The River of Shadows

The Black Tongue

8 Modobrin 941

237th day from Etherhorde

When the keel of the fishing-boat dug into the sandy shore, Ibjen was first out: the journey had turned his stomach. And it had been bad, Pazel thought: the open boat with its one spindly mast and weird ribbed sail flapping about like a fin, no lamps on it anywhere, cutting through all that darkness with the wind howling over the peaks, the bright stars wheeling as they pitched and heaved, ice floes looming up suddenly, sometimes even grinding against their sides… He shuddered, and leaped out himself, and winced as his feet sank to the ankles in the watery sand. Freezing, even at midsummer. How did they manage, those fisherfolk, year after icebound year?

At least the moon had sailed above the peaks: a full moon, by which the snowcaps dimly glowed. The second boat drew up beside the first, and the fisherman’s uncle leaped barefoot into the water and pulled it in.

“And to think I’d hoped to sleep a little,” growled Big Skip, wading ashore as the dogs leaped out around him. He cursed as the nearest one shook its wet coat vigorously, then opened the front of his coat. “Are you well, my ladies?” he asked.

“Alive, anyway,” said Ensyl as she and Myett crawled groggily to his shoulders.

The mizralds kept looking at the shore, as though anxious to be gone from it. Hercol counted coins into the fisherman’s hand. The man’s wife took one and studied the strange Arquali designs. “It’s a fake,” she announced. “There’s a tol-chenni on this coin.”

“It’s real gold, I bit one,” said the fisherman’s brother.

“That’s the face of His Supremacy Magad the Fifth you just gnashed,” said Dastu coldly. “You understand? He’s our Emperor, our King.”

The fisherman’s son laughed. “King of the tol-chenni. King of the monkeys, the beasts!” He hooted and beat his chest. His uncle laughed, but his father scowled at him, embarrassed. Pazel looked at the wrinkled, wind-chapped creature. Was he, like Ibjen’s father, just old enough to recall the days before the plague?

Soon all the chilly passengers were ashore. Hercol placed the twentieth coin in the man’s palm, then smiled and added another fistful. “Ask them not to speak of us to strangers, Pazel,” he said. “There is still a chance we might be pursued.”

The family waved goodbye, delight beginning to show on their faces as they realized there was no trick.

“Come,” urged Hercol. “We have gained a few miles on Arunis, I think. Let us gain a few more.”

He started at once up the gray, wind-sculpted beach. As the others straggled after him, Pazel heard a shout from the old fisherman. He turned: the mizrald was splashing up to him.

“You will go down the Ansyndra, and across the burn? What you call Black Tongue?”

“Well, yes,” said Pazel. “There’s no other way, is there?”

The mizrald shook his head. “No other way. No other way except with wings.”

“Wings would be dandy,” said Pazel.

The fisherman nodded solemnly.

“Well,” said Pazel, “goodbye.”

“You go at night, eh? Only at night across the burn. Darkly, quietly: that’s how it’s done. Tell your friends. Because by daylight-no, no.”

“No?”

The mizrald drew his finger across his throat. “No, no and no.”

He stared at Pazel with concern, and looked as though he wished to say more. Then (as his family howled in protest) he pulled the youth down and planted a kiss upon his forehead. Then he turned and pushed his boat offshore.

Stunned, Pazel hurried after the others. They were trudging west along the rim of the lake, toward the spot the mizralds had said was the only way down. Pazel could hear a rushing of water, and the now very familiar slushing roar of a waterfall. He ran, catching up with Neeps and Thasha. Neeps was gazing back across the lake.

“How are we supposed to return?” he said. “The fisherwoman herself said they almost never come down here. And half the time there’s no shore to walk along, just blary cliffs. How are we supposed to get back?”

“There must be trails through the mountains,” said Pazel, trying to sound as though he believed it. “Hercol and Olik must have thought about it, mate. Don’t worry.”

Thasha’s gaze swept darkly over the peaks. “They thought about it, all right,” she said.

Their destination, as it happened, was similar to the Chalice of the Mai: a river outlet above a sharp descent. But then Pazel swayed and stepped back, dizzied by what he saw. Where the Mai had begun as no more than a stream, this was a thrashing watercourse, descending almost vertically within a deep, twisting crack down the mountainside. In many spots the water vanished under boulders; in others it surged forth in a chaos of white spray. There were outright cliffs beneath them too, where the river became falls. And very close to the river, bolted fast to the rock, was a heavy iron ladder. It descended some forty feet and met up with a wet, steep trail that snaked back and forth down the mountain to another ladder, which in turn met another trail, and so on for some distance. Even by moonlight Pazel could see how far and fast the Ansyndra descended, falls beneath falls beneath falls…

“The ladders will take us only so far,” Vadu was explaining. “There, at that widest shelf, you can see where the Black Tongue begins.”

Pazel could not see it, in fact, for the men were all crowding hazardously for a view. Quickly he told the others what the mizrald had said.

“By night alone,” mused Hercol. “Prince Olik too had heard rumors to that effect.”

“Nonsense,” said Vadu. “Day or night makes no difference. Look there: you will see what does.”

This time Pazel managed to catch a glimpse. Far down the black ridge a faint light shone. Something was burning, with flames that danced and guttered in the wind, throwing sparks into the night. Then all at once it was gone. Utter darkness wrapped the slopes again.

“A fumarole,” said Vadu, “a tunnel into the depths, formed as the lava cooled. The gases that erupt from those horrid pipes are flammable, and sudden in their emergence. But something worse dwells in them: the flame-trolls. Idlers who never leave the Upper City will tell you that they are mere legends, but we who carry the Plazic Blades know better. They are real, and deadly. When they emerge, no living thing can cross the Tongue.”

“And when is that, Counselor?” asked Myett, from Big Skip’s shoulder.

“When they hear footsteps on their roof,” he said. “Or loud voices, possibly. Many parts of the Tongue are but a hollow crust.”

“How did ye learn so much about the place?” asked Alyash.

Vadu gave him a rather hostile glance.

“The answer to that can wait,” said Cayer Vispek. “The crossing cannot, if we are to go by night as Pathkendle says.”

“I tell you silence is all that matters,” said Vadu.

Nonetheless they began the descent without delay. It was not the longest leg of their journey but certainly the most terrifying. Some of the ladders shifted on the rusted iron pins that held them to the cliffs; one had been reduced to a single bolt and three wooden splints. The rungs were corroded, and bit into their hands. But to Pazel the spaces between the ladders were worse: slick ledges, barely flat enough to balance on even when motionless, too narrow for crawling (which would have been far safer than walking upright) and devoid of any handholds whatsoever.

Only the ixchel were at ease, and even they crouched low when the wind surged suddenly. Pazel, at home on masts and rigging, had to fight down panic at every turn. They crept down the cliffs, barely speaking. The four hunting dogs, slung in harnesses on the backs of the Masalym soldiers, held absolutely still. One particularly long ladder spanned a pair of rocks jutting well out from the cliff, so that for a good seventy feet there was no cliff to see or touch, just rung after iron rung, lost in the clawing wind.

How many more? thought Pazel desperately, after the eighth or ninth descent. He glimpsed his sister in the moonlight and was amazed at her poise. The other sfvantskors were the same, and so was Hercol: masterfully aware. Did such awareness free one from terror or increase it, he wondered, when each step might be your last?

At last, after fourteen ladders, they reached a broad, rocky shelf. Pazel was shaking, and feared he might be sick. But the air was warm: they had dropped right out of the icy wastes of Ilvaspar, and into a gentler place. But there was also a strange, biting smell that for some reason made Pazel think of rats.

It was very dark. He moved away from the ladders and at once bumped into Neda-and Neeps. The small boy was holding his sister, rigid with indignation, in a tight embrace.

“Is all right,” said Neda, squirming, her Arquali rougher than usual. “Let go now! You do same for me, same situation.”

Neeps did not seem able to let go. Pazel touched his shoulder; he started, and abruptly dropped his arms. There was mud on his face but he did not seem aware of it.

“I should be dead,” he whispered, staring at Pazel. “I mucking fell, mate. On that path with the ice underfoot, that terrible spot. Your sister caught me by the belt and dragged me back. She could have fallen herself. I should be dead.”

Neda looked at Pazel. Switching tongues, she said, “Your friend is in shock. But when he’s able to listen, tell him I’ll break his arms if he tries to grab me again.”

“I don’t think it’s likely,” said Pazel. “He’s a married man.”

Neda’s face was blank. She looked the small tarboy up and down, and when her eye flicked back to Pazel she began suddenly to laugh. She turned away, fighting it, but Neeps’ baffled look made matters worse, and she spun back helplessly to Pazel and pressed her face hard against his shoulder. Reckless, wondering if she would break his arms, Pazel held her a moment and gave way to silent laughter. That old, choked guffaw. She still existed, she was still Neda somewhere inside. He could have held her for an hour, but when she lurched away he let her go.

Cayer Vispek looked stern, and Jalantri glared at him with something like fury. But Pazel found he no longer cared what they thought. Something had changed in Vasparhaven. He was older; he knew something that they did not. Rin’s eyes, he thought, sometimes even a blary sfvantskor needs to let go.

As if he’d just given the idea to the mountain, there came a deafening clang that reverberated in the rocks, and for the first time ever a yelp from one of the dogs. An entire ladder had parted from the cliff, fallen soundless, and shattered just inches from the animal. The stone cracked; bits of iron flew among them; the bulk of the ladder pinwheeled over a big boulder and lay still.

The dog crept whimpering among them, pleading innocence with its eyes. Hercol glanced up at the cliff. “One bolt,” he said, “and three wooden splints.”

For a time the night grew even brighter: the old moon still shone down on them, and the Polar Candle, its small blue sister, joined it in the sky. By this double illumination they saw the strange new place they had reached.

The shelf was the size of an ample courtyard. On the right-hand side the Ansyndra poured into a kind of natural funnel in the rock and disappeared, bubbling and gurgling. Behind them and to their left rose the high cliff wall, up which they would never climb again. Straight ahead, growing from cliff to cliff, there rose a stand of willows, straight and lovely, and utterly startling after so much barren rock. Ferns grew among them, and streamers of moss dangled from their limbs. A long-disused trail led away through the trees.

They gathered their belongings and followed it. For a gentle mile it ran, only gradually descending. The gorge did not widen much, and they were never more than a stone’s throw from one cliff or the other. Then, like something lopped off with an axe, the forest ended, and they saw the Black Tongue.

It was old lava: a deep, smooth expanse of it, like a hardened river of mud. It began at their feet and swept down a long, gradual decline, widening ever, for several miles or more. Nothing grew upon its surface; nothing could. There were smooth, mouth-like holes in the lava, some no bigger than peaches, others wide as caves. There were cracks and fissures, and small puffs of fire like the one they had seen from atop the mountain.

