Spell of Fate By Mayer Alan Brenner

[Feedbooks]

Spell of Fate

Mayer Alan Brenner

Published: 1992

Categorie(s): Fiction, Fantasy

Source: http://www.mayerbrenner.com/ Also available on Feedbooks Brenner:

- Spell of Apocalypse (1994)

- Spell of Catastrophe (1989)

- Spell of Intrigue (1990)

Copyright: Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country.

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Copyright

© 1990-2007 by Mayer Alan Brenner. First published by DAW Books, New York, NY, March, 1992. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivs 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 or write to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, U.S.A.

Prologue

“AUNTIE LEEN! AUNTIE LEEN! Look what I found!”

Auntie Leen, also known as the Keeper of the Imperial Archives, raised her eyes above the lenses of her reading glasses as the three-year-old figure of her nephew skidded to an uncertain halt next to her desk. In the midst of a frenetic bustle of waving arms she could see that both hands were empty, and the pockets exhibited no more than their typical bulge. “Very well,” said Leen. “I’m looking. What are you hiding, and where are you hiding it?”

He was tugging insistently at her hand. “Here! Come here!”

Robin had been rummaging somewhere off in the back, playing hide-and-seek with himself among the uneven aisles and coating himself with his usual cloud of grime. With her free hand, Leen slid an acid-free marker into the ancient book and closed the crumbly cover, leaving it perched on the reading stand, and picked up her lantern. Although her work area was liberally furnished with candles, thus slowing the deterioration in her eyesight, the deeper reaches of the archive had only the illumination one brought to them. How had Robin been able to see whatever he’d discovered?

As Robin trotted ahead of her off into the darkness, a blue glow spread out ahead of him, lighting his way through the crates and leaning piles of scrolls and books. Leen scowled to herself. She must be getting prematurely dotty, on top of blind, or perhaps it was mere engrossment in the book, although that was an excuse with more charity than Leen was usually willing to allow herself. Nevertheless, absentmindedness was the least dangerous explanation she could claim. Puttering about in the dust while mumbling non sequiturs was professionally expected of an archivist, but when you stopped backing it up with a lucid mind it meant trouble. One day you’re forgetting the trick tunic you yourself had given the boy with the very goal of making it safer for him to prowl through your domain, as she had done at his age when it was her grandfather at the great desk, and soon you’ve advanced to fuddling the sequence for disarming the door wards, with the immediate sequelae of an expanding cloud of archivist-shaped vapor and, of course, the election of a new archivist.

Robin pulled up next to a long spill of books and more than a few freely floating pages and stood hopping impatiently from foot to foot. The glow from the runes on his shirt diffused out through a hanging cloud of fresh dust. Come to think of it, Leen did vaguely remember a crash and thud some ten pages earlier in her own reading, but it hadn’t seemed nearly serious enough to rouse her. Leen took a look around. They appeared to have arrived at a wall, or at least a room-sized pillar. There were many similar spots around the catacombs. “Show me what you’ve found, Robin,” Leen said patiently.

Robin flopped down on his knees and felt around under the next-to-lowest shelf.

The bottommost shelf was a single thick slab of wood extending to the floor, and the next shelf above it was only a book’s-span higher, so Robin was about the largest person who would have been able to discover something that far down. Three or four books from the lowest shelf had been removed, judging by the gaps in the line of snugly fitting spines; without the added clearance, even Robin’s three-year-old-sized arm wouldn’t have had space for maneuver. “Watch!” Robin commanded.

Leen barely heard a soft click. The bookcase made a much louder creak and pivoted slowly away from them into the wall. An opening large enough for a person of Robin’s size appeared on the right side, then continued to widen until a Leen-and-a-half could have fit comfortably through. Robin took hold of her hand again and dragged Leen toward it. How long the shelves and books had been there was anyone’s guess. Leen had found a journal kept by the fourth archivist before her own tenure which set forth his theories. He had been the only member of his particular dynasty, if she recalled correctly, which explained his works not being handed down through the line as her own family had done, although in his case that was not the only plausible explanation. On the basis of flimsy (not to say cryptic) evidence he had speculated that the structure of the archive catacomb itself dated from the time of the Dislocation, if not before. Leen had her doubts. After all, the same archivist had apparently gone loony himself soon after writing his conjectures, closing his career by triggering the trivial third-bend gate and letting loose a construct that had taken half the palace strike team and three senior-level magicians to dispel. His flattened image was still embedded in the wall just past the bend, the expression on the stretched face oddly untroubled. Her grandfather had hung a tapestry over it.

Behind the sliding bookcase was a narrow alcove and the top of a tightly wound circular stair. Leen followed the unstoppable Robin down it, refusing to give in to a sudden maternal rush and tell him to watch his step. She kept her left hand on the central support pole and glanced up periodically as the stairs wound around it; it was fully two complete turns, or perhaps even a quarter more, before they reached bottom.

Leen had no idea where they were, compared to the overall layout of the Archives and the catacombs and the palace complex as a whole. The palace was the kind of place where outside and inside measurements rarely added up, anyway, with the discrepancy as likely as not to indicate that the inside dimension was significantly the larger. Still, the Archive occupied the lower levels of its corner of the complex, so it appeared reasonable to presume that the staircase had taken them down into the midst of solid rock. Or into what she had previously assumed, for lack of any particular reason to think otherwise, was solid rock.

The floor was cold and certainly felt like unbroken bedrock rather than some construction team’s marble or concrete sub-basement. Leen was no longer quite as willing to give it the benefit of doubt as she had been even moments before, though. The other two features of the room were suggestive. One was the wall that faced her at the bottom of the stair. It too was solid, and cold, and obviously thick, but unlike the floor, it was metal. Metal. Not a crude iron alloy or a thin beaten sheet of copper or some lumpish bronze implement or even a piece of the newer structural steels, either, but a deadly serious, absolutely flat, medium-gray slab that reflected its dull sheen beneath the centuries’-long accumulation of sifted dust. She had never seen a piece of metal like that in her life. As far as Leen knew, there had never been a piece of metal like that anywhere in the world. Since the Dislocation, of course. Although there was no evidence of hinge, lock, or control, Leen was certain the slab of metal was a door.

It wasn’t a certainty born of unfettered intuition. The wall adjoining the metal one on its right had its own feature. From the level of her waist to a spot above her head and for a span of an arm-and-a-half or so in width, the solid rock wall, retaining the same texture and feeling of cold stone, turned inexplicably transparent behind its coating of filth. Leen slid a finger through the grime. As the clear rock became clearer behind her finger, she could see that her initial impression was no mirage. The transparent area glowed a pale green, the green washing over her finger in a faint necrochromatic smear. Where her fingertip pressed against the wall a brighter green spot appeared beneath it. She brought her eye close to the smudge her single wipe had left.

Although it was difficult to tell exactly how thick the crystal actually was, it was incontrovertibly not thin. The depth of her forearm, at least. That it did have a far side, though, was also evident, since Leen could see something beyond it - a circular spot of green, coin-sized. A light. Not a flame, or a sorcerous torch, or a rune like the ones on Robin’s tunic, but a light of some different type entirely, a light that glowed its perfect, unceasing, monochromatic glow in the darkness where no eye had seen it for-

The light turned orange, flashed once. Then it winked off.

Leen’s head snapped back as though the light had leapt forward through the crystal and slapped her instead. She shook her head once, trying to still through sympathetic magic, she supposed, her whirling thoughts. She looked down at Robin; he was happily pounding away at the metal door, making not the slightest dent or sound, except for the very mild thump of his small hands against the material. Leen discovered she was rather proud of him, even in the midst of her quite un-Archivist-like mental turmoil. Even as the young child he was, he was revealing the appropriate inclinations of a first-class Archivist himself. One of them, unfortunately, was dredging up things better left hidden. Still, he had most likely finished his part; now it was her turn. Leen told herself to remember to get him something special for bringing her such an interesting puzzle. Interesting? Well, this was interesting. Indeed, it was more than interesting. Something ancient was still alive in there.

Chapter 1

IT SEEMED LIKE THE FIRST DECENT SLEEP he’d had in ages. Of course, his standards had grown significantly more lax since being on the road, but even so you could scarcely deny -

Again, a boot tried to separate his ribs. Again? Jurtan Mont tried to think back into the immediate past. Something must have roused him far enough out of sleep to kick his mind into gear. Could it have been the same foot? And if so, whose foot was it?

“Come on, get up already.”

The voice was unfamiliar. Jurtan cracked an eye and craned his neck around. The shaggy figure with its unkempt beard that loomed over him in the predawn murk was not one he recognized either. But his warning sense hadn’t given him an alarm, and he hadn’t been robbed and strung up in his sleep. “Who are you?” Jurtan said.

“Who do you think I am?” the unfamiliar figure said irritably. “Shoulda slipped a knife through your belly instead of just a friendly boot. That might sharpen one thing about you once and for all, since I’ve just about given up on your mind.”

The figure might be new, but Jurtan was well and fully intimate with the irritation. “Max?”

Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable, looking more than ever like his sobriquet, grunted down at him. “Five minutes, then we exercise.”

Jurtan piled out of his bedroll. It was chilly out in the air, but at least the dew hadn’t frosted over on his face. “How long do we have to keep doing this for? How long until we get somewhere?”

“Never fails, does it,” Max muttered. “Awake for ten seconds and the first thing he does is start to complain.”

“But we aren’t just going to keep traveling forever, are we? When do we get to someplace we want to be?”

“We are someplace.”

“No, I mean -”

“So do I.” Max raised an eyebrow and directed his gaze meaningfully over Jurtan’s shoulder. When they’d stopped after dark the previous evening they’d gone just beyond the line of trees that marked the margin of the road before settling themselves down. During the night, Jurtan had rolled up against what he’d thought, in the gloom of sleep, was a hard tree. It wasn’t a tree. It was a low cairn of stones, with a small signpost on top. He went around to the front and squinted at it. The arrow-end of the sign pointed ahead down the road in the direction they had been traveling. The legend on the sign read “PERIDOL.”

Jurtan grunted. “It doesn’t say how far.” It did seem like they’d been traveling forever. “How long has it been since we slept in a bed?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Really?” Well, okay, maybe. Still, it had to be more than two weeks since they’d made it out of the swamp; maybe as much as a month. If Jurtan had had anything to say about it, they’d never have gone into the swamp in the first place, especially since all they had to show for it was a sack of moldy papers neither one of them could read. Of course, if Jurtan had anything to say about anything, he’d be anywhere at the moment but out at five-thirty in the morning on some nameless road in some useless countryside on the way to somewhere he had not the slightest interest in arriving at. With a maniacal self-improvement freak. Jurtan was still surprised Max didn’t make the horses do calisthenics right along with the two of them.

To his credit, if you were in a positive frame of mind, you could note that Max never sat on the sidelines just calling instructions to Jurtan. Jurtan scowled at his own thought as he laced his fingers together behind his back and began his first ten-count of creaking his way over backward. That wasn’t a positive at all; all it meant was that Max pushed both of them as hard as he pushed himself. “What do you think you’re glaring at?” Max said, finishing his own back-bend, holding it, and then moving his upper body up and over in a slow lithe curl that culminated with his nose touching his thighs and his arms pointing straight ahead of him behind his inverted back.

“Why do we have to do this every day?” Jurtan grunted a moment later, coming back upright and pausing before doing the whole thing over again. “We’re already in shape. Okay, maybe I wasn’t when we left Roosing Oolvaya but I am now, so -”

“You’re in shape now? Good, then we can go on to the next level. There’s no standing still in this outfit.” Max tilted backward again and Jurtan reluctantly followed.

Max had already told him that standing still meant going back; that was aphorism number ten-thousand thirty-three. Thirty-four? If Max tossed him another Rule to Live By today Jurtan thought he’d … well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Jurtan’s music sense didn’t seem to agree with Max. Well, it might be as bad physically, but at least he wouldn’t have to accept the fact that his own body was in league against him too. He didn’t care at this stage if something was good for him or not. So what if he actually did feel better than before he’d met up with Max and Shaa? Great, he was in touch with his body, he had muscles and supple joints, his coordination had improved and he had a new repertoire of skills. All this had done was give him a new appreciation of the under-recognized appeal of sloth as a lifestyle.

A flugelhorn honked querulously at him from the back of his head. That was another thing - what was the good of an extra sense that spent most of its time editorializing? Anybody who had a conscience had to be used to having it tell its owner what it thought of them, but Shaa (who was supposed to know about things like that) had never heard of one that orchestrated its critical commentary with multi-part harmony and a comprehensive palette of tonal colors.

Of course, the standard wisdom on consciences was that they concentrated on reactions to issues of right and wrong, weighing in with a compulsion to do right and feelings of guilt if you violated a previously recognized ethical principle. What a conscience wasn’t supposed to do was step out proactively, jumping in with helpful hints and suggestions of its own when it hadn’t been asked to do anything more than shut up. In fact, shutting up was the one thing Jurtan’s sense had thus far refused to do.

