been ten years since I knew such surroundings, and longer still since I knew such company. Besides, Stasi and I will sleep out of doors, as is our custom during these months, and therefore we shall not frighten the children too much, nor keep the others awake with the strange hours we keep.” He glanced at Keera quickly. “Better Stasi feel safe among such a family than that she feel excessively honored. And I might say the same for myself—”

At which Heldo-Bah’s tired voice growled, “I am awake, damn you, Veloc, and ready to leave this place, I assure you — so stop kicking me!”

“Perhaps a quick departure for a night’s rest, Father,” Keera suggested, “would be best after all.”

“As you say, as you say,” the Father replied, with a wave of his hand.

As the party turned to go, Caliphestros paused to mention only one thing more to the Priestess of the Moon: “And, Priestess, such remove from the great activity of the center of Okot will give me further chance to consider a problem with which, I believe, yourself, the Fathers, and all of the Lunar Sisterhood have been struggling.”

“Oh?” the Priestess said doubtfully. “And what might that be?”

Caliphestros paused, studying this remarkably prideful young woman, and determining that had he, like Veloc, been summoned to her bed, he, too, would certainly have refused. “You have, unless I am mistaken, been casting the runes in connection with this crisis.”

The Priestess scoffed. “There is no great revelation in that — it is our way to cast the runes, to assist in any troubles that face our people.”

“Indeed,” Caliphestros replied carelessly, turning Stasi toward the exit to the Den. “Then perhaps I am wrong — perhaps you have determined just what ‘the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone’ is, and are aware of how its solution may very soon aid in the struggle against Broken.”

For the last time during this audience, the faces of all at the Groba table reflected utter confusion. “How—?” the Priestess managed to express in alarm; and then the Father asked, in a more coherent expression of concern:

“My Lord Caliphestros — how can you know of the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone? And what can you tell us of its meaning and use?”

“Little more than you yourselves can — just yet,” Caliphestros called over his shoulder, raising a hand as he departed. “But it is good to know that we are all indeed concerned with the same problems, is it not?” Caliphestros and Stasi, without any encouragement, continued on their way out of the Den, seeming weary with the place. “I bid you good night. Tomorrow begins our great work, and we must be rested and ready …”

Keera and Veloc turned to issue more formal and acceptable words of departure to the Groba, while Heldo-Bah, like Stasi herself, simply wandered toward the long stone hallway that led out of the Den, scratching at his head and various other parts of his body.

“If you do not mind, Lord Caliphestros,” he could be heard to say in the stone hallway, “I shall sleep with you and your friend under the trees and stars, tonight. They are good people, Keera and Veloc’s family, but I would rather be in the place that suits me best, and worries me least …”

“And you are welcome, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros answered, his voice now fading altogether. “But do not keep Stasi awake with your snoring, for it is one of many human sounds she detests …”

Back in the Den of Stone, the Groba Father looked up and down the great table at his fellows. “Well — what say we: sorcery or science?” Then he gazed at the stone hall once more, as he answered his own question with another: “Or does it really matter at all, when we consider the forces that are even now bearing down upon our people …?”

And to that query, not even the Priestess of the Moon had an answer.

3:{v:}

The three Bane foragers had long since learned that both Caliphestros and Stasi had the capacity to almost instantly distinguish between persons of quality and compassion and those more common humans, ungenerous and cruel in nature. And among the most reliable and generous of people to be found in Okot (or anywhere else) were certainly Keera’s family — not only her own and Veloc’s parents, Selke and Egenrich, but the tracker’s children: the still-recovering boys, Herwin and Baza, as well as the storm of energy, curiosity, and youthful wisdom that was the youngest, Effi, so like her mother in many ways, although more circumspect, and now having been exposed to the kind of tragedy and sadness, brief but scarring, that teaches wise children not to be bitter or selfish.

The morning after Caliphestros, Stasi, and Heldo-Bah slept outside the welcoming family’s home, Keera followed Caliphestros’s instruction to assemble every miner, ironmonger, and smith that lived in the central and outlying settlements of Okot so that they could listen to the requirements of a plan that, in a matter of days, would so arm the central corps of Yantek Ashkatar’s troops that they could hope not only to defeat even the soldiers of Broken, but to do so at a point far north of Okot, thus keeping the exact location of the long-hidden community safe.

Because of this, ancient mines dug into to the sides of the mountains above Okot that had long lain sealed and dormant were now reopened, in order that they could join those few that were still active, as well as allow the Bane to more easily gain access to veins of a special iron ore that had been propelled from the night sky into the Earth countless ages ago. In addition, the miners digging into the mountainside were told to bring their day’s or night’s gatherings of coal (the main substance with which the unique iron ore would be smelted) to Caliphestros, before any thought was given to using them to fuel the new, smaller but far hotter and more numerous forges that the old man designed. The fiery effect of the forges was increased by the thousands of torch lights that lit the way into and around the mines, creating an ever-expanding impression that the Bane had bargained with their old gods, and been allowed to tear open a terrifying gateway into their underworld: the dreaded Muspelheim.†

But why, some workers could occasionally be heard to ask, was any deep coal mining necessary at all, when the mountains were already so covered in young and old trees of all varieties — trees that could easily be used to fuel the old cripple’s forges? That the city of Broken itself needed coal was not difficult to understand: the summit of Broken mountain was, as has been seen, primarily composed of stone, and been shorn of nearly all its readily accessible stands of heating timber during the kingdom’s early generations, as had the plain north of the Cat’s Paw. Indeed, it was well known that direct control of new supplies of wood and coal, along with all metal ores found in the great forest (primarily iron and silver), were two of the chief reasons that Lord Baster-kin so coveted Davon Wood. Yet Caliphestros not only insisted on coal, but on personally examining every piece of it that was brought out of the mountains, surrendering much of the little nightly rest that it was his custom to take and instead relentlessly searching through the cartloads that Bane miners, with blackened faces and bleeding hands, dragged under his practiced eye. He was seeking a type of black rock that was marked by certain qualities, qualities that took the miners long days to recognize in the darkness beneath the ground, but that they eventually learned to identify by the light of day quickly enough: qualities of weight and texture, all of which made it well suited to transformation by fire into yet another variety of fuel, related but not identical to coal, that was vital to the creation of Caliphestros’s near-miraculous grade of steel.‡

But in truth, for all the talk among the Bane townspeople of the mines and forges above Okot resembling, to an ever-increasing extent, some sort of terrible entrance to the most fiery of the Nine Homeworlds,†† a passageway that would eventually disgorge those agents that would cause the end of the old gods and perhaps of the world, Caliphestros privately told Keera that all such tales were but myths, while the work that he was directing on the mountains above Okot, whatever its sinister nighttime appearance, was in fact, like all undertakings to which he applied himself, based on such scientific learning as had been developed and carried on by men and women like himself for hundreds if not thousands of years. These refinements, which so closely resembled sorcerous transformations to the ignorant, were carried out upon the mountains that brooded over Okot not because the spot had been appointed as the site at which the end of the Earth or the imminent arrival of infamous demons would take place, but because the position of the caves within allowed the Bane metalworkers to capture the only winds in the area strong enough to heat the coal and charcoal in Caliphestros’s furnaces to so great an extent that they could to do the work that must, at this critical hour, be done.

One particular mountaintop cave, meanwhile, became both Caliphestros’s private new forge and the scholar’s and Stasi’s temporary home. The panther herself slept above the cave, as much as she did within, during these days, for the old man worked long hours, producing (or so the Bane thought) additional weapons in order to keep some vague pace with the Bane smiths to whom he had taught many of his secrets. During these restless hours, when Caliphestros turned his mental and physical efforts to ever more arcane experiments, Keera became the old man’s sole assistant; and such only after she swore not to reveal what he was in fact doing. The work in the Bane mines and the mountaintop smithies multiplied daily: Caliphestros knew that the Bane had always been extraordinarily clever and imitative people, who, once shown how to do a thing, required little repeated instruction to achieve their object. All the special coal and special charcoal they created did, indeed, create sufficient heat to allow Caliphestros to himself smelt what the Bane workers came to call the “star iron,” because the iron ore itself was brought from deep in the mountains and the mines where it had presumably been embedded hundreds of years ago, after hurtling down from the heavens. That iron was combined, first and above all, with the remarkably high quality charcoal that Caliphestros had taught his smiths to create, a combination that produced a steel capable of not only attaining but holding an edge of fearsome sharpness. Some Bane smiths swore that there were traces of other elements in the ore, a tale that reinforced the other-than-Earthly origins of the “star iron,” although none among these same smiths could even guess at what those other elements might be.† This new style of heating and smelting, brought back from the East via the Silk Path by Caliphestros during his youth, allowed even the highest grade of ore, what the Bane called “the star iron,” to be heated to so uniform a consistency that it could be masterfully united with another iron — one of equal purity but also of greater resistance to fracture or breakage — with the object of giving the blades both mighty durability and at the same time astonishing cutting power. After this, the combination was folded and refolded, worked and reworked, pounded together by smiths until there were hundreds of layers in each uninterrupted strip that became a weapon; and any one of these weapons was capable of becoming higher in both strength and sharpness even than that which Heldo-Bah had demonstrated to the Groba, and far superior to anything manufactured outside the realms of the East.†

For, while the occasional daring seeker of a European trading fortune, or traveler of great renown as a swordsman, might journey far to bring back examples of this remarkable steel from the most distant realms of the East to the markets of their homelands, Caliphestros alone had understood the formula for the manufacture of the steel well enough to record it, during his travels on the Silk Path. He had then brought it back west with him, and awaited the day when the loosing of this seminal substance would create weapons that would change the very rank of power among kingdoms in the West where they were used — just as they had already done in the East.

And yet, even as Caliphestros made a gift of the knowledge of how to create the star iron to Keera’s tribe of diminutive outcasts, Keera herself — perhaps the most perspicacious member of her tribe — remained far from easy about all the reasons why he might be doing so. His obvious motives — revenge, for himself and for Stasi, contempt for how the Broken state had changed since the death of his former patron, the God-King Izairn, and the desire to end the dangers of disease that seemed not to be invading the city on the mountain, but rather to be emerging from it — were apparent and easily understood; although Keera nonetheless wondered, at certain moments — moments when the old man’s blood and ire were truly racing — if it would ever be truly possible for her or anyone else to comprehend the inner feelings that drove a man who had lived as long, colorful, and mysterious a life as Caliphestros.

As it only could have, the vital portion of the explanation of the mystery that Keera had built in her mind around the old man and his behavior came without any spoken question on the subject, one night when the winds atop the mountain ridge were building to what seemed an especially portentous fury. With ever more days of massive effort by increasing numbers of Bane laborers piling one atop the other, the southern horizon above Okot had never seemed to crack open with such great and purposeful fire; and, being as the mountaintops upon which the Bane forged the weapons with which they hoped to blunt any aggressive moves by the Tall army or Lord Baster-kin’s Guard stood at an even higher elevation than did the point upon Broken’s mountain where the Inner City, the House of the Wives of Kafra, and the High Temple were all located, it seemed only too likely that the God-King and his family and minions (to say nothing of the average citizen of the walled city) could not help but look out at that southern horizon and wonder what was taking place. Was their own god, Kafra, preparing some divine punishment for the Bane, one that would make the sacrifice of Broken’s young men, whether in the Guard or in the army, unnecessary? Or were, indeed, the demons of the old faith’s fiery Ninth Homeland preparing to enter humanity’s realm, and punish the subjects of Broken for having abandoned them in favor of the strange deity brought back by the followers of Oxmontrot from the world of the Lumun-jani, by first weakening the unfaithful with plague and then releasing their own demoniacal powers upon the kingdom north of the Cat’s Paw?

Keera’s secret work assisting Caliphestros in his private cave, guarded against all prying eyes by Stasi, only heightened this air of mystery; for the truth was, as she soon learned, Caliphestros was not producing a marginally additional number of spearheads and dagger and sword blades within that cave, but something altogether different. Every few nights, the forager, the old man, and the panther would journey to bog pits among the mountains above and below Okot, the existence of which Keera had never thought anything more than a danger to passing travelers. From these, the old man would extract buckets of a strangely pungent liquid, lighter and thinner than pitch as well as more inflammable, and then they would bring these back to his cave, where he would combine them in various mixtures with strangely colored powders and extracts from the very Earth, always working toward Keera knew not what, save that he produced a broad array of foul-smelling, combustible half-liquids and fluids, all of which he would speak of, at times, but none of which he would fully explain. Only when she returned to her home and her children, Keera believed, did Caliphestros complete these experiments; and in this fact she found reason for uneasiness as much as amazement.

Still, knowing that the Tall in Broken, from the lowliest worker to the God-King, might well be viewing all the fiery activity in the mountains of Davon Wood with real dread and fear was cause for ever greater joy; just as it was when — with the wind rising to a particular fury, creating especially plentiful fire, and with the heat and sparks of the now dozens of exile forges rising in great upward showers — momentous news arrived from those units of Ashkatar’s army that patrolled the barrier of the Cat’s Paw: a column of Broken troops were advancing on the river. It happened that, when this intelligence came, Keera was outside Caliphestros’s cave, beside Stasi at the jagged mouth of the place, a spot where the panther often sat, ever ready to spring forward, as her human companion within brewed and mixed the strange substance that absorbed him so.

It was, predictably, Heldo-Bah and Veloc who brought the news of this march to the old man’s cave, the pair being the only Bane, beside Keera, who had the courage to approach Caliphestros when he was laboring at his seemingly mad doings therein.

“Great man of science!” Heldo-bah called as he reached the cave’s entrance. “Come with us! Come and see the column of men that approach on the main road from Broken to the Plain, with torches lit in the night to show us just where they are!”

Caliphestros emerged from the cave, his skin smudged with the smoke and ash of his work, his face sweating as he pulled himself along upon his walking platform with his crutches; and it seemed, even to Heldo-Bah, amazing that a crippled man should be capable of such difficult labors of the mind and body. The wind was continuing to blow with true ferocity, causing the old man’s robe to drag directly across his body, and his beard across his face, as well; but his skullcap remained in place, and an expression of wilder emotion than any of his forager friends had ever seen him exhibit soon came into his features.

“So soon?” Caliphestros said, staring only briefly at the winding points of lights on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain before moving to a large, naturally formed basin in the outer rock of the cave’s entrance, one that was full of rainwater. A small cake of the same soap that the old man had insisted the Bane diggers use during their march to Okot lay on the basin’s edge. “Then they cannot be the column of Talons that is on its way from Daurawah,” he said, as he began to scrub himself clean of the coal dust and other black patches on his skin that had formed during the smelting and smithing processes earlier in the day.

“Not if they behave so stupidly as to light their path for us to see plainly,” Veloc replied. “Although how you could have known that the Talons went to Daurawah in the first place remains a mystery to me, Lord Caliphestros.”

“It was the only logical direction to take, if they needed to collect supplies and forage for their horses,” Caliphestros answered with a smile. “Besides, did not your tribe’s Outrager spies observe them taking the eastern road as they departed Broken?”

“Yes,” Heldo-Bah said, spitting on the ground. “But to trust in the reports of the Outragers is folly — and even if one accepts that they were right, it does not explain your insistence that the plague was also active in the Tall’s port, Lord Caliphestros.”