“Not a troll to be had,” said Alyash. “Pity.”

“Keep your voices low,” replied Hercol.

The smell Pazel had noticed before was far stronger here, and now he recognized it: sulphur.

“That’s why I thought of rats,” he said to Thasha. “We almost used sulphur on the rats, to smoke them out of the hold, remember? And we used it all the time back on the Anju.”

“It must work like a charm,” she said, grimacing.

“Oh, it does,” said Myett suddenly, “and on crawlies as well.”

“Blary right it does,” said Alyash.

“Enough of that!” said Hercol, who had not taken his eyes from the scene before them. Then he growled low in his throat. “The descent took longer than I hoped. There is not enough darkness left for us to make it safely across that dismal field. We shall retreat into the forest until this evening.”

“That is sheer folly!” said Vadu. “Weren’t you listening to me above?”

“I listened to you,” said Hercol, “but also to what Pazel heard from the fisherman, and to what Olik knew, and to my own counsel above all. You may be sure that I am making no light choices. We have abandoned our ship for this cause. And our people.”

“Then let it be worth your sacrifice!” said Vadu, his head starting to bob. “You are said to be a warrior, but this tactic is more suited to a counting-clerk. Show some courage. Let us go now, and quickly-and if we must run the last mile, so be it. Come, our goal is the same.”

“It is,” said Hercol, “but we are not agreed on how to reach it. For I am thinking like a counting-clerk. I am counting every person in this expedition, and intending to send none of them heedlessly to their deaths.”

“Heedless?” The counselor’s voice rose in anger. “You claim that death awaits all of us, if Arunis masters the Nilstone. Do you not understand where he is going? The River of Shadows, the River of Shadows enters Alifros just downstream from the Tongue, in the heart of the Infernal Forest. Throughout the ages of this world it has been a pilgrimage site for wizards good and evil. Whatever advantage Arunis thinks to find is surely there. He does not have far to go, Stanapeth, and neither do we.”

“I have heard you out,” said Hercol, “and you, Vadu, have sworn to abide by my decisions. I gave you a warning then, and I repeat it now.”

“I am no child, and need no warnings,” said Vadu.

“No?” said Hercol. “Did you place your hand on the knife-hilt, Counselor? Or did the knife call it there, as it has called the tune before?”

Vadu started, and jerked his hand away from the Plazic Blade, wincing as he did so as if the gesture caused him pain. He was breathing hard, and his men backed a little away from him. “Do as you will, then,” he said, “but I am not responsible.”

“Only for yourself,” said Hercol, watching him steadily.

The party retreated into the trees and found a level spot to rest. “I think we must light no fire,” said Jalantri.

“How about a candle?” said Big Skip. “The ixchel are cold and wet.”

Ensyl and Myett protested, but Hercol at once gathered stones into a ring and thrust four candles into the ground within them. Pazel looked at the two women, warming themselves amply by the little flames, shaking their short hair dry. We’re finally in the same boat, he thought, cut off from our own kind, in a world that knows nothing about us. But it wasn’t the same, not really. The humans numbered thirteen, not two; and they had not been raised in a clan that honored the whole above the parts, the House above the self. And they were not eight inches tall.

The humans and the dogs settled down to wait out the day, posting watches on the Black Tongue. Pazel fell asleep almost instantly, and dreamed of Chadfallow. He was lecturing Pazel in his old professorial way, but the subject, oddly, was how to trim a foresail brace-line. “Up, in, down to the pin!” Chadfallow kept repeating, watching Pazel struggle with rope and cleat. And as his frustration grew, Pazel realized that Chadfallow wore a captain’s uniform. “No good, boy, no good,” he said. “It’s that hand of yours. Too fishy by far.” Pazel looked at his left hand and saw nothing unusual, just the leathery scar he’d borne for months. “Not that one,” said Ignus crossly, and raised Pazel’s other hand by force. It was black and half webbed.

Dawn came, and with it Pazel’s watch. He was paired with Ibjen; they lay low at the edge of the trees, listening to the chatter of unseen birds, and watching the flames spout and sputter on the Tongue. The nearest fumarole was only about a hundred yards from where they lay, but the big ones-wide enough for something man-sized to crawl from them-were much farther down the lava flow. Sounds issued from them: soft piping like stone flutes, low surging moans. With every noise Pazel half expected to see a troll crawl out into the daylight. Ibjen, however, seemed more worried about Vadu and his Plazic Blade. Hercol, he said, should have driven the man off while he could.

“I thought so too,” Pazel admitted. “But Hercol’s thought carefully about it, and I trust him.”

“He hardly sleeps,” said Ibjen. “That cannot continue, you know. Unless he too draws his strength from some unnatural source.”

“Ildraquin isn’t cursed,” said Pazel, “and Hercol is strong without help from any blade.”

“Pazel,” said Ibjen, “is it true that you can cast spells?”

“What?” said Pazel, startled. “No, it isn’t. Or… just one. And Ramachni says it’s not even right to call it a spell. It’s a Master-Word. He gave me three of them, but I’ve spoken the other two, used them, and that erases them from my mind.”

“How are they different from spells?”

Pazel thought back. “He said that a Master-Word is like black powder-gunpowder, you understand? — without the cannon to control the explosion. He said the key thing about spells is that control. Otherwise you can’t stop them from doing what you don’t want to do.”

“Like turning men into dumb animals,” said Ibjen, “when your goal is to make animals think like men.”

Pazel sighed. “I suppose Erithusme didn’t have much control either, when she cast the Waking Spell. But that spell drew its power from the Nilstone, and it ruins everything it touches, I think. And I wonder, Ibjen: what’s going to happen to woken animals, if we succeed? I’m afraid for Felthrup. For all of them, really.”

He gazed out at the Tongue, the sudden plumes of flame that came and went like harbor-signals. Ibjen was quiet so long that Pazel glanced at him, wondering if he’d nodded off. But the silver eyes were wide, and staring at him with concern.

“I must add to your fears, Pazel,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s Neeps.”

Pazel gave a violent start. “Neeps? What about him? What’s the blary fool done this time?”

“I wasn’t sure at first, because the stench from the Black Tongue was so strong. But it’s there, all right.”

“What’s there?”

“The smell of lemons. I know that smell, Pazel: my father tamed tol-chenni on the Sandwall, you know. Once you’re used to it there’s no mistaking it for anything else.”

When he finally understood, Pazel felt as though his own death had just been handed to him, as if he’d thrown back a drink only to learn it was poison. “No,” he muttered, shaking his head, looking away from the dlomic boy.

“Father always claimed it was the sure sign,” said Ibjen gently, “back in the days when humans were changing.”

“It isn’t true, Ibjen, it’s not happening, you’re crazy.”

But even as he spoke Pazel remembered Olik’s words in the stateroom. Rage was one warning sign, he’d told them, along with a sharp smell of lemon in one’s sweat. And what had Neeps said, when they were sitting beside the signal-fire? There are times when my mind just seems to vanish. Panic, deep terror, welled up inside him. Ibjen’s hand was on his arm. “How long does it take?” Pazel heard himself ask.

“Five or six weeks,” said Ibjen. “I think that’s what Father used to say. Pazel, are you crying?”

Pazel pinched his eyes shut. Images from the Conservatory assaulted him. The mindlessness, the filth. He would not let Neeps become a tol-chenni. He turned to Ibjen and gripped his hand in turn. “Don’t say a word about this,” he begged. “The plague doesn’t spread from person to person anyway. Your father told us that.”

“I know,” said Ibjen, “and I won’t tell anyone. You’re right, it would only make things worse. The others might drive him away.”

“We’re going to stop it,” whispered Pazel, “before he changes. We will, Ibjen. We have to.”

Ibjen said nothing for a time. Then he asked, “What does it do, your Master-Word? The one you haven’t spoken yet?”

“I don’t know,” said Pazel. “Ramachni told me it would blind to give new sight. What that means even he couldn’t guess.”

“Blindness?” said Ibjen. “Blindness, from a kind of magic that you say runs out of control?” The dlomic boy looked terrified. “You must never speak that word, Pazel. Try to forget it, and soon, before you utter it one day in your sleep.”

Pazel shook his head. He trusted Ramachni. His two previous words had shaken the fabric of the world around him, but done no lasting damage. Ramachni had assured him of that, just before repeating his promise to return. But in his mind Pazel still heard Arunis back at Bramian, gloating, saying that the mage had abandoned them, vanished into the safety of his own world. And now Neeps “Look there!” whispered Ibjen, pointing. “Something does live on the Tongue. Or dares to crawl on it, anyway.” Far down the black slope, Pazel caught a glimpse of reddish fur, vanishing behind a bulge in the lava. “A marmot, or a weasel,” said Ibjen. “I suppose trolls don’t bother with weasels.”

Their hour was over. They crept away from the edge of the lava flow, then stood and walked back toward the clearing. But as they drew near Pazel felt a sudden, horrible sensation in his mind: the same sensation, in fact, as two days before: the power of the eguar was being summoned again.

He dashed to the clearing. Everyone was awake, afoot, rigid with alarm. Counselor Vadu had drawn his knife. His head was twitching almost uncontrollably; his soldiers had massed behind him, steeled for a fight. Ildraquin in hand, Hercol glared at the counselor. Vadu’s own face was screwed up in a strange mixture of bravado and pain.

Floating in the air before him were Ensyl and Myett. The two women’s backs were together; they revolved slowly as though hanging from a thread. Vadu’s free hand was raised, his fingers cupped as though squeezing something tight between them.

“No!” Pazel cried.

Vadu whirled and the women cried out in pain, in the ixchel voices only Pazel himself could hear. “Stay where you are, Pathkendle!” cried the counselor. “And you, Hercol Stanapeth: where are your lectures now? Have you realized that you should have left them on the far side of the Nelluroq? Or will you try again to order us about in our own country?”

Hercol gestured for Pazel to be still.

“You should have taken this Blade when you mastered me on the plain,” said Vadu, his voice made staccato by the twitches of his head. “It called out to you; it would have abandoned me, and served you in my stead.”

“That Blade serves no one,” said Hercol, “except perhaps the beast from whose corpse it was fashioned.”

“Be that as it may, I am now in command,” said Vadu, “and I will not let this mission fail through cowardice. Don’t you realize that I can fight off the trolls, if they should come?”

“Are you sure?” asked Cayer Vispek. “There is almost nothing left of that knife. Look at it, Counselor: it has shrunk in a matter of days.”