On the other hand, Jurtan wasn’t complaining, especially now that he’d reached an accommodation with his resident talent. In the old days of all of several months ago, his musical accompaniment had been jealous to a fault. Back then, as soon as Jurtan had heard music from outside his head - music that someone else was actually playing - his eyes would glaze and his mind would grind to a useless stop. Eventually he’d come back to consciousness with a blank gaze and no idea where he was. Sometimes he’d even be jerking and kicking, too, or worse. It had been pretty embarrassing, and sometimes kind of dangerous as well. After all the training and the practicing, though, that didn’t happen anymore.

Max finally called a halt. Jurtan felt tingly and fully wrung out, but of course the day was really just starting. Back in the grove of trees and parallel to the road was a stream. The horses eyed Jurtan suspiciously as he eased down to the water; they hadn’t quite forgiven either Jurtan or Max for their experience in the swamp. Max had been eyeing the horses back. For Max’s own part, the look on his face implied he’d been considering whether he was going to continue viewing the horses as part of the team, rather than as a source of ready cash or, in a so-far unexperienced emergency, as dinner or lunch. The horses and Max had for the moment fish-eyed each other to a standstill.

Nothing snapped at Jurtan out of the water, and a quick splash took some of the edge out of his own snappish mood. He was almost back to their small camp when he saw the strange device standing near to the shoulder of the road at the edge of the treeline thirty paces or so west, in the direction of Peridol.

“What’s that?” said Jurtan. It certainly wasn’t another signpost, unless it was pointing the way to a place you couldn’t get to on a horse, and not a place merely across the ocean either. One of the trees, a small sapling really, had been stripped of its side branches, leaving little more than a wooden rod protruding upward from the ground to the height of Jurtan’s head, a rod with a prominent root system still anchoring it to the ground. A carved icon had been strapped to the top of the tree facing the road and was doubly secured there with a peg. Jurtan couldn’t make out any details of the carving since a wisp of ground fog was still clinging to the icon in a soft glow.

“Better stay away from it in that state of mind,” Max called over.

“Stay away from what?” muttered Jurtan. “I’m not a kid.” Ignoring the sudden blare of discordant brass and the familiar snare-drum roll that usually warned him when something worth paying attention to was about to happen, he aimed a kick at the pole. Without quite knowing how it had happened, Jurtan found himself for a brief instant hanging upside down in the air, where he had been dragged when something that felt like an enraged beehive had latched onto his foot and lashed it up over his head. Then he was sprawled out on the dirt fifteen feet away, at the end of a five-foot furrow, with his face covered with mud and his leg throbbing and tingling as though Max had had him exercising for three days straight without a rest break. Jurtan got an elbow under him, wiped dirt out of his eyes with an equally filthy hand, and spit loam out of his mouth.

Max was standing nearby looking the shrine over with a professional eye, but from a prudent distance. “What did you think was going to happen?” Max said. “It’s an active offering to an active god, looks like the Protector of Nature. Whoever set it up obviously had the concept a little vague, since they mutilated a tree to do it instead of just honoring something green in its natural state, but I guess the Protector wasn’t being too picky that day either, or maybe she was just hungry. You’re just lucky it didn’t call an enforcer.”

Jurtan dragged his head free of the dirt and sprawled up to a sitting position. “You wouldn’t have let me get near it if it would have set off something real bad.”

“Oh, you think so,” said Max, “do you.”

“Not if it would have called attention to you, no I don’t.”

The kid was probably right but that didn’t mean Max had to let him know he knew it. Give him an inch and, well, who knew where you’d end up. Max gave Jurtan a hand instead and pulled him to his feet. “Get yourself put together again while I finish breakfast. We still have some eggs from that last village.”

Even in his newly reinstated morose mood, Jurtan had to admit that one of Max’s other talents was knowing how to make the most of cuisine on the road. With some decent food inside of him and after his second bath of the morning, Jurtan was also more willing to take a longer view of his situation. He was prepared to acknowledge that the pace Max had been setting since Iskendarian’s swamp was by no means a killing one even if it wasn’t downright leisurely. They’d been in and out of several countries and city-states since then, wasting a fair amount of time talking and hobnobbing in towns and farms. They’d even made a few outright side trips to check out local legends or hot spots, and in one case to visit a ruined castle where Max had climbed a toppled mound of wall-stones festooned with moss and trailing ivy to declaim several stanzas of ancient poetry. Far too many stanzas, if you asked Jurtan, who had never been a big fan of high literature. When you added it up, though, you had to conclude that they’d been staying on back roads and avoiding the larger thoroughfares. On the more traveled routes there would have been more people who might have remembered them, Jurtan figured, but there would also have been more excursionists to lose themselves among. On the other hand, the smaller towns they’d been through wouldn’t see ten visitors in a year, so they’d most likely remember the two of them if anyone asked.

How much did Max really want to shake The Hand off their trail?

Something else Jurtan had learned was how to think and work at the same time. While he’d been mulling Max’s plans and intentions back and forth he’d succeeded in getting the area cleaned up and the horses packed; more skills Jurtan couldn’t recall wishing he possessed. At least sitting on a horse all day was no longer a more drawn-out form of one of Max’s tortures. Jurtan was almost at a stage where he could say he felt comfortable with riding.

“No,” said Max.

Jurtan paused, one foot in its stirrup and halfway into the saddle. “What?”

“We’ve been pushing the horses enough. Let’s give them a break today.” Jurtan let himself down to the ground. They hadn’t been pushing the horses, they’d been virtually coddling them. What was Max up to? This bit with the horses wasn’t the only strange thing this morning, either. “Why are you wearing that beard and that grubby disguise?”

“Practice. “ If there was anything else Max didn’t need, it was practice in deception or dissimulation, which meant his answer this time had meant about as much as any of Max’s answers ever did. “If you told me what was going on I could help,” Jurtan volunteered.

“Oh, you could, could you?”

“What do you have against me, anyway?” Jurtan mumbled. “I thought apprentices were entitled to some consideration.”

“They probably are. Are you coming or not?” Max had led the other horse onto the road. Jurtan grimaced and dragged his horse after him.

Something was up, though. Max wasn’t usually quite this testy, especially in the morning; he liked getting up early, and seemed to hit his stride right around the time the sun came out. Maybe Max did need practice. Max was always suspicious, but this morning he was out-and-out on edge. Something was putting him especially on his guard.

Max had produced a floppy, wide-brimmed hat of a piece with the rest of his ratty disguise. It was ratty only in appearance, though, not in effectiveness. If Jurtan met this fellow on the street he wouldn’t give him a second look, except perhaps to make sure there was enough of a buffer space around to steer clear of him. As the trees thickened around them and the amount of morning light reaching them through the canopy of leaves declined, Jurtan thought he saw a pale pink glow begin to peek from beneath the brim of Max’s headpiece.

Max settled his hat more firmly. While his hand was in place next to the brim, he slid his fingers underneath it and adjusted the control matrix above his right ear. Camouflage, Max thought, camouflage and subterfuge, always hiding one thing behind another; what a world. If we didn’t have all this magic running loose, struggles of power and battles of will, it would probably be a much nicer place overall. But on the other hand it probably wouldn’t. People were people and power, after all, was power. The enhancement disc in front of his right eye firmed and Max’s overlay-view of the scene ahead of them settled down. Off to the left on the trunk of a tree was a squirrel. Between its bark-colored fur and the gloom of the lighting level it was all but invisible to the unaided eye, even once Max knew where to look. To the disc, though, painting the squirrel’s body heat in a glowing orange, it might as well have been under a spotlight.

There were other animals out and about, too - a streak that could have been a fox, an assortment of birds, a few more squirrels. No larger game was in sight, though, and certainly nothing on two feet, unless they were using countermeasures. Screening aural emanations was a standard enough trick in the right circles, but heat signature suppression was still largely unheard of. Infrared sensors were such an obvious idea, too. Still, it was a fact that remote sensing never really seemed to catch on, like so many facets of magical technology that were deliberately subtle and designed to keep you out of trouble rather than blowing up situations with flash and pyrotechnics. Most practitioners weren’t nearly as clever as they thought they were, and on top of that they’d didn’t much like to do research. Of course, Max thought, there’s research and there’s research. Everybody liked to steal good stuff if they could. Their problem was that they went after it the hardest way, trying to lift the secrets of a living competitor, or reverse engineering back to a piece of left-over stagecraft from its residual fallout. It was safer all around and usually more productive to boot to mine where the guardians were dead.

When you wanted certain kinds of answers, though, going through ruins and books was nothing but a waste of time. Max glanced idly around again. There was someone around here laying for them, he could feel it. Beyond the matter of foiling whatever the somebody had in mind, the larger question was whether they were just freebooters out to waylay travelers in general or whether they had a particular target in mind. The options weren’t exclusive, of course, if you were going to be logically comprehensive, since the kind of customers who’d ambush someone in particular in a forest probably were the sort who wouldn’t mind an extra spot of fun and profit if someone else happened along while they were waiting.

Until proven otherwise, you had to assume every plot was directed at you personally. Even with this carefully cultivated paranoia, however, Max had to acknowledge that the most likely scenario here was the old scout-them-out-in-the-village, rip-them-off-in-the-forest routine, with the innkeeper in league with a few of the local toughs.

After all the waiting, when it happened the whole thing was there and over with almost as soon as it had started, in the typical disorganized flurry and commotion.

Max had unbent enough in his didacticism to warn Jurtan to stay alert and keep his eyes open. They had entered a section of forest where the path was both narrower and twistier than it really needed to be, and also happened to be snaking through a series of chest- and then head-high gullies. Reddening leaves covered the ground. It was, after all, fall, but it was still early in the season, and these were a lot more leaves than they’d seen anywhere else in the forest. It could be that this particular area had had a recent windstorm, Max was thinking, perhaps coupled with too little foot traffic to disturb the leaves since then. He’d seen the obvious trace of a wheel-rut in various places they’d already passed on the path, but Max knew he wasn’t a good enough tracker to tell how long ago the cart had gone through. Still, even with these plausible natural explanations, was it possible that someone had deliberately spread leaves out across the path?

Max looked around him at the forest on either side. Unfortunately, this was one of the spots where the banks of the gully were above his head. From the back of the horse, though, his vantage point would be significantly better. He raised his hand to tell Jurtan to stop and stepped up into the stirrup.

Following behind Max, Jurtan had been hearing an undulating, traveling string motive in a succession of major keys that he supposed was symbolic of forest murmurs or some such. For background accompaniment it was fairly pleasant, as his internal music ran; it was nicely tonal and more representational than conceptual. Jurtan was much fonder of melody than the atonal screeching stuff, which tended toward sour harmonics and sharp sudden squeals, but even now, with his greater level of control, he didn’t usually have a choice. Over the last few minutes, though, a menacing deep bass theme had gradually appeared behind the forest music, which itself had just modulated to minor. Jurtan was looking around himself too, trying to figure out which direction the menace might be coming from, and so he didn’t immediately see Max raising his hand and pausing his horse. As a result, when the loud harsh voice of a steerhorn opened up with a quivering blast from the edge of the gully just behind Jurtan’s head, spooking his horse and Jurtan both, Jurtan had no idea how close he had drawn to Max and his horse. In the process of leaping out of its skin, Jurtan’s horse only knocked him spinning off to the right and into the earthen bank, from whence he went sprawling toward the leaves, but it hit Max full on just as its stride lengthened and it really started to dig in.

Max separated from the stirrup and hurtled toward the ground just ahead of the charging horse’s front hooves. Jurtan, watching with slow-motion clarity and stunned fascination on his own trajectory toward the ground, could see that at the same moment as Max’s chest hit the path the horse was going to land on his back with its full galloping momentum and punch Max’s spine through his heart. Then, an instant later, Jurtan was equally sure that Max had pulled off some slick piece of sorcery and had teleported or dematerialized himself out of the way, since he had hit the layer of leaves and disappeared. An instant after that as the horse’s forelegs began to disappear as well and the horse lurched forward off balance, Jurtan realized that no magic had to be invoked after all. Just ahead of them the leaves had concealed a pit.

Max knew if there were spikes in the pit he was in trouble. He used the thump the horse had given his back to wind himself forward, spinning head-first down. Above him, Jurtan’s horse, still on solid ground beyond the edge of the pit, pushed off strongly with its hind legs, trying to use its momentum to clear the pit’s far rim, which was now visible since the net that had held up the leaves was collapsing under Max’s weight. Unfortunately, the front of the horse was already twisting downward after Max. The horse started to do a forward cartwheel and hit the far lip of the pit halfway along its forelegs.

Jurtan rolled over once in the leaves just short of the pit and came to rest facing upward, giving him a perfect view of another net with lead weights woven into its sides descending from the top of the gully straight toward him. Also centered in Jurtan’s field of view was the underside of Max’s horse, which Jurtan had fetched up next to in his roll. Max’s horse was tossing its head and stamping its legs nervously, but it hadn’t decided to take off like Jurtan’s. Accordingly, instead of draping itself over Jurtan the thrown net settled over the horse.

Jurtan rolled back out from under the dangling corner of the net and staggered to his feet as the steerhorn sounded again. Something swooshed past his ear - an arrow! Whoever was up there was going to hang back behind the ridge above and try to pick them off. But what if Jurtan just tried to run away? He heard a crunch, a clatter, and a loud grunt from his left, in the direction they’d just come from, and turned to see a heavily built man with a wild black beard and a broadsword getting his balance on the path; a spill of earth showed where he had jumped and slid down into the gully.