Caliphestros glanced again at the swaying treetops, and smiled slightly. “You must allow me a few secrets, Heldo-Bah.”

But Keera, also glancing at the loudly rustling branches above, knew the secret of the old man’s wisdom concerning this subject, even if she could not, at that moment, see either the starling called Little Mischief or the enormous (and enormously proud) owl named Nerthus.

“So — if it is not the Talons, the question becomes, Who is it?” Having voiced the question, the old man moved on his single wooden leg and crutches to stand beside Heldo-Bah, who was scratching at Stasi’s thick coat. Leaning against her other shoulder, the old man removed his walking device, then bundled the wooden leg and crutches, and slung them on his back. Climbing with little difficulty onto the neck and upper back of the panther, he settled himself as Stasi stood fully upright again, and Heldo-Bah took a step back “Well, whoever it is,” the old man continued, “Yantek Ashkatar must make his preparations — with all crossings over the Cat’s Paw save the Fallen Bridge destroyed, he must position his best men amid the Wood on this side of that pathway, so that he will, from the first, force these Broken soldiers to fight on the Bane’s chosen ground, and according to the Bane’s most practiced dispositions and maneuvers. Has he been alerted?”

“Yantek Ashkatar is even now about the very activities you have mentioned,” Veloc replied. “He has obeyed your counsel wholly, in preparing this first battle, my lord, despite the objections of the Priestess of the Moon.”

“And he is to be congratulated for that bravery,” Caliphestros judged with a nod. “For myself, I would observe the proceedings from the large rocks I took note of on our journey to Okot. You know the place of which I speak, Keera?”

“I do, my lord,” Keera replied, somewhat unnerved at the mention of the very spot where the foragers had left behind the arrogant but deadly Outrager, Welferek. “We had an — encounter near there, at the beginning of this business.”

Heldo-Bah and Veloc exchanged looks, Heldo-Bah’s merry but Veloc’s somewhat sheepish.

Caliphestros stared hard at the tracker. “And I am certain that your brother will join me, Keera, in urging, even insisting, that you join me there — you are the only parent your children possess, now, and they need you far more than does Yantek Ashkatar.”

Keera looked quickly to her brother, who only nodded sternly. “He is right, Keera,” Veloc said. “And, if it offers you any consolation, I anticipate being ordered to join the two of you, that I may be able to prepare records for a saga recounting the tale of this battle.”

“So I go alone to draw Tall blood?” Heldo-Bah said, at once proud and a little uneasy about losing his comrades. “Well — I cannot argue your reasoning, Lord of Science, and still less can I condemn yours, Keera. And, as it will no doubt infuriate that little vixen, our Priestess, I suppose I must accept even yours, Veloc. Finally, the truth is, this will be hard and bloody work, best undertaken by those who truly relish the opportunity …”

As if to confirm Heldo-Bah’s statement, a sudden, single sounding of the Bane Voice of the Moon was heard, telling all who had been laboring on the mountain ridge or anywhere else outside Okot that the time had come to gather for battle. The blast was short, for the enemy was near and growing nearer.

A certain light entered Caliphestros’s eyes, once more, and he urged Stasi to climb to the top of their temporary cave, which offered a fine view, not only of far-off Broken mountain and the city atop it, but of the Cat’s Paw in the middling distance, and Lord Baster-kin’s Plain just beyond that waterway. The three foragers scrambled to follow, fighting both the steep, slippery slope of the cave’s rock and the mounting wind, which was creating the haunting notion that there was a mareh behind every tree, inside every cave, and ready to strike from behind every rock.

So much the stranger was it, then, that when the foragers at last joined Caliphestros and Stasi, they found the old man with a look of terrible joy upon his face, and the panther snarling with enthusiasm to descend from the mountain they were perched upon, and make for the enemy that was approaching and, even more importantly, for those ever-burning lights beyond the walls of the city in the far distance.

“They are actually doing it,” Caliphestros called to the foragers when they reached him. “See there!” He pointed to the long line of torches as, in the manner of a stream of liquid, the soldiers left the safety of the Plain and began a careful crossing of the Moonlit river’s last remaining bridge. “The fools enter the Wood without pause! Baster-kin will risk the lives of what looks to be a full khotor of his own Guard in order to eclipse the power and prestige of Sentek Arnem’s Talons, and the regular army as whole — he would secure the land and riches of the Wood for the merchants and the royal faction alone! Never has he been so foolish.”

And with that, the party began a run, first to Okot, so that Keera might briefly take leave of her children, and then to the rocks that overlooked the southern side of the Fallen Bridge (and, in the middling distance to the southeast, the Ayerzess-werten). Their dash took a number of hours, although far less, as always, than it would have taken any ordinary forest travelers at night. The length of time might have been still less, had they not paused for an unforeseen interruption; an interruption that would not so much solve the enigma of Caliphestros, to Keera, as leave old questions answered, and new ones posed …

3:{vi:}

It was, of course, the white panther who sensed the presence first, although it was not long before Keera did so, as well. When the grade of the swiftly moving group’s path began to slowly flatten, indicating that the valley of the Cat’s Paw was growing closer, Stasi stopped, so suddenly as to almost hurl her rider onto the ground before her. To Caliphestros’s repeated inquiries concerning the cause of her refusal to move forward, the panther only put her nose high in the air, searching the wind that continued to blow from the west; and, once she had determined the definite direction from which the scent she detected came, she continued forward, although not along the same direct course toward the riverbed that she had previously been following. Caliphestros turned to the tracker, who continued to run beside them.

“Keera!” he called. “Stasi will not respond to my direction — this has never happened before, without her first leaving me behind! Have you sensed anything that would make her behave so?”

A strange expression entered Keera’s features, Caliphestros noted, one to match Stasi’s behavior. “I fear I have only too good an idea of what she is about, my lord,” the tracker replied, tilting her ear rather than her nose into the same breeze that seemed to have agitated Stasi so, as she continued to match the panther’s pace. “I can just hear a male brown bear making the sounds and performing the dance of mating†—yet the female scent that provokes him is strange: artificial, or, rather, carefully collected and placed, and confined to far too small an area. Along with which, the scent is accompanied by that of—”

Caliphestros had begun to nod his head, his expression darkening. “Of a human female,” he finished for the reluctant Keera. The anticipation that the old man had felt at watching a khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard receive the punishment it so richly deserved seemed to suddenly disappear. “And, I will wager, a human female you have detected before …”

Keera glanced at the old man, as concerned by his expression as by the strange mix of emotions in his voice. “Aye, lord. Just so. The Wife of Kafra — on the strange occasion of which we have told you. Save that it was a panther’s scent with which hers was mingled that night, rather than a bear’s.”

Caliphestros nodded his head. “Well, then …”

“My lord, we should avoid this, if we can,” Keera warned. “Battles between brown bears and panthers can do grievous harm to both combatants.”

“Fear not, on that account, Keera,” Caliphestros replied. “It is not the bear that draws Stasi on.”

“What is happening, you two?” Heldo-Bah said loudly, from behind. “We have strayed from the most direct path to the rocks you spoke of, Lord Caliphestros — and you know as much, Keera.”

Before further discussion could be pursued, Keera indicated silence to her fellow foragers; and it was not very much longer before the party had reached the edge of a small clearing, where the tracker indicated to her brother and Heldo-Bah that they should take their customary positions of observation in the branches of several high trees. When Veloc questioned with his eyes why they were not being joined by the white panther and her agèd rider, Keera simply held up a hand, indicating patience—

And very soon, that patience on the foragers’ part was rewarded: seemingly unaware, now, of the behavior of their three traveling companions, the old man and the panther stepped onto the edge of the clearing, in the middle of which the foragers could now see a familiar yet dreaded human woman moving in a strange, seductive manner, urging on a large male brown bear, who would ordinarily have attacked her long ago:

It was the First Wife of Kafra, once again, her robe as yet clinging to that same remarkably long-legged body, and her long strands of black hair slowly moving with the western wind while her remarkable green eyes — neither so brilliant nor so beautiful as Stasi’s, but similar in color — held the confused bear in place, just as they had done to the male panther, on a night that now seemed, to the foragers, very long ago.

From where he sat in the treetops at the southern edge of the clearing, Heldo-Bah glanced at Keera and her brother. “The old fool is mad,” he whispered. “He should get that panther up into the trees, lest that witch see him and cry out to the forward units of the Guard.”

“Heldo-Bah, when will you make up your mind?” Veloc countered. “Is he a fool or an all-knowing sorcerer?”

“He cannot be both?” the gap-toothed Bane questioned in reply.

“Quiet!” Keera commanded, softly, but in the manner that always brought immediate compliance from her fellow foragers.

In the middle of the small clearing below, the First Wife of Kafra — sister to the God-King, the very embodiment of radiance in the Broken conception of life — had begun to slip one perfect shoulder from beneath her black gown, causing Heldo-Bah, once again, to salivate almost visibly through his filed teeth. “Oh, great Moon,” he whispered.

Caliphestros had urged the white panther to continue forward, and up onto a stout rock; then the pair stopped, although their presence had evidently been noticed already by the Wife of Kafra, despite the fact that she had not turned to face them. Her green eyes remained fixed upon the black orbs of the bear, and she said calmly:

“We had heard rumors that you might have survived the Halap-stahla, Caliphestros …” Finally she turned to face the old man, and a sudden look of disappointment — even bordering on revulsion — entered her beauteous features. “Though none of those rumors had mentioned the condition you might be in — and I confess that I was not prepared for it …” She studied him more closely. “You have … changed, haven’t you?”

Keera studied Caliphestros’s reaction carefully: she knew him well enough, by that point, to see the injury that he tried to cover with pride.

“And what condition did you imagine you might find me in, Alandra? After my treatment at the hands of your priests, and so many years in the Wood?”

The Wife of Kafra shook her head slowly. “I do not know,” she replied softly; and, although Keera looked and listened for it, she could find no real trace of remorse, only of disappointment, in either the woman’s face or her words. “But not this. Not this … You have grown old. But there is more. The evil for which you were condemned has made its way out from inside your body — your demon side is loose, truly.”

Caliphestros continued to nod. “Yes. I remember well that you had to condemn me as such an absurd creature as a ‘demon’—how else to prove the equally nonsensical notion that your brother was sibling to a god? You have always required a villain in your life, Alandra, to justify the perversions into which both you and Saylal descended. And when your father — who was in fact a good man, whatever lies the pair of you told about him — died, I suppose I was the next logical choice.”

The First Wife of Kafra nodded toward the panther. “And what of this creature? You ride the great mistress of the Wood. Is that not evidence of demonic behavior?”

“I do not ride her,” Caliphestros answers. “She offers me conveyance. Just as she offered me life, after your brother agreed to condemn me to what I am sure you all thought would be death.”

Suddenly, as if she were able to weigh the emotion of the moment, Stasi issued one short but especially angry — even lethal — snarl at both the woman and the brown bear; and the bear, though not at all pleased about doing so, made a few movements from side to side, then backed out and away from the clearing, eventually moving quickly east.

“Oh,” the Wife of Kafra said in disappointment, pulling her robe back over her bared shoulder. “That was not at all kind of your — well, what do you call this creature with whom you consort, old man?”

“Her name is not for you to know, Alandra,” Caliphestros said. “Nor will any other citizen of that foul city on the mountain ever learn it.”

Suddenly, the woman called Alandra adopted a coy, almost flirtatious manner with the legless man before and just above her. “You did not always find it so foul,” she murmured with a smile.

“And you did not always find me so,” Caliphestros replied.

“True,” Alandra agreed. “But I was only a maiden, then; and you had been my tutor. An unfair advantage for you to enjoy — when I grew old enough, I came to see the truth, and to prefer … other company.”

“I assume that by that remark you mean that you came to prefer your own brother’s bed to mine.”

In the treetops above, Veloc released a slow, near-silent oath: “Hak—the old man was once the lover of such a beauty?”

“And why not?” Heldo-Bah replied. “There are women among the Tall who have endured your touch, Veloc …”

“Silence, both of you!” Keera ordered once more. “This is, although I would not expect you to know it, a terribly delicate moment …”

In the clearing below, Stasi stepped forward again, once or twice, causing a look of uncertainty even in the supremely self-confident priestess. “But let us not alter facts,” Caliphestros continued. “I may have been your tutor, and you a maiden, when we first met — but years later, when you came to me with your desire that we become more, you were a woman. Certainly enough.” With the Broken bear’s departure, the old man felt easy enough to lean forward upon the panther’s shoulders. “And well you know it, whatever tales you may have since told to make me seem more a demon to your people than they were already inclined to believe. Yet you say that you had heard rumors of my survival, Alandra,” he continued. “I take it such came from Lord Baster-kin’s torture of my acolytes?”

The First Wife of Kafra smiled in a way that Keera found most repugnant: beautiful, but nonetheless cruel. “Only in part,” she answered. “For Baster-kin has never put his full effort behind such methods. We could not be truly sure until reports reached us of Visimar’s traveling with Sentek Arnem.”

Stepping forward herself, Alandra seemed to make a point of exposing her long, enticing legs through the slits on either side of her black gown.

“I am sad to see your tastes for intrigue and plots grown so strong and ugly,” Caliphestros replied. “Unlike the rest of you.”

“Ah, scorn once more,” Alandra said, shaking her head. “I can remember a time when my intrigues did not trouble you so. When I stole away from my rooms, that we might lie together in your high chambers in the palace.”

And again, Keera thought, she could see an expression of deep injury hidden beneath the old man’s stern efforts to affect disdain. “Was it all deception even then, Alandra? Did you deceive me with talk and acts of love?”

“Mmm,” Alandra noised, with the first hint of something other than maliciousness beneath her outward manner. “Perhaps not. But that time was so long ago — who can honestly remember?” Seeming to rouse herself from some not unpleasant memory, Alandra continued: “And what does it matter, any longer? You are the enemy of our kingdom, and of my brother — a shadow, as I say, of what you once were. And so, with that, I will leave you to your new mate …” She turned to depart, but her every movement was suddenly arrested by a stern note of authority in Caliphestros’s voice:

“Alandra!” The First Wife paused, almost against her own will, but did not turn fully back about. “It is not I who consort or mate with the beasts of the Wood, my girl — although I understand that you cannot make the same assertion. And the heavens only know what your brother amuses himself with, these days. But let that be. Take only this message to Saylal—”

“Do you mean,” the First Wife asked, feigning indignation, “to the God-King of our realm, brother to Kafra, the Supreme Deity?”

Caliphestros shrugged, seeming to have suddenly gained the upper hand in the exchange, and to have realized as much. “Call him what you like. To me he is simply Saylal — the frightened, malicious little boy who was taught by priests to lust after his own sister. But whatever the name: tell him that his armies enter Davon Wood at their certain peril, and probable doom. A doom that will be demonstrated tonight …” And, as if he had foreseen the moment, Caliphestros looked to the north, as did Alandra, when the sound of a Broken battle horn was heard sounding an alarm. “And tell him,” Caliphestros said, smiling now, “that I alone have solved the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone.”

The First Wife of Kafra turned to the old man suddenly, fury now plain in her face. “That riddle is a myth.”