“We will cross the Black Tongue now,” said Vadu, as though the other had not said a word, “and overtake the mage before he reaches his goal, and slay him, and then the Nilstone shall be ours.”

“Ours,” said Bolutu, “or yours? Vadu, Vadu, you are not the man who came to us on the plain! That man understood the very dangers you are surrendering to!”

“The only danger is inaction,” said Vadu. “We will go, in prudent silence. These two I will hold until we reach the shores of the Ansyndra; and then we shall see.”

“Fight him!”

The voice was Ensyl’s, and it was torn from her throat. Vadu bared his teeth and the ixchel women cried out again. Pazel saw that Neda was looking Hercol in the eye.

“We can kill this fool,” she said in Mzithrini. “We have him on three sides, and those little seizures will not help his fighting. Whatever his power, we will be too quick for him to stop.”

“Do nothing, I beg you,” replied Hercol in the same tongue. “We could kill him, yes, but not before he kills his prisoners.”

“There’s no other way,” said Jalantri. “They’re warriors. They’re prepared.”

“I am not prepared!” shouted Hercol. And looking at his tortured face Pazel knew he was remembering another moment, another ixchel woman facing death and urging him not to give in.

Staring hard at Vadu, Hercol sheathed his sword. “I would pity you, if you would but speak the truth, as you did when I briefly set you free. Indeed, I should have taken the knife-for your sake. Lead on, man of the Platazcra. But harm those women and no blade will protect you.”

“They will be harmed only if you are foolish,” said Vadu.

Fighting his twitches, he reached out and closed his hand around the waists of the ixchel women. Quietly the party moved down the path. At length they came to the edge of the black, smooth lava flow. Hercol stopped and pointed to the right.

In a low murmur, he said, “The eastern part of the Tongue is still shadowed by the mountain. Will you at least permit us to walk there, and not in the bright sun?”

Vadu nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes, if it will strengthen your spine. Only say nothing, and plant your feet lightly, and make no sound until we are well among the trees on the far side.”

Hercol looked at the others. “Check all that you carry. You soldiers especially: do not let your scabbards knock against the ground.”

“I was about to say as much,” said Vadu.

“If we should have to run,” asked Hercol, “what will happen to Ensyl and Myett?”

“I will not run,” said Vadu.

Hercol’s look was withering. Then he stepped out onto the lava. Vadu came second, his prisoners against his chest. The rest of the party followed gingerly. Within the first few steps Pazel knew that the going would be harder than he had supposed. Though smooth, the surface was anything but even. It was like a candle melted down the side of jug, one liquid trail hardened atop another. And twisting through them all were the shafts of the fumaroles. Was it better to walk, or crouch down and creep? Many times he was tempted to jump, as he would from stone to stone at a river crossing. But he dared not risk making a noise.

The flames were sudden and unpredictable: one moment there would be a black, dark fumarole, the next a geyser of twisting flames. Gas, searingly hot and reeking of sulphur, issued from others in bursts and wheezes. There was absolutely nothing one might call a trail.

Yet the going grew easier the farther they went. It did help to be able to see, Pazel reflected, although he supposed Hercol would have waited for the moonlight. So far no one had made a sound. Even the dogs, marvels of perception that they were, understood what was required, and crept along with mincing steps.

The sky was beautiful, cloudless. Far overhead, a few vultures drifted. On the lava bed they were the only things that moved.

The shadow of the mountain was shrinking toward them, but they could always, Pazel supposed, move closer to the mountain.

Thasha and Neeps were descending on his left; Neda and her brother sfvantskors on his right. All of them watching the ground; it was the only safe way to proceed. And yet, Pazel thought, and yet He raised his eyes-and fought down the urge to cry aloud. About three yards from Neeps, a tiny face was watching them from a hole in the lava. It was hideous, part human, buck-toothed, squinting, red. The face was attached to a hairy body about the size and shape of a gopher. The creature had hair everywhere except on that face, and the hands-they were hands, not paws-that gripped the edges of the scalding rock.

It vanished down the tube. Pazel was so shocked that he nearly missed a step. The others looked at him in alarm. No one else had seen the creature. He pointed at the hole, then gestured wildly (squinting eyes, fingers for teeth). Was it the same sort of creature he and Ibjen had glimpsed? Was it dangerous, or did its silence mean that it, too, had learned to remain unnoticed by the trolls?

There were more vultures now, and they circled lower over the Tongue. The others in the party glanced at them, frowning. Pazel realized that they had quickened their pace.

Less than a mile to go. The dogs gazed ahead, clearly wishing they could run. Each man and woman moving precisely, silently. A Masalym soldier lost his balance, and a Turach caught his arm. The dlomu mouthed a silent thank you; the Turach smiled, and then everyone stopped dead.

Hercol had flung his arms wide, a violent gesture. At first Pazel did not understand. Then someone gasped and, turning, he saw that they were surrounded. From inside every hole and behind every bulge and hardened bubble, the red-faced creatures stared at them with their strange squinting faces, like old men who had lost their glasses. A hundred, perhaps many more. Yards deep they stood, eight or ten together in the larger tunnels. Not one of them moved a muscle.

Vadu’s mouth was agape. The dogs’ hair stood on end, but they did not growl.

“Warriors,” said Hercol with monumental slowness. “Be ready with your weapons, but do not attack first. We are going on.” And with Ildraquin’s tip hovering just before his knees, he stepped forward.

The creatures bristled, and bared their white rodents’ teeth. Hercol took another step. The creatures directly before him hissed, and shrank into their holes. But those on the sides only tensed and twitched, as though ready to spring.

Then Vadu laughed. He held his knife at arm’s length, and over the tiny nub of bone the ghost-blade flickered. Suddenly a great shrieking hiss went up from all the creatures, and they whirled about and disappeared into their holes. A brief sound of scurrying rose from the depths. Then nothing more. The travelers looked at one another in shock.

“I told you I had power to keep us safe,” said Vadu.

“Let us go on,” said Hercol.

“Counselor Vadu?” said Pazel suddenly. He startled everyone, beginning with himself, but he knew what he was doing. “Let the ixchel go. We’ve come too far to turn back anyway.”

Vadu glanced down at Myett and Ensyl, clutched against his chest. He laughed again. “It is not enough that I obeyed a human, for a time. Now I am to take orders from a human underling, a servant boy!”

Pazel swallowed. “I think-”

“That is open to question.”

“-you’re going to need that knife for something else.”

Vadu started. His head wobbled as he looked at the holes, the massing vultures, the distance yet to walk. Then, with a jerky motion, he thrust the two ixchel into Pazel’s hands. “I release them,” he said. The women gasped suddenly.

“Quiet!” said Pazel, in their own language. “Don’t shout! You were enchanted. You’re free now, but we’re not safe.”

Both ixchel began to shake. Her eyes closed, Myett whispered, “Who did this to us?”

Pazel was about to answer when he noticed that Vadu was still staring at his knife. The look of rapture on his face made Pazel think suddenly of the Shaggat, gazing with adoration at the Nilstone that had almost killed him. Vadu raised the knife above his head, and as he did so his hand cleared the shadow of the mountain. Sunlight touched the last, minuscule bone-shard upon the hilt-and with a slight quaking of the air, the shard was gone.

Vadu lowered his arm. “It is over,” he said. “I released them, and the Blade released me. That was its final act. The end was closer than I dared hope.” He rubbed his face, his neck: the twitching had finally ceased. Joy welled suddenly in the counselor’s eyes. Before anyone realized his intention he turned and flung the hilt across the lava flow with all his might. “I am free!” he cried, and with that all bedlam erupted.

Fire burst from holes far and near. A roaring filled the earth. A dog howled, and from the larger tunnels the flame-trolls began to emerge: first their long fingers, ash-white and clawed; then their mighty arms; then their heads, large and powerful as the heads of horses, but with the spreading jaws of wolves. They were hairless, and the flames of the depths licked over them, as though their very pores exuded some combustible oil. Their eyes wept fire; the spittle in their mouths was fire. The first to emerge was nearly nine feet tall.

It made to leap but Hercol moved first, and before Pazel knew what had happened the troll was waving the stumps of its hacked-off limbs, and its foul blood was spattering them all.

“Run!” thundered Hercol. “Turachs, sfvantskors, to the vanguard! Men of Masalym, stand with me behind!”

No one questioned his orders now. The party charged for the forest with weapons drawn. Pazel ran with Thasha at his side, and Neeps just behind. He bore his sword in one hand, Myett and Ensyl in the other, curled to his chest. They were ahead of the trolls, that was clear. The creatures were bursting forth in greater numbers, but always a step or two behind. As though their footfalls were guiding them, waking them. And he remembered suddenly running along a hollow log back in Ormael: a log that housed a great, drowsy hive of bees. He had felt them stirring under his feet, but had gotten away without a sting.

Then he saw the red-faced creatures, swarming out of the fumaroles dead ahead. They squealed piercingly, and the trolls rose in answer, cutting off the party from the trees.

The sfvantskors met them first, slashing at the flaming arms, the spitting heads. The Turachs did their part as well, hacking and stabbing alongside their old enemies. Three or four trolls died before they could escape the tunnels.

But right and left the creatures were gaining their feet and leaping to the attack. Suddenly all was carnage, terrible and blindingly swift. Cayer Vispek jumped over a troll’s groping hand, then killed it-killed it-with a savage kick to the head. A Turach drove his blade straight into flaming jaws. The dogs killed the rodent-beasts with swift efficiency, shaking them, flinging the carcasses away. But their muzzles were burning; Big Skip’s shirt was burning; a dying troll spat flame in Vadu’s face. On Pazel’s right a dlomic soldier beheaded a troll just rising from the earth, and a second troll caught his arm and wrenched him, headfirst, into the fumarole. He never managed a scream.

“On! On! Stop for nothing!” Hercol was bellowing. And somehow they did go on, right through the fire, over the twitching bodies, the arms still reaching from the earth. They ran with the red-faced creatures dragging from their ankles; they ran not knowing which of them, what part of them, was burning.

“Pazel, stay with us! Protect them!” Thasha shouted, waving at the ixchel. He ran with her on one side, Neeps on the other. Together, as though maddened by danger, they charged a huge troll with broken fangs. The beast lunged at Thasha; she parried with her sword and stabbed it through the hand with her knife, and turned her head before its fire-spittle could scald her in the face. Neeps managed only to graze the creature before it raked him with the claws of its free hand, sending him sprawling. The troll snapped at him, tore out a mouthful of hair. Then Pazel and Thasha lunged together. His sword pierced its chest; Thasha’s tore its belly open. It toppled sideways, dying; the three of them were past it-and then Pazel felt it sink those teeth into his calf.