Max landed inverted at the bottom of the pit, in a handstand, his arms tangled in leaves and netting. The horse with its broken legs was sliding in after him. Max let himself fall carefully backward. Something narrow, scratchy, and tall pressed up against his back, yielded, and then snapped with a crack. There were spikes, but obviously not enough of them to carpet the hole. Max kicked another spike over out of the way and sprang backward onto his feet, then leaned forward to press himself against the side of the pit. Next to him, the horse finished collapsing into the pit, impaling itself on the spikes. An arrow thonked superfluously into its flesh.

There would be at least four of them, Jurtan thought. The hefty guy guarding the path with his sword, the archer, the one with the steerhorn, and probably another swordsman to watch the path on the other side of the pit. Max had been tutoring him in swordwork, but even after Max’s usual intensive crash-course Jurtan didn’t think he could take down all of them with his blade, especially considering the tactical situation the terrain put them into. The blade was scarcely the only weapon at hand, though.

The music in his head left Jurtan an opening. Drawing his own sword, he hurled himself forward at the hefty man, yelling out “Heda!” in tune with the music.

A blare of internal trumpets matched him. The edge of Jurtan’s vision swam, but with the last month’s practice behind him his concentration locked solidly into place and held his consciousness together. Instead, the man ahead of him reacted slowly, as though he’d fallen into a sudden daydream, his eyes vague and sluggish as he began to adjust his stance and bring up his sword.

Max and Jurtan had determined that vocalization wasn’t nearly as effective in projecting paralysis as the flute in Jurtan’s pack or the harmonica in his pocket. On the other hand, his voice was close to hand and left both arms free. Jurtan slid past the man’s guard and whacked him on the side of the head with the flat of his blade. Music stabbed at him; without thinking, Jurtan leapt back. Another arrow flashed in front of him through the space he’d just left and punctured the falling man’s chest.

Max vaulted over the thrashing horse before it could crush him against the wall and rolled upward out of the pit. Not pausing, he pushed out of the roll and sprang up the side of the gully. Just above of him sticking over the edge an arrow was being slapped into a bow. Max snatched at an exposed root just below the lip, pulled himself closer, grabbed the bow with his other hand, then let go of his grip on the root. As he fell backward he pushed off with his feet and yanked. With a crazed howl a man appeared in the air above Max, still holding his bow. The man twisted over Max and followed his bow head-first into the pit.

Two sets of footsteps crashed above, retreating rapidly into the trees. Max was scrambling back up the embankment to give chase when the charging footsteps stopped and were replaced by first a whinny and then a gallop. The path beyond the pit jogged to the left; presumably it snaked around to the spot where the ambushers had their horses hidden. Max dropped to the floor of the gully next to his own horse. “What?” Max demanded of it.

The horse had its head cocked to one side and was giving him a reproachful look from beneath its weighted net. The horse hadn’t moved a foot throughout the entire affair. “Be that way, then,” Max told it.

“Are you all right?” said Jurtan, from a location safely beyond Max’s reach.

“No thanks to you. Next time take better care of your horse.”

Jurtan was relieved to note that Max’s tone of voice was relatively mild, for Max. “I don’t think anyone’s going to be taking too much care of that particular horse in the future.”

The kid was right. The horse in the pit had had one last thrash in it, and it had expended this by rolling over onto the bowman. Most likely the guy had broken his neck anyway, but that still left no one to interrogate. Max picked up his hat, which Jurtan’s horse had demolished by falling on it, then tossed it into the pit. So much for a field test of the infrared detector. It would have found the ambushers if he’d had a line of sight to them, but of course he hadn’t. “It could have been worse,” Max said. After all, they did have the one horse, and the Iskendarian papers. The ambushers might have tossed down a torch.

Jurtan was standing over the man on the ground beyond the pit, the one he’d hit over the head, but who’d then been shot by the archer when Jurtan had moved out of the way. “They’re … dead,” Jurtan said.

“Yes. Yes,” said Max, “they’re dead, all three of them.” Max noted that Jurtan was now looking off into the air, studiously avoiding the sight of the body lying in front of him in its heap of leaves splashed red with blood, and the other man and the horse behind him in the pit, and in fact Max himself. Max made no move to approach Jurtan. If you were going to live with violence you had to deal with this situation eventually.

“I, ah, never killed anybody before,” said Jurtan. “I mean, I didn’t even mean to kill him.”

“Well, you didn’t kill him, either. His friend did.”

“But if I hadn’t hit him the way I did - if I hadn’t moved away when I did … ”

“Yeah?” said Max after a minute.

“ … Then either he would have killed me or the arrow would have,” Jurtan said heavily. “Right? But it still - I mean, they were people, they had lives, and all of a sudden -”

“They might even have had mothers, too,” Max said, “but it’s still worth remembering that they were the ones trying to ambush us. You didn’t see them trying to run away; they took the job, no one was forcing them.”

Well, Jurtan thought, at least I haven’t thrown up. “I’m just glad my father isn’t around,” he muttered. “He’d probably want to see me drinking their blood instead of standing around talking.”

“If we ever see your father again,” Max said, “I won’t tell him about it if you don’t want me to. Keep in mind that your father is not exactly typical when it comes to these things.”

Now Jurtan was looking down. It wasn’t really that bad, except for all the blood. The scene would probably only give his father an appetite, and the satisfaction of a job done well. His father was weird.

But Shaa and Max had been teaching Jurtan to be professional, and there was nothing weird about that that he could he think of. What would be a professional thing to focus on? “Was this The Hand again?” asked Jurtan.

“No,” said Max.

“So you don’t know who it was?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Well, who was it then?”

“I didn’t get much of a look, thanks to you, but the main guy could have been Homar Kalifa.”

“Another friend of yours? Is he someone else who’s after you?”

Max closed one eye and squinted up at the sky. “Kalifa’s a third-rater, strictly small-scale; more of a tough-for-hire than a decent adventurer. A riffraffy sort, but he does like to carry a steerhorn. Not too many steerhorns around these days, either. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall crossing him up once, dropped him out a mid-story window into an ornamental pond, it might have been.”

“So this could have been just a not-so-friendly hello for old times’ sake.”

“Maybe,” Max said dubiously. “Even if the pond did have something nasty in it; eels, maybe. Doesn’t seem very likely to be Kalifa, but it’s not totally implausible. Kalifa’s the sort who could easily wash up in a spot like this. It’s quiet countryside, he could ease back and terrorize soft locals or dumb travelers.”

“Really?” said Jurtan. “You think this was just random violence? I thought you were the most suspicious person on the continent.”

“There’s no real way to tell, kid. It could have been a robbery. Anyway, you’ve got to remember it’s Knitting season. A Knitting always kicks things loose; everybody’s out taking care of any business they can think of.” Max glanced into the pit, then looked away down the path. “Whether or not someone sicced Kalifa on us, could be there’s more of this stuff up ahead.”

Chapter 2

IT WAS EARLY MORNING, AND THESE WERE THE HIGH SEAS. Actually, the sun had cleared the headlands, which meant it couldn’t be all that early, and since the headlands above the seasonally fog-shrouded coast were in easy sight off the starboard beam the seas couldn’t be all that high themselves. Zalzyn Shaa had appropriated his accustomed morning-watch position on the quarterdeck of the Not Unreasonable Profit, and, with his sea legs long since thoroughly entrenched, was balancing easily against the coastal swells with a steaming mug of herb-brew tea in his grasp. This fine if slightly foggy morning, Shaa was reflecting back on his early acquaintance with the Not Unreasonable Profit and its similarly not unreasonable captain and crew, on the middle reaches of the River Oolvaan. The River Oolvaan, as was typical of intra-continental and land-locked waterways, had a fresh-water source, even though it emptied ultimately into the sea. Its navigational challenges had been those of sandbars and shifting currents, punctuated by the odd flood and the occasional cataract. Didn’t that mean, Shaa was wondering, that a vessel which made its habitat on such a river would have been designed specifically for fresh-water navigation in areas of restricted passage, rather than for the vicissitudes of the open ocean?

Despite his brief tenure as captain of this very ship, Shaa did not consider himself enough of an expert on nautical matters to speak authoritatively. Such a sage was, however, present. “Captain Luff,” said Shaa, addressing the slicker-garbed individual standing beside him at the rail, where he had been keeping his usual weather-eye peeled for any fresh pandemonium Shaa might feel compelled to unexpectedly unleash, “this ship and this crew, and one might add, yourself, are used to sailing the River Oolvaan, is that not true?”

“Aye, Dr. Shaa,” Captain Luff said warily, “that is indeed the situation.”

“Indeed,” said Shaa. “Have you found, then, that the forces at your command have been equal to the transition to the salt-water environment we are now cruising so pleasantly across?”

Captain Luff removed his pipe from the corner of his mouth, extracted a pointed implement from beneath his slicker, and set to work scraping at the pipe’s inner recesses. “Why do you ask, Dr. Shaa? Do you have a criticism to lodge?”

“Not at all,” Shaa told him, “not at all. I was only reflecting on the reservoirs of seamanship and marine expertise present on this ship, not to say within its very sinews.”

The captain looked at Shaa for a moment, his hands still and the pipe forgotten. “You know, it is true,” he continued, after the pause for consideration, resuming work at the same time on his pipe, “that a mariner does not often get the chance to engage in conversation of the sort I have engaged in with you, especially while at sea, don’t you know. That being said, and that being no less than the truth, it must also be said that never in all my years of roaming the waterways of the known world, aye and seas and oceans beyond the commonly known, too, never, as I say, I can state with confidence, have I heard before today any person refer to any ship as having sinews.”

“It is my honor to be the first, then,” said Shaa. “But the matter of sinews remains, nevertheless, with or without the delineation, as does the matter of the difficulty in realigning ship and crew from one environment to another. That would appear to be just the sort of challenge to appeal to an old sea-dog such as yourself. Wouldn’t you say so, Captain?”

“There be more than enough challenges aboard this ship,” stated Captain Luff. Shaa inclined a guileless eyebrow. By this time, however, Captain Luff had been through enough of these encounters to realize that if Shaa had a guileless bone in his body it had not yet revealed itself, even by implication. “More challenges than that, Captain?” Shaa said. “A hardy sea-dog you must be indeed, and no doubt about it. Surely there must be some way I can help lighten the goad of your burden.”

“I would doubt that very much, Dr. Shaa,” said the captain with a sidelong glance in his direction, “seeing as you yourself contribute mightily to it, don’t you know. You are a challenge yourself, sir, and no doubt about that. You must have been quite a vexation to your mother, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“So she often commented,” said Shaa, “which was all the more curious considering the overall balance of terror in my family.”

Captain Luff examined his now-clean pipe with relish before propping it securely back in the corner of his mouth. “How was that, now, then?”

Shaa had been lulled by the pleasant swells and the motion of the ship, which was for a change gentle to a degree approaching placidity. “I had an older brother, you see, compared to whom I was the merest pussycat.”

“‘Had,’ then, you say.”

“Had, have, it’s all the same anyway.”

“Is that how it is? I lack the personal experience, don’t you know, being an only child.”

“A prudent philosophy,” Shaa told him, “have no doubt about it.” To the east, the sun broke through the last wisps of the morning mist and cast a clean light across the ship. Below them and forward, the main deck was spotted with clumps of crew members adjusting ratlines, coiling ropes, swabbing the deck, and checking the lashings on the few crates of trade goods that had failed to fit down in the hold with the rest of the cargo. Much more of the deck was open than had been the case on their run down the Oolvaan. Perhaps this was also related to the different demands of sea and river. Shaa decided that, all things considered and curiosity aside, it might be better not to reopen the topic.

Members of the crew were not the only ones abroad on the deck. Ronibet Karlini and the young Tildamire Mont were ensconced at their small writing-desk over by the starboard bulwark. Tildamire was not so young as that, actually, Shaa reminded himself, noting the appreciative glances the deckhands were giving her whenever they had the opportunity. She and Roni were both dressed in shirts and shipboard trousers, with loose jackets as outer wear, and Tildy had similarly followed Roni’s lead by cutting her sandy hair short. In Shaa’s professional opinion as a physician an adolescent woman could do much worse than adopt the sensible Ronibet as her role model. Shaa hadn’t known Roni at Tildamire’s age, though, so it was possible that could have been a time when the model had broken down. As Shaa well knew, even sensible adults are not necessarily sensible from birth.

Tildamire had been following Roni in more than just deportment, though. Roni was easygoing but that was not the same as being easily impressed. In discussing their plans for the near future just the previous evening, in fact, Roni had commented on Tildy’s rapidly developing aptitude for symbolic math and theoretical magic. Tildy didn’t have practical spell-knowledge or casting skills, but her grasp of their underpinnings was significantly the harder to achieve. It could also ultimately take her further if she chose to continue with wizardry as a career. Still, the thrill of discovering an astute disciple did not totally account for the fervor with which Roni had been alternately encouraging Tildy and egging her on. Observing Ronibet, the situation made Shaa wonder if she was not reenacting one of her own formative experiences. Perhaps Karlini knew, but if so he had thus far been unwilling to spill those particular beans.