“Oh, it is no myth,” Caliphestros said, still smiling, his injury and tentativeness now seemingly erased, and his mastery over the conversation unquestionable. “And its solution will mean the shattering of Broken’s impregnability. And so, go, now, by whatever route it is you use to return to the city — for your return will not be possible very much longer. Therefore get back to your life of cruelty, bestiality, and incest, and continue to believe that it is a faith. And remember only this—” The old man raised an accusatory finger. “My age and my decrepitude were inevitable—as are your own. A fact that you shall discover, soon enough. Indeed, now that the Moon rises higher, I perceive that you may have begun to discover it already.” Alandra’s hands suddenly reached for her face, as her eyes searched the skin of her arms and the exposed parts of her legs. “Go, Alandra. In the name of what we once shared, I shall not hand you to the Bane Outragers, despite the advantage their tribe should gain from your capture — although I doubt that you would show me the same courtesy, were our positions reversed. Go on, then!”

And, with no more cleverness or cruelty to offer, with nothing at all remaining, save a look of simple fear, the First Wife of Kafra turned and moved swiftly out of the small clearing toward the south, glancing back only once, with what seemed to Keera, now, an expression of not only resentment, but, perhaps, regret, as well.

As soon as she had disappeared, the three foragers quickly leapt down from their high perches to tree limb after tree limb, until they were upon the woodland floor once again. Each was plainly full of questions; although Keera and Veloc could see that the encounter had drained Caliphestros — despite his final posture of defiance and anger — of too much energy to allow any possibility of immediate reply, and so brother and sister were silent. Heldo-Bah, of course, exhibited no such delicacy, and no such manners:

“You, old man,” he said, stepping closer, “have a great deal of explaining to do …”

“I suppose I do, Heldo-Bah,” Caliphestros replied, his great store of exhaustion finally making itself audible in his voice. Keera and Veloc both rushed to each of his arms, fearing that he would fall from the panther’s shoulders; but he indicated that he was able to travel unaided atop Stasi with a quick lift of his hand. “For now, however — let us get to our destination, before the fighting begins …”

“Demons take the fighting!” Heldo-Bah replied. “I have seen much fighting, in my time — but never have I seen so strange an encounter as that one. No — I will remain with the rest of you, to learn what lies behind all this.”

Caliphestros nodded, urging Stasi forward once more. “And learn it you shall — but I am not yet ready to speak of it.”

It was not long before the group approached the high rocks that offered a broad view of the trees and ground on the southern side of the Fallen Bridge; and, in the distance, the flickering lights of the torches being carried by Lord Baster-kin’s Guard could just begin to be seen. Before long, their laughing, triumphant voices, aided by wine, mead, and beer, began to become audible: a clear demonstration that they believed the complete lack of resistance they had thus far encountered was an indication, not of any trap or stratagem on the part of the Bane, but of the terror with which they had filled their enemies’ hearts.

3:{vii:}

Through their own and Stasi’s ability to move with unmatched swiftness, Keera, Veloc, and Heldo-Bah managed to compensate for the time lost during the strange but enlightening encounter that had left Lord Caliphestros racked by turmoil and a weariness of the spirit, and to reach the high rock formation that had been their original destination before hostilities erupted. Here they positioned themselves behind stony barriers in time to observe the lesson that would soon be taught to the soldiers of Broken (even if only to the Merchant Lord’s Guard) about war: not war as it was taught to or practiced by the officers and men of that kingdom, but war as it was best understood and fought by the Bane.

“But I do not understand the distinction of which you have often spoken, my lord,” Keera said softly, looking out amid the ground lying to the south and east of the misty crags overhanging Hafften Falls and the Fallen Bridge, across which the forward units of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard had already made their way, and were now trying, with almost uniform failure, to drag their ballistae, nearly all of which slipped from the surface of that giant tree, only to crash into pieces in the rocky waters below. “A hammer or a blade is not different when used by different peoples,” Keera continued. “Is not war the same? Why should there be one variety of war for the Tall, and another for the Bane?”

“Because war is not a thing separate from the mind, like the hammer or the blade,” Caliphestros replied quietly, his head ever turning to make out the forms of Bane swordsmen, spear carriers, and archers who had already taken up positions amid the northernmost part of Davon Wood, while more of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard continued a march that they presumed would take them closer to the enemy. “It is an expression of the mind,” the old scholar continued, “one used to achieve a certain object, yes, but one that bespeaks the nature of the collective mind of that people.”

“Yes, yes, all very interesting, I’m sure,” Heldo-Bah interrupted. “But now, Lord Caliphestros, if we may return to the small matter of what we saw take place between yourself and the First Wife of Kafra—”

But Heldo-Bah was silenced by a quick warning blow to the ribs issued by Veloc.

“Aiee, Veloc!” Heldo-Bah noised, quietly but urgently. “Are you mad? There are not Tall enough entering the Wood, that you think you must attack one of your only friends?”

“Let Keera be the one to ask about such things, Heldo-Bah,” Veloc replied, as he took several sheets of parchment and a bit of writing charcoal from a small bag at his side. “You have all the tact of a shag bull.”

Heldo-Bah, ready to argue further, was distracted when he noticed just what his friend was doing. “And what does all this mean?” he asked, indicating the parchment and charcoal.

“I shall make a few notes,” Veloc answered, “that I may remember all that his lordship says without error.”

“You?” Heldo-Bah said. “The man who believes that his precious history can only be accurately related by the historian to his audience through spoken words, whereas writing provides opportunity for lies?”

“And so do I believe still,” Veloc declared. “These are, as I said, but notes, used to remind me of certain details that, when I speak of it later, may be useful in recalling the whole with greater accuracy.”

“With even more lies, is what you mean,” Heldo-Bah judged.

“Hush, now,” Veloc said, with great self-importance. “Let us learn what his lordship would have us know …”

The conversation between Keera and Caliphestros had not ceased, during this interval, and the old man was continuing to explain his same theme: “Had Yantek Ashkatar kept to his original plan,” he said, “then he would have committed an error of enormous proportions. The Bane have not the training to face soldiers of the Tall, or even of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, in an open field, nor have they the weapons or the physical stature. They should have been cut to pieces. Now, however”—and at this, Caliphestros held his hand out to the moving shadows on the forest floor, hundreds of them, marching without any organization at all, due to the trees that everywhere prevented any such order—“it is the Guard who have made the terrible error of attempting to fight their enemy upon his ground, and according to his methods.”

Keera looked curious, but far less confused, having been given these thoughts by so expert a mind. “You must have fought in many wars yourself, my lord, to know such principles.”

“Myself?” Caliphestros shook his head. “Not at all. Oh, I have witnessed many battles, true, but only as a man of medicine in the employ of one side or the other, who gave his service to heal the wounded, and to ease their pain. But to understand such things, truly? There are great minds, Keera, who have practiced warfare — generals, kings, and emperors — who have gathered their own and others’ knowledge into books of instruction, which are available for any to read, and which I used in offering my advice to Yantek Ashkatar. And in this sense, we have been fortunate.”

“Fortunate, old man?” Heldo-Bah echoed. “How is it ‘fortunate’ to find a full khotor of the Merchant Lord’s Guard entering Davon Wood? Amusing, perhaps, but …”

Although Veloc once again shoved at his friend for daring to interrupt, Caliphestros turned and spoke to Heldo-Bah without anger or rancor: “Because it is now plainly evident that neither the Grand Layzin nor Lord Baster-kin has deigned to read any such books, whereas a truly wise soldier — such as Sentek Arnem, who is even now marching his khotor of Talons toward the Cat’s Paw — would never have made such a mistake. It violates everything he was ever taught by his own tutor, Yantek Korsar, or by his own experience in fighting such tribes as the Torganians and the eastern marauders. He would have waited, and drawn Ashkatar out onto the Plain — and, as I say, despite the fact that the steel we have spent these many days forging is superior even to that carried by the Talons, the manner in which they fight, their discipline and organization, is something that requires years for large groups of men to learn — and its absence among the Guard shall prove as important as any grade of steel.”

“Leaving only the small flaw,” Heldo-Bah murmured, also, now, listening to the sounds of passing Guardsmen beneath the rocks atop which the three foragers and the pair who had become their traveling fellows were carefully hidden, “that the Guard are a vicious group of murderers, able to do more than a little damage to our warriors on their own.”

“Some, perhaps,” Caliphestros answered, with a shrug of his shoulders. “But in the end, for the few wounds the Bane may receive, these Guardsmen will trade their lives — and when Sentek Arnem does reach the Cat’s Paw, he will be met by a scene of death and horror, of hundreds of Tall bodies in the Cat’s Paw amid those poor Bane souls who took their lives in the river before we were able to determine a cause and a method of preventing the rose fever. And that horror will make him pause, unwilling to trade the best troops in his kingdom for a highly uncertain outcome. And then, we may find him ready to treat with us. But hush, now …” The old man brought his face in contact with the fur of Stasi’s neck and cheek, burying it sidelong in that rich white coat, as if it gave him some sort of deep, even mystical comfort to do so: not only, Keera believed she could see, because of the danger that was so close about them on all sides, now, but because of the lingering yet still-unexplained hurt done to the old man’s soul (nay, she thought, to his heart) by his encounter with the First Wife of Kafra, the woman called Alandra. “Let us be silent, or as silent as we can,” the old man continued. “Further talk can only threaten our being discovered, and, as Heldo-Bah has said, even if these Guardsmen lack order and insight, they do not want for bloodlust.”

Perhaps cheered at finally having his thoughts recognized as valid by the old man, even if in a somewhat less than direct or congratulatory manner, Heldo-Bah half-rose, producing the sword he had carried since meeting Caliphestros in one hand, and his gutting blade in the other. “Well, as to that,” he whispered, “rest assured, you shall all be safe — I may not wander out into this madness, but the Moon help any Guardsman, or any five Guardsmen, who wander too close to these rocks. Stay low, all of you.” He looked directly into Stasi’s eyes. “And that includes you, my lovely,” he said, before disappearing into the shadows only a short distance away.

Veloc turned in sudden shock. “Heldo-Bah!” he hissed, as loudly as he was able. “Don’t be a fool—”

“Do not bother, Veloc,” Caliphestros murmured; and when Veloc turned to the old man, he found to his surprise that the old man was smiling in true admiration. “You were right, Keera, in this as in most things: a profoundly irritating man, but possessed of great courage …” Stasi growled lowly at the disappearance of the third forager, and Caliphestros ran his hands deep into her fur, stroking and scratching and trying to calm her. “Take your ease, Stasi — this is one task for which our filthy friend is best suited — whereas you must remain here with me.”

And this last statement, it seemed to Keera, as she lifted her eyes to determine the position of the Moon and thereby the time of night, was more a plea than a command …

The Moon had not traveled very far from where Keera first glimpsed it before the battle began. The encounter started where Caliphestros had said it likely would: near the Cat’s Paw, thus ensuring that, once the whole of Baster-kin’s khotor were in the Wood, they would not be able to flee back across the Fallen Bridge. Indeed, the foragers and Caliphestros would later learn that Ashkatar had ordered that any Tall given the responsibility of remaining in the rear of their force to hold the southern end of the bridge be dispatched first: this was not to be an encounter in which prisoners would be taken or cowards allowed to flee, but one of complete destruction, which would, therefore, not only allow the Bane to indulge their special loathing for the Merchant Lord’s men, but serve as a warning — again, just as Caliphestros had said it would — to any other troops from Broken who were on their way to Davon Wood with the purpose of attacking and destroying the exile tribe.

Thus, the cries that echoed from the southern bank of the Cat’s Paw, indicating that actual combat had been joined, were especially horrifying, produced not merely by wounded and dying men, but by the screams of those who were thrown down from the rocky heights into the violent riverbed below. This horror, of course, was no accident, but rather a key part of Ashkatar’s plan, designed to make those Guardsmen in the Wood lose whatever small ability the forest had left them to organize their numbers into coherent ranks and conduct an effective resistance; and it served this purpose completely.

Of course, there were other varieties of horror with which the doomed Guardsmen were forced to contend; indeed, there were few if any that they escaped. It is the peculiar nature of the forest, and of primeval† forests such as Davon Wood in particular, to change in aspect as soon as night falls, and threats are heard, seen, or felt, into a place of infinite danger; and hard on the heels of this change, the interloper who finds himself stranded in what is without doubt the realm of some other force, realizes the extent of his error. Even the foragers atop the rocks had not truly realized the extent to which Ashkatar’s painted warriors had established their presence in every part of the Wood; but following the first terrible screams that echoed up from the chasm beneath the Fallen Bridge, and the subsequent drone of a Davon ram’s horn being blown, every tree, rock, bush, or shadow seemed to disgorge one or more such brave souls. As always, unlike the forces of the Tall, the Bane fighters included women, more than ready and trained to inflict deadly punishment upon their enemies; and their cries, being the higher in pitch, quickly drove the men of Baster-kin’s khotor into a kind of fear that bordered on madness.

And once this confused and unstable (indeed, given the darkness of the Wood, to which the eyes of the Guardsmen were not at all accustomed, this nightmarish) condition had been established, almost anything seemed possible. First, of course, Ashkatar’s constant emphasis on vicious war cries from both his male and female warriors made it impossible for units of Broken soldiers to relay orders or to take any accurate measure of how many enemy forces were actually involved in the fight. In truth, the Bane were badly outnumbered; but terror is a mighty method of nullifying such imbalances of power. This effect was only increased by the fact that any attempt by a soldier of the Tall to call for aid instantly marked both the man in distress and those who dared raise their voices in response for death. Fear, again, is whipped into panic if a soldier fighting for his life on foreign ground feels that he cannot even communicate with his fellows without immediately being confronted with the image of an enemy whose body is painted to match the leaves and bark of the surrounding wild plants and trees, or, worse yet, the fur and teeth, feathers and beaks of the deadliest night creatures, and whose immediate attack, therefore, quite aside from being incomprehensibly loud and savagely noisy, is wild and almost bestial in its appearance as well as its violence. Such terrifying methods, if carried off with the skill of which the Bane were masters, could go a very long way toward counteracting differences in numbers, if those differences were not utterly overwhelming.

And then, of course, there was always the bloodshed itself, simple yet supremely effective gore, which Lord Baster-kin’s Guard liked to think they understood, as a weapon, but which they had never truly seen demonstrated until that night. The sights, smells, and sounds of comrades being torn open and apart, dismembered and otherwise disfigured and dispatched, sapped the Guardsmen of what little real understanding they had of combat. When the forest floor became wet with blood in the middle of the night, as well as when the curiously horrifying colors and visions of human guts laid open to Moon- and torchlight were encountered, and a soldier was almost certain that the gore was that of his fellows, the man’s usefulness in combat (especially if he was unfamiliar with the sight, as was nearly every Guardsman) was quickly cut down to almost nothing, and his primary concern shifted from inflicting punishment to somehow trying to make sure that his own blood, guts, and limbs were not added to the heaps and rivulets that had been loosed by swords, gutting blades, spearheads, crude iron halberds and axes, and daggers.