He fell flat atop the ixchel; the troll’s claws were shredding his pack and clothes, seeking his flesh; then from the corner of his eye he saw Neeps make a desperate upward thrust, and blood from the troll’s severed throat washed down his leg.

The corpse fell burning atop him; Thasha and Neeps somehow moved it in a matter of seconds, and to their clear amazement Pazel leaped up and ran at their side. But the burning followed him, enveloped him; and still more trolls slavered at their heels. He felt that his run was an extended fall down a black cliff, faster and faster, his feet somehow staying under him just enough to fend him off the lava, and then suddenly he was on thinner lava, crumbled lava, then earth, then leaves, and the hooting, howling pursuit went on into the forest, and he smashed through vines and palms and thorns and flowers and brush, his arm over the ixchel’s faces, his own flesh torn, and then Praise Rin and His host there was the river, a blessed short muddy bank and then in, down, the fire in his clothes hissing out, the ixchel coughing and choking as he lifted them clear, trod water, kicked out into the water among the other survivors, while on the banks behind them twenty or thirty flame-trolls stood screaming their hate, and fighting over the corpses already roasting in their grasp.

The Ansyndra here was wide and shallow; they bobbed along with it gently, the dlomu helping the humans stay afloat, until they rounded a long bend and left the creatures behind. Then they dragged themselves ashore. Three of the eight Masalym soldiers were gone, and one Turach also. Two dogs limped onto the sand, and a third, nearly hairless, came whimpering from the forest.

“Sit down!” said Thasha to Pazel, catching him by the arm. “We’ve got to take care of that leg. Damn it all, the packs, our medicine kit, our food-”

“How did we do it?” Pazel gasped. “How did we get away?”

“Hercol,” she said, “and Vadu. I know it looked like there were trolls everywhere, but most of them were behind us. They held them all back. Vadu can fight, by Rin.”

“Hush, Thasha,” said Neeps, looking past her shoulder.

The surviving dlomic warriors were laying Vadu in the grass. He was hideously burned, his face unrecognizable, the lids barely moving over the silver eyes. His hands were so blistered and torn it was hard to tell where one finger ended and the next began. “I don’t think he can move,” whispered Neeps. “They floated him downstream like a log.”

But Vadu could move, for he was raising one hand, weakly beckoning. It was Hercol he wanted. The swordsman drew close and knelt at his shoulder.

“Now I pay,” said Vadu, his voice faint and rasping. “For all my folly, and a life of borrowed strength.”

“You have been paying for years, son of Masalym,” said Hercol.

Vadu shook his ruined head. “Not everyone who touched a Blade surrendered to it. I gave myself to the eguar, and lost my sanity, my soul. You alone had no fear to say so, to my face. Human, warrior human. I look at you and see the man I should have been.”

“You are that man,” said Hercol. “You have outlived the curse you carried.”

“I have done that,” said Vadu. “Yes. That is something. Farewell, strange friend-”

Vadu said no more. He lay still, and though Pazel knew he might be imagining it, he thought that peace stole over the counselor’s body; and Bolutu, no longer a monk of the Rinfaith but practiced in such moments nonetheless, gently closed his eyes.

The Infernal Forest

8 Modobrin 941

Thasha’s hair was half the length it had been an hour before; her locks ended in singed, black strands. Kneeling beside Pazel, she cut away the shreds of his trouser leg, and winced at what she saw. But Pazel knew he was lucky. His calf had been pierced in four places, but the broken fangs had not gone deep; the troll had meant to hold him while its claws did the killing. Still, something was wrong. The wound throbbed, and ugly green-purple blotches were rising around the broken skin. Thasha looked around helplessly. “Blary wonderful place to be without a doctor,” she said.

Pazel thought of Neeps, and cringed inside. What doctor could help him, though? In Arqual Chadfallow had cured the talking fever, but that was not a magical plague. And all the doctors of the South had obviously failed. So much horror, he thought, watching a Turach wrap wet bandages about a burned dlomic forehead.

“The trick will be to keep those holes from getting infected,” said Ensyl, studying his leg.

No, he thought, the trick was to keep moving. To keep moving, and not to let his thoughts wander anywhere he couldn’t stand to look. With that goal in mind he glanced up at the trees. There were fifty shades of green straight overhead. Tiny butterflies were descending like a fall of orange snowflakes. “This doesn’t look very infernal to me,” he said.

“No,” said Thasha, “I don’t suppose we’re there yet.”

The survivors dressed their wounds, and those of the three remaining dogs. Then they carried Vadu into the forest, and built a cairn of stones over his body, and held their breath to the count of one hundred for the dead, as their people had done for so many generations that no one could say how the custom began.

As they returned Pazel looked over the remaining soldiers. Two Turachs: an older warrior, with a scar on his forehead like an extra eyebrow; and a younger man with a sullen, boyish face. Five dlomic warriors, including a tall and capable woman who appeared to be taking charge of her comrades.

Ibjen walked knee-deep into the river, staring intently at something offshore.

“What is it, lad?” asked Cayer Vispek. But instead of answering, Ibjen suddenly dived.

He surfaced many yards away, swimming with a power no champion human swimmer could hope to match. As Pazel watched he closed on some jagged rocks at mid-river, where sticks and other debris had collected. Carefully he plucked something from the detritus, then turned and swam back to the shore.

“This is yours, Thashiziq,” he said as he emerged. On his palm rested an ornate wooden box, soaked and battered but intact.

“The box from Vasparhaven!” said Thasha, taking it. “The one the novice said came from you, Pazel. I thought for sure it was lost. But that lovely crystal-it can’t possibly have survived.”

She sprang the latch, raised the lid. Unfortunately she was quite correct: nothing but a fine dust remained of Kirishgan’s exquisite sphere. The parchment was damp, but not soaked. As the others gathered, watching, Thasha took out the little scrap and unfolded it with great care. The selk’s writing had begun to blur, but it could still be read. A sworn secret must be kept-but in like measure, a fateful meeting must be honored. Therefore in deepest trust I tell you: there is hope downriver, between the mountains and the sea.

Alyash turned away, sneering. “That’s profound, that is. I’m all a-quiver.”

“You’re a fool,” said Pazel. “He’s telling us something important. As clearly as he can without breaking an oath.”

“The message is surely important,” said Hercol, “but we cannot debate it now. Rest a little more, all of you, and see that your wounds are dressed properly. We have our own oaths to keep, and they will soon spur us onward.”

Pazel lay down with his head on a stone, watching the butterflies, trying not to think of the trolls. He closed his eyes and saw their faces, their flame-slobber, their claws. He heard Dastu say something about “Pathkendle’s nurse” and realized that Thasha was still fussing over his leg. Once again he felt a surge of annoyance with her, although he knew the response was foolish. What was he resisting, exactly? Her touch, his need for it? Whatever it was, Thasha sensed his impatience, and her fingers grew clumsy on his bandages.

Very soon Hercol called the party together. “It is best that you know the truth,” he said. “We have lost all our supplies, save the weapons we managed to swim with, and what Alyash and I carried on our backs. We have some half a dozen mul, but nothing else to eat. We have no spare clothes, no oilskins against the rain, no telescope, or rope, or compass. There are torches, and a box of matches that may dry out eventually. Among the twenty-one of us we have nine swords and two knives.”

“And one pistol,” said Alyash.

“One soaked pistol,” said Hercol. “This is what I would tell you now: we may perish in this quest. But if you are with me still, I can promise you that ours will not be a thoughtless or an empty death. We will stand together, and if need be fall together, but we will yet do all that we can to prevail.”

“But of course we’ll follow you,” said Thasha.

Hercol’s fondness for her shone in his eyes. “You are my right hand, Thasha-or perhaps I am your left. It is to others I speak.”

“As for the three of us,” said Cayer Vispek, “you need not waste your breath. The scriptures tell us that it is a blessing to discover one’s fight, to see the devil by the plain light of day, and take after him with a blade. Most are denied this; most lunge at false devils-even at their brothers. We have taken enough false lunges. I think now that you were sent to show us our true fight-even if that is a fight from which we do not return. So lead on, Tholjassan. I say again, if we did not follow you, where would we go?”

“This is no debate we need to have,” added the dlomic woman. “Any doubts we harbored, we left behind in Masalym. Even Counselor Vadu knew in his heart that you must lead. We will go forward, and if fate permits we will kill this sorcerer before it is too late.”

The other dlomic soldiers nodded. “The Otter speaks for us all,” said one.

“Otter?” said Hercol.

The dlomic woman looked slightly embarrassed. “I am Lunja, a sergeant of the Masalym Watch. My name means ‘Otter’ in the old tongue of Chaldryl. So to my men I am the Otter.”

Hercol nodded to her. “I thank you for your trust, Sergeant Lunja.” He looked at the remaining faces, one by one. His gaze fell last on Alyash, who was something of an apparition. His hair had burned off completely; his shirt was torn open, revealing his old, extensive scars, and blisters like embedded pearls graced his ears and forehead.

“What are you staring at?” said the bosun. “Yes, I’ll blary follow you. Not as if anyone here’s going to take orders from me.”

“Then prepare to march,” said Hercol, strapping Ildraquin over his shoulder. “Fulbreech is still moving away. We will rest at dusk, whether he pauses or not. But since we have crossed the Black Tongue by daylight, let us at least do as Vadu wished and use these hours well.”

He set off at an unforgiving pace, and the others, in their burned boots (and in Vispek’s case, no boots at all) struggled to keep up. They walked under the trees, out of the dense underbrush at the margin of the forest, but near enough its edge to keep the river in sight. Thasha, who carried nothing except her sword, began to help Pazel hobble along on his wounded leg. After a few minutes she gave the task to Neeps. “You’re the right height,” she said, sliding Pazel’s arm over his shoulder. Neeps flashed her an awkward smile, and so did Pazel. But when he smelled lemons he turned away, pretending that his leg hurt him awfully, so that neither would see the truth on his face.

An hour later Pazel felt stronger, and told Neeps he could manage on his own. The forest began to thin by midafternoon, and in time they marched out of it altogether, onto a narrow plain of low, feathery grasses, bounded on the right by jagged cliffs and the scree of old landslides, and on the left by the crumbling banks of the Ansyndra, along which grew scattered pines and cedars and the occasional oak. It was strange country, very warm and windless, and yet enclosed on all sides by those enfortressed mountains, looming over them with vast shoulders of snow. The Ansyndra became deeper, narrower, more violent and swift. They had no other guide but Ildraquin’s whispers to Hercol, but he drove them on, nearly running, saying that their quarry lay ahead, always downriver and ahead.

