"I trust not, sir. I'm not accustomed to such treatment, and I don't find it amusing."

"Naturally not." He looked up, snapped his fingers at one of the landlord's serving girls. "You-a flask of the five-year vintage, now!" And, turning back to Indigo, he added, "It's small recompense, saia, but the very least I can do."

He was doing his best to conciliate, and although Indigo had taken an instant dislike to him, she couldn't maintain her hostility without being churlish. "Thank you, sir. I appreciate your kindness." She hesitated, then realized that from common courtesy she had little choice but to add: "Will you join me?"

"For a few moments only." He smiled. "I have no wish to intrude on your privacy any further."

The serving girl hastened to the alcove with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g jug, and as she set it down Indigo saw naked fear in her expression. Quinas, whoever he might be, clearly had influence in more quarters than one. The girl was sent for another cup, and while she fetched it, Quinas took the seat opposite Indigo.

"To your continuing health and prosperity." He poured for them both, and they drank. Grimya had quieted-Indigo could feel the she-wolf's body against her legs as she lay down under the table-but her thoughts were still uneasy, and Indigo took a moment to a.s.sess her companion. He was, she guessed, in his middle or late thirties, and he had the black hair and olive skin typical of people born and bred in the region. He was too well dressed and clearly too educated to be a miner or a boatman, although his hands looked hardened to manual work and the skin of his face was browned by sun and wind-Quite a handsome man, in his way-until, for the first time as the lamplight exposed his face more clearly, she saw his eyes. They were oddly hooded, and when he blinked-at first she couldn't be certain, but the second time confirmed it-a crimson film came briefly down, like a bizarre second lens, to cover them.

Another deformity... Indigo controlled a desire to shrink back in revulsion and hastily looked down at her cup. When Quinas spoke to her, she had to suppress a shudder.

"May I ask your name?"

She made herself look up again. "My name is Indigo."

"Indigo... very unusual. You are not, I presume, from this area?"

"No."

"Might I inquire what brings you here?" He saw her expression grow wary, and smiled self-deprecatingly. "Please forgive my curiosity. I ask simply because I have the privilege to be overseer at the North Scar mine; in the course of my duties I often conduct visiting merchants to view our operations. If you have business at the mines, I will be happy to offer my services."

Indigo relaxed a little. "I see. Thank you, Quinas, but I'm not concerned with the mineral trade.Vesinum is simply a stop on my route."

"A pity." Like Cenato's, his smile didn't reach his eyes. "Nonetheless, your arrival is fortuitous.

Has anyone told you of our festival?"

"Festival?"

"In the town square: you may well have seen the preparations. Tonight, we of Charchad celebrate, and the town celebrates with us. It is a time of cleansing, of renewal and reaffirmation," A new note crept into Quinas's voice, and Indigo caught a sharp and unpleasant echo of the fanaticism of the mad celebrant, and of the group who had accosted her in the taproom. "It is also, I think, a part of the reason why Cenato was so insistent in his approach toward you." He looked up, and his face was so guileless that she was thrown mentally off balance. "The festivities are due to begin at midnight. I hope you will do us the honor of attending so that we may correct the bad first impression you have of us?"

It might do well to attend, Indigo thought, if it helped her to learn more of the Charchad. She nodded. "Thank you. I will be glad to."

Quinas drained his cup and rose. "Then I'll take my leave and allow you to finish your meal uninterrupted." He stepped out of the alcove and bowed to her. "I am happy to have made your acquaintance, Indigo. And I trust that I may yet play some small part in aiding you toward understanding and enlightenment. Good night." And he turned and walked away across the room, to the door.

Indigo stared after him, trying to a.s.similate the extraordinary mixture of feelings that he had evoked within her. Surprise, chagrin, an element of confusion-but overriding them all was a powerful and near-violent sense of dislike. As yet she would put it no more strongly than that; but it was enough to make her skin p.r.i.c.kle, and to add kindling to the smouldering anger deep within her.

Under the table Grimya moved restlessly, and she heard the wolf's thoughts. I do not like that man.

"No." Indigo spoke softly. "Neither do I."

Everyone else is afraid of him. That is not healthy.

Grimya's finer senses had picked up what her own could not, she realized; that it was not merely Cenato and his henchman who feared Quinas's influence. The serving girl's att.i.tude, the looks on the faces of her fellow diners as he strode from the taproom... For a mine overseer, he wielded a disproportionate power.

She looked at the flask, which was still half-full, and moved to pour herself another cup of wine.

Before she could touch the flask, however, the serving girl appeared.

"Beg pardon, saia, but the landlord tells me to say that there'll be no charge for your food and drink tonight. Thank you, saia."

Indigo stared, nonplussed, at the girl's departing back, then beyond her to the landlord, who caught her eye and bowed respectfully. Quinas's doing; or an attempt to please Quinas... Suddenly she didn't want the wine, wished she hadn't eaten the meal. She wanted only to get away from the taproom and from the invisible but all-pervading influence of her self-appointed champion.

She leaned down, slipping a hand under the table to touch Grimya's head lightly. Let's leave, she projected silently.

Now? Gladly! What do you wish to do?