One can often hear it said, among posturing fools such as those young men who have long spent the better part of their lives in the Stadium in Broken, that some peacetime activity is “like a war,” or even “is war”; but such only serves to demonstrate how far they have ever lived in remove from any true battlefield or other place of large-scale violence: for war, like all human activities related to the creation or termination of life, is unique, unique in its pain and fearfulness, of course, but unique, perhaps most of all, in its loneliness, as well as in each participant’s terrible lack of certainty — unimaginable until the moment has arrived — of whether or not she or he will survive.

In this case, the sudden realization, felt as a group, that the Guard were in fact not more than a match for the Bane, and that their allotted time on this Earth and in this Life had abruptly expired, added an additional note of horror to the shrieks that increasingly escaped the men of Lord Baster-kin’s creatures that night; and it was a type of cry that made even Stasi, who had seen so much terrible death in her comparatively short time upon the Earth, draw closer to Caliphestros, Keera, and even Veloc, as much to comfort her own soul as to make sure that her friends did not leave their positions and attempt to enter the fray that was taking place in the darkness of the woodland beneath the rocks that sheltered them all.

Finally, the Guardsmen’s religion, their all-important faith in Kafra, failed them at the last. The soldiers of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard had received special sanction from the God-King and the Grand Layzin of Broken before this particular undertaking — sanction not only represented by the beaten bronze bands that they wore clamped to their upper arms, but manifested in their grossly overconfident behavior as they marched into the Wood. Kafra, the priests had already assured the men of the Guard, would provide them special protection and special power. And yet here they were, now, themselves, with death striking at them from out of the darkness at every turn and along every path — including and especially from above. The Bane tactic of dropping down to slash at the throats and other essential parts their enemies’ bodies in an even more sudden and shocking manner than could be managed from their very effective hiding places on the ground was wholly new and especially frightening, for Baster-kin’s men; yet no matter how the latter called out to the god whose smiling countenance was depicted on the bands that encircled their arms, Kafra remained deaf to their pleas. The number of deaths among them — either from wounds or from being hurled over the cliffs above the Cat’s Paw, below which their skulls and bodies would be shattered and mangled upon and overwhelmed by the deadly rocks and rushing waters of Hafften Falls or the Ayerzess-werten—mounted with astonishing speed, and this one relatively confined area of Davon Wood grew ever more littered by and soaked with the bodies, entrails, and blood of soldiers of the Tall.

In short, the encounter proceeded far more successfully than any member of the Bane tribe had dared wish for. For Caliphestros himself, along with Keera and Veloc, nothing demonstrated the triumph and even joy of the Bane troops more than did the heightening, almost mad laughter of Heldo-Bah, who quickly turned from simply keeping watch around the edges of the rock formation upon which his friends and the white panther lay hidden to merrily falling upon any passing Guardsman, whose weapons he delighted in overmatching or even cutting and breaking into pieces — just as Caliphestros had done to him when first they entered the old man’s cave. Never was the file-toothed Bane’s lust for revenge against the servants of Lord Baster-kin, the man he saw as the embodiment of all that was evil in Broken, that city that had used him so ill during his childhood, more amply displayed than during the night of the battle by the Cat’s Paw, when his rage mounted to ever more reckless and gleeful heights. After each quick attack, Heldo-Bah would disappear back into the crevices in the great stone formation that sheltered the others, his lustful merriment almost impossible to contain.

It was hardly likely, given their complete and increasingly triumphant concentration on their slaughter of the Guardsmen, that any Bane would have noticed a lone pair of eyes and ears watching and listening to what was taking place on the woodland side of the river: but the young Guardsman to whom those eyes belonged, a member of the regular watch that patrolled the richest portion of the great Plain, who was as well an inexperienced youth who had been left behind by the larger column because he dared question the wisdom of marching all the other soldiers of the Guard into the Wood for a night attack, soon made his way back north through the grazing ground; and without knowing it, toward Sentek Arnem and the oncoming Talons …

3:{viii:}

It had been Sixt Arnem’s firm intention, upon riding to and then beyond the eastern perimeter of the central camp that his Talons were continuing to establish on Lord Baster-kin’s Plain, to take a very stern attitude while interviewing the only surviving member of the First Khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard; but when the commander of the army of Broken sees the condition of the youth he cannot help but relent from this posture. The Guardsman was but a few years older than Arnem’s own son, Dagobert, and although he must ordinarily have been larger in stature than the sentek’s boy, what the lad had seen and heard had made him draw into himself in every manner. Thus vividly reminded not only of his only son, but of his wife and the strange peril he has been told that both she and Dagobert face in the Fifth District of Broken, Arnem crouches down to look the terrified youth full in the face. “Where is your home, son? Do you wish me to send word of your survival back to Broken along with my next packet of dispatches?”

The fearful youth shakes his head vigorously and fearfully. “I would not have my family know that I was not willing to follow my commander into the danger that lay across the river. I would not have them think me so disobedient and cowardly.”

Arnem puts a hand to the boy’s shoulder. “You are neither, Pallin. Discipline is a vital thing in an army; it can also be a deadly one. More often than not, I would agree that your speaking out was irresponsible. But in this instance?” Arnem looks down toward the line of the trees on the southern border of the Plain, now almost invisible in the growing darkness. “I cannot find it in me to call it so. For to have taken nearly five hundred drunken men into Davon Wood, when he also had every reason to believe that the Bane were fully aware of our people’s intention to invade their homeland, was a decision that now places the blame for the disaster on your sentek — not on you. Although I sincerely doubt that the fool yet lives to assume that responsibility. Come, now — on your feet.” The pallin obeys the order, slowly but in what passes for a soldierly manner. “Step closer to the light, and let my friend, here, who is a talented healer, examine you.” Arnem indicates Visimar, and the cripple steps forward.

Visimar makes several satisfied sounds as he goes about inspecting those parts of the pallin’s body that would be first to display any sign of either the rose fever or the Holy Fire, and each murmur seems to embolden the Guardsman, so much so that, after several moments have passed, he says:

“If you would not mind, Sentek Arnem — I should much rather march with your men than return to the city.”

Arnem shakes his head, immediately and definitively. “There are many soldiers that would like to march with the Talons, Pallin. But our reputation is not based upon pride or arrogance. There are maneuvers that you must know, and through long training be able to execute quickly and unhesitatingly. Men’s lives depend on your knowing such, as has already been demonstrated on this march. I understand your reluctance, but — as I say, I will give you notes vouching for your behavior, to be delivered to both your family and Lord Baster-kin. Be easy in spirit — there will be no recrimination. In addition, I will offer you this, Pallin — we’ll tilt the table just a bit, so that the knucklebones† will be certain to roll in your favor. I shall state in my report that upon our arrival we were able to rescue you, and only you, from a rearguard action your fauste was conducting. I may even add that we were forced to pull you away from the combat, so heated was your blood. I think that should suffice.”

The pallin looks to the ground uneasily. “If you will but hear one additional fact in confidence, Sentek, at some distance from these others, I shall do as you say, if you still think it wise.”

Looking to the others and shrugging, Arnem indicates to them that they should remain where they are with a gesture of his hand, then walks off to the edge of the small world of light created by Akillus’s torch.

By the time Arnem and the young Guardsman return, the older officer has apparently managed, whatever their secret conversation, to convince the pallin that his return will take place without punishment, if he will follow Arnem’s original plan. “But I shall ask one favor of you, in return, Pallin,” Arnem says, as he moves toward and then mounts the Ox. “Remain outside camp, while I go to my tent to secure you a mount and compose the dispatches we have discussed. My men will know the truth of what has taken place in the Wood soon enough — I do not want more rumors than I can manage flying about camp. Akillus, remain here with the pallin, and I shall send one of your scouts back with the horse and the reports, along with whatever rations they have prepared.”

Akillus salutes, reluctantly but without question, and the pallin quickly does the same. Arnem offers them both a nod, and tries to smile reassuringly to the Guardsman.

“The soldier’s life is not the Guardsman’s, Pallin,” the sentek says. “Particularly when you leave the walls of Broken. There’s little enough use on the frontiers for making arrests and cracking skulls, to say nothing of watching over cattle. I am sorry that your first taste of large-scale action had to be so horrifying — but remember these truths the next time you feel tempted to castigate yourself.” He laughs once, cajolingly. “And consider a change of services upon your return to Broken …” Arnem turns to his chief of scouts. “And don’t go badgering the boy, Akillus,” Arnem declares.

“Aye, Sentek,” Akillus replies. “Come, Pallin — let’s see what scraps of wood we can collect to make this torch something other than a source of light. It will help to keep the wolves back, even if the evening is warm …”

It is a generous attitude to adopt, of the type that Arnem and Niksar have long since learned to expect from the gregarious Akillus. Visimar, however, having been helped onto the saddle of his mare by Niksar, is impressed. “Akillus is indeed a rare man — you are to be congratulated for elevating him, Sixt Arnem.”

“He is my left arm,” Arnem agrees, smiling at Niksar as he does. “Now that Niksar has suspended his spying duties and become my unquestioned right …”

“Sentek!” the linnet protests, until he realizes that his commander jests.

Arnem smiles, wearily but genuinely, to his friend and comrade, and in moments the three riders have passed over the spiked ditch and similarly bristling eastern gateway in the protective barrier about camp that has been constructed with astonishing speed by the engineers of the Talons during the hours since the khotor arrived on the Plain. The officers’ wine-red cloaks are lifted behind them by the western wind as they trot into camp, a martial image that is made all the more impressive when placed in direct contrast to Visimar’s faded black and silver cloak. But even the latter is somehow strangely comforting, in its heightened implication of a perhaps arcane but no less lucky influence: for the old man has undeniably demonstrated both the power of the good fortune he brings to the troops, as well as his wisdom.

Arnem’s tent, imposing from the outside, is perhaps more spare and severe within than one might expect from a man of such rank. Thick, quilted walls and modest personal quarters are to the rear, furnished only with a camp bed, writing table, and oil lamps, all of which are curtained off by warm, silencing hides that offer privacy from the tent’s front section. That area is dominated by a large table that serves as both senior officers’ mess and council center: all in all, a highly mobile structure that is all the commander needs, and more than he ever expected to be awarded, as a young man. He has no illusions — as do, say, the eastern marauders — about creating a traveling den of pleasure to serve as his home while campaigning. He is therefore unsurprised when he enters to find those same senior officers (save Akillus) all in attendance, talking quietly and respectfully among themselves, then standing to salute as he joins them: this is the principal purpose of his tent, to the sentek — professional — and the sooner the business of his men can be planned and executed, the sooner he may gain what little rest he will allow himself; and the sooner, too, will his assigned tasks be completed, and he himself be allowed to rejoin his family, high on Broken’s mountain—

And yet, on this night, his usually reassuring thoughts of home are usurped by what he has been told concerning both his wife and his children by, first, Akillus, and, later, the young member of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard: a most bizarre set of what the Guardsman referred to, not as rumors, but as confirmed facts, concerning some kind of a rebellion in the Fifth District, and of Isadora’s and Dagobert’s participation — even more, their leadership — of the uprising; and these are tales about which he intends to know far more, before he will make any move against a Bane enemy that cannot help but be in the full flush of victory over the most despised arm of their enemy …

Arnem waves a hand to his officers, urging them to sit. “I shall require a moment, gentlemen,” he declares, never breaking stride as he heads for his personal quarters. “Therefore, be as you were, but make certain your reports are ready.”

Once behind the curtain that screens his quarters from the council area, Arnem pauses to wash his face and hands in a plain brass basin of cold, clean water that the ever-silent, ever-reliable Ernakh has made sure to have ready. Running his hands through his hair, more to keep himself alert than for appearances, Arnem towels off any lingering water, places the moist, cool piece of cloth about his neck, and turns to lean over his camp table, taking two pieces of waiting parchment and a nub of charcoal and quickly composing the notes to Lord Baster-kin and the Guardsman’s family that he promised the youth. Instructing Ernakh to have a scout deliver these reports, as well as to relieve Akillus, that the latter may represent his own men at the council table, and making sure that Ernakh orders the scout to take some of the food that is being prepared outside the tent with him, Arnem dispatches the skutaar out the back of his tent, and finally returns through the hide curtain to sit in the lone camp chair that occupies the head of the council table. At last allowing himself to breathe deeply with some small relief, he then eyes the expectant faces around him, noticing first his chief archer.

“Fleckmester,” he says, with a slightly surprised although approving tone. “I take it your ability to attend this council means that you are satisfied with the defensive dispositions of your archers at the Fallen Bridge?”

“Indeed I am, Sentek,” Fleckmester replies. “I do not doubt that the Bane still have silent eyes in the trees along the southern bank, observing our every move; but any attempt by them to cross the bridge into the Plain now would be as foolish as was the Guard’s original march into the Wood.”

“Hmm,” Arnem noises. “I wish I could say that I doubted you, and that there might in fact be an easy way for our men to get across the Cat’s Paw and achieve our object as originally stated; but the Bane have proved even more than usually clever, during this action.” Preparing himself for the announcement that he is about to make, Arnem takes the towel that is about his neck and grips it tight, as if it will support an overburdened mind, and says in a louder voice, “I’m certain that by now you all know what one or two of you have learned firsthand, and several others have surmised; the true identity of our guest on this march.”

The sentek holds out a hand to the cripple, who sits to his left, at the first seat on that side of the table. Noises of general assent make their way from officer to officer, but few if any are either surprised or uneasy in nature.

“Aye, we have discovered it, Sentek, and have been discussing it,” says one Linnet Crupp,† with whom Arnem has seen long service. The sentek holds this scar-faced man in high regard, not only for his mastery of ballistae, but for the fact that he has ever shown as little true fervor for the faith of the golden god as has Arnem himself. “Can you truly be he?” Crupp continues, smiling, now, as he turns to Visimar. “The same demon-man with whose name I once frightened my children into obedience on nights when they were especially unruly?”

Visimar is sipping a cup of wine and kneading his leg, which has begun suffering from a special pain that, he long ago learned, was and remains a signal of the distant onset of a rain.‡ Given the generally warm, dry conditions of this spring, it is a sensation he has not felt for some time, and would readily have done without for a good while longer: he cannot yet know (despite all his seeming prophetic power) that the rain’s arrival will actually be of vital use to his own and his former master’s secret efforts to undermine the kingdom of Broken.

“I would gladly have had my name never gain such notoriety, amusing as it may now seem, Linnet,” the old man says, as congenially as his discomfort will allow. “If such would have meant living without the decade of pain that I have endured.”

Light laughter — most of it easy, some of it guarded — moves about the table, at which the forward opening of the tent is pulled aside to allow the entrance of several pallins, who bear wooden platters upon which sit roasted joints and slabs of beef, surrounded by various mounds of fire-baked root vegetables and stacks of unleavened, rock-fried pieces of bread. The sight is sudden and welcome, bringing immediate cheers of gratitude and anticipation. Such is the clamor that Arnem must shout to make himself heard by the lead bearer:

“Pallin! You are certain that these roots and this bread consist solely of our own supplies, and have not been gathered locally — and that none bore the marks of which Visimar warned you before they were prepared?”

The pallin nods his head with the kind of smile that has proved a rare sight, on this campaign. “Aye, Sentek,” he replies. “But we dared not keep the stores any longer, given the time we have been on the march and the molds that our guest”—the young soldier inclines his head in Visimar’s direction—“tells us are more likely to form with coming changes in the weather. We in the baggage train have been waiting for the right moment to make use of them — and with camp made secure, this seemed as good a one as any.”