So the day ended, and at dusk as promised Hercol let them rest. They chose a spot with many cedars near the river. The mountain’s shadow brought swift darkness, but they had good luck with the matches and soon a fire was burning. It cheered them some and dried their boots, but its heat made their burns ache. Alyash disassembled Ott’s pistol, drying the components on a stone. Pazel gazed blearily at the little wood-and-steel mechanism. Hard to believe that it could kill a man.

Famished, the twenty-one travelers and three dogs shared half their stock of mul, which came to about a teaspoon each. Pazel was battling sleep even as he chewed. He drifted off with Thasha once more examining his leg, and a dog licking his mul-sticky fingers with equal concentration.

At dawn they were chilled and soaked with dew. Hercol had them up and marching before they were properly awake, and certainly before they could commiserate about their injuries, their fallen comrades, the lack of food, the impossibility of return. The plain widened as the river (unreachable now, sunk deep in its rocky gorge) cut longer serpentines. Hercol maintained his savage pace, cutting off any protests with a lancing stare. When they crossed a stream he ordered them to bend and drink deep, and while they did so he wrenched off his own boots and handed them without a word to Cayer Vispek. In the heat of the afternoon the scalded dog began to limp and drop behind, calling after them with a mournful yelp. Hercol turned back and lifted it over his shoulders, and carried it that way like a sack of grain. “If its foot does not improve by morning we will eat it,” he declared.

They ate the last of the mul that night, and Bolutu extracted a long thorn from the dog’s paw. Hercol would not permit a fire. “We have closed the gap,” he said. “I think the sorcerer is within five miles, and I would not lose him now.”

Just beyond their camp the land rose in a stony bluff, leaning out over the river gorge. While the others prepared to sleep, Hercol climbed the bluff with Ensyl on his shoulder. They crouched among rocks at the summit, hidden from the sight of anyone beyond, staring through small gaps. They remained there a long time, motionless.

“What are they looking at?” said Neeps finally.

Thasha got to her feet. “Let’s go find out,” she said. She and Neeps climbed the bluff and stood beside Hercol. At once they grew still, gazing beyond the rocks, transfixed.

When Neda too noticed their fascination, Pazel held out his hand. “Help me up,” he said. “We’ll go and see for ourselves.”

At that Jalantri leaped to his feet and caught Neda by the arm. “You’re not thinking, sister! You’re badly bruised and there is fighting ahead. Let him waste his strength if he will. We know better, Phoenix-Flame.”

Neda seemed at a loss for words. She looked at Jalantri’s hand on her arm until he dropped it, chastened. Then she glanced quickly at Pazel and started up the hill.

They walked in silence (so weirdly normal, climbing a hill beside his sister; they might have been back in Ormael) until Neda said, “The way of the sfvantskor is perfection.”

“Okay,” said Pazel.

“If you are distracted by the personal,” she said, “you will fail when your people most need their champion. That is certain, proven. That is why we are chaste. We turn our passions to the needs of the people, to the Grand Family. That is the Mzithrin way, and the sfvantskor must be the example.”

Pazel looked back: Jalantri was still watching them. “You don’t have to explain, Neda,” he said.

She smiled, as though amused that Pazel thought he understood. Then she said, “The dogs keep sniffing at Neeps. They look at him strangely, too.”

Pazel glanced at her, aghast. He could have kicked himself for not noticing. They’re hunting dogs, he thought. Were they trained to hunt tol-chenni? Is that what Neeps smells like to them? Fear for Neeps surged through him once more. But when they reached the hilltop, where the others were still crouched and staring, what he saw drove everything else from his mind.

A gargantuan lake spread before them, far greater than Ilvaspar, almost as large as the Gulf of Masal itself. Or was it a lake? It was almost perfectly round, and its shores were sheer, rocky cliffs. But there was no water that he could see. Instead, across the whole expanse, some twenty or thirty feet below the rim, spread a layer of dark, murky green. A flat surface, but not entirely smooth. It appeared to be composed of one round patch atop another, like overlapping lily pads choking a pond, except that these pads were all fused at the edges into one solid mass. Pazel could see no gaps at all, except very close to them, where the Ansyndra tumbled into the crater.

“Hercol says Fulbreech is down there,” said Thasha. “Inside it. Moving around.”

“But what is it?” said Neda. “A lake, covered in water-weed?”

“I think,” said Hercol, “that we are looking at the Infernal Forest.”

“That’s no forest,” said Pazel. “I mean… could it be?”

“We have seen many strange things on this side of the Nelluroq,” said Ensyl, “but that is the strangest. I do not like it. I fear it will not go well for us there.”

“Then let us rest,” said Hercol, “for Fulbreech is there below, somewhere. And Arunis must surely be with him, for who would enter such a place if not compelled?”

That night for the first time since Masalym the air stayed warm. Pazel lay down next to Thasha and held her near. The others lay all around them; a dog curled up and leaned into his back. He tried to nudge the creature but it only groaned.

Thasha’s eyes were still open. He leaned close and whispered, “What are you thinking about?”

“Marila,” she said.

He felt a tightness in his throat. He wanted to tell Thasha about Neeps, but the words would not form.

“We’re going to know their child,” said Thasha. “If we live, I mean. If we live and we win.”

A shudder flashed through his body. He pulled her tight. Then Thasha turned and pressed her lips to his ear.

“Half Bali Adron,” she said, tapping his chest.

He nodded.

“What did you find there, Pazel? In the temple, in Vasparhaven? Are you allowed to tell me?”

Pazel said nothing. He could hear the bursting of the globe, see the empty space where the woman had been, feel the stab of what he’d known was love. Such a distant memory. Such a terrifying force.

“Crystal,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“Everything there was made of crystal, Thasha. The spiders and the people and the music and the stones. And everything outside the temple’s the same, isn’t it? You want to hold it because it’s so beautiful. And you can’t, really. Not for long. It will break if you’re bad and selfish and it will break if you’re good. It snaps or it shatters, or it melts in your hand. And the more beautiful it is the less time you get to have it. And you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

Thasha didn’t answer. She turned her back, thoughtful, and then lay still beneath his arm. In minutes they were both asleep.

Well past midnight, he felt her guide his hand under her tattered clothing and hold it tight against her breast. So quiet when it finally happened. So unlike the way he’d dreamed. He raised his head, kissed her silently from shoulder to ear, tasting ashes, feeling her tremble. Then he lowered his head beside her, nuzzling, and tumbled back into sleep.

But later still he woke more fully beneath her kisses, and without a word they rose, and tiptoed barefoot into the grass. They neared the river gorge, felt the breeze over the water, stepped cautiously along the rim. Beneath one of the cedars, they turned to face each other, and Pazel lowered himself onto a stone, mindful of his leg. Thasha undressed before him, and she was no more than a blue-white silhouette by the light of the little Polar Candle (the old moon had set; it was almost dawn) but at the same time she was everything that mattered, Thasha Isiq, his lover, naked and frightened and magnificent and strong. And when he carefully removed his own clothes and embraced her there was no more fear in his heart, no room for it, she was the place in the world where fear ended, and she backed into the tree and said she loved him, and her hands reached up for a sturdy branch, and for a few seconds he was inside her, just barely; she had raised herself almost out of his reach, and knowing he shouldn’t he tried to stand higher, to scramble up onto a root, rock, anything, it was like trying to mate with the tree, and then she pushed him out altogether and lowered herself to her feet and clasped him tight in her hand, frantic, hips straining against the side of his leg, she was closer than his own skin, closer than he was to himself.

The moment they fell still another sound reached their ears. The dog had followed them, and was scratching urgently with a hind foot just a few feet away. He felt her heart drum against his chest, the laughter shaking her from forehead to thighs. It was nonsense, what they said about dying of happiness. Happiness made you want to live.

They walked a bit farther along the edge of the gorge. He tried talking to her but she only murmured; she was suddenly far away and thoughtful. He was teased by the notion that they had done something dangerous, perhaps mortally so. Was it the magic inside her, Erithusme’s strange, destructive gifts? Or his, maybe: the language-spell working to decode her silence, her yearning; trying to translate her wordless needs into his own? He could not make himself care. They clasped hands, scarred palm to scarred palm. He felt that whatever befell her must happen to him as well, and already he longed to touch her again.

Thasha said she wanted to bathe in the Ansyndra. He tried to dissuade her and got nowhere; she told him it might be their last chance for days. They found a descent, but not an easy one. Thasha looked at his leg and shook her head. “That’s all we need,” she laughed. “You at the bottom, shouting in pain, and our clothes up here by that tree.”

So he sat beside the dog and watched her creep down the broad rocks, spider-like, moving in and out of shadow. The river was a braid of murmuring darkness, and it was hard to tell when she reached it, until he realized that she had slowed, and was splashing palmfuls of icy water against her legs. The simple gesture enough to drive him mad. She moved a step deeper, staring fixedly at the opposite shore. Another step, and she was gone.

Pazel surged to his feet, terrified. Why in Pitfire had he let her go? Into that water out of Ilvaspar, a river that mixed with the River of Shadows?

His fright grew by the second. How could he have been such a fool? Thasha was gone, gone into the black turbulence he had sensed at the bottom of the temple pool. And suddenly he knew that she had been drawn to the river by more than a desire to bathe.

Then she rose and clambered for shore. Her eyes sought him, found him, and she hugged herself, and Pazel was so relieved that he never did ask, then or later, if the gesture meant that the water was freezing or that he was loved.

When dawn came the party rose and set off at once, for there was no breakfast to linger over, no tea to warm. They rounded the bluff and came back to the side of the Ansyndra, and soon the vast green crater was sprawling before them. Pazel had hoped the mystery of its nature would be resolved as they approached; but on the contrary, the place only became more alien and strange. The scrub and feathery grasses of the plain grew right up to its edge. Then the side of the hole fell straight down some thirty feet, to where the green surface began. The latter pressed tight against the rock, leaving barely a finger’s width of empty space, and often not even that.

What was it made of? How strong was it, how thick? Alyash tossed a rock onto the surface: it bounced and skittered and lay there in the sun. Not a liquid, then, and not flimsy either.

“It looks like elephant hide,” said Big Skip. “I’ll bet you could walk on it.”

Hercol stepped close to the riverbank. They could hear the sound of a waterfall as the Ansyndra plummeted into the dark depths, but even at its very edge they could not see much, for the green tissue stretched to within a few feet of the spray. But they could at least see the edge of the substance: it was some three inches thick.

“There’s a second layer below,” said Ibjen. And so there was: a second layer, slightly less green, about twenty feet beneath the first. And below that, a third? Pazel could not see it, but the dlomu (whose eyes could pierce the darkness better than human eyes) said that yes, there was a third; and the ixchel (whose eyes were better still) detected even a fourth, cracked and withered, about sixty feet below.