Not that the Great Karlini had been all that communicative on any other topic for the last few days, either. This morning Karlini was at his accustomed place too, up on the foredeck wedged into the bow. Karlini had spoken vaguely about keeping a watch for icebergs, and indeed he had been spending an inordinate amount of time gazing off into the water ahead of the ship. True, Karlini at the best of times was noticeably absent-minded. At the moment, though, Shaa had observed that Karlini had been taking preoccupation to new levels of intensity. This did not seriously interfere with his value as a deterrent, and was clearly playing a role keeping the sailors at a healthy distance away from his wife and Tildamire. Sailors were a superstitious lot by tradition, and Shaa would not have been surprised to discover that this was codified in their guild rules as well, but it took no superstition for them to treat Karlini with vigilant respect, only powers of observation. They had viewed Karlini’s pyrotechnics earlier in the voyage.

Of course, as far as the issue of deterrence went, there was Svin, too.

As Shaa watched him along the length of the ship, Karlini suddenly stood, brushed himself off, shook one leg clear of the coil of rope that had decided to tangle itself up with him on his getting up off the deck, and began to make his way aft. Some ancient philosophies had claimed that observer and object were linked in a complementary relationship, with an act of observation causing some reciprocal change at the other end, and indeed a certain class of spells were based directly on this principle, not to mention its ramifications throughout the treatment of action-reaction coupled pairs. Outside of the direct application of this philosophy through sorcery, Shaa did not believe its effects could be felt at the level of the macroscopic world. Nevertheless, it was certainly true that the world was full of surprises. Shaa had been watching Karlini, and Karlini had taken that moment to spring into action. Of course, nothing said the world’s surprises had to be any more than inconsequential.

Shaa heard a discreet cough at his elbow. “Excuse me, sir,” said Wroclaw, Karlini’s retainer. “Might I bring you a refill for your tea? And you, sir, captain, a fresh pouch for your pipe?”

Indeed, Captain Luff had just started to fumble beneath his slicker with an increasingly furrowed expression, which Shaa had interpreted to mean that his tobacco had somehow eluded his grasp. As Wroclaw deferentially extended a full pouch of the captain’s blend toward him, it became clear that he had in fact been even better than his word had implied in anticipating the needs of the moment. “Thank you, Mr. Wroclaw,” Captain Luff said, taking the pouch and beginning to prime his pipe. “How do you do that, man?”

For Wroclaw, “man” was a generic honorific, what with his lime-tinted skin and extra-jointed arms, but then you had to allow species terms a certain laxity in modern society in general, unless of course bigotry was your all-too-common philosophy of life. “I’ve always looked on it as more a calling than a job, sir,” said Wroclaw. “And you, Dr. Shaa?”

Shaa had thoroughly inspected Wroclaw as he’d handed over the captain’s pouch; both of Wroclaw’s hands were now free and there were no noticeable bulges around his coat or trousers. “Yes,” said Shaa, “I will thank you for your offer and indeed take a refill, since it is after all for medicinal purposes rather than raw sybaritic pleasure, but only if you can produce it now from about your person.”

Wroclaw cleared his throat again with a genteel “ahem.” Then, when nothing had happened after a few seconds, he stamped lightly on the top step of the companionway up which he had first appeared. “Ahem,” he said more forcefully, aiming it down the steep stairs. An earthenware teapot appeared at the top of the companionway and rose into the air.

“Not beast of burden am, I,” said a crackly voice. His attention now focussed in response to the new speaker, Shaa could perceive that the teapot was not in fact floating on its own in mid-air. Instead, the teapot was clutched in a set of black-cloaked arms that Shaa had lost at first against the similar gloom of the unlighted below-decks passage. Beside him, Shaa felt Captain Luff find something else to observe on the quarterdeck, and edge carefully away. Captain Luff did have his limits.

Shaa had his own limits too, of course, but he made a point of drawing them much more liberally, and on a time-varying basis of relativity. “Thank you, Wroclaw,” he said as Wroclaw poured more brew from the teapot, “and you too, of course, Haddo. That was quite neighborly of you, I must say,” he added judiciously.

“Hmph,” said Haddo. “Low is fate, for teapot the porter I to become. If not on vacation was bird, different would be things. Wroclaw, speak with you would I.”

“Please excuse me, gentlemen,” Wroclaw said. “Is there anything else I might get you?”

“Thank you, Wroclaw, no,” Shaa said. “Off with you now. The path of wisdom is not to keep friend Haddo waiting.”

“Indeed, no, sir,” agreed Wroclaw, followed by another echoy “hmph” from beneath his feet. Wroclaw disappeared down the stairs.

“Quite a crew you are,” commented Captain Luff from his new position behind the helmsman, “and about that there’s no mistaking.” He fingered his nattily short growth of new beard. “Speaking of which, where’s that other young fellow this morning? The one with the cane and his mind in the haze.”

“The Creeping Sword?” said Shaa. “I’m sure he’s skulking about somewhere.” He had not actually told a lie, Shaa reminded himself. He had merely neglected to mention the fact that the “somewhere” to which he had alluded was no longer onboard the boat.

Captain Luff gave a noncommittal grunt and puffed vigorously on his pipe. A cloud of aromatic smoke engulfed his head before shredding away in the breeze. “And our other amenities are adequate, I hope? And our navigation? I trust we are approaching Peridol at a quick enough rate to suit you, Dr. Shaa?”

“‘Alacrity’ is a word that comes to mind,” said Shaa. This was not necessarily an unmixed blessing. The circumstances of his last departure from Peridol had been what they had been, nor were they likely in the interim to have changed. Back then, it had been made clear to Shaa that Peridol was not what he would be able to call a healthy place. Nevertheless, one characteristic of interims was that they did offer an opportunity for situations to evolve. His heart gave a sudden palpitation and broke into a run of rapid beats. Be still, Shaa told it, and took an extra swig of the glycosidic tea for good measure. Surprisingly, his heart did quiet, resuming its regular rate and rhythm. Pharmacologically speaking, the double swallow of brew he had just downed would not have yet had an opportunity to affect things one way or another, but Shaa was never one to devalue the role of a timely placebo, even on himself. For all his crustiness, Shaa knew well just how vulnerable he could be to suggestion.

In the classical texts, suggestibility was tied up with susceptibility to a curse. Learning that there was such a thing as a curse-prone personality had not improved Shaa’s attitude on the subject of curses as a whole. Unfortunately, one’s conscious attitude, whether approving or disapproving, was not a side of the issue that had any impact on the results; one’s receptivity remained. So did Shaa’s track record. To the extent that Shaa’s vulnerability to curses might depend on his suggestibility, Max had tried to browbeat him out of it, and Shaa had also submitted to various arcane therapies from the deepest ranges of science and superstition both, but still the curse remained. Shaa was resigned to it. I am, he thought, really I am.

Resignation in this case was as much a matter of practicality as anything else. Too many oaths would have to be broken - and for that matter too many people would have to die - for the effects of the curse to end. The thought always left Max undaunted, but then Max was an undauntable kind of guy. Shaa was much less so, at least in this case. In this particular case, the most probable single person whose death would bring the curse to a close was Zalzyn Shaa, himself.

Down on the deck, the Great Karlini had reached Roni and Tildamire. He had been joined partway along his path from the bow by a seagull, which had perched itself on his shoulder. This being the sea, there were many seagulls about, and a small flock of them had taken up regular station just astern of the boat. This particular seagull, however, had not entered their company with these others, but had been dogging Karlini’s steps since even before he’d come to Roosing Oolvaya, having joined up with them the first time at a spot far inland.

“There’s something not quite right about that thought,” Karlini muttered. “‘Dogging your steps’ is a common enough expression, but doesn’t it sound kind of odd when applied to a seagull?”

“Many things you say sound odd, dear,” his wife told him.

Karlini’s face had furrowed itself in thought. “Isn’t there some tradition that looks at the seagull as a harbinger of doom?”

“Not as far as I know,” said Roni. “That’s not to say you don’t hear about seagulls here and there in some of the out-of-the-way texts. Usually they’re put in a concrete rather than metaphysical role, though; avatars of pelagic ecology, that kind of thing. The seagull? - maybe a harbinger of ocean carrion and bivalve mollusks, but doom? Why aren’t you talking to Shaa, anyway? He’s the student of natural philosophy, not me.”

The seagull stretched out its wing and flapped Karlini once over the head. “Urr,” Karlini said. “It has to mean something! The thing’s been following me for months.”

“It probably knows you’re an easy touch, dear.”

I simply must take up tennis, thought Tildy Mont. Her father had sent her off with Roni to get an education and see the world. The academic stuff she supposed she was getting, all right. What she’d been seeing of the world, though, was less scenic than distressing. Tildy had lost count of the number of conversations she’d witnessed that were just like being a center-line spectator at a tennis match, only without the ball, although sometimes with the rackets.

Tildy was used to it enough by now that she didn’t swivel her head back and forth to follow the volleys; she could observe with her eyes alone, and even with her eyes closed. The way the Karlinis played the game was different from the way Shaa did it, though, or for that matter most anyone else she’d run across. The things Karlini said often didn’t seem to have much connection at all with what was going on in the rest of the conversation. Karlini did this with everybody, but with his wife he was getting to be the worst. Was that because they’d been married for so long, or was Karlini just heading off on a different plane? Tildy glanced idly at the seagull, which as usual was paying no heed to Karlini’s comments except for an occasional nip at the closest ear, and sat up straight with a start.

For a change, the seagull had swiveled its eye around and seemed to be watching her.

“No, you don’t,” Tildy hissed. “You’ve already got a shoulder.” The seagull squawked and tossed its beak, then turned and wailed straight into Karlini’s eardrum.

“Yow! Stop that, will you?” Karlini growled at it. “The first thing when we land in Peridol I’m heading straight to the college library to look up an exorcism for sea-fowl.”

“Sit down and have a piece of cheese, dear,” Roni suggested. “The grapes are still fresh, too.”

“I don’t want a grape,” said Karlini, sitting down anyway and immediately regretting it. Why was Roni looking at him like that? “What? What is it?”

“What’s wrong with you, dear? You’ve been snapping at everyone ever since we left Oolsmouth.”

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine. I’m bored. I don’t like boats. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“So you said.”

Karlini managed a strained-looking smile. “See? Nothing’s wrong. You like to see smiles, right?”

“Okay, fine.”

“What did I say? Now you’re mad at me.”

“You’re just fine?” said Roni. “Okay then, I’m not mad.”

“Okay then, fine,” said Karlini.

“Fine.”

“Great.”

“… Uh, guys?” Tildy said, watching the two of them sit there glaring at each other, Karlini with his arms folded belligerently and Roni matching him with a sour enough expression to make you think she’d just taken a swig of milk a week out from under its freshness spell. “You love each other, right? Why are you beating up on each other all of a sudden?” It was sort of like watching your parents argue. Part of Tildy wanted to slide under the table and shrink away. Of course, that was the part her father, the former Lion of the Oolvaan Plain, had tried to totally expunge, along with any other personality features that smacked to the least extent of anything less than no-holds-barred straight-ahead attack-dog ferocity. No weaknesses were tolerated in the Mont family. That was surely why Tildy’s brother, Jurtan, had had such a hard time, what with his seizures and all; the Lion had looked at him like he was a strange invertebrate dragged in by the cat and dropped on the rug with a binding set of adoption papers. Tildy wondered how Jurtan was doing. Karlini might have been able to snoop in on him and Max to find out what was up, but Roni was right - Karlini hadn’t done much of anything since they’d left Oolsmouth except mope around and be peckish.

“There’s more to a relationship than love,” Roni said, after a pause long enough that Tildy had just about decided neither one of them had heard a word she’d said. “You decide what’s important in the relationship and then you stick to it. Trust. Openness. Sharing. Communication. Old favorites like that.”

“I’ve got nothing to share!” protested Karlini.

“So, see,” said Roni. “I guess we’ve communicated.”

“Good, I guess we have.”

“Right.”

“Fine.”

“It seems to me,” said Tildy, “that if you, Karlini, were working on some project instead of -”

“I don’t need marriage counseling from an adolescent,” Karlini sputtered. Maybe he’d also been listening after all. “Give me a break! Okay, I’m on edge, big deal. We’re heading into who knows what-all kinds of trouble in Peridol, that’s enough to put anybody on edge. There’s - oh, why bother. And there’s always Haddo.”

“Yes,” said a reedy voice approaching from astern, “always is Haddo.”

Tildy looked over her shoulder behind her. There was no doubt from the voice, of course, that Haddo was heading their way, but you could always hope. Haddo was trailed by a distressed-looking Wroclaw.

“Thanks, Haddo,” muttered Karlini. “Perfect.” Karlini didn’t enjoy knocking heads with his wife, especially with Tildy tossed in the mix to boot, so that should make the idea of being rescued more appealing, he thought, right? Unfortunately, rescue by Haddo promised its own set of new aggravations. Haddo’s industrious scuttle ground to a halt next to the table. Ready or not, Haddo was upon him. “Time for more contract negotiations, Haddo?” Karlini said.

Haddo aimed the black opening in his dark hood at Karlini, the twin floating red sparks in its depths canted reprovingly and the cloth of the upper rim drooping over them like accusingly furrowed eyebrows. “Master, O Great,” said Haddo. “Homage give we small laborers. Master are you, light can you treat serious the matters.”