“You see, fellow Talons?” Linnet Taankret announces with a broad grin, wiping his carefully sculpted mustache and beard further from his lips, so that they will not become tainted with food and the grease of the beef, and tucking one corner of a large kerchief beneath his chin, that the piece of fabric may protect his ever-spotless tunic. “We no sooner have confirmation of Visimar’s true identity, than we can enjoy more than dried meat and rock-hard, flat biscuits — I always knew that this old madman, whatever his name, was a breathing and benevolent talisman!”

“I hope that your good humor will last the meal,” calls Arnem, “for there are yet more remarkable facts to be revealed, Taankret. For now, however — let us eat. No more than one cup of wine or beer per man, however!” he adds, pointing to the serving pallins who have begun distributing the drinks to each officer.

“A deep cup, I hope, Sentek,” says Akillus, as he enters the tent to the shouted greetings of the other officers, and takes a place at the bench that runs along the foot of the table.

“Aye, deep I will allow,” Arnem replies. “But the men will have their wits about them, tonight, and I have no intention for my officers to be in any worse condition.”

One linnet-of-the-line, an engineer called Bal-deric,† whom Visimar has noticed and spoken to more than once on this march (largely because the man is without most of the lower portion of his left arm, lost to a mishap during an excavation that employed large, oxen-driven machinery, and has substituted for it an ingenious assembly of leather fittings, sections of hardwood tree limbs, and steel wheels and wires),† now signals to the older man, then leans back to use his good right hand to pass Visimar a small piece of cotton containing a tightly packed ball of herbs and medicines. Under the sound of the other officers’ conversation, Bal-deric congenially says to his fellow in suffering, “It is the approach of rain, is it not, Visimar? My arm behaves in just the same way. Break this into pieces and swallow it with your wine. A concoction of my own, developed some years ago — I’m sure you will be able to guess its ingredients, and will also find them most efficacious. But by the heavens, do not let any priest of Kafra know that I have given it to you!”

Visimar smiles and takes the packet gratefully, then leans behind the intervening men to say, “I thank you, Bal-deric — and perhaps, if we come out of this business alive, we may discuss the construction of some better substitute for my missing leg than the admittedly crude support I carved myself, after the first year or so of my changed condition — for I have long admired the device you have created to take the place of your arm.”

Bal-deric smiles and nods, and Visimar turns back around, relieved to note that Arnem does not appear to have caught any of this exchange.

As the very last of twilight turns to utter darkness outside the tent, the officers within, most still expressing words of surprise and congratulation to the ever more contented Visimar as they at the same time voice their complete satisfaction with the provisions that have been placed before them, inevitably begin to lose interest in the food, and turn instead to debates about the best and fastest way for their campaign to proceed. Arnem has intended for this to happen; it is the reason for his having limited each man to one cup of drink. And yet, even he, the confident and ever-resourceful commander, finds himself perplexed as to precisely how he will reveal the next portion of his plan — for it does not involve the action desired most by his officers, direct military confrontation, but something very different indeed. Eventually, knowing that he cannot put the matter off, he slams the pommel of his short-sword on the table, and begins to demand reports from each of his officers about the dispositions and moods of their respective units.

“I assure you, Sentek,” declares Taankret, “when you have decided precisely how to take the Talons into Davon Wood, they will be as prepared for the task as they were to fight their way out of that madness in Esleben — and the Wildfehngen will be no less ready to lead.”

Arnem glances for an instant at Visimar, who gives the slightest indication with a movement of his head that the sentek must proceed along some course that is, apparently, known only to the two of them. “That ‘madness in Esleben,’ Taankret, is precisely the point. You may wonder why I ordered the establishment of what would seem so forward a position on our own ground, rather than waiting until we crossed the Cat’s Paw.”

“None among my scouts has wondered as much,” Akillus declares solemnly. “Not given what fills that river. I do not know what black arts the Bane are practicing, in their defense, but … we will need a sure sanctuary on our own soil, for this campaign.”

“Assuming that there is to be any more of a campaign,” Arnem announces, to the sudden consternation of all present.

“But Sentek,” Bal-deric declares. “It was our understanding that such were our orders. It was well known throughout the streets of Broken, before we departed, that these were our objects: the final invasion of Davon Wood, and the destruction of the Bane tribe …”

“Yes,” Arnem replies. “It was well known — by those who had not seen what we have seen on this march.”

“But — Yantek Korsar gave his life precisely because he refused such an order,” Niksar says carefully.

The sentek nods. “And I confess that I did not know why, at the time, Reyne,” Arnem replies. “But on this journey, much has been revealed — much that provides us with answers to that as well as other questions. Certainly the horrific fate of the khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard tells us why the yantek did not wish us to enter the Wood: in that wilderness, our superior numbers apparently mean little or nothing, so well have the Bane mastered combat within the forest.”

“But—” A young linnet sitting next to Akillus is, like most of his comrades, puzzling with the dilemma determinedly. “But the Bane also attack outside the Wood. In terrible ways.”

“The Outragers do,” Visimar replies. “But the Bane army? We have no evidence that they do so, or that they ever have.”

“Then do they not deserve chastisement, for allowing the Outragers such vicious liberty?” comes another voice.

Arnem answers quickly: “Do all the subjects of Broken deserve similarly stern treatment, for the equally foul behavior of the Merchant Lord’s Guard, or for the behavior of a few nobles who excuse their murderous pursuit of the Bane under the title of ‘sport’?”

The sentek takes a few steps away from the council table, toward his own quarters; and for the first time, his officers notice that an additional, large, reversed piece of hide has been hung from the heavy curtain that separates the two areas. He tears away a light covering of fabric from this hide, to reveal a detailed map, not only of the northern side of the Cat’s Paw, but of much of Davon Wood — enough to show, after generations of searching, what appears to be the general position of Okot.

“Sentek …,” breathes one round-bodied, and equally round-faced, officer called Weltherr,† Arnem’s chief mapmaker. So fascinated is the man that he cannot help but rise up and move toward the image, lifting a hand to touch it, almost as if he believes it unreal. “But this map includes not only locations of communities, but features of topography, as well. With such a rendering, we could easily complete our original task: the invasion of Davon Wood, and the destruction of the Bane and Okot.”

“I do not believe so, Weltherr,” Arnem says, returning to the map. “Yantek Korsar, I have come to see, was not only speaking of physical features of the Wood, in his final warning — he also referred to the tactics of the Bane. Remember what happened to Lord Baster-kin’s men, after all — they were destroyed on ground with which we have long been fairly familiar, within sight of the Cat’s Paw. It was the manner, not the location, of their action that was their undoing. And I do not mean for the same to happen to the Talons.”

“Sentek,” Akillus says, quietly fascinated. “You still have not told us how you were able to compose such a map.”

Arnem breathes heavily once. “I did not compose it — but to hear who did, I must exact a special pledge from all of you: nothing that you are about to hear will ever be repeated outside our company. If any man feels he cannot abide by such an oath, let him leave now.” Allowing the men a moment to absorb this statement, Arnem eventually continues, in an even quieter tone, as he slowly strides around the table: “I shall not ask of you anything that could be construed as genuinely treasonous; but as we all know, strange things have taken place during this campaign, and it may be that their explanation will implicate persons in high places in Broken. Therefore, remember that our oath as soldiers is to our kingdom and our sovereign. And keeping faith with that oath will likely lead us, now, into territory more unmapped than the most distant corners of Davon Wood, if we follow the plan that I will suggest. We begin with questions, to be followed by facts: Did it not strike any of you as strange that the Merchant Lord should have dispatched a full khotor of his own Guard to reinforce the patrols on his Plain, much less attack the Bane within the Wood, just when, by my calculation, we had learned the truth of matters in Esleben and the other towns on the Daurawah Road, and were on our way to that latter port, where we would find even worse conditions prevailing? Almost as if he did not want the army to play the crucial role in Broken’s attack on the Bane?”

“Aye,” Taankret replies, a little ruefully. “Although I would not have been the first to speak of it. Could he have been ignorant of what we were discovering, Sentek?”

“You know my habits, Taankret,” Arnem answered. “I sent dispatches to the noble lord throughout our march. And Niksar’s brother, the unfortunate Donner, had been sending pleas for help for weeks. All unanswered. And then—” Arnem reaches into a pouch in his leather armor, and produces a small handful of kernels of some kind of grain. “—there were these …” He tosses the kernels into the middle of the table, and at once, each officer half-rises to get a closer look “Do not, any of you, touch them!” the sentek says, going to wash his own hands.

“What can they be, Sentek?” asks a young junior linnet, who is clearly disturbed by the turn the conversation is taking. Arnem, returning from his basin, turns to his left. “Visimar?”

The cripple is confident in his answer: “Winter rye. Such as is stored in almost every town and village in Broken, and was evident in abundance in Esleben.”

“But,” Bal-deric says, puzzling it out, “winter rye? We are well into spring. Why should the Eslebeners still be hoarding winter rye, when it was likely needed in the city, if not the provinces, during the last and most severe winter?”

“A question that perplexed me, as well,” Arnem answers, “until my conversation with the unfortunate Donner. But our own farmers and merchants are no longer, it seems, the sole source for winter grain, nor even the principal source — northern raiders are bringing it into the kingdom, having plundered it in far-off lands, and selling it to factors of the Merchant Lord: including, I regret to say, Lord Baster-kin himself, who believes that our provincial farmers and their representatives have begun to ask prices too great for the treasury of the kingdom to bear.” Soft murmuring again circulates around the table, until Arnem goes on: “Akillus — you saw the raiders’ ships, or what was left of those vessels, in the calmer portions of the Cat’s Paw, as well as in the Meloderna — correct?”

Akillus nods certainly. “Aye, Sentek. And it did not seem clear precisely what the Bane had to do with their destruction.”

“The Bane had nothing to do with such,” Arnem replies. “Our own people destroyed them when they became aware that the merchants in Broken had found illegal, even treacherous ways to frustrate their attempts to raise prices. This grain, when spoilt, produces a poison that brings about the same disease that we identify after battles as the fire wounds—”

The murmuring at the table turns suddenly more fearful, yet Arnem pushes on: “Yet these are not kernels of the grain recently brought into our kingdom by our enemies. These are taken from the storehouses of towns such as Esleben. Supplies which those unfortunate townspeople and citizens have themselves been consuming, because they refused to underbid thieves in the competition for the grain that goes on to feed and guarantee the security of the city of Broken.”

“And so,” Fleckmester says, slowly reasoning the matter out, “it was the fire wounds that drove the people of Esleben mad — the fire wounds, or whatever name the poison takes in its other forms—”

“Gangraenum,” Visimar says quietly.

Fleckmester nods to the cripple, comprehending the term not a bit, but knowing that, if Visimar says it is so, it must indeed be so.

“The fire wounds,” Arnem explains further, “are but one form of a disease that has many names. The Lumun-jani call it the Ignis Sacer, the ‘Holy Fire.’ To the Bane, it is ‘Moonfire,’ the cause behind the most terrible forms of death among humans and animals — as your men saw up and down the river, Akillus.”

“But this,” Fleckmester continues, drawing out the logic of the argument, “this means that some of the most important things that have made our kingdom strong are now — because of the stubbornness of the people of the provinces, in combination with the avarice of the Merchants’ Council — are now weakening it …?”

“That is the predominate fact, Linnet,” Visimar replies. “In so many parts of this tale …”

“And it is now clear,” Arnem says, “that this weakness is afflicting most if not all of the provinces. Not simply because of what we observed outside Daurawah, but because, Visimar assures me, supplies of the only known medicines that Nature offers for the disease are being harvested in great quantities throughout those same regions. Furthermore, I have received written reports from several sources that the disease is thus rife.”

“But,” Weltherr says, his voice trembling with newborn fear, “we have been told that the plague was a weapon, placed in Broken’s water by Bane spies and agents.”

“And yet, were this so,” Niksar answers slowly, “would we now know that not only are two diseases are at work in Broken, but that one of them afflicts the Bane, as well as ourselves?”

“But are we so certain that one of these same diseases is at work in the Wood?” Taankret says.

Visimar glances uneasily at Arnem, who, not wishing to show any sign of the uncertainty he indeed feels, at this moment, nods his head once. The cripple then reaches down to the right side of his chair, to a pouch he has long been carrying; and from it he withdraws all the objects that were entrusted by Caliphestros to the great eagle owl, Nerthus. Placing them on the table, he identifies each in turn (although many present need no introduction to the golden arrow of the priests of Kafra) and further explains the revealing manner of each plant’s harvesting, its function in first identifying the origin of the current troubles and its role in the treatments for the diseases that are loose.

“This is all very well, Visimar,” Bal-deric says, when the old man has finished his statement, “but how come you by such knowledge, when you have been marching with us these many days?”

“From the same source as came this map,” Visimar replies.

Bal-deric eyes them both. “And you, Sentek?” he continues, coming dangerously close to impertinence. “How can you know so much of what is taking place in the city, if no royal or merchant couriers have been observed bringing information?”

“No ‘royal or merchant’ couriers, Bal-deric,” Arnem answers. “But I have received private couriers — from Lady Arnem.”

“Lady Arnem?” Taankret bellows, throwing down a chop of beef and pulling his kerchief from his chin as he stands defiantly. “Has someone dared offend your wife, Sentek?”

“I fear so, Taankret,” the sentek replies measuredly, not wishing to allow the passion of the council to run too far before its purpose. “In fact, we have just learned that Lady Arnem has been accused of leading a rebellion that has flared up throughout the Fifth District — accused by none other than Lord Baster-kin himself. I was as reluctant to acknowledge such behavior on his lordship’s part as was anyone. But we have since discovered that the district has been sealed off, and is under effective siege, with veterans of our army leading the younger men and women in resistance.”

Arnem quickly learns that he has calculated correctly: like Taankret, nearly all of his officers dispense with their food and drink, stand in indignation, and begin to utter loud condemnations of any such actions. Isadora is, the sentek has correctly reasoned, the one figure whose fate could cause such a reaction; and it is their reaction, once Arnem has quieted his officers, that will dispose them to hear even more shocking intelligence.

“I assure you again, gentlemen,” the sentek says, “no one has been more disturbed by all these revelations than have I.” Arnem remains seated, attempting to display courage even in a situation that threatens his family and therefore himself. “But there is more. The dispatches from our city do come from my wife, but these pieces of evidence”—he holds a hand out toward the withering plants and the golden arrow—“these have been entrusted to us by another source entirely. A source whose continuing existence, I daresay, many of you will not credit as possible.”

“If the honor of Lady Arnem, as well as that of our own veterans, is being questioned,” declares Weltherr, “than I assure you, Sentek, we shall credit anything as being possible.”

Silence again dominates the interior of the tent, as Arnem glances at Visimar one last time; then the commander leans further toward the center of the table on his right elbow, and all his officers lean in toward him. Finally, in a hushed whisper, the sentek says:

“We have received this aid from none other than … Caliphestros …”

Arnem’s officers recoil as if each has been struck in the face by some invisible hand; yet before any of them can utter so much as a shocked echo, loud cries of alarm are heard from without the tent, and one of the pallins who served the officers their meal rushes through the quilted entrance.