“And something else,” said Ensyl. “Struts, or rafters, on the underside of each layer, propping it up, maybe. But they are very irregular and thin.”

Myett peered down into the rushing void. “Those are not rafters,” she said. “They’re branches.”

There were grumbles of disbelief. “Branches,” Myett repeated. “And I would wager that those”-she swept her hand over the miles and miles of olive surface-“are leaves.”

“Oh, come now,” said the older Turach. “Leaves? All flattened, crushed together like a griddle cake?”

“Can you think of a simpler explanation?” asked the dlomic woman, Lunja.

“Pitfire, it’s true,” said Neeps, crouching. “The surface is dusty, like, but you can see veins if you look close. Those are treetops, by Rin.”

“Then we’re in the right place,” said Pazel.

“And so is Arunis,” said Bolutu. “The Infernal Forest. And he has taken the Nilstone deep within.”

“Then let us go and take it back,” said Cayer Vispek. “But there is no entrance here. We might aim for those rocks, but to my eye that is a two-day march, and who knows if the… leaves are as solid everywhere as here.”

“Something is different far off along the rim,” said Hercol, pointing east. “Perhaps the leaf is torn or folded; I cannot tell. But that too is miles off.”

“We could try to shimmy down the cliff beside the river here,” said Alyash, “but that’s a tricky wall. Very sheer, and wet with spray.”

“And dark, too, it must be, farther down,” said Dastu.

“Let’s make for that torn spot, if that’s what it is,” said Thasha. “Maybe we’ll find something along the way.”

Having no better option, they set out. The day was bright, and the dark green surface warmed quickly in the sun, and soon the heat was rolling off it with each puff of wind. For several miles there was almost no change in the surface. Here and there they could see a frayed edge, where two leaves were not quite perfectly joined. But they always overlapped, so that one could never catch a glimpse down into the crater. Pazel reflected morbidly that they still had no idea of its depth.

Slowly the thing Hercol had spotted came into view. There did appear to be a hole, but also something white protruding from it. When they arrived at last, they found themselves standing above a semicircular gap some twelve feet in diameter, opening right against the cliff wall. The edges were not torn but smooth and rounded, as though the opening was intentional.

The white shapes turned out to be flowers: enormous, fleshy blooms with dark stamens the size of bottle-brushes. They had a rich perfume, a mixture of honey and spirits. The flowers were not part of the leaf structure, but grew instead upon a woody vine reaching up out of the darkness. The vine was massive, and tightly grafted to leaf and stone. Its angle of descent was gradual, no more than a steep staircase, and indeed with its corkscrew pattern and elbow-turns it somewhat resembled a staircase, leading down to the next level.

“We could manage well enough on that, I dare say,” said Alyash.

“Look there!” said a dlomic soldier, pointing downward. “There’s another opening on the level below. And what’s that? Fruit? Am I seeing fruit on that blessed vine?”

It did look very much that way: five or six purple fruits, about fist-sized, dangling in a bunch near a second opening in the leaves.

“Beware your hopes, and your appetite,” said Hercol. “If ever I saw the makings of a trap, it is here.”

“Agreed,” said Jalantri, “but what if the entire forest is a trap? It must have done something to earn its name.”

Hercol looked gravely into the depths. “Let us descend one level,” he said. “We will collect those fruits but not taste them, for now. If we are starving-well, then we shall eat, and hope to live. But this is all too convenient.”

He went first, scrambling down the mighty vine, passing through the highest layer and stepping out gingerly onto the leaf-platform below. Pazel and Neeps went next, and couldn’t help but smile at each other: this was far easier than climbing the shrouds on the Chathrand, and a thousand times preferable to the iron ladders. Still, Pazel’s leg was throbbing again, and the wound felt itchy and inflamed.

When they reached Hercol, Neeps shouted to those above: “You can all come at once. That vine won’t break, it’s thick as a hawser!”

“Like your head, Undrabust, more’s the pity!” hissed Hercol. “Do you want to announce us to the sorcerer, and whatever else may dwell here? The next time you shout, I expect to find you menaced by something at least as deadly as a flame-troll.”

The tarboy glowered, abashed. The others descended without incident. Even the dogs managed well enough, scrambling down almost on their bellies. Pazel bent and touched the leaf surface: it was spongy, like the inside of a gourd.

When they were all on the lower level, Hercol picked the dark fruits: six in all, very juicy and soft. He placed them carefully in the pack Alyash wore. “They certainly smell delicious,” he said, “as they would, if they were meant to lure us down here.”

“Call me lured, then,” said Big Skip. “Your mul lasts a fair spell in the stomach, I’ll admit. But not this long.”

“You can see the branches, farther in,” said Ensyl. “And there in the distance: that may be a trunk.”

Pazel could make out a few of the pale, slender branches, piercing the leaf on which they stood and dividing overhead, to prop up the uppermost level like the beams of a roof. But he could not see any trunk. It was too dark already: about as dark as the berth deck at twilight. And this, he thought, is just the first level down. He glanced back up along the vine and saw a sliver of blue sky, and wondered what on earth they were getting themselves into.

“The vine keeps going down,” said Neda, crouching, “and there’s another hole like this one, but smaller. And more fruit, too, I think.”

Down they went. The third gap was indeed smaller, and there were but three fruits. And now it was truly dark. Since the holes were so far apart, no direct sunlight could reach them, only a dull, reflected glow, and small pinpricks of light along the cliff wall.

Pazel bent over the third gap. A mix of pungent smells, earth and mold and rotting flowers, issued from it. He looked up at Hercol. “Time we lit one of those torches, don’t you think?”

Hercol considered. “We have but six,” he said, “and each will burn but an hour-or less, if our swim in the Ansyndra has damaged them. But yes, we should light one now. We cannot go on blind.”

“We dlomu are not blind, yet,” said Bolutu.

“And we ixchel,” said Ensyl, “will not be blind until the darkness is nearly perfect. But if you light that torch it will dazzle us, and we will see no better than you.”

“Let us go first, and report what we see,” said Myett.

The others protested. “You can’t be serious,” said Thasha. “You don’t have any idea what’s down there.”

“But we know a great deal about not getting caught,” said Ensyl. “More than any of you, in fact.”

“Go then,” said Hercol, “but do not go far. Take a swift glance and return to us.”

The two women started down, with the matchless agility of ixchel. They were lost to Pazel’s sight almost at once, but at his shoulder Ibjen whispered: “They are halfway to the next level. They are pausing, gazing at the space between. Now they are descending farther. They are upon the fourth level, and walking about. But what are they doing? They are going on! Hercol, they are leaving my sight!”

“Fools!” whispered Hercol. Stepping onto the vine, he began to rush down after them. But then Ibjen hissed, “Wait! They’re returning.” And minutes later the ixchel were back beside them, unharmed.

“We saw nothing threatening at all,” said Ensyl. “But we had two surprises. First, it is very hot, and hotter as you descend. Hot and wet.”

“And the other surprise?” asked Neeps.

The ixchel glanced at each other. “We reached the fourth level,” said Myett at last. “There is no fifth. The vine merely continues into the darkness. We crawled down it a short distance, but never caught sight of the floor.”

“It can’t be much farther,” said Big Skip. “We’re down some seventy feet already from the rim. Drop a torch, I say. That’s how we’d explore the old silver mines at Octray, when I was a lad.”

“You would only soak the torch,” said Ensyl, “and announce us to anyone or anything waiting below. Better to let us lead the way, and light it when we reach the bottom.”

Now even the dlomu grumbled about “climbing blind.” Myett looked at them and laughed. “They don’t trust us, Ensyl,” she said in their own speech. “Not even the black giants want to put their lives in crawly hands.”

She was forgetting Pazel’s Gift, or not caring that he heard. Impulsively, he said, “This is rubbish. They can see, we can’t. Let’s get on with it.”

No one liked the plan, but no one had a better. They descended. After the fourth level Pazel could not even see the vine he clung to. He trod on Neda’s fingers, and Dastu trod on his. The silence was oppressive, and the heat more so. There was no breeze whatsoever, and the moist air felt like syrup in his lungs. “It goes deeper!” the ixchel kept saying, amazed.

The sickly sweet odors grew alongside the heat. Pazel’s hands became slippery. He could not judge how far they had descended (even looking up he saw nothing, now), but a point came when he knew that it was much farther than the four leaf-levels combined, and still they went down and down.

Finally Ensyl said what they had all been waiting for: “The bottom, at last! Watch your step, now! Great Mother, what are we standing in?”

Pazel heard those below him exclaiming softly, and a squelching sound as they left the vine. He reached the ground himself: it felt like a heap of fishing nets: moist, fibrous, very strong.

“Hot as midsummer in the marshes,” whispered the younger Turach.

“Now is the time for that torch,” whispered Myett. “We are almost blind ourselves. This is not the darkness of a forest; it is the darkness of a tomb.”

A scraping sound: Hercol was struggling with a match. Finally it caught, and Pazel watched the tiny flame lick the end of the oil torch. The match sputtered, nearly dying; then all at once the torch burst into light.

Pazel gasped. They were in a forest of jewels, or feathers, or cloaks of colored stars. His eyes for several moments simply could not sort out all the hues and shapes and textures.

“Plants, are they?” whispered Jalantri, wild-eyed, tensed like a cat.

“Obviously,” hissed Dastu.

The things grew all around them, some just inches tall, others towering overhead. The colors! They were hypnotic, dazzling. But the shapes were even stranger: branching sponges, serpentine trunks ending in mouths like sucker fish, bloated knobs, delicate orange fans. Bouquets of fingers. Clusters of long, flexing spoons.

“They feel fleshy,” said Ibjen.

“Don’t touch them, you daft babe!” said Alyash, smacking his hand.

It was hard not to touch them, the things grew so thick and close. Pazel tried to look through the mass of petals, bulges, braided tentacles, feathery limbs, flaring blue, purple, green in the torchlight. They were even shedding color: rainbow droplets were falling and splattering everywhere, as though the things were exuding brilliant nectar or pollen from their pores.

“Fireflies!” said Bolutu suddenly, and Pazel turned just in time to see them: a trail of blue sparks, whirling around Bolutu’s upraised hand, then speeding off to a cluster of growths beyond the torchlight, where they all winked out together. There were other insects, too: flying, crawling, wriggling, with bright reflective spots on wings or feelers. Only the fireflies, however, glowed with their own light, and they were already gone.

Pazel wiped his forehead. The hot air wrapped him in a smothering embrace. Then he felt Ensyl scramble nimbly to his shoulder. “The ground is alive,” she said. “Have a look at your boots.”