“I guess that means yes,” said Karlini, his scowl (if that was possible) deepening further. He pushed himself to his feet. “I guess I’d better deal with it.”

“Guess?” said Haddo. “Guess not. Only do.”

“What?” Karlini muttered. “What, you want me to start paying you for those pearls of wisdom now too?”

Roni watched Karlini move reluctantly off with his retainers, and Tildamire watched Roni. She hadn’t seen Roni like this before. Roni sighed. Actually, Tildy thought, remembering that all of them kept telling her precision was important, it was more a masculine exclamation of “huh!” than a feminine sigh. To say it was a sigh would put the wrong spin on it. “I don’t know, Tildy,” Roni was saying, oblivious to Tildy’s internal battle with vocabulary. “You spend years with somebody, you start to think you know them, then you blink at them one day and see they’ve turned into someone else.”

“Uh, maybe it’s like he said, he’s just worried,” Tildy suggested. “He thinks he’s got to watch out for me, keep the sailors off me. I wish he’d back off a little. I mean, there’s my father and everything. My father thinks I can take care of myself or he wouldn’t have let me go off with you.” She noticed Roni wasn’t listening again. Just as well; Tildy thought she might have gone overboard a little with the bit about her father. As far as the Lion was concerned, the only one who could take care of themselves was the Lion. “Karlini said he doesn’t like boats.”

Roni was playing with a grape from the bowl on the table. “He doesn’t like boats, but he’s never reacted like this before. He usually just turns green and sits in a locker moaning. I’m not a shrew. It’s him - he’s keeping something from me. He was always a terrible liar.”

“Okay, maybe he is. Why would he do that? If he is, he sure doesn’t seem very happy about it either.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’ll tell you this. I’m going to find out.” Grape juice squirted. Roni wiped the crushed grape skin off her fingers.

Tildy found she was staring at the remains of the grape. Don’t go making a metaphor out of this, she told herself. The image of the pulped fruit stayed with her, though. If this kept up somehow Tildy didn’t think grapes were the only things that might get crushed.

The Great Karlini stopped on the far side of the deck, leaned on the rail so he could look over the side, and said in a low voice, “Is this far enough out of anybody’s earshot for you?”

Haddo regarded him, his arms beneath his cloak planted solidly on what in any similarly proportioned humanoid would have been his hips. “Bum are turning yourself into, you.”

“What Haddo means to say -” Wroclaw began.

“What means Haddo to say,” snapped Haddo, “Haddo will say. Not for you is business this, you with for liver the lilies. When tough must get - are doing you what?”

“Would you like to sleep with the fishes?” asked Wroclaw, in the same urbanely unruffled tone he always used. The other incongruity in the scene, aside from his words, was contributed by the way in which Haddo was now dangling over the side of the boat above the rushing water below, suspended by the bunched material of his hood caught up in Wroclaw’s clenched hand. “Answer now, if you would, Haddo my colleague.”

From the strangled sound of Haddo’s voice, Karlini thought, you might think Wroclaw had him by the neck instead of by the hood. “Down put me!” he gargled. “Point have you made!”

Karlini blinked. Haddo was back on the deck. There’d been a slight black-tinged blur in the air, but that was the only sign that Wroclaw had swung him back rather than using some kind of quick-zap teleport number. Haddo shook out his cloak and reached up to adjust the hang of his hood. “Regret will you this,” he muttered. Rather than a manifesto of vendetta and doom, though, the remark sounded to Karlini like a statement made pro forma, for the sake of appearance and conversational nicety.

But Wroclaw? “Uh, have you been taking some kind of martial arts lessons or something, Wroclaw?” Karlini said tentatively.

“As always, sir, my services are yours to command,” said Wroclaw. “As Haddo was commenting, though, with his usual velvety manner, we have been noting a certain … decline in your condition of mind of late, sir. We beg your pardon for our boldness in raising this, but there it is.”

“Condition of mind? What are you talking about?”

“A term that comes to hand, sir, is ‘mope;’ also ‘brood’ or ‘sulk.’ We would all much rather see you engaged in some productive activity than slipping into, excuse me sir, as I mentioned before, decline.”

There it was. A sorcerer in “decline” was one who’d lost his or her touch and was an accident waiting to happen; raw meat for the next predator who walked up with half an appetite, a sinking ship to be deserted. The seagull shifted its balance uneasily on Karlini’s shoulder. “Is that what this is about?” said Karlini. “Are you telling me you’re quitting?”

“No, sir,” Wroclaw stated, “certainly not at just this moment. Peridol in this season is likely to be rather a challenge, though, if I might say so.”

“I’ll be ready! Don’t worry about me, I’ll be ready.”

Wroclaw scrutinized him. “Indeed, sir, of that I had no doubt. Please pardon our impertinence. Haddo, shall we go?”

“I’ve got something else to discuss with Haddo,” said Karlini. “Leave him with me.”

“As you say, sir.” Wroclaw bowed and withdrew.

Karlini directed a hard stare at Haddo, which the seagull still perched next to his head duplicated. Haddo stared back. “Well?” Karlini said. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“Close enough is matter. Better can you do than doing have been you.”

Karlini closed his eyes, and kneaded his forehead. “All this plotting and• scheming, scheming and plotting. It never ends, Haddo, it only gets worse.”

“Word gave you.”

“I know I gave my word, Haddo, but this is not going to work. I haven’t kept anything from Roni since I met her. Now I’m supposed to work against her behind her back?”

“Not as extreme as statement is situation. Know this you.”

Karlini turned back to the ocean and drooped over the rail. The seagull squawked and hopped off his shoulder, flapped once, and came to a neat landing next to him on the gunwales. “I can’t do this, Haddo. It’s only going to get worse, it’s not going to get better.”

Karlini felt Haddo’s leathery hand on his back. “Do it you can,” Haddo told him, “because do it you must. In Peridol perhaps will be all things resolved.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

Haddo shrugged. “Happen it could. Happened have stranger things.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“How things go, that is. Help you perhaps can I. On this think I should.” Karlini had fallen silent. Haddo watched him a moment longer, though, before deciding Karlini was in no significant danger of falling or leaping over the rail. As he retreated, Haddo cast another glance back to be on the safe side. Karlini was still drooping, his back to Haddo, but the seagull fixed him with an intent, watchful look.

Checking periodically over his shoulder, Haddo made his way below decks and into the hold. The crates and lashed bales of their cargo had been packed tightly into the available space, with only a few narrow passageways left to twist and dodge their way between them. Haddo, however, was a being of less than average size. He had also assisted in the packing. This was not the first time during the trip he had been down in the hold, either. He was sure no one had been following him, and no one was in sight when he scuttled around a bend in one of the passageways, dropped to the deck, and slid himself to the left. Anyone carrying a lamp through the hold would have seen no hint of an opening, since the sacks that flanked the passage at that point bulged out at the front, casting a maze of shadows on everything below them. To detect the narrow recess at the bottom where a cleverly raised palette kept the sacks off the deck an observer would have had to crawl, hope for a quiet bilge as they put their eye down on the deck, and aim their light just right.

Of course, it was a ship, so there were rats. As Haddo wriggled through the narrow space, pushing the sack he’d picked up on his way past the kitchen in front of him, something chittered at him from up ahead deeper in the blackness. Haddo growled back at it. The squeaking persisted, joined by a blinking set of green eyes. Obviously this was a rodent he had not previously encountered. “Warned you did I,” muttered Haddo. A red glow spread from under his hood, then focussed down and became twin beams, straight, clear, and narrow with a color like spotlit rubies. The rat’s green eyes fluoresced and its chittering turned to a squeal as its sharp-edged shadow spread out behind it. Where the beams converged, a puff of smoke rose out of its fur. Then the rat had had enough. It twisted away with a final wail and was gone. The beams and the red glow died. Haddo edged through the area the rat had abandoned and reached the lower edge of a crate. He rapped on it. “Who is it?” said a muffled voice.

“Who think you it is?” Haddo snapped.

“You can’t be too careful,” grumbled the voice. The wood panel clicked and slid upward, and Haddo edged through the opening. The panel glided shut behind him. “Hold on while I get the lights.” A ripple of shining green ran around the wall over Haddo’s head and snaked off at right angles, outlining the inside of the crate. Then yellow burst out through the green, the two colors pulsated once or twice as they worked things out between them, and the light level settled down to a constant low but serviceable glow.

The crate measured perhaps eight feet on a side. As you’d expect from a crate in a cargo hold, the space ahead of Haddo was crammed tight with stuff - rolled parcels concealed in oilskins, boxes with latches, a lashed set of short metal rods, a hand-axe. Barely visible atop the mounds of equipment was the curve of a spherical cauldron.

Behind Haddo, a ladder was fastened to the inside surface of the crate. The same lattice-work retaining wall that kept the contents of the crate from collapsing into the entrance-space continued upward along the ladder’s path. Haddo grasped the ladder and scurried up. At the top of the ladder a two-foot-high gap separated the cargo and the crate’s upper lid. Protruding from the center of the cargo was the upper swell of the round ball, and swung back from the center of the ball was a domed lid. “Outside met I rat,” Haddo told the creature perched inside the sphere, its head propped on the lip.

“You want to tell me about inconvenience?” said the creature, its pointed ears splayed at conflicting angles. “Try taking an ocean voyage inside a box.” He moved his head around in a slow circle, carefully stretching his neck muscles, then worked one shoulder back and forth to match. “I’m getting to be nothing but a mess of hog-tied ligaments.”

Haddo tossed the sack he’d lugged up the ladder onto a cluster of skyrockets protruding out of the baggage next to the ball. He gestured at the metal sphere. “Have you not your vehicle, Favored? Life support facilities has it, said you not?”

“There’s a big difference between support and comfort,” said Favored-of-the-Gods. “At least you get to walk outside on the deck.”

“A pleasure always that is not,” Haddo said drily. “Also my idea this plan was not.”

“You could have tried to talk me out of it.”

“Frozen permanently in frown is mouth,” asked Haddo, “or is just to make of visitor with supplies to welcome feel?”

“If you weren’t bigger than me I’d whomp you one,” Favored muttered.

“Testy is getting on ship everyone,” Haddo reflected. “At throats people are.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Haddo shrugged. “Not alone are you. Good or bad not is, fact is only. Of it make what choose you. To Peridol ride wanted you.”

“Well, yeah, all right,” said Favored. “You’d think if my patron wanted me in Peridol for the Knitting she’d at least have supplied transportation, but no.”

“Insensitive ones work you for,” commiserated Haddo. “Downtrodden masses are we.”

“You starting with the dialectic again?” Haddo shrugged. “Anyway,” Favored went on, “as long as you’re bringing up insensitivity, how’s that Karlini of yours doing? You keeping an eye on him?”

“Faith has kept Karlini. Speak to wife will he not.”

Favored shook his head. “I don’t know about him, Haddo. He could be a weak link. If he lets something slip to her - or, worse, directly to Max - Max’ll come after us the first thing he does. I don’t mind telling you I’d rather not face him head-on.”

“Danger is Max. Getting around it no way is. To check put on Max, options limited are. Karlini most attractive option is.”

“You’re sure he’s not going to fall apart?”

“Sure am I not,” snapped Haddo. “Said I not under strain is he not. Observing closely am him I. Difficult position have put we in him.”

“So we’re just going to watch while his fuse burns down?”

“Credit give me for brains,” Haddo said. “When Peridol reach we, mood of Karlini must we lift. Cycle must we break. This for, place Peridol perfect is.” Haddo hesitated. “Problem only is Karlini not. Told I not you about ice the attack.”

One of Favored’s eyes snapped wide open and the other squinted half-shut, his nictitating membranes twitching. “Did you say ‘ice’?”

“Ice said I,” said Haddo reluctantly. “On trip down river to Oolsmouth attacked by icebergs was boat. Thought Karlini and Shaa against them was aimed strike this.”

“Does that mean what I think?”

“Know not I, suspect I only.” Favored slumped back into his sphere. His voice echoed out with a hollow metallic tone. “That’s the last thing we need right now.”

“Last need we, first yet but may we have.”

“Ice, you say?” Favored repeated, with a note of disbelief. “That’s not good. What the hell business does he have heading out of the frozen wastes to come after you down here, anyway? I thought he was out of the picture for good. You said he couldn’t survive out of that climate, either.”

“Maybe someone he got refrigerator to build.”

“Damn,” said Favored, now thoroughly morose. “You got anything else you want to tell me? What about that seagull?”

“Bird speaks not yet.”

Favored hung his head back over the lip of the hatch. “I don’t like that either. The idea of that bird makes me nervous. As long as that thing’s walking around … Well, I don’t like it.”

“Much around is there that like you not,” said Haddo. “Agree with you do I, yet strike we preemptively can not. To be on guard, to wait, to watch is of wisdom the strategy.”

“Wisdom? You trying to turn yourself into a sage now too?”

“Particularly wise am I not. Open merely are eyes.”

“Yeah, well, you’re probably right,” Favored said. “You’ve had more fieldwork than me anyway. There sure isn’t much we could do on a boat even if we wanted to. Once we get to Peridol the story’ll be different.”