“Damn it all, Pallin!” the sentek declares, now rising to his own feet in indignation. “You had better possess vital intelligence, indeed, for you to burst in on a closed council of war unannounced!”

“I — that is — yes, I think I do, Sentek!” the pallin says, standing straight as a he can and saluting. “Warriors have been observed by the men in our outposts, approaching camp!”

“Warriors?” Arnem says. “More of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard, perhaps, come down from the mountain to see what has befallen their comrades?”

“No, sir,” the pallin says. “Only one wagon approaches from the north!”

Arnem looks suddenly annoyed again. “Well, then, why all this shrieking about ‘warriors’—”

“The warriors approach from the south, sir!” the pallin says. “A large body of Bane infantry — and under a flag of truce!”

“Truce, Sentek?” Taankret says, his skepticism plain. “The Bane understand as little of honorable truce as they do of mercy.”

Visimar now gets to his one good and one wooden leg, gripping the table for support. “I really must disagree, Linnet Taankret. These are myths, told by the Merchants’ Council over many generations, until honorable men like yourself believe them. The Bane do understand truce, and mercy, as well.”

“How can you know this, cripple?” Bal-deric asks.

“By the same means I have come by these pieces of evidence, Bal-deric,” Visimar answers. “From my onetime master, who rides, now, with the Bane. It is he who has arranged this truce; he has sent me word of as much, and that the Bane have been willing to comply with it — some reluctantly, some less so. These are the facts of which I can assure you.”

“Oh?” Taankret says, still unconvinced. “And how have you been able to learn these supposèd facts, Visimar?”

“Through methods and messengers that, again, you shall scarce credit, ere you see proof of them,” comes the cripple’s answer. “But be assured of this: no ‘sorcery’ or otherworldly power has been employed.”

Taankret’s demeanor softens. “True enough, old man — for if you truly possessed such powers, you would likely have used them in our, or at least your own, defense before now.”

“I am glad to hear you apply such logic to our predicament, Linnet,” Visimar answers, relieved. “There is much I could and would have done to aid your brave comrades, were I what the Kafran priests claim. But I, like my master, can nonetheless use the knowledge and abilities we do possess, to help our cause — and so I beg you, receive this flag of truce, and let us speak with the party that approaches.”

“That, we shall do,” Arnem announces; and yet, despite his decisive words, his manner appears genuinely perplexed. “What troubles me most immediately, however, is this single wagon that approaches from Broken. Pallin!” The young trooper who has brought the information straightens up, once more fearful of another berating. “You know nothing further of what this conveyance carries, and why?”

“No, Sentek,” the pallin answers. “Our information was only—”

At just that instant, another young scout enters the tent, as respectfully as some apparently momentous news will allow. He spots Akillus and, despite being covered in dust that has become mud by its mixture with horse and human sweat, moves to his commander at once. They exchange a few apparently astonishing pieces of information, and then Akillus dismisses the man quickly.

“Sentek,” Akillus says, “I have now learned the identities of those in the wagon, which evidently departed Broken with the greatest secrecy.” Akillus pauses, steeling his nerve. “It is your own children, Sentek.”

“My — own …,” Arnem whispers. And it takes him many moments more before he can continue: “All of them? Without their mother?”

“The scout counted but four,” Akillus says, his heart now heavy with the pain he has inflicted on the man he most admires in all the army; indeed, in all the world. “And your wife is not with them. In fact, their guardian, the driver of the wagon, is perhaps the most peculiar choice it would be possible to imagine. It is the seneschal of the Kastelgerd Baster-kin, Sentek — the man Radelfer. And, as I say, he displays no threat toward the children. Rather the opposite. He seems to be protecting them.”

Looking up suddenly, Arnem tries as best he is able to regain his composure. “Well — we face a crucial meeting, gentlemen; and my own difficulties must be left out of it.” His voice grows stronger, and he stands. “Each man to his command, and quickly, but be certain that each of your men understands that he is both ordered and obliged to observe the formal terms of truce, until he receives my personal order releasing him from those duties.”

Arnem’s officers all stand to attention, salute smartly, and depart the tent. The sounds of commands being shouted and units being marshaled begin an ever-louder but always ordered chorus, outside the tent, as Visimar remains behind to study Arnem’s continuing reaction to the momentous intelligence he has received. Finally, Sixt Arnem murmurs only, “Kafra’s stones …,” and almost immediately afterward stands and shouts: “Ernakh!” Before the briefest instant has passed, the skutaar appears from Arnem’s private quarters in the rear of the tent, and presents himself to his lord with almost as much bearing as the officers who have just departed. “You heard all that has taken place?”

“Aye, master,” Ernakh replies, eager to serve.

“Then ride north to meet the wagon,” the commander says, “and guide it here—directly here, to the rear of my tent. The children know and trust you, and even if this seneschal does not, their trust will bring about his compliance. Am I clear?”

Nodding rapidly, Ernakh salutes, then runs out of the tent to his waiting horse.

Turning to Visimar after the boy has departed, Arnem says, “Well, cripple — here is a development about which neither your master nor his faithful birds could have warned us.”

“No, Sentek,” Visimar replies, having felt it expedient, some few days before the evening on which this evening’s council of war took place, to tell the commander the truth of Caliphestros’s remarkable avian allies, so that Arnem might know just how the old man was receiving messages from his onetime teacher. “My master had a remarkable ability to communicate with creatures other than men, when I served him. And I would wager that ten years in the wilderness have done nothing save add to it. But as to why this lone wagon should be coming — at such speed, and with the passengers and driver it bears — no creature, I suspect, be it man, bird, or other, could or can guess. Not until its arrival …”

“You may be right,” Arnem says, pulling back the rear entrance to the end of his tent and gazing into the dark northern landscape. “Certainly, I cannot yet say — but before this night is done, I will determine what, by Hel, is taking place here …”

3:{ix:}

The visitors who walk under a broad white banner of truce stop in a wide line some fifty paces from the southern entrance to Arnem’s main camp; and at this distance, the Talons — who have prepared themselves for a fight, if a fight is to be offered — can discern that their opponents are not so many in number as was first reported; it was merely the order of their march that made them appear so impressive, as well as certain almost unbelievable participants in it.

At their center, the legless “sorcerer,” Caliphestros, rides astride the shoulders of the most legendary animal, not only in Davon Wood, but in Broken, as well: the famed white panther, who escaped the last of the great Tall panther hunts, that of the present Lord Baster-kin. On this astonishing pair’s right, proudly holding no more seemingly lethal weapon than an impressive whip, is a man that Visimar knows to be Yantek Ashkatar, commander of the Bane army. Yet no khotor or even fauste of troops encircle this renowned leader for his protection: only a dozen of what any experienced soldier can see are his senior officers walk behind him, and all keep their weapons sheathed. At the end of this side of Caliphestros’s apparent escort are three more faces, the male pair of which the Talons know only too well: they are the ever-troublesome, ever-enraging, yet ever-formidable Heldo-Bah, as well as the handsome but heavily resented Veloc, who has cuckolded more than a few Tall soldiers who now stand safely behind their spiked ditch, as well as their hastily but expertly constructed palisade. The female figure at the end of this wing, meanwhile, is the renowned tracker Keera, looking not only wise, but also impressive, even formidable, and therefore, perhaps unexpectedly, like the perfect anchor for the left side of the assembly.

On the opposite side of Caliphestros and the white panther are, first, a group of humbly dressed, elderly and bearded men who exude wisdom, and must, Visimar therefore reasons, be the Groba Elders, and then less than a fauste of Bane warriors, male and female, whose swords are sheathed and who, it can only be supposed, are the Elders’ only official escort.

For long moments, this delegation must remain where it stands, for Sixt Arnem is still within his tent, awaiting the arrival of the cart that carries his children from the north before he will join the conference: it being always best to know the true disposition of one’s own countrymen and allies before attempting to negotiate with one’s enemies. This being the case, it becomes the duty of Niksar and Visimar to play chief emissaries, and to depart by foot from their camp to greet their visitors, followed by Taankret, Bal-deric, Weltherr, Crupp, Akillus (who feels it only right to stay in his saddle, in order to balance the scales of the meeting just a bit), and a few other linnets, all of whom have been placed under the strictest orders to bring only minimal weapons, and to keep even these sheathed or slung so long as there is no trouble. This does not prevent Fleckmester and his men from keeping their arrows secretly nocked and at the ready as they observe from the bristling ditch, of course; but the master archer issues this order on his own authority, for neither Niksar nor especially Visimar believes it will in any manner prove necessary.

Nevertheless, the representatives of the kingdom of Broken (if such they truly are, any longer, after all they have heard and seen on their current campaign) approach the line of Wood-dwellers and their allies cautiously, particularly when they see the utterly fiendish expression on Heldo-Bah’s face, try as the gap-toothed forager may to exhibit his most somber behavior. When the two lines of opposing representatives are some ten paces apart, Niksar holds his hand up, and all become still where they stand. Searching the group before him, Arnem’s aide says, not without some admiration:

“I see no Outragers among you — a gesture, I wonder, or a deception?”

The Groba Father turns to Caliphestros, indicating that the latter will be best suited to speak for their delegation, and the legless old man says, “A gesture, I assure you — for none you see here have any great affection for that particular group of the Moon priestess’s servants.” Turning quickly to his onetime acolyte, Caliphestros cannot repress a smile, tinged with sadness as it may be. “Well, old friend — the years have been as kind to you as they have to me, I see.”

Visimar returns the smile. “But have not swayed my loyalties, master,” he says. “I am glad to see you, in whatever condition.”

“And I you, rest assured,” Caliphestros replies. “But what of Sentek Arnem? Surely we cannot proceed without him.”

“No,” Niksar says, his eyes even more transfixed by the white panther (as indeed are all those of the officers of Broken) than they are by the man who was Second Minister in their kingdom when most of them were children and a heretical sorcerer by the time they became young men. “But he should not be long. He has received new intelligence from Broken that may affect this parley. From the seneschal of the clan Baster-kin himself.”

Caliphestros’s eyes go suddenly wide, and a smile of an entirely different sort — one that unnerves Niksar, who knows nothing of the infamous outcast’s past dealings with the Merchant Lord and his servants — makes its way into his features. “Radelfer?” the old man asks. “Is this true, Visimar?”

“I myself have not seen him, master,” Visimar replies. “But while we wait for the sentek’s arrival, he suggested that we might pass the time with preliminaries.”

“Well?” Heldo-Bah suddenly queries, falling flat upon his back. “Who’s for knucklebones?”

“Heldo-Bah!” the Groba Father says. “There are protocols to be followed!”

“Well, Father,” the troublesome forager replies, bringing himself up on his elbows. “I’m simply saying, if we’re going to sit out here in the sun wasting time, why not cast a few rounds? What other sorts of ‘protocols’ for simply marking time do you suppose we might discover that we have in common?”

Veloc claps a head to his forehead. “Each time I think he has reached the limits of appalling behavior,” he announces to both sides in the negotiation, “there is some new offense. And I, as his friend, must apologize for it …”

But, because no other suggestions as to how to mark the duration of Sentek Arnem’s absence are offered, the two lines of representatives continue to face each other stone-facedly for a few moments more, listening to Heldo-Bah rattle the set of bones he keeps in a sack looped to his belt, until finally, Akillus and several other Broken linnets take the forager at his word, and a game of knucklebones breaks out over the objections of both the Groba and Niksar. Yet these more senior representatives are in turn quieted, in the first instance by Caliphestros, and then by Visimar, each of whom has seen the chance for informal good relations to be opened by the game. So strange does the sight become that Fleckmester’s men, a little out of envy and a little out of greed, begin to look back toward their sentek’s tent, in an effort to see if they might not be granted permission to join in the gambling. This causes the ever more bewildered Fleckmester himself (who in truth would join in the game himself, if he could) to glance back to Arnem’s tent, as well, where, he sees, an ordinary laborer’s wagon has appeared at the back entrance.

“Eyes forward, boys, eyes forward,” Fleckmester tells the troops who man the camp’s southern fortifications, be they archers or no. “We must continue to ensure that, however things may look upon the Plain, the safety of our comrades is guaranteed. As for what is taking place in the sentek’s tent, however …” He glances at the quilted walls once more. “That is not our concern, nor is it possible for us to imagine …”

What is taking place within the sentek’s tent is, on the one hand, a wholly ordinary and domestic scene — a man being reunited with all, save one, of his children — and on the other, an extraordinary one: for the fact that Radelfer has been the children’s guide out of the city would seem to indicate that something not only unusual but, perhaps, treacherous has taken place within Broken’s walls. The seneschal of the most powerful clan in the kingdom should not have to flee like a criminal from those confines, any more than should the offspring of the kingdom’s supreme military commander: yet this appears to be precisely what has happened. Arnem’s children have already related to their father (for the greater part through Anje’s words) the tale of how their mother attempted to alert the Merchant Lord to the source of the rose fever in the Fifth District, and was met in return with ultimatums, siege, and talk of criminality. Throughout this account, Radelfer has stood at attention near the closed rear entryway of the tent without comment: Arnem knows that the seneschal, despite his current employment by Baster-kin, was once a member of the Talons; and that he must have formed, given the two posts, opinions as to what is happening. The sentek rightly suspects that Radelfer’s momentary reason for keeping sentinel is primarily to ensure the safety of the sentek and his children, as well as to prevent any besides Arnem himself from hearing the strange story told by the children.

“But Mother was right,” Anje declares. “The strange water under the southwestern wall of the city was the cause of the rose fever, and once the people in that part of the city stopped using it, the fever ceased to spread.”

“It’s true, Father,” says Golo. “But, instead of being rewarded for helping the people, Lord Baster-kin said the God-King and the Grand Layzin had decreed that Mother, and anyone who had or continued to assist her, should be outlaws — even Dagobert! — and that our district should be cut off from the rest of the city and destroyed.”

“Wait, now, Golo!” objects the pious young Dalin; and then he turns to Arnem. “We do not know that these orders came from the God-King and the Grand Layzin themselves, Father.”

“Your son speaks truly, Sentek,” Radelfer says, quietly but firmly, from the shadowy rear of the tent. “We know no such thing …”

Emboldened, Dalin continues: “Only Lord Baster-kin himself visited the place where the unhealthy water flowed, only he argued with Mother, and only his men played any part in cutting the district off from the rest of the city. The sentek of the regular army who usually watches over that section of the walls — Sentek Gerfrehd, he told us is his name — is a good and obedient man, with whom Mother speaks, from time to time. And he knows that he is not allowed to attack his fellow citizens of Broken, even in the Fifth District, simply because the Merchant Lord wishes it. That is a command that must first come from the God-King, and have your own approval — and it has not been given either of these things.”

“Gerfrehd,” Arnem muses quietly. “Yes, your mother has written to tell me of their conversations, and I was pleased, for I know the man well — as honorable an officer as has ever held high rank in the regular army …” The sentek then quickly and silently glances up to Radelfer, who simply nods once in return, as if to say, Yes — it is as complex and bizarre as it seems …

“Which is why I do not understand why we were forced to leave home, like common criminals,” Dalin complains.