Muffled cries and curses: their feet were being embraced by pale, probing tendrils, wriggling up from the ground on all sides. They were easily broken, but relentless in their work. The scene might have been comic, if anyone had the heart to laugh: twenty figures shuffling in place, lifting one foot and then the other. “Pitfire, we can’t stay here,” said the older Turach.

“Keep close to me,” said Hercol. Raising the torch, he set off in a straight line, forcing a path through the rubbery growths. The others fairly stampeded after him. They had not gone twenty steps when Pazel realized that they were no longer pushing through so many of the weird living things. Hercol stopped and turned to look back, and Pazel did the same.

They had been standing in a thicket formed by the great vine. The growths surrounded it, grew atop it, buried it in their flesh. The vine snaked away across the forest floor, every inch of it covered with growths.

“Like a reef back home,” said Neeps, “except that it’s so blary hot.”

“It feels like the bottom of the sea,” said Pazel. “And this is just a clearing. Those growing things are still all around us.”

“Other things, too,” said Big Skip. He pointed away from the cliff: white, rope-like strands were dangling there, from somewhere far above. They were thick as broom handles and segmented like worms, and they ended in coils a few feet above the ground.

“There must be hundreds,” said Ensyl. “They go on and on into the forest.”

“The plants seem hardly of this world,” said Neda, gaping.

“Maybe they’re not plants at all,” said Pazel.

“Well, naturally they’re plants, Muketch,” said the younger Turach. “What else, by Rin?”

“Mushrooms,” said Thasha.

“Mushrooms?” Bolutu looked startled. “That could well be so. Fungus, molds, slimes-they all thrive in darkness. And moisture too, for that matter.”

“And heat,” said Cayer Vispek. “But great devils, a whole forest of fungi?”

“Not the trees,” said Thasha. “They’re plants, all right. That vine is a plant too, and there must be others. But most of these things-yes, I’m sure they’re mushrooms.”

“Come here often, do you?” asked Alyash. “Summer picnics and such?”

Thasha turned away, indifferent to his taunts. But Pazel touched her arm, trying in vain to get her attention. The familiar, faraway look was creeping back into her eyes.

Neeps pointed off to the left. There the growths, though tall as apple trees, were the same parasol-shapes as any mushrooms of the North. “I guess that settles it,” he said.

Hercol put his hand on Ildraquin. “Our quarry is motionless, but still far away. Let us form ranks and be off. Ibjen, bear the torch as you would bear no weapon. Stand in the center and hold it high. And to all of you: need I say that Alyash is right? You must touch nothing, if you can avoid it, and be ever on your guard.” He glanced back to where they had started. “The vine heads toward the center, and that is where we are bound. Let us follow it-safely to one side, of course-for as long as we may.”

They left the cliff wall and started out over the spongy ground. The vine grew thicker still, and its load of outlandish growths even heavier. Soon it was less a vine they followed than a twisting, scaly wall, each section flaring brilliantly in the torchlight as they neared. It was very quiet. Nothing moved save a few tiny insects, and the root-tentacles snatching weakly at their boots. Pazel was soon gasping with heat. His leg too began to hurt, but when Thasha came to his aid he shook his head and whispered, “Not yet.”

“Don’t ignore it,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze. She marched ahead, fierce in her readiness for whatever was to come. As she had been just hours ago, in that so-much-gentler darkness, walking with him to the cedar tree. For an instant the wonder of their lovemaking came back to him, and he felt a wild need for her, a contempt for everything but the desire to be with her, far from these troubles, far even from their friends. The feeling appalled him with its selfishness.

An hour passed. With every step they saw new beauties, new horrors. The crown of one mushroom was a miniature flower garden, each blossom smaller than a grape seed. Another mushroom was as large as a haystack, and twisted as they passed, aiming a hideous, hairy mouth in their direction. The great dangling worm-tendrils moved also, reaching slowly for an outstretched hand. When Ibjen brought the torch near, the tendril coiled like a snake into the darkness above. In some places the tendrils had reached the ground and taken root, so that one looked through them as through prison bars.

Other vine-reefs descended from the unseen trees. Some they passed under; others lay upon the ground like the one they followed. Climbing them was an awkward business, for it was hard to find the solid vine beneath the fungal mass. And some of the mushrooms burned like nettles to the touch.

Atop one of these reefs they suddenly came face to face with a pair of enormous, four-legged creatures, grazing placidly on the far side. Elephant-tall and milky white, they resembled giant sloths, but their backs were hidden under jointed shells. They had great lower mandibles with which they scooped up mushrooms, and gigantic eyes, which they pinched shut against the torchlight. Flapping their soft ears in vexation, they shuffled away from the vine.

As the journey continued they met other creatures: graceful deer-like animals with serpentine necks; a waddling turtle that hissed at the dogs; and far more alarming, a swarm of bats the size of pumas that blasted like a storm through their midst, at eye level, and never brushed them with a wing tip. The bats settled on a gargantuan loop of vine and feasted on its melon-like fungi, before racing off into the perpetual night.

“Fungivores, all of them!” said Bolutu. “They must rarely go hungry. I wonder if anything in this forest lives off meat?”

“I do,” said Big Skip, “but I’ll settle for one of those fruits. How about it, Hercol? They smelled like blary ambrosia.”

“Hold out a little longer,” said the swordsman, “we may find something better, after all. I was a fool not to kill that turtle.”

A bit later they heard running water, but saw none. The sound grew louder, closer, and at last Neda bent to the ground and said, “It is under us. It is flowing beneath the roots.”

After that they realized that they were often mere feet over a rushing stream. Once or twice the gap in the roots was wide enough for them to reach a hand inside. There they found the running water deliciously cool, and bathed their faces. But Hercol warned them not to dip their arms too deep, or to taste even a drop of the water. As soon as they left these gaps the heat swallowed them anew.

They were on their second torch when they reached the base of one of the gigantic trees. It was a straight pillar, twelve or fourteen feet thick. Though painted with lichens its bark was paper-smooth, with no knobs or branchings as high as they could see.

“We will not easily climb such a trunk,” said Cayer Vispek.

“Myett and I could manage,” said Ensyl. “Those lichens will bear our weight.”

Then they saw it: the vine they had followed from the start took root here, right at the base of the tree. Beyond it there was no clear path to follow.

Hercol was unperturbed. “We will blaze a new trail,” he said. “Step up here, Neda, and count paces, and speak each time you reach twenty.”

Sweating and stumbling, they moved on. Each time Neda spoke Ildraquin cut a deep slash at breast height in the nearest fungus. “What if we miss one, Stanapeth?” Alyash called out. “What if something eats them? This is lunacy, I say.”

“The bosun’s right,” Pazel heard Myett say to Ensyl. “We should not have descended to the forest floor! We should be walking above, in the sunlight!”

“And then?” asked Ensyl. “The sorcerer is not up in the sunlight. What if we had marched all day across the surface, only to find no way down?”

“I do not want to die in this place, sister, on this giants’ quest. A reunion awaits me in Masalym.”

“I do not want to die at all,” said Ensyl. “But Myett, be truthful with yourself: Taliktrum surely returned to the Chathrand, ere the ship departed?”

“You do not know him as I do,” said Myett, “and you did not hear his words to Fiffengurt. Nothing will persuade him to return to the clan.”

“Love might,” said Ensyl, “and I think you will have your reunion, however unlikely that appears. We are not defeated yet.”

“Ensyl, you amaze me. Do you truly have such faith in them?”

“In the humans?” said Ensyl, surprised. “Not all of them, of course. But in Hercol, and the tarboys and Thasha-yes, in them I have faith a-plenty. They have earned it. And besides that, I would honor… whatever made us unite. Even as we honor the founders of Ixphir House, what they lived and died for.”

She knows I’m listening, thought Pazel, smiling. It was Diadrelu who brought us together, Ensyl. Your teacher, Hercol’s lover, my friend. Diadrelu who showed us the meaning of trust.

Someone screamed.

It was Alyash, Pazel realized a moment later. He was holding his head, reeling, smashing into the others. Then Pazel saw that there was something in the air, like a fine sawdust, trailing from his hands and head. Some of it drifted into the torch’s flame and crackled; some of it touched those nearest Alyash, and they too cried out.

Alyash crashed away into the darkness, blind with pain, sweeping through the white ropes like curtains. The others charged in pursuit. Cayer Vispek and Neda managed to grab him after thirty feet or so, but it took the whole party to calm him down. “He was cutting extra notches,” said the older Turach. “He was afraid you weren’t marking the trail well enough. I was about to say something when he slashed one of them fat yellow globs, and it exploded! Credek, I breathed that powder in myself, it burns like thundersnuff!”

“I breathed it too,” said Ibjen. “What is thundersnuff?”

“Something not to be toyed with,” said Hercol, “like the things that grow in this place. You are a fool, Alyash. Were you hacking any fungus in your path, or did you choose that one because it resembled a sack fit to burst?”

Alyash’s eyes were streaming. “It stings, damn it-”

“You’ll be lucky if the spores do only that,” said Bolutu.

Alyash screamed at him: “What’s that supposed to mean, you damned bookish fish-eyed doctor to pigs?”

With rare fury, Bolutu retorted: “These fish eyes see more than the little oysters in your face! I know! I had to use them for twenty years!”

They were still bickering when Lunja gave a cry. “Indryth! Indryth is gone!” She was speaking of one of her comrades, a Masalym soldier.

“He was right beside me!” shouted another. “He can’t have gone far!”

“Fan out,” said Hercol. “Watch one another, not the forest alone. And do not take a single step beyond the torchlight!” Then he whirled. “Gods, no! Where is Sunderling? Where is Big Skip?”

“Myett!” cried Ensyl. “She was with him, on his shoulder! Spirake! Myett, Myett!”

Three of their number had suddenly, silently vanished. The others turned in circles, casting about for foes. But there was nothing to be seen but the brilliant spots and stripes and whorls on the fungus.

Then came a sickening sound of impact, not five feet from Pazel. A fungus like a glowing brain had suddenly been crushed, splattering all of them with slime. Out of the remains of the mushroom rolled Big Skip, both hands at his neck, barely able to breathe. Clinging desperately to his hair was Myett.

Big Skip’s hand came away from his neck holding six feet of slippery white tendril, writhing like a snake. With a tortured gasp he hurled it away.

“A worm,” gagged Myett. “One of those dangling tendrils. It snatched him up by the throat. I was pinned against his neck, but my sword-arm was free, and I managed to saw through the thing. It was lifting us higher and higher.” Her eyes found the dlomu. “Your clan-brother is dead. Many worms seized his limbs; they were fighting over him. I am sorry. They tore him to pieces before my eyes.”