“In Peridol will be many things different,” Haddo said. “Enjoy you of refill the fruit.” Always a useful ally, was Favored, Haddo mused as he squirmed his way back out of the crate and into the passageway in the cargo hold. Seeing adequately as always in the minimal light, he padded quietly toward the exit, dodging around the jogs and corners. Two to the left, then one to the right, then - whoompf!

“Where from came wall?” muttered Haddo, taking a step back. There hadn’t been a surface at this spot on his way in. Then all at once he realized that what he’d run into wasn’t a wall at all. It was a man. A large man, in fact a very large man. A man whose mass owed nothing to sloth or fat and everything to cord upon band of muscle, that and his hereditary ceiling-scraping stature.

“You,” whispered the man.

“Down keep your voice,” hissed Haddo, feeling the cargo shift around him in resonant vibration with the subterranean rumble of the speech, “or avalanche cause could you. Around boat seen you have I. Svin are you. Dark corners liking are you now?”

“You,” Svin repeated, with a bit less rumble this time, but with the same hollow bang and boom. “I have seen you too. You have been avoiding me. You are Haddo.”

“Avoiding have I been not,” protested Haddo. “No reason would have I -”

“I have tracked the snow leopard. For three days have I followed him through the tundra, through the empty plains. When someone tries to hide from me, I know. You are Haddo. I know you.”

“Serve we both same masters,” Haddo said, his own voice a bit scratchier than usual. “Met did we in service together, recently, on boat.”

“No,” said Svin. “I know you. I am a barbarian from the frozen north, like my parents before me.”

Haddo stared him up and down. Even in the gloom of the hold, lit only by the stray beams of sunlight that had wormed their way through gaps between the planks of the deck above, it was apparent that this statement was out of date. “Barbarian were you,” Haddo stated. “Now wear you trousers and shirt, cut you your hair; abandoned have you loincloth, are gone your furs. Civilization have you entered.”

“You may be right,” Svin said reflectively. “Perhaps now I am something else. That is not the point. You will not change the subject, you with your games of language and your culture of deceit. Men are not born to -”

“If to something say have you,” said Haddo, “stop you can I not, but favor do me this - forget at least of noble savage the spiel. Old has it become.”

“Words are a trap,” Svin acknowledged. “I leave the snares of rhetoric; the truth is this. At the top of the world my people lived with the land; with the caribou, the ice hawk, the polar bear. We lived the way of the warrior. Man strove against beast, family against nature, tribe against tribe. Who would dare rule us? Chill wastes were our home. Even the hand of the gods was light. Then came Dortonn, Dortonn the sorcerer, Dortonn and his Kingdom of Ice.” Svin spat, as though to clear his throat of something vile.

What was vile to Svin was not merely the content of his speech, Haddo knew. Not that long ago Svin had been down with tuberculosis. Since then it had been hack and hack, cough and cough all over the ship. Svin got his throat back under control and continued. “With his power Dortonn forced my people to serve him, to build his castle. We called to our gods, but they were with Dortonn. They told us to submit. We would not submit, even at the word of our god. But we were not the only ones under Dortonn’s hand. There were others in the wastes. Those like you.”

“Many relatives have I -”

Svin squatted down in a smooth powerful motion and closed one hand over Haddo’s cloak next to the hood, where his shoulder probably was. “One among them served Dortonn as his chamberlain, as Fist of Dortonn. He too was a cunning sorcerer. He was called Haddo.”

“Among my people common of Haddo is name,” Haddo said quickly.

Svin’s hand tightened. “Under Haddo, Fist of Dortonn, life was hard, but before this time Dortonn himself was even worse. There was little difference; we hated both Dortonn and his Fist. Then one day there was lightning and fire in the castle. One tower fell. We fought Dortonn’s soldiers shoulder to shoulder with Haddo’s people, who seemed to come from the very walls. Some said this was Haddo’s doing, his plan to overcome Dortonn.

“Many fell. Many fled. Dortonn survived, though his strength was now weak. Haddo was not seen again.”

“Interesting perhaps this is,” allowed Haddo. “Happened what then? Events these must years ago have been.”

“Yes,” Svin said, his voice lost in memory, “years ago. I was a child. Yet it was I who saw Dortonn escape into the cliffs.”

“Do not understand I why to rule frozen wastes would want someone,” said Haddo. “Of better places are there plenty.”

“That is what I need to ask you. Why? Why did Dortonn come to us? What was the true story, and the story of Haddo?”

“Release you your hand,” Haddo instructed him. To his surprise, Svin realized that his fingers had obeyed almost before his mind had had a chance to process the demand. Still, rather than grab Haddo again he stood up and moved back a step. In Haddo’s voice, croaky though it was, Svin had suddenly heard the same tone of nonsense-is-over that he’d been trained to recognize across from him at the other end of a sword. The twin red embers beneath Haddo’s cloak looked hotter than usual, almost like the actual pit-of-hell flames Svin remembered from bedtime tales as a youngster, and seemed to circulate like whirlpools of fire as Haddo stared up at him and spoke. “If that Haddo were I, if there had I been, think would I that behind this story, really was there a god, that his tool Dortonn was. For gods games these are.”

“That is not enough. I must know more.”

“Your time bide you,” Haddo said after a moment. “If that Haddo were I, lightly not would take I this. Much means this to you… Against this Haddo swore you vengeance?”

“Of course I swore vengeance,” said Svin, taking another step back. “My people are always swearing vengeance for one thing or another.” The elders had told him to watch out for magicians, especially ones who weren’t human, but they’d never really explained how to rationalize the craftiness you needed around sorcery with the forthrightness expected from a warrior born. “But now I am older,” he went on, more thoughtfully, “and have seen too much for things to be that simple. Perhaps knowledge may be a kind of vengeance too.”

A sudden creaking at the far end of the cargo hold, and a new glow in the air, indicated that someone else was undogging the door across from them and coming in. “Perhaps talk will we again,” hissed Haddo. “One question pose will I for you. Name know you of god, master of Dortonn?”

“They said Dortonn’s allegiance was only to Death,” said Svin. “That’s all my people ever thought of him as, Death.”

“Many deaths there are. To tell them apart, names they have.”

“… I was only a child,” Svin said tentatively, “but perhaps I did hear something else, at night, when the elders were talking. Is it even a name? Pod Dall?”

“Is a name,” Haddo reassured him. It was quite an interesting one, especially under the circumstances. The god whose creatures had terrorized Svin’s people had kept an uncharacteristically low profile; this god had apparently not wanted his identity bandied idly about. Still, Svin’s information corroborated Haddo’s own suspicions.

Quite interesting. Especially under the circumstances. Did Svin know about the ring they had picked up in Roosing Oolvaya? Probably not. It would be just as well not to tell him. In particular, it might be better, at least for the moment, that Svin not know about the god trapped in the ring. The god by the name of Pod Dall.

Chapter 3

THERE HAD TO BE LAND AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE. I dug the oars in again, stroked against the swells for at least the ten-thousandth time since I’d left the ship, and felt the dinghy move another fathom further toward what I hoped was still the east. The water-hugging mist had enough of a pearly glow that I knew the big moon was up there someplace, even if by now it was surely declining toward dawn. The fog bank had gotten thicker as I rowed, though, and it was now useless to think about putting the moon squarely astern and rowing away from it, since I couldn’t see the disc of the moon to save my life. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. After all, I did have a compass. I was confident enough of my ability to row in a straight line that I couldn’t have been checking it more than once a minute. But how hard could a continent be to find when you were sitting just offshore?

As creative as I’d been at getting myself into trouble, I might find out.

I looked out at the haze and stroked. Maybe one reason the fog was so thick was that some of the murk that had been clouding my own mind was finally leaking out. Wishful thinking, maybe, but you could argue that was the same philosophy that had already carried me alive and intact over more than a few rapids in the last several weeks. Wishful thinking and luck.

Riding the rapids does take a toll, though. The end of the mess in Oolsmouth had left me in a daze; how much so was only becoming clear to me now that I was coming out of it. In my stupor, flowing along with the current, I’d taken some actions that didn’t seem entirely well-chosen now in retrospect. Drifting out to the Oolsmouth docks and linking up with Shaa and the Karlinis for the ride to Peridol was one of them.

It had seemed to make sense at the time. I’d felt like I needed reinforcements around, enough to provide me with a breather to rethink and regroup. I also hadn’t been looking forward to walking or hanging onto a horse all the way from Oolsmouth to Peridol. On the other hand, for anybody who might be watching me, I’d now reinforced my connection with the others and in effect dragged them even deeper into my own problems. I know, I know, “anybody who might be watching me” sounds paranoid to the extreme. Paranoid I may have been, but there was still the evidence of recent twists and turns to show that in the case paranoia was the most conservative of strategies; I was as sure of that as, well, as my own name. Of course, considering that I didn’t have the slightest idea of what my name actually was, that gives a pretty good outline of the state of affairs.

They’d been calling me the Creeping Sword. An alias like that is enough to send anyone with a modicum of taste back to bed with an icebag, I know, but unfortunately it was really my own fault. There’d been that case I’d just finished involving this Sword guy, see, and the name was so cheesy it stuck in the front of my mind. When I fell in with Max and Shaa and they wanted some handle to address me by it was the first thing I could think of. Like most first thoughts, it left endless possibilities for recrimination after the fact. It beat “hey you over there in the corner,” I guess, but both of them had about the same relationship to anything approaching the real me. At least, I hoped they did. None of us really knew, which was yet another way of popping the situation into a nutshell. Of course, a patronymic like the Creeping Sword was certainly the least of my worries.

Just because I had problems, though, didn’t mean they were all equally difficult to address. Even if joining the Not Unreasonable Profit had been a bad idea it still might not have been too late to escape the repercussions, which is why I found myself out alone in a rowboat in the middle of the night in the middle of the ocean. From my vantage point at the moment, this was not the first time one of my solutions looked less appealing than the problem it was supposed to solve. Nevertheless, if I could make it to shore it shouldn’t be more than a three- or four-day walk into Peridol along the coast road. That sounded like a good investment. A stout hike was probably the perfect prescription for draining the last dregs of goo from my mind. That’s what Shaa had said, anyway, and prescriptions were his business.

There wasn’t much question about the hike’s destination, either; Peridol was clearly the place to be heading. Whatever your question might be, Peridol was always the leading place to find answers. Of course, Peridol being what it was there were usually more answers than questions, and if you hadn’t thought to bring a question with you, Peridol was more than happy to provide you with more than enough of its own. That was Peridol during normal times. During the Knitting season, that should apply at least double; maybe even triple, who knew? Since Peridol was Peridol, someone probably had the multiplier posted somewhere, with a back room full of probabilists arguing over the odds.

There it was again, math. Things kept coming back to math. For me, math had always been a dark room and me without a match. I didn’t think I had any better grasp of mathematics now than I’d had before I’d run afoul of Max and his crew. Well, fine, I’d never wanted to be an accountant, and I’d certainly never wanted anything to do with the other major discipline that required a solid grasp of math, both abstract and applied. It was an axiom that you couldn’t do magic unless you could work the math, but that had always been just dandy with me.

Just look at me now, though. Whether I’d had anything deliberate to do with it or not, at the very least you had to admit a lot of magic had been working itself around me lately; not only around me but through me. “Through me” just about describes it, too. I wasn’t real happy about it; I didn’t like being the next thing to a conduit or a trade road, sitting there minding my own business while magic stampeded over my head like a herd of runaway buffalo, but then I wasn’t real fond of magic in any guise. On the other hand, I wasn’t entirely complaining either - there had been a couple of situations where I’d have been in a terminally tight spot if I hadn’t succeeded in sucking something useful out of Gashanatantra through our metabolic link. At least that’s what I’d assumed was happening. Now I wasn’t so sure.

There was a lot I wasn’t sure about, and even more about which I absolutely knew I understood too little. Even something as simple as the cast of players, whether they were there by deliberate intention or had just been swept up by the swelling broom of events, was far from clear. There was Gashanatantra, who had had an important hand in getting this thing started in the first place. He’d hauled me in to be his front man back in Roosing Oolvaya, using the hook and gaff rig that bound his metabolism to mine. One of the worst things to do if you want to live to an advanced age is to surprise a god, but I’d surprised him, all right, when it turned out the metabolic link was more than a one-way street. Drawing fragments of his knowledge as well as his power through the link had helped me out in the short term, had helped me enough to save my life more than once. Whether the long-term situation was any more than the same fated death stretched out for the sake of excruciation remained to be seen. What didn’t seem open to question was the extent to which the events just past had focussed Gash’s attention on me. At best I was a tool he’d found unexpectedly useful; at worst I might have actually become a center of his serious interest.

As Shaa and Max had told me and I’d come to see for myself in Oolsmouth, Gash’s reputation for plots with more layers than a ripe onion was honestly earned. The mess in Roosing Oolvaya had been downright intimate by comparison. There, Gash had only sent me up against Oskin Yahlei, the necromancer and would-be god who’d taken charge of the ring holding the trapped Death, Pod Dall. The ring had swept Karlini into the situation, too, and with him Max, but if Gash cared about them or even knew they were there I hadn’t seen a sign. Of course, it now appeared that, whatever he had said at the time, Gash’s main interest then had been with the ring; after all, he’d been the one who’d trapped Pod Dall in it in the first place.