“Oh, most un-common, surely, Master Dalin,” Radelfer offers with a small smile, raising the sentek’s estimation of the man. “Allow yourselves that much, at least.”

But the attempt at friendly humor is lost on Dalin: “I don’t care!” he states emphatically. “I only know that I have been forced further away from my duties to the God-King.”

“Dalin …,” Sixt Arnem warns, trying not to be too stern, but having heard enough.

Young Gelie has stayed on her father’s knee since she and her siblings arrived in the tent, and now declares, as emphatically as is her custom, “Mother was doing much good for the district, Father, but the entire situation really did become frightening — Lord Baster-kin’s men built their wall so quickly, I was afraid that we would be captured forever! If it had not been for Radelfer—”

“And that is another thing,” Dalin says, not a little suspiciously. “Why should the Merchant Lord’s own seneschal have defied his orders and made himself an outlaw, simply to help Mother?”

“Oh, don’t be such a clever little brat,” Golo says. “Wasn’t it obvious that the situation was quickly becoming far more dangerous?”

“It’s true, Dalin,” Anje says, putting her hands to her hips — much as her mother might do, Arnem observes with a melancholy smile. “Even you should have been able to see that much. As to anything else, we ought to allow Radelfer, who does understand the matter fully, to explain it to Father.”

“Though one thing is plain enough already, Father,” says Gelie. “You would hardly believe how much Mother’s help and instruction, along with the work of the old soldiers, have made life better in the district.” Her young face screws up in puzzlement. “And yet, that only seemed to make Lord Baster-kin’s men angrier—you would think it would be the other way round, wouldn’t you?”

Arnem’s eyes turn up to meet Radelfer’s, and he nods. “Yes. I would, Gelie. And so …” Arnem lifts his youngest child up and sets her on the woolen floor of the tent. “There is a great table full of freshly roasted beef and vegetables in the next room, my young ones; why don’t you all go and have something to eat while Radelfer and I talk about what has happened?”

A general chorus of enthusiasm — one that includes even Dalin’s voice — rises up from the children, making it clear that, whatever other improvements Isadora may have effected in the Fifth District, supplies of food to that beleaguered section of Broken have not increased of late. Golo and Gelie lead the dash through the heavy curtain partition, with Anje urging all of her younger siblings to slow down and behave themselves. But Arnem’s eldest daughter pauses at the partition; and, making sure the other children are engrossed in the food, she returns to the sentek and Radelfer despite her own hunger.

“That is not all I was to tell you, Father,” Anje says, now appearing more plainly worried. “Although Mother did not wish the younger ones to hear it.”

“I suspected as much, Anje,” Sixt Arnem says, holding his oldest daughter tightly, as if it will give him some reminder that his wife still lives. “Tell me, then.”

Anje — ever her mother’s most sensible child — speaks in a remarkably controlled voice. “Lord Radelfer can tell you of it far better than can I. If he will be so kind.”

As Arnem continues to keep one arm around Anje, Radelfer says, “I am only too happy to oblige, Maid Anje — if you will promise in return that you will eat, for you are exhausted and have been without proper food for too long.”

To this, Anje only nods. “All right, Lord—”

“I am no ‘lord,’ Maid Anje,” Radelfer says. “Although I appreciate the honor you do me by calling me such. Now — get yourself some food.”

Anje nods again, and then follows her siblings. Radelfer turns to Arnem, his face displaying both unease and admiration. “Your daughter is brave and wise, Sentek,” he says, “just as her mother was at her age.”

“You knew my lady even then, Seneschal?” Arnem asks, amazed.

“I did — and I shall tell you more of that in a moment,” Radelfer replies. “As well as of the miraculous changes she has brought about in the Fifth District, assisted by your son and by an old comrade of mine that you may remember — Linnet Kriksex.”

“Kriksex?” Arnem replies. “Yes, I recall both the name and the man — he was with us at the Atta Pass, among many other engagements, before he was grievously wounded.”

“Not so grievously that he has not protected your wife, in the company of other veterans, from the terrible change that has taken place—”

Radelfer stops speaking when he grows aware of a presence; and, turning, both men see a young face poking through the rear entrance of the tent: Ernakh’s.

“Excuse me, Sentek,” the youth says quietly, “but I was wondering if I might ask the seneschal a question?”

“One question only, Ernakh,” Arnem says, increasingly anxious to know what is happening to his wife and eldest son. “Then go and join the other children, and get something to eat.”

At this, Ernakh enters the tent fully, making sure to close its flaps tight behind him, and turns to look up at Radelfer. “It is only—” he says haltingly and fearfully; “My mother, sir — why did she not come out with the sentek’s children?”

Radelfer smiles, and puts a hand to the boy’s shoulder. “Lady Arnem urged your mother to leave, Ernakh,” he says. “But she would not abandon her mistress. Yet there was probably greater danger in the journey than in staying behind, so you may put your young mind at ease.”

Ernakh smiles with relief, then nods once as he says, “Thank you, sir.” Turning to Arnem, he repeats, “And thank you, Sentek — I only wanted to be certain.” The skutaar then runs out into the council room, where he renews his friendships with the Arnem children.

The sentek turns to Radelfer. “What is the truth of the matter, Seneschal? Would my children have been safer in the city, and was my lady merely being exceedingly cautious by sending them out?”

Radelfer sighs, then takes the cup of wine and the seat that Arnem — who also sits and drinks a little, out of uneasiness, if nothing else — offers him. “I wish I could say that I had been entirely truthful, Sentek,” Radelfer begins. “In fact, the situation in the city has grown vastly more dangerous — especially for Lady Arnem because of my master’s past feelings for her, which seem to have returned, if indeed they ever truly departed.” The seneschal pauses, staring into his wine. “Although I suppose I must refer to the Merchant Lord as my former master, now — and I am not at all certain that such is a bad thing … But the peril to your lady, as well as your district? That, I fear, is truly heightened, which is why I have come. Never, in what has been his troubled life, have I seen Rendulic Baster-kin so full of anger, so possessed by schemes that have driven him wild with passionate desire and a murderous determination.”

Arnem feels the steady pain of dread growing in his heart. “You say the situation in Broken has changed, Radelfer,” he replies. “Is that why I have received no written word from my wife, of late, when previously she had been writing so regularly?”

“Aye, Sentek,” Radelfer says. “Lord Baster-kin has closed all avenues of communication between the Fifth District and the rest of the city, as well as the rest of the kingdom. No food enters, and few citizens escape. I only passed into the area and then back out, because of the Guard’s knowledge that I am the seneschal of the Merchant Lord’s household: I could therefore hide your children in the wagon I took from our stables.”

“The Guard?” Arnem echoes. “But my wife’s last dispatch, as well as my own children, reported that Sentek Gerfrehd and the regular army were atop the walls.”

“As they were,” Radelfer answers with a nod. “But, just before our departure, his lordship was able to convince the God-King, through the Grand Layzin, to order the regular army to confine itself to its own Fourth District, because they would not participate in the planned destruction of the Fifth. The second and last khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard now man the walls above that unfortunate district on all sides, and are preparing, after they have starved its inhabitants, to burn it to the ground. Therefore, if you now plan to march back to Broken, as I suspect you do, you cannot expect to be welcomed. For his lordship has also convinced the God-King — again through the Grand Layzin — to declare both the Talons and the residents of the Fifth to be in league with the Bane.”

Arnem’s face fills with an expression of both crushing betrayal confirmed and even more terrible fears realized: for what Radelfer has told him is no more than the logical continuation of the conclusions he has already been forced to reach, at Visimar’s insistence, concerning Lord Baster-kin’s intentions regarding the kingdom’s most elite troops; yet he had not thought that such a charge, in all its deadly absurdity, would ever be extended to his wife and eldest son, to say nothing of the people of his native district.

“In league with the Bane …,” the sentek repeats, in no more than a dreadful whisper. He stands and begins to pace, running a hand through his hair roughly, as if he will drag comprehension from within his skull. But after several moments of silent bewilderment, as well as being alerted to the full extent of the danger by the laughter of his children and Ernakh from behind the thick, rich hides that compose the partition inside his tent, he can conclude no more than, “Madness … He cannot be in his right mind, Radelfer!”

The seneschal shrugs, having already had at least some time to adapt to the terrible turn that Rendulic Baster-kin’s mind has taken. “On the contrary, Sentek — I have known his lordship since he was but a boy, and I have rarely seen him speaking and behaving so seemingly lucidly.” Pausing, Radelfer drinks deep from his goblet, and looks up at Arnem. “I doubt very much that you have heard he not only witnessed but presided over the death of his own son.”

Arnem spins on the seneschal in horror. “Adelwülf? He allowed him to die?”

“He arranged it,” Radelfer replies; and there is a sadness beneath the even tone of his words that he is very obviously working hard to suppress. “In the Stadium. As good as served the lad up to one of the wild beasts, there — he explained that he wished to frighten the wealthy young men who frequent that place into serving with the khotor of the Guard that has just marched on the Wood.”

“And been destroyed to the last man by their arrogance and utter lack of professional understanding,” Arnem says, in an angry reply.

Radelfer takes in this information with the same labored steadiness that has marked the whole of his conversation with Sixt Arnem. “Have they?” he murmurs. “Well … then his lordship might have spared the boy so horrifying a fate, and let him die fighting our enemies.”

“If indeed they are our enemies,” Arnem says quickly. Radelfer’s features become confused, but before he can ask the sentek’s meaning, Arnem has set his fists heavily on the table before Radelfer and — in a voice measured enough that his children will not hear, but no less passionate — demands, “But why let his own son, his heir, die in the first place, much less arrange for it to happen?”

Very carefully, Radelfer stares into his goblet, and states with thinly veiled meaning, “He intends to have a second family. With a woman who, unlike his wretched, dying wife, is someone of strength, someone he has long admired — a woman who will, he believes, give him sons that will be true, loyal, and healthy servants of the kingdom.” Pausing to take a quaff of wine, Radelfer finally says, “Just as she has given you such children, Sentek …”

Once again, Sixt Arnem is momentarily stunned by how much more elaborate Lord Baster-kin’s plotting has run than he or even Visimar suspected. “My wife?” he eventually whispers. “He intends to steal my wife?”

“It is not theft,” Radelfer replies, still with remarkable control of his emotions, “if the former husband is dead. And your lordship has been daily expecting confirmation that both you and your men have died from the pestilence that is ravaging the provinces.” Staring into the distance, the seneschal reflects: “But instead, you are all still here, and the First Khotor of the Guard, along with the sons of most of the prominent houses in Broken, lie dead in the Wood …”

“And what of my children, Radelfer?” Arnem demands. “What was to become of them?”

Turning his head to the rough wool beneath his feet, Radelfer muses, with his first real display of remorse, “Your children would simply have been declared unfortunate casualties of the destruction of the Fifth District. Your insistence on remaining in that part of the city, even when you have attained command of the army, has always caused widespread consternation among the royal family, the priesthood, and the merchant classes in the city. The deaths of your children would have been laid to your own inscrutable stubbornness, rather than at the door of his lordship …”

Arnem is silent for a few moments, scarcely able to believe what he has heard. “But—why? Why, Radelfer, does the Merchant Lord turn on his own people in this manner? Or on my family? I have never voiced anything but support for him.”

“I can tell you what lies behind his actions, Sentek,” Radelfer says. “But in order to explain the situation fully, I must first tell you things that no one in Broken knows, save myself. The one other who even guessed at the truth paid the most awful price imaginable, simply for his attempt to be truthful and of assistance to the clan Baster-kin.”

Arnem ponders this statement for a moment. “Radelfer — would that ‘other’ have been, by any chance, Caliphestros?”

Radelfer looks up, wholly surprised. “Aye, Sentek,” he answers. “But how can you have guessed that?”

Sitting back and taking a deep sip of wine, Arnem says, “It may interest you to know, Seneschal, that Caliphestros not only survived the Halap-stahla, but is at this moment less than a quarter-league outside the southern perimeter of this camp, in the company of various Bane leaders, all of whom await my arrival under a flag of truce.”

Radelfer, stunned for a moment, eventually murmurs, “I see … The tales that the Bane merchants spread are true, then … It does seem almost too fantastic.”

“Not so fantastic,” Arnem replies, “as the mount it is said he rides: none other than the legendary white panther of Davon Wood. Apparently, she is there now, as well — amazing nearly all of my Talons.”

Radelfer considers the matter for a long moment, then grows far more restless. “Sentek,” he finally says, “if the Bane and Caliphestros are in earnest about their desire to parley — and I pray that they are — then we have greater cause for hope than I had dared believe …”

3:{x:}

The seneschal goes about finishing the full tale of young Rendulic Baster-kin and the healer’s apprentice once known only as Isadora, as the sentek’s children and Ernakh eagerly laugh and fill their bellies beyond the tent’s partition. By the time that Arnem and Radelfer take horse to join the meeting south of the Talons’ camp, the sentek, having made certain that the children will be properly guarded in his tent during his absence, has also made certain that he has allowed the surprise and shock that he first felt upon Radelfer’s revelations to wane, so that they will not dominate his behavior during the parley to come. Yet now the sentek has been made aware, not only of how far back the history between Isadora and the Merchant Lord reaches, but of the very intimate and dangerous nature of it, as well as of a good many more previously unknown facts concerning Rendulic Baster-kin’s life that finally worried Radelfer enough to risk his own life in an effort to save, if not Isadora herself, then at least most of her children, as she asked. By the time they ride toward the southern gate of the Talons’ camp, Arnem has become as convinced as is the fugitive seneschal that no good can come of events as they are presently configured in the city. Broken’s greatest soldier will need to convince his own officers to march, not into Davon Wood, but back up Broken’s mountain — and he will need, as well, to plead that the military arm of the Bane, along with the legless sorcerer Caliphestros and his onetime acolyte, Visimar, support them in their effort, and embrace entirely the changes in outlook and, perhaps, loyalties required for any such scheme to succeed.

It is therefore no omen of success (or is it?) that, as the Ox and the mount with which Arnem has provided Radelfer storm out of the Talons’ camp and thunder toward the meeting place of the truce between the two opposing lines of leaders, the principle sound that they both hear and see from afar is that of a certain notorious, file-toothed Bane laughing as he presides over an apparent game of some sort, one being played among Arnem’s own officers and many of the Bane leaders. Unnerved by the strangely inappropriate activity, Arnem rides on, unnoticed by the bone-casters ahead.

“I ask you, Linnet,” Arnem can hear the infamously ugly Bane he knows must be Heldo-Bah shouting in derision, as the Ox draws closer beside Radelfer’s mount. Heldo-Bah has recognized Niksar’s rank by the silver claws, the color of his cloak, and the air of authority he projects over his men. “Is this any way for the senior representative from your accursèd city — well, the most senior yet present — to face the most important encounter between your own and our peoples since the days that your Mad King began throwing the less than perfect in body and mind down off your mountain full of marehs and skehsels two hundred years ago? By not honoring his gambling debts?”