The dlomic soldiers cursed, their faces numb with shock. Big Skip drew an agonized breath. He did not look badly hurt, but he was frightened almost out of his wits. “Lost my knife, my knife-”

“You’re safe now, Sunderling,” said Hercol. At these words Jalantri actually giggled, earning him a furious stare from his master. Jalantri dropped his eyes, chastened, but a smile kept twitching on his face. What’s wrong with him? thought Pazel. Is that all the discipline they’re taught?

But Jalantri wasn’t alone in looking strange. The younger Turach kept glancing to the right, as though catching something with the corner of his eye. And Ibjen was staring at an insect on a frond, as though he had never seen anything more fascinating.

“Never mind your knife, Sunderling,” said Hercol. “We’ll find you a club. You showed us what you can do with one when we fought the rats.”

Big Skip stared up into the darkness. “The rats were easy, Hercol.”

They marched on. The gigantic trees were more numerous now. Pazel had barely cleared the slime from his face when the next torch died.

“Stanapeth!” hissed Alyash. “How much farther have we got to march into this hellish hole?”

Hercol did not answer, but Pazel heard him searching carefully for the matches. Pazel realized that his heart was still racing exceptionally fast. It was not just the heat, he realized-the darkness, the darkness was worse. It had begun to affect him like something tangible, like a smothering substance in which they could drown. Suddenly he thought of the Master Teller’s strange words to him in Vasparhaven: You need practice with the dark. Surely this was what the old dlomu had meant. But the Floor of Echoes had done him no harm, and the last encounter had even been wonderful.

Perhaps that was the point: that the darkness could hide joyful things as well as danger, love as well as hate and death. Yet when he had reached for that woman with love she had vanished, and the world they’d supported between them had been destroyed.

The third torch lit. Hercol looked at Alyash. “We should arrive within the hour, to answer your question. That will leave us three torches to return by, if our work goes swiftly.”

“Our work is the killing of a deadly foe,” said Cayer Vispek. “It may not be swift at all.”

“Then we will find which of these mushrooms best holds a flame,” said Hercol.

Off they started again. The ground descended, slowly; the water gurgling underfoot sounded nearer the surface. The heat, if possible, grew more intense; Pazel felt as if he were entangled in steaming rags. His leg throbbed worse than ever, and now he let Thasha support him, though walking together was hard on such treacherous ground.

“We have to stop and clean that wound,” she said.

“Not when we’re this close,” he replied.

“Stubborn fool,” she whispered. “All right, then, tell me something: your Master-Word. The one that blinds to give new sight. Could it help us, when the torches run out? Could that be the sort of thing it was meant for?”

Pazel had expected the question. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, Thasha, but I’m sure it’s not. Ramachni said I’d have a feeling, when the time was right. And it feels completely wrong, here-like it would be a disaster, in fact. I don’t think it’s about literal blindness.”

“Ah,” she said. “I see.”

He could hear the effort she was making, trying not to sound crushed by his answer. She was desperate. The thought jabbed him like a splinter, much harder to ignore than the pain in his leg. And that was love, surely: when you could stand your own suffering but not another’s.

Neeps fell into step beside them. “Listen,” he said, “there’s something wrong with me.”

Pazel turned to him, alarmed. “What’s the matter, Neeps? How do you feel?”

“Easy, mate,” murmured Neeps. “It’s probably nothing, just… well, damn it! I keep hearing her.”

“Her?” said Thasha. “Do you mean… Marila?”

“Blary right,” said Neeps, shaken. “And someone else, too, with her. Some man. He’s laughing at her, or at me.”

Thasha touched his forehead. “You’re not feverish. You’re just worked up, probably.”

“I think it’s Raffa,” whispered Neeps, almost inaudibly.

Raffa was the person Neeps hated most in Alifros: his older brother, who had let him be taken away into servitude by the Arquali navy rather than pay the cost they demanded for his release. “I know it isn’t real,” he said, “but it sounds so real. Pazel, Thasha-what’s happening to me? Am I losing my mind?”

“No!” said Thasha. “You’re exhausted, and hungry, and sick of the dark.” She slapped his cheek lightly. “You stay awake, and calm, do you hear me? Pretend we’re in fighting-class back in the stateroom. And what’s the rule in class, Neeps? Tell me.”

“I obey you,” said Neeps, “like you obey Hercol.”

“That’s right. So obey me, and stop listening to voices you know are just in your head.” She leaned close to him, and sniffed. “And if we get another chance, wash your face. You smell sour. You must have got into something different from the rest of us.”

Neeps sniffed at his arm. “You’re cracked,” he said. “We stink like blary convicts, sure, but there’s nothing special about me.” He looked at Pazel hopefully. “Is there, mate?”

Pazel avoided his gaze. “You smell like a bunch of roses,” he said, feeling cruel and false. Even through the general reek of the forest and their bodies, Neeps’ lemon-smell reached him faintly. When was he going to say something? What was he going to do?

“Here!” shouted Alyash suddenly, just ahead of them. “What did you go and do that for?”

The bosun was sopping wet, and glaring at the younger Turach. The group had stopped by the base of one of the great trees. When Pazel rounded the trunk he saw a weird growth attached to it: a kind of bladder-shaped mushroom five or six feet wide, which the Turach had evidently stabbed. The thing had burst open like a ripened fruit, and water-plain water, as far as Pazel could tell-was gushing from the wound.

Alyash, soaked to the skin, was still glaring at the Turach. “I asked you a question,” he said.

“It was sneaking up on me,” said the Turach, still gazing suspiciously at the fungus.

“Sneaking?” cried Alyash. “That blary thing can’t sneak any more than one of Teggatz’s meat pies! You’re out of your head.”

“If he is, your own foolishness is to blame,” said Neda. “Taking your sword to an exploding fungus, coating all of us with spores.”

“That’s right, sister,” said Jalantri, drawing near her. “His stupidity could have killed us all.”

“Stupidity?” Alyash looked ready to explode himself. “You ignorant little groveler. I was smart enough to fool the Shaggat’s horde on Gurishal. I spied on ’em for five years, while you lot ran about saying it can’t be done, they’ll catch him tomorrow, they’ll roast him, eat him. And all the while I managed to get letters out to Arqual. Your shoddy spying guild never caught a whiff.”

“Devils grant the power of deception to their servants,” said Jalantri.

Neda, clearly annoyed at Jalantri’s interference, stepped away from him. To Alyash, who spoke perfect Mzithrini, she said, “I seek no feud with you. I only meant that you and the Turach made the same mistake.”

“Except that his may have done real harm,” put in Jalantri.

“I should blary stab you, and see what harm it does!” said Alyash.

“You should sheathe your weapon, and empty your boots,” said Hercol. “If we turn on one another the mage’s victory is assured. Now be silent, everyone.” He drew Ildraquin and pointed off into the darkness. “Fulbreech is but half a mile away, perhaps less. And he has not moved in hours.”

“Then Arunis must have found what he seeks,” said Cayer Vispek.

“I fear so,” said Hercol, “but that does not mean he has managed to use it yet. Regardless, the time to strike is now. We cannot go on without the torch, but we can stop it from shining forward, until we are nearly atop the sorcerer, and then attack him at a run. Come here, Jalantri; and you too, marine. Grasp each other’s shoulders, that’s it.”

He made the two enemies stand together, as if partnered in a three-legged race. “Why us?” snarled Jalantri.

For a moment Hercol actually looked amused. “For the sake of the Great Peace, of course. And also because you have the widest chests.”

Removing his own tattered coat, he draped it over both their shoulders. Then he passed the torch to Neda and made her hold it low behind the men. He looked at the others, grave once more.

“Stay low until I give the signal to run. Then there must be no hesitation, no turning. Arunis is very great, but with Ildraquin I stand a chance of slaying him. I will take that chance, but you must help me drive through his defenses, no matter how many, or how fell. Think of what you hold most sacred; think of what you love. You fight for that. Let us go now and finish it.”

They drew what weapons they had and crept forward. Pazel thought the heat had never been so intense. The very trees felt hot to the touch. Off to their left something enormous loomed in the torchlight: another of the bladder-fungi, Pazel saw, but this one was the size of a house, and wedged high above the ground between two trees. What were they for? Water storage? Could there possibly be a dry season here?

He let go of Thasha and pressed her forward, shaking his head when she objected. He feared he would be no use in the fight. But Thasha would be, if he let her. He hobbled, gritting his teeth against the pain.

Neeps looked back at him over his shoulder, his face utterly filthy. Neda glanced back at him too. Pazel nodded to them: I’m managing. And to his great surprise he felt a kind of happiness. His best friend, his sister and his lover: all here with him, even if here was hell. They cared for him; it seemed somehow miraculous. He thought: I’m going to fight you, Arunis, on one leg or two.

Then he went mad.

He was sure of it, for a horror beyond anything he had ever dreamed had enveloped him, a horror you could not look at and stay sane. They were walking on babies. Mounded, rotting, torn open as if by the gnawing of animals, human babies, and dlomic, and They were gone. A hideous lie, an illusion. He was bathed in sweat, and needed to scream. What had just happened to him? Was he mad? Or was something attacking his mind, some illness, some enchantment?

The spores?

Alyash and several others had been stung by the spores. But what if not all of them stung? What if some could not even be seen, or smelled or tasted, but were potent nonetheless? They had shoved and stumbled through miles of fungi. Of course the spores were inside them. Could they brew visions in the mind? Neeps was hearing voices, and the Turach had seen that bladder-fungus move…

“Now!” said Hercol, and flew forward like the wind. The others bolted after him, weapons high, rushing heedless through the fungi, slashing through the dangling worms, moving like a scythe toward their goal. Pazel ran too, faster than he thought himself capable. He actually passed Ibjen and Neeps, and drew level with Bolutu. They jumped a stream, darted around several of the towering trees (how close together they were now!), slid down an eight-foot embankment of roots and globular fungi, leaped through a last tangle-and saw the whole party, standing still and aghast beside an orange pool.

It was not sunk into the ground but raised in fungal walls some five feet high, and in the center lay Greysan Fulbreech. The rim of the pool was a mass of wiry tentacles that strained to reach the newcomers. Fulbreech was floating on his back. He was withered, and shirtless, and a rag that might have been part of his shirt was wadded and stuffed into his mouth. Bruises and burns marked his skin, along with cuts that looked raw and inflamed. His eyes were open but he barely moved. A weak groan escaped him. He did not even turn his head in their direction.

Lifting the torch, Neda raced around the pool, gazing beyond the towering trees. “Arunis is not here!” she cried, desolate, enraged. “The Nilstone is not here! We have been following that bastard and no one else.”

Even as she spoke the torch seemed to leap out of her hand. Neda whirled, lunged after it, and then the light was gone.