Throughout the Roosing Oolvaya and Oolsmouth side of things, though, Gash hadn’t seemed to necessarily want the ring in his own possession. Instead, it was lurking out there serving the same purpose as a fishing lure or a piece of flypaper or a nice ripe tarpit - to work as a catalyst and a decoy, both, pulling folks out of the woodwork and getting them enmeshed in a situation that appeared to be one thing on its face, but that in fact involved Gash behind the scenes pulling strings toward his own inscrutable goals. Every time I thought about it his hand only looked more subtle. He wasn’t one for brute force; instead, the core of his style as I’d seen it rested in giving players the opportunity to do things their inclination naturally disposed them toward anyway. Once the framework was in place, all Gash had to do was point them toward the right target and stand back while they took off after it like a hound after a plumped-up rabbit.

Of course, this kind of stuff was easier to talk about than to pull off. No matter how much you wanted to hide behind the screen, sometimes someone just had to be out on stage helping things along. The problem with that was that once you were out in public, you made yourself a target for people to come after later if and when they thought they’d figured out what had really been going on. In Oolsmouth there had indeed been such a front-line figure; Gashanatantra, right? Of course not.

No, they thought it was me.

Actually, if it had only been that, it would have been simple, or simpler, anyway. The players Gash was working with were ones he knew. They knew him, too, but more than that they were already out for his hide. Rather than dodging indefinitely he’d decided to face them, in a manner of speaking. Because of the metabolic link and the aura it projected, they thought I was him. I was more than a front man, I was a full-fledged surrogate. I was there not only to advance Gash’s plot but to take his heat.

Of course, no one actually bothered to tell me this or fill me in on my role; no, I’d had to figure it out as I muddled along. At least Gash hadn’t decided to rearrange my face, or my anatomy in general. Fortunately for me, in his circles no one seemed to raise much of an eyebrow over a new body here or there. Still, the first person who’d showed up believing I was him was his wife. At least Jill hated him; that I could deal with. I could sympathize with it too, since I wasn’t exactly fond of him myself, but given the circumstances sympathy didn’t seem like the most productive approach to take.

If Jill had succeeded in killing me straight off I didn’t think Gash would have been too unhappy either. After all, if Gash was supposed to be dead it would have given him even more freedom of action, as well as relief from Jill and anyone else on his trail. That I hadn’t obligingly caved in had only opened the door to an extended high-wire act. In the company of Jill and her partner, Zhardann (or Jardin), the Administrator of Curses, I had somehow succeeded in extending the masquerade for days; in fact, they might not realize it was over yet. I was sure that the way we’d parted company, though, had left them more than eager to renew our acquaintance at the next possible opportunity. The least they’d be looking for would be answers I either didn’t have, or couldn’t give them and expect to remain alive.

Would they be in Peridol? Hah! - that was a sucker bet. For a Knitting everyone who thought they were someone would be in Peridol. That didn’t mean I had to make things any easier for them than they already were. If they’d picked up my trail in Oolsmouth they could have learned I’d shipped out on a boat. With all the sea traffic converging on Peridol it’d been impossible to tell if the ship was being shadowed, but it wouldn’t have been surprising. Even if we weren’t under observation, it was only elementary to figure that showing up in Peridol on foot rather than on water might keep them off balance. Of course, knowing my traveling companions, a welcoming party might be waiting for any or all of the Not Unreasonable Profit’s passengers. That being said, any reception waiting for me would probably be the nastiest; these were gods I’d been fooling around with, after all. Even if someone was merely waiting for the boat to come in to pick up our trail I didn’t want to give them that much of a break.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only possibility to consider. They could be waiting for me to split off from the others before coming after me. They could -

But there was only so far you could go in trying to anticipate how someone would surprise you next. The more reactive you became, the more initiative you threw out. I was pretty damn tired of being tossed back and forth by the whims of fate, chance, and the plots of others. I wasn’t planning to wait for another god to show up on my doorstep and sling me into another maze of their own devising. It was time to assert myself, to become again an active participant in my own story rather than just getting bounced around the landscape by the events unfolding around me.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t perpetually looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next hand to reach out from the unknown and grab me around the neck. Just because I’d come to an ideological breakpoint didn’t mean I’d lost all sense of reason. I was still half-expecting someone to pop out of the water next to the boat and hoist themselves onto the gunwales. You could say a rowboat in the middle of a fog bank had to be one of the safer places to hide out. On the other hand, these were gods etcetera etcetera; you go over the same ground often enough and it gets less and less interesting, unless you have a particular appreciation for churned mud.

Mud or no, the situation hadn’t changed. Who knew what the gods could do? More to the point, I sure didn’t know what they were capable of, other than lots of nasty surprises. They had to have limitations, but other than the ones I’d observed, which centered primarily on a shortage of good sense, and on energy supplies and the recurring need to refuel, I didn’t yet know what they were. It didn’t go nearly far enough toward evening the scales to remember that my sparring partners apparently thought I was a god too. Aside from its dubious value as a deterrent that didn’t help me a whole lot. More than outweighing the deterrent value on the downside was the fact that it seemed to keep the scheming lot of them interested in me.

The thing that bothered me more than having them think I was a god was the chance they might be right.

Even though I’d been listening for it, it suddenly occurred to me that the sound I’d been waiting for had gradually snuck up unawares. More than the constant swish and gurgle of the swells, there was now the added crash and whoosh that implied the presence of breakers and a shore. It was behind me, too, exactly where I’d been hoping for it. There’s that old proverb, about watching out what you wish for because you might get it, but in this case I couldn’t see how it was going to bite me, unless the shoreline was actually one of jagged rocks and I was about to have the keel ripped off the rowboat. In the larger case the proverb was a different story. Even so, I didn’t see how that story would pick up again until I’d made it to Peridol, though, or at least before I’d gotten through the waves onto the beach.

Everything was in place, not that I’d brought much with me off the boat. A pack of supplies sat underneath my seat, and jammed through the top of the pack lengthwise was a stout walking stick just the right heft and length for a two-hand broadsword. I left off rowing for a moment and felt around for it to make sure it hadn’t wandered off - yeah, there it was, all right. “You got anything to contribute?” I asked the stick.

It didn’t say anything, which was no more than I’d expected, but it did vibrate quickly under my hand, sending a low tingle up my wrist and into my arm. Was that a message with real content, or was Monoch just letting me know it was still alive, or whatever it really was? I couldn’t say. I didn’t know its language, if it had a language, but I had come to know its moods. At the moment it was placid enough, for a change. I didn’t know its purpose, either, beyond the fact that it was at best a reluctant ally foisted on me by Gash. That meant that it had to be a spy, and quite possibly a homing beacon too. Unfortunately, things being what they were I just couldn’t toss Monoch in the sea and be done with it, if tossing it in the sea would let me be done with it, which was another question entirely.

The sound of breakers behind me was now distinct. After perusing a navigational chart, Shaa had assured me that given the currents and the topography of the coastline I’d be encountering beach rather than rocks. I didn’t exactly trust Shaa’s seamanship, but he’d assured me he knew this section of the countryside well, and anyway I didn’t have much choice. A predawn seagull cawed somewhere overhead. Off to the left I saw white-capped foam, then the rowboat creaked and lifted. I played with the oars, trying to keep the dinghy headed straight-on, and as the wave dropped beneath me the keel grated on sand.

I splashed and sloshed my way up the beach, dragging the rowboat by the painter in the bow, as the breakers rose to my knees and ebbed away. I was going to take this as a clearly good omen. It was anticlimactic, true, but I was hoping to find more anticlimactic episodes in my life in the days ahead.

I left the rowboat overturned on the beach under a bed of tangled kelp and headed inland up the sand. I sort of wished I could take the boat along; I never liked to waste a good piece of equipment, and who knew what I’d need for those same days ahead, but on the other hand clawing my way up a cliff and then hiking for days along a road carrying a rowboat on my back or hauling it behind me could easily attract just the kind of attention it was my intention to avoid. There was also the condition of my back and other assorted joints and muscles to consider. It was the sort of stunt you sometimes hear about in myths, and certainly had the mythical characteristic of being essentially pointless, but maybe that was just the kind of thing gods appreciated. Probably not the ones I’d met, though; they seemed to like to avoid anything that smacked of direct work.

I could have camped at the edge of the water until the day arrived or the fog lifted, but I didn’t want to push my luck; I had images of somebody sending giant lobsters out of the surf to snap pieces off my hands while I dozed. So I moved up the beach in the fog, the sparse light giving me a ten-foot circle of visibility before the mass of the fog won out over the glow of the moon, stumbling over piles of driftwood and popping the flotation bladders of tendrils of slimy kelp, until I discovered the cliff by the simple expedient of walking into it. That was good enough for me. No way was I going to try to climb an unknown cliff in the dark and the fog when there wasn’t even any need for it. I flopped down on the sand, rested my head on the pack, and closed my eyes.

If there was any particular subject one or another of the members of Max’s crew weren’t interested in I hadn’t discovered it yet. One of the topics they all had something to say about was dreams. In my case, afflicted as I was by the effects of the Spell of Namelessness, they thought my dreams should be a fertile area of study; mirror of the unconscious and all that. I hadn’t been much help. Max had a technique for monitoring the surface thoughts of someone he could physically lay his hands on, but it hadn’t picked up a thing from me. “If he’s got a mind in there at all I can’t find it,” was Max’s only comment on the question. Actually, that was okay with me. I’d been starting to have doubts about how far I could trust Max, especially if my original identity turned out to be someone he didn’t like. What if I really had been a god? If the Spell of Namelessness was a weapon mainly employed by gods against each other, as Zhardann’s use of it had seemed to imply, that was a possibility that couldn’t be ignored, not that I felt like a god, whatever a god was supposed to feel like. If I was or had been a god, though, regardless of what I felt like, the trick to survival might very well involve keeping out of Max’s sight.

Karlini with his hypnosis and Shaa with his bedside manner hadn’t had any better luck in prying hidden visions out of me either, though. As Shaa had pointed out, it was true that none of them had ever examined a victim of the Spell of Namelessness before, and such cases were also under-reported in the literature, so as far as any of them knew loss of dream content could be a standard effect. I had a slightly different slant on it. As far as I was concerned, dreams were even more of a myth than me and the rowboat, since I didn’t think I’d ever had one in my life.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Not the part about the dreams, that was accurate enough, but the slight exaggeration about my life. The fact was, I knew very little about my life. The Curse of Namelessness had taken more than my name, it had erased all memory of whoever I might have been and whatever I might have done prior to my arrival in Roosing Oolvaya. Physical evidence was lacking, too - I didn’t even have an evocative scar.

Which made it all the more unexpected, as I dozed off there on the sand next to the cliff, to discover I was having, in fact, a dream.

Not that it was much to talk about, I suppose. There was a landscape of mist. I knew it wasn’t a real landscape, though; it didn’t feel real, it felt too real, as though it was the mother lode ideal against which all mists in the real world were just cast shadows. It crackled with clarity, it sparkled, it shone, as though I was examining each wisp simultaneously with a microscope. By comparison, the genuine mist I’d just been rowing and slogging through was a cheap cast-off imitation let loose by someone who didn’t have a clue how a real mist was supposed to be put together. But all it was, for all its hyper-realism, was fog. Great, I remember thinking, all this time waiting for a dream and what I get is fog?

The fog and I contemplated each other. Maybe it was my metaphor about the conditions inside my head made concrete. It did hold my attention, in a way actual fog never had, but even so it wasn’t exactly an epiphany of meaning. Then I saw the face.

It had actually been condensing for awhile without my growing aware of it. When I did realize something else was there, it was already a rough head-and-shoulders bust, still the grayish-white of the mist surrounding it and without any discernible features, as though someone had cast a wizard spotlight on their sculpture garden after a season of extreme erosion. Even in that state it projected the same realer-than-real effect as the mist itself, but as it formed a thin nose and a straight-edged mustache, a close-shaved cap of silver-blond hair, and eyes of glacier-ice blue, I had the feeling that if I ever met this person (since I’d never seen him before in, well, my life) I would recognize him instantly, even if all I could glimpse was the tip of an ear around a door in the dark. The image looked too intense to be a person; if I didn’t know better, I’d have said someone that vivid must be something superhuman, like a god. I figured it must be an artifact of this dream business - the gods I’d encountered hadn’t seemed any more radiant than anyone else you’d meet on the street.

The face hung there for a bit, and after a vague interval I had the feeling I could put a name to it. No voice pronounced it, and I didn’t hear the name, per se, it just sort of seeped into the back of my awareness. For some reason I couldn’t actually pronounce it myself, either; instead it had sneakily bypassed the usual paths of speech and memory to plop down, latent, on the tip of my tongue.

How long the experience lasted or exactly when it ended I had no idea, but the next thing I knew I was staring down a length of rock and earth. Up a length, really, since I was lying on my back and the cliff was still stretching up over my head, although now into the retreating fog under the brighter glow of dawn. I got to my feet and set about putting myself together.