“I have told you,” Niksar says, “I will honor them, it is simply that my own store of silver is back within my tent—”

“Ah, Linnet,” Heldo-Bah replies airily, “if I had a piece of gold for every time I have heard an excuse like that …”

Now it is Caliphestros’s turn to erupt uncontrollably, declaring for but an instant, “Heldo-Bah! Will nothing stop this idiotic exchange of—”

Then comes the sound of hard-pounding horses’ hooves; and the old man looks up to see Sentek Arnem and Radelfer bearing down on their position with ever-greater haste. “Ah!” Caliphestros judges, allowing himself a smile that might be taken for a smirk, in a lesser being. “Well — apparently there may be. Let us see how greatly you feel like disrupting this all-important occasion when faced with both the commander of the Talons and the seneschal of the clan Baster-kin, Heldo-Bah, you impossible student of perversion …”

Himself turning to see the same impressive sight, Heldo-Bah’s face goes a little pale: he straightens himself into something resembling a martial posture, and immediately grows silent. Throughout both sides of the parley lines, men return to their place of rank and draw themselves upright, silently leaving the knucklebones and the monies involved in the game untouched.

Even through his attempt at dignity, Heldo barks out, “No one touches the goods!”

Further comment from the most irrepressible of foragers is silenced, however, when Sentek Arnem bursts through to the spot where the game had been taking place. Sixt Arnem rides first to face Visimar, then crosses half the gap between the lines to study Caliphestros and the white panther in amazement. “So it is true, Caliphestros,” the sentek says. “Your former acolyte’s claim that you survived your punishment was more than fable. I confess that I did not fully credit it until this moment.”

“Understandably, Sixt Arnem,” Caliphestros says, his face a mask of inscrutably complex emotions: for the last time the legless old scholar had set eyes on this soldier, he had been a full man being cut to pieces. “Although I am not certain which of us is, right now, in the more unenviable position …”

Arnem can only nod grimly.

“Radelfer,” Caliphestros says, with a nod. “I confess to some satisfaction that you are here. It at least proves my suspicion that you were ever a man of honor, who has come to realize his moral predicament.”

Radelfer nods back at the compliment. “Lord Caliphestros. I, too, am pleased that you somehow survived your ordeal, for the charges against you were baseless.”

“Indeed,” Caliphestros says. “But that is the heart of this entire matter, is it not?” Radelfer nods again, although Arnem’s features become puzzled. “What I refer to, Sentek,” Caliphestros explains, “is the nature of the most dangerous men in Broken — perhaps the world. Do you know to whom I refer?”

Arnem shrugs. “I should think to evil men.”

But Caliphestros shakes his head. “No. Evil, when it truly exists, is far too easily detected to be of the greatest danger. The most dangerous men in the world are those who — for reasons of their own — put their names and services at the disposal of what they see, at the time, as good causes. The greatest, the truest evil, then, is that undertaken by good men who cannot see or, worse, will not see the wickedness they serve. And there is one such man in Broken, perhaps the last of his breed, whose power and motivations have long made him a source of profound concern.”

Arnem nods grimly. “You refer to me.”

But Caliphestros seems surprised. “To you, Sentek? I do not. But more of such philosophical matters at a later time. We have pressing business to discuss, without delay.”

“Indeed — I see that you have called for truce, Caliphestros,” the sentek replies. “May I safely assume, then, that you, like your former acolyte, have somehow found it in your soul to forgive my participation in your torture and intended abandonment to death?”

“You may assume nothing, Sentek,” Caliphestros replies. “For it is not I who have called for truce.”

“No?” Arnem asks. “Well, it cannot have been the member of your party who was presiding over the game of knucklebones as I approached, surely.”

“No,” Caliphestros says, leaning over, stroking the white panther’s neck, in a motion both vague and clearly threatening toward his opponents, and glancing at the now-fearful Heldo-Bah with a deep anger. “It would be neither my place nor his to assert such authority within the Bane tribe, nearly all of whom were as ignorant or uncertain of my continued existence as were you and your people, until a matter of days ago. You must address yourself to the Groba Father and his Elders, who alone speak for the Bane. Were it up to me …” And at this instant both the old man and the panther look up as one, Caliphestros’s slate grey eyes and Stasi’s brilliant green orbs seeming to contain an inscrutable sentiment: “Were it up to me, I might well have allowed every soldier in the Broken army to enter Davon Wood, to share in the fate already met, and so richly deserved, by the khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard.” But then Caliphestros’s manner softens. “Although that is likely my half-legs, and not my mind, speaking.”

Arnem nods knowingly. “I believe so,” he says, his tone contrite. “For of all people, I suspect that you know that to speak of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard and the true soldiers of Broken, especially the Talons that face you now, as if they were in any way similar, does neither my men nor your wisdom justice.”

“True,” Caliphestros replies. “And that is the only reason why I am here …”

Still attempting practicality, Arnem nods and states, “Your attention to protocol is wisely worded, and I shall heed it.” He then looks at the man who, by his slightly superior appearance and bearing, he takes to be the Bane leader. “You are the Groba Father, then?”

The Father, who more than makes up in courage what he lacks in height, takes one or two steps forward. “I am, Sentek,” he says with great courage, earning him respect among members of both lines of the truce. “And perhaps it would, as my friend Lord Caliphestros intimates, be the most honest way to begin this discussion by telling you that the Merchant Lord might have sent emissaries, rather than his personal Guard, to us, and together we might have addressed the terrible ailments that we now know afflict your people as well as, at least in the case of what Lord Caliphestros calls the rose fever, our own. But instead, he chose our moment of weakness to attempt to achieve the long-cherished, inexplicable desire of your God-King and the Kafran priests to destroy our tribe.” Taking one deep, steadying breath, the Father finishes: “Which, I gather, was your original reason for leaving the walls of your foul city, as well.”

“Not our reason, Father,” Arnem says grimly. “Our orders. But know this — that same order cost me both my teacher and my oldest friend—”

The Groba Father nods. “Yantek Korsar.”

“As well as Gerolf Gledgesa,” Caliphestros adds solemnly.

Surprised, Arnem looks for a moment to Caliphestros, and then at Visimar. “Well — whatever ‘science’ you two practice, I continue to learn why it terrified the priests of Kafra so. For this is not knowledge I expected you to possess.”

Caliphestros shrugs. “In the first instance, simply an accident of discovery, Sentek,” he says. “In the second, a communication from Visimar. There was no great mystery in either case. But please — proceed …”

Arnem resumes, still a little unnerved by Visimar’s and now Caliphestros’s ability to state matters of fact before the sentek himself can reveal them, “That order not only cost myself and my kingdom such men, but was issued long before we knew of any diseases at large throughout either your or our own people, or of any attempt to remake the city of Broken itself by use of violent force. Had these facts been known to me in advance … I can say that I should not have been willing to play a part in them.”

“Some would say that you ought to have questioned such orders, nevertheless,” Caliphestros declares flatly. “Yantek Korsar certainly did — and I have seen his body hanging along the banks of the Cat’s Paw, as a result.”

Arnem blanches considerably, before murmuring, “Have you, indeed …?” Then he uses his commander’s discipline to try to recover his composure, and looks to the Groba Father. “And would you, sir, also have expected me to thus disregard orders? It is well and good for exiles and men of the shadows to talk thus—” He glances at Caliphestros. “But could you forgive such impertinence from the man I now suspect to be at once one of our most formidable and most honorable opponents, over the years — Yantek Ashkatar?” Arnem lifts a respectful finger to indicate the stout Bane commander with the coiled whip, who, in his turn, draws himself up more proudly.

Considering the question momentarily, the Groba Father replies, “No, Sentek Arnem. We likely could not. Very well, then. We shall accept your answer in the spirit of this truce and this … negotiation. But the Groba will ask you an equally direct and crucial question, in return, one that I hope you can answer in the same manner—” Now stepping further to the nearly precise midway point between the two lines of negotiators and the spot where stands the Ox, with his rider sitting high above, and earning still more respect among the officers of the Talons for doing so, the Groba Father locks gazes with Arnem fully before asking:

“Will you, Sentek, agree to having your eyes and hands bound, and in that condition, to accompanying our party to Okot, there to observe the full effects that the fever with which your people have poisoned the Cat’s Paw have wrought, and to discuss what our forces may do together to bring a halt to the crisis, both for your people’s sake and for our own? Lord Caliphestros seems to think that you will — but I confess to my own doubts. You see, as a younger trader, I once spent a very long night beneath the Merchants’ Hall in Broken …”

Arnem sits back in his saddle: plainly, this not a question that he has anticipated.

“It is the simplest way in which to demonstrate to you how at least the one disease — the rose fever — is spread,” says Caliphestros. “As well as how and where both it and the Ignis Sacer—the Holy Fire — may be originating within the city and kingdom of Broken: which, I believe I have determined, is indeed their source — a determination that your own wife, I suspect, has made, which is part of the reason she is now so persecuted.”

“My wife?” Arnem echoes. “You have been in communication with my wife? And you know where the fever originates, Caliphestros?” Arnem says, shock following upon shock. “For we have already determined, with Visimar’s and, I suspect, your aid, that the rose fever taints the waters of the Cat’s Paw. How can you know its origin more exactly?”

“In good time,” Caliphestros responds. “Finally, the journey to Okot will also give me a chance to show you how the fabled walls of Broken may at last be breached and the Merchant Lord defeated, should you deem it right — or, more to the point, necessary — to do so. For you see, after many years of study, I have at last discovered the meaning of, and the solution to, the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone.”

Arnem’s face betrays shock, once more, and this time it is a shock shared by the Broken commanders behind him. “Truly, old man? Then that riddle was not merely one more fancy of our founding king, Oxmontrot — whom men such as Lord Baster-kin insist on calling ‘mad’—in the years before his death?”

“The longer I live, Sentek,” Caliphestros replies, “the less I believe that any of Oxmontrot’s thoughts were ‘fancies’—or that he was mad, at all.” The old man sits back on Stasi’s shoulders. “Well, Sixt Arnem — will you agree to the Father’s proposition, and come to the place your superstitious citizens call the center of all that is malevolent?”

“Sentek — no, you cannot!” Niksar whispers urgently, and the other officers of the Talons murmur like warnings.

“Don’t listen to that man, Sentek,” Heldo-Bah quickly interjects. “He still owes me money!”

“I have told you, forager,” Niksar replies angrily, “the money is in my tent—”

“I shall of course stay within the Talons’ camp,” announces Ashkatar, taking a step forward of his own and attempting to quash this momentary, foolish squabble. “As a guarantee of Sentek Arnem’s safety. So shall the foragers who brought Lord Caliphestros to us, in the first place.”

Heldo-Bah’s eyes suddenly look as if they will burst. “What?” he fairly screams. “I will be damned if I will do any such thing!”

“You will be damned, whatever your actions!” Keera declares, quietly but passionately. “Which is why we thought it best not to consult you on the matter.” She turns and takes the few steps needed to put her angry face in his. “In the name of our people, in the name of my family that saved you, in the name of my children, who, for whatever innocent reasons of their own, love you as they would any true uncle, you will do this thing, Heldo-Bah!”

Realizing that he has already been utterly outmaneuvered, Heldo-Bah allows his face and shoulders to sag with displeasure. “Very well,” he at length replies.

“It will at the least allow you to collect your silver from Linnet Niksar,” Veloc says tauntingly.

“And so — bring forth a blindfold, Visimar,” the sentek says, glancing at Caliphestros. “But I will make one request: may we make our visit as brief as possible? For it has been brought to my attention that you are correct in assuming my wife is in grave danger, Lord Caliphestros, and my men and I must march at once to her relief — a march upon which I should be proud to have the Bane army accompany us.” Arnem turns his eyes to the Bane leader. “Father?”

“We may be brief,” says the Father in reply, impressed by Arnem’s courage and invitation, both. “So long as we are thorough, as well.”

Arnem agrees with a silent nod, and looks again at the remarkable man atop the equally remarkable panther. “I assume your former acolyte will be accompanying us, my lord?”

Caliphestros smiles, now: the true smile of a man who has begun to be restored. “You assume correctly, Sentek …,” he says, at which Visimar brings forward a strip of clean cotton that Niksar has reluctantly produced for him.

“Must I, too, bind my eyes, master?” Visimar asks Caliphestros.

“You need not,” the latter replies with a small laugh. “But you must stop calling me ‘master.’ If I have learned nothing else from the last ten years, and from this noble tribe that has survived in so harsh a wilderness, it is that such titles, while they may belong within the kingdom of Broken, have no place outside it.”

“Then bind my eyes alone,” Arnem repeats, as the Groba Father issues a last set of quiet instructions to Ashkatar and Keera, and they then begin to make their way to the line of the Broken soldiers. “And do not despair, Niksar — for you must command, now, and that will be worry enough.” The sentek smiles briefly. “That and — paying your losses …” Arnem studies the faces of his “captors,” then dismounts the Ox, steps forward, and bids his mount farewell as he prepares to submit to the binding of his eyes.

At this moment, Caliphestros allows Stasi to stray somewhat closer to Arnem. It is not the Ox’s being led back to the line of the Talons by Niksar that causes the legless old philosopher to so approach: for both Arnem and the Ox know that, if plunged into a fury, the panther could take down even so impressive and mature a Broken warhorse as Arnem’s, and likely would: the last time Stasi saw such an animal, after all, was on that terrible day that her family was lost to her, seemingly forever. Rather, the old scholar desires a moment of confidentiality with the man he long ago and correctly surmised would be the only possible choice to fill Yantek Korsar’s position as commander of both the Talons and the army of Broken: “Again I urge you to remember one thing, above all, on this journey, Sentek,” he says. “The actors in this drama may all be playing far different roles than you have been trained to believe. Keep your mind open to the full range of possibilities, for such is the only true path to knowledge. Of any kind.”

Arnem smiles: a genuine and conciliatory expression of hope that the two men may soon be reconciled. “Ever the pedant, even without your legs, eh, Caliphestros?” he says, in such a way that the panther’s rider cannot but laugh again at his own manner. “Well, fear not,” Arnem adds. “I am prepared to heed your advice, I assure you.”

With Arnem’s sight securely if temporarily taken from him, all parties to the truce begin the processions — one short, one longer — back to their respective safe territories, when Arnem suddenly stops and turns back toward his own men.

“Radelfer,” the blindfolded sentek calls. “Will you tell my children where I have gone, and that I have every expectation of returning tomorrow?”

“I shall, Sentek,” Radelfer responds. “And, I believe I can now tell them that they need not fear for your safety — that you travel with an honorable people.”

And it is in this mood of perhaps promising confusion that the meeting under the snapping sheet of white cotton concludes, and the development of events that will only be more decisive commences.

“Feel and smell the breeze,” Arnem says, being led away by Visimar behind Caliphestros and Stasi.

“I have done so for quite some time, now,” Caliphestros answers, turning toward the Broken commander as they reach the members of the Bane Groba.

“It heralds rain,” the Groba Father comments, as the procession back toward the Fallen Bridge begins. “Will that interfere with what you have planned, Lord Caliphestros?”

A deeply satisfied smile enters the scholar’s features. “Only if it arrives too early, Father. But that it will arrive?” The old man seems for a moment almost anxious for events to unfold. “On that, I am relying — on that, the solution of the Riddle of Water, Fire, and Stone in our favor absolutely depends …”

3:{xi:}† The “Battle” for Broken