In reconnoitering the base of the cliff, I came across the one artifact I’d been most hoping for right at the moment - a trail. Shaa’s map had indicated villages scattered here and there along this stretch of coast, and a small fishing port slightly to the south, so it wasn’t like we were talking about unexplored wilderness; a prepared path up the cliff hadn’t seemed unreasonable. The path had its share of switchbacks and crumbly spots, but the patches of wildflowers clinging to cracks in the rock and spills of earth made the short hike surprisingly scenic. The fog had retreated enough so that the top of the cliff began to condense into view when I was barely halfway up. Emerging over the lip at the end of the climb brought me out of the fog entirely and onto a meadow of wild grasses waving gently in the morning light. Behind me, the cliff submerged into the fog as though it was the edge of the coastline and the sea was the gray of clouds, and the beach I’d crossed was off in another world beneath the waters.

I adjusted the pack and pushed off toward the road. It was further back from the cliff than I’d expected, but I still came upon it soon enough. The road was wide enough for a lane-and-a-half of traffic, but it was paved with stone; this deep in the heartland of empire you wouldn’t expect anything less. Still, it wasn’t being maintained as well as it might, especially with the Knitting coming up and all. The status of maintenance was driven home even further when I topped the ridge of a low hill and saw a canted-over barouche at the trough at the foot of the hill ahead of me. Two men were standing next to the carriage looking down at the right-front wheel. As I drew up to them it was plain to see what had happened. One of the paving stones had shifted and the wheel had wedged itself into the resulting gap. Fortunately for them the wheel hadn’t splintered and the axle was intact, but the carriage was plainly stuck tight. Both men were covered with road dust and breathing hard. Scattered around them on the road were several boxes, a large luncheon hamper, and a trunk.

The man in livery, his hands on his hips, called to me, “Give us a hand here, then, will you?” The driver wasn’t the one of interest to me, though. The other man, his black and silver traveling clothes now distinctly the worse for wear, had fixed me with his full attention and, I thought, a fleeting touch of surprise. “Well met,” he said, “and timely. You’re the first person along in the last hour.”

“And a pleasant morning it is too,” I said, indicating the roadside wildflowers glistening in the sun. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“It now shows signs of improvement,” agreed the man. “You’re a stout fellow; the three of us should have no trouble accomplishing what the two of us could not.”

Even if they’d been straining at the carriage and unloading its contents for the last hour, which looked perfectly plausible given their appearance, the guy still had a sword slung on his hip. He hadn’t reached for it to put it on as I’d approached, either; he’d been working with his sword easily at hand. It wasn’t only that sign that made me recognize him as a pro. I’d seen that aura of latent menace before, along with its subliminal aroma of congealed gore. He’d be a nasty one to cross. I didn’t want to cross him; I didn’t even want to get within his range. I’ve sized up enough swordsmen to know which ones are deadly and which ones only think they are.

But that wasn’t the real reason I was reluctant to approach. He –

“You’ve recently been to sea,” he stated.

“Actually, I spent the night down on the beach. Unfortunately I picked a part of beach that was a little close to the tide.” I wasn’t about to volunteer to anyone that I’d gotten drenched while landing a boat, especially not him. I didn’t trust the situation; it was a classic setup for all kinds of things. Of course, it could have also been an honest case of a random busted wheel, but there was more to my feeling than just the setup. It wasn’t merely the situation, and it wasn’t just the look of him with his sword. Was it just my paranoia acting up again? Was I just going to automatically distrust anyone I happened to meet? No, because - “I beg your pardon?”

“Together we will extract this wheel and then you will ride with me; I insist.”

“If it’s just the same to you, I’d just as soon walk. It’s a nice day for a stroll.”

“No, no, I won’t hear of it,” said the man. His hand seemed to drift, of its own accord, toward the pommel of his sword. “I insist. What is your name, so I may know in whose debt I find myself?”

“Okay,” I said slowly, “if that’s the way it’s going to be, that’s the way it’s going to be. My name’s Spilkas, and before you start in after my life’s history I’d just as soon tell you I’m a fellow of no particular account.” I’d resolved not to be caught short reaching for a moniker like the Creeping Sword again. I figured I was due a few free throwaway names to toss out at random, anyway, but I didn’t mind borrowing some from people I’d known. Spilkas was a jittery cutpurse back in Roosing Oolvaya. He was so fidgety, in fact, that he couldn’t do a job unless he was halfway soused. Spilkas existed along a fine line - too drunk and his coordination would go and he’d start to fall down, not pickled enough and he’d twitch himself straight into jail. I wasn’t one for getting sloshed myself, but the connection with his fine-line lifestyle still made the name a sure fit for me. “Who might you be?”

“I am Joatal Ballista,” he told me.

But he wasn’t. He was lying. I’d have known he was lying even if it hadn’t been for the dream, but the dream put the capper on it. The dream where I’d seen his face; had it scoured into my memory as though it was etched on the business end of a branding iron. And the name that went with it, the one that had perched itself on the tip of my tongue, was … was … Redley? Fredley? No, Fradgee. No, not that. Fradi. Fradjikan, that was it.

Chapter 4

HIS BUSINESS DOWN THE COAST had gone tolerably well. There was always far too much to be done given the time and resources available. Still, things were coming together. With his new insights into the motivations of his patron he was coming to be more prepared for the aftermath, and with his recent recruitments and alliances the short term was looking bright as well. The outcome had always been fairly much ordained, of course; he had been commissioned to deal with Max, and there was no doubt Max would indeed be dealt with quite comprehensively. It was how one managed the loose ends and overall esthetics, though, that set the brute practitioner apart from the select virtuosi at the top of the form, or at least that was the ideal Fradjikan always preferred to pursue. Rather than the sudden descent of calamity from the skies, Fradi was partial to the gradually tightening web of encroaching doom, the progressive dropping away of escape routes and camouflage both, until the noose was finally drawn tight in an orgastic passage of revelation and inescapable ruin. It made one feel glad to be alive.

Nevertheless, being master of the web didn’t mean that one foresaw or planned out every last detail. Planning was only part of the game, anyway. If you were a commander of troops perhaps the greatest satisfaction might come from watching your plan reel itself out with every particular precise, the forces of each side marching as automata through their prescribed evolutions; an ideal rarely achieved, to be sure. Those who plotted plots, on the other hand, whether as their livelihood or just from innate disposition, were either flexible or found themselves cracked across the fault line of their greatest rigidity. That was the source of the real challenge - proceeding toward a fixed end-point through an ever-changing flurry of random events and the workings of fate. The real challenge and, to be honest, the real fun. But what was the harm in that? The most effective practitioner was the one at one with his job.

In Fradi’s experience, though, fate rarely got its workings into gear this early in the morning. Yet here was this Spilkas fellow, producing himself right into Fradi’s lap, as it were, of all things. Spilkas was now sweating as much as Lowell, the driver, or Fradjikan himself, but as Fradi had predicted the sweat had been both timely and effective. Lowell and Spilkas finished manhandling the last unloaded piece of baggage, the big trunk, back into the cab and stood back for a moment to pant. “Have you breakfasted?” Fradi asked Spilkas. “The inn provided a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice.”

“Orange juice, you say?” said the man, retrieving his pack from the side of the road. “A swig of that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“After you,” said Fradi. He opened the door to the coach. “Don’t hesitate now, come come. I won’t hear of it.”

“Did you make a promise to some god you’d meet a good-deed quota?” Spilkas said, “or is this just some compulsion to hobnob with the lower class?”

Spilkas had been deliberately trying to be irritating, and was succeeding rather well for that matter. “I also have some cheese and a modest assortment of fruit,” Fradi told him. “Look at it as payment for services if you like.” Spilkas grunted but at least gave off arguing, and let Fradi follow him into the carriage. Lowell mounted to the box and got them underway. Fradi doled out the refreshments and considered the situation.

Spilkas; a dispensable name, to be sure. Surely the name was as false as the one Fradi had used himself. (Which one had he used? - oh, Ballista, of course.) Names were quick camouflage on the cheap but nonetheless effective for all of that. At least the fellow wasn’t using one of those horrid tacked-on appellations, wasn’t calling himself Someone the Something, for instance. During a stint as facilitator to some court or another early in his career, a higher-level factotum, the principal chamberlain in fact, had taken to referring to Fradi himself as Fradjikan the Assassin, as opposed to Fradjikan, the assassin, which was how he had been hired. Well, Fradjikan had squared accounts with him, and ultimately with the entire court. Not out of spite, or anyway not spite against the court; it had been a pure question of business. His real employer in that case had been the court’s subsequent inhabitant.

In such ways are reputations built. Yet what was the background of this Spilkas, now at work with determination at demolishing a hearty wheel of Brie? Until he had appeared boarding the ship following the denouement in Oolsmouth Fradjikan had not detected his presence. Perhaps he’d merely taken passage with the others; it was too soon to tell. If Spilkas didn’t look any more impressive at close-up than he’d seemed from afar, he did have some potential in his own right. In particular, he was proving very adept at giving no information of any substance. On the other hand, he affected a cane even though he had no obvious impairment, and vanity was something that could be played upon.

“You must be on a lengthy excursion to need such a stout walking stick,” Fradi tried.

“Not much to look at, is it? If it wasn’t an heirloom I’d chuck it in a marsh.” Well, so much for vanity. “What does bring you out on the road, then, and camping out on beaches?”

“Maybe you’ve heard there’s going to be a Knitting down the road here a piece? You got any more of those wheat crackers in there?”

Fradi passed over the hamper. It was likely this fellow would be nothing but a waste of time; most people were. Considered as a limbering-up exercise, however, even going through the motions wouldn’t be entirely a waste, and anyway all he’d be doing otherwise would be sitting with his own thoughts looking out the window of the carriage. On the other hand, perhaps Spilkas really represented something key, but something that needed a bit of digging to exhume. Fradi wouldn’t discard him until the possibilities had been exhausted; Fradi was not one to frown back when luck smiled. “Had you been long at sea?”

“What sea?” said Spilkas, his mouth full of cracker. “I said I was on the beach, not on the water, didn’t I?”

“Perhaps you did.” There was no way Spilkas could know he’d been observed getting on the boat, and as a result no way for him to know that Fradi recognized his position as a lie. Not that Spilkas had actually come right out and stated that he hadn’t been on a boat. The difference between misdirection and outright mendacity was primarily a semantic one, though, or at most question of tactics. That wasn’t the issue. If Spilkas was at pains to make a casual acquaintance think he hadn’t been at sea there was obviously something there he deliberately wanted to conceal. His association with the others seemed most likely. Was the plan for Spilkas to act as their deep-cover agent in Peridol, clear of surveillance and free to carry out any secret schemes?

Could there be even more here? Could they be trying to set him up? Fradjikan, himself?

Fradi decided that that brief consideration was about all that possibility deserved. Yes, it was a possibility, but no, the chance was too low for reasonability. How could they plan against him; they didn’t even know he was there. Surely he had not tipped his hand to reveal, even by implication, his presence on the scene. The sun could flare and the oceans could boil, too, but the cost/benefit ratio in planning for the eventuality was similarly too stacked to make it worth worrying about. There was only so much looking over one’s shoulder one could engage in before one’s neck became irretrievably frozen in a retrospective attitude.

Nevertheless, it was useful to remind oneself occasionally that one was not a sorcerer. One might employ them, and one might know how to bend them to his purposes, and one might even have a professional but limited respect for them as lower-order tradesmen and functionaries, but one still had to admit they did have their own annoying tricks and their own peculiar delusions of grandeur. Indeed, though, delusions notwithstanding, there was no reason to get one’s own hands dirty grubbing around in the mystic arts. Why stoop so low when there were magic practitioners for hire begging on the streets, almost, when one’s own patron was a god of not inconsiderable power, even among gods, and when one’s allies included such as even a high contender for the throne of Gadzura? And when one was who one was oneself?

Why, indeed?

“Why do you keep harping on this sea stuff?” Spilkas said suddenly. “You looking to recruit a sailor?”

“I, ah, I was just on my way back up the coast,” Fradi began, his thoughts racing barely ahead of his words, “after a quick trip down to the cape to seek news of a ship overdue for its arrival in Peridol.”

“What ship’s that?”

“The Flying Pelican, out of Oolsmouth.”

“Who thinks up these names?” muttered Spilkas. “Any boat with a name redundant as that deserves whatever it gets, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Actually, Fradjikan had just made up the name himself out of whole cloth; not one of his finest moments, it was true, especially given his earlier thoughts on the adequacy of acceptable names or the lack thereof. “I don’t suppose you saw anything sailing past, while you were camped out there on your beach?”

“No pelicans, that’s for sure.”

“Perhaps some sailor colleagues of yours?”

“I know coincidence is golden and all that, but don’t tell me you were expecting to get the news you’re looking for from a guy you picked up at random on the road. Come on, Ballista. Here’s one for you that’s a lot more reasonable - you know any decent places to stay in Peridol that still have room?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Fradi. He had a few bottles of assorted spirits packed away in the bottom of the hamper, including a fresh one of aged rum; was it time to crack one of them? Maybe if he could get Spilkas drunk it would make him more helpful, either by making him talk more or making him talk less. If worse came to worse, Fradi could drink enough himself so he wouldn’t care. No, that would be unprofessional. It was still too early in the morning, anyway. “I do know that lodging is scarce; you may find yourself back on the road home as soon as you’ve arrived.” Fradjikan leveled a finger at Spilkas. “You should also know my personal staff complement is full, so don’t think about taking service with me to stay off the streets. Unless you have some particular talent I should know about?”