Indigo smiled with faint cynicism as she realized that the true answer to the she-wolf's question was: get away; get drunk; forget the existence of Vesinum. I'm tired, she said. If we're to attend the festival at midnight, I'd like to rest for a while.

I don't think I could rest. This room smells of fear; it disturbs me. Grimya wriggled. I would like to go out far a while, in the open air. But I don't want to leave you alone.

Indigo smiled, remembering her friend's hatred of confinement. She looked about the room. The landlord was deep in conversation with an obviously favored customer. The serving girls scurried with laden trays between the tables. And the influence of Quinas, who had favored her with his patronage, still hung, an invisible but emphatic presence, in the air.

I'll be in no danger, she told Grimya. Not yet, at least.

Heads turned surrept.i.tiously as they crossed the room, and one or two murmured asides wereexchanged. Indigo ignored the looks, the whispers; ignored the landlord as he tried to catch her eye ingratiatingly: she watched Grimya slip through the decorated door that opened directly on to the square, and for a moment breathed in the hot but still relatively fresh air of the night. Then as the she-wolf vanished into the darkness she turned and walked out of the taproom toward the stairs.

*CHAPTER*III*.

Indigo had left a lamp burning in her room, but its light was eclipsed by the strange, pervasive glow from the northern sky, a ghostly reflection shining in at the window. She slammed the inner shutters; the presence of the light made her feel tainted and she couldn't be easy until it was shut out, no matter how stifling the room might become.

The quiet and the airlessness were soporific, and Indigo soon fell asleep, though her rest was light and punctuated with odd dreams that seemed unrelated to past or present. She finally woke at the sound of claws scratching at the door, accompanied by a soft querying whine; and she climbed from her bed to lift the bar and let Grimya into the room.

The she-wolf flopped down beside the bed. Hot, she projected, her tongue lolling. It disturbs me. I can find no relief from it.

Indigo sat up and reached for her water bottle to give Grimya a drink. "Did you discover anything?"

Nothing important. Gratefully Grimya lapped from the dish Indigo had set before her. I kept to the side streets, to the shadows; I did not want to be seen. She paused to lick her chops. That is good. Did you know that the river here glows at night, like the sky?

"No." The thought was unpleasant, suggesting that the source of the light was palpably closer, and perhaps more physical than she had surmised. "And what of the square? The festival?"

Grimya finished drinking and shook her head, drops of water flying from her muzzle. I think they must have completed their preparations. There is no one about. Just some piles of wood: I don't know what their purpose could be.

"It must be close to midnight." Indigo opened the shutter a crack. A breath of faintly cooler air slunk in, and with it the dim, unnatural reflection from the sky. The square below was, as Grimya had said, empty, the shadows too deep to make detail visible. She looked up, peering toward the jumble of rooftops on the far side of the paved arena. No lamps burned in houses or arcades, and the only sound was the faint murmur of voices from the taproom beneath them. All activity seemed to be in abeyance, as though the entire town were holding its breath in antic.i.p.ation.

Or trepidation...

A faint whirring broke the quiet then, and suddenly the timepiece in the center of the square began to chime as it had done earlier in the day. Indigo could see the disks spinning, catching the cold light from the sky like winking, lambent eyes, and as the bell-like discords rang out, a torch sprang to life in the dark maw of one of the side streets. Then another, and another; catching and flaming as they were ignited and hurling grotesque shadows over walls and paving. In a window a candle was lit; in another house a door opened, spilling lantern light into the square- A furtive rapping came at Indigo's door and she whirled around, pulse quickening. "Yes? What is it?"

A girl's voice, mumbling; she caught only the word saia* and laid a restraining hand on Grimya.

"Enter."

The door opened and she saw the wide-eyed child who had served her in the taproom. The girl bowed nervously, "If you please, saia, the festival is beginning. We must all attend, so the taproom is to be closed.

The master said to tell you."

She was frightened. Indigo saw; and the emotion went far deeper than fear of a harsh employer.

"Thank you." Indigo got to her feet, and remembered the terms in which Quinas's invitation hadbeen couched. A courtesy? she asked herself. Or a threat?

Anger stirred afresh, and the air tasted suddenly sour and rotten in her throat. She looked at the girl again and forced herself to smile. "If you'll be so kind as to leave a candle lit on the stairs, I shall find my way well enough."

"Yes, saia." The child vanished; hasty footsteps clattered on the steps, and Indigo looked at Grimya.

"Are you ready?"

Grimya's nostrils flared and she said aloud: "Rr-eady." The word was a guttural challenge to the outside world. The wolf slipped through the door, her shadow rearing huge and distorted across the landing to the stairwell beyond. Indigo paused a moment, considering-then picked up the knife in its sheath, which she had discarded while she slept. Looping the sheath into her belt, she covered it with a fold of her outer robe, then followed Grimya down the stairs.

They heard music in the square as they emerged from the hostelry. Cushmagar, the old Southern Isles bard who had been Indigo's tutor, would have covered his ears in horror at the discordant racket; cymbals clanging, pipes screeching and shrilling, a dozen different kinds of percussion rattling with seemingly no thought for time or rhythm. To the girl's ears it sounded like the din made by farm boys set to the task of scaring crows and pigeons from their masters' fields; as her eyes grew accustomed to the play of brightness and shadow she sought the source of the noise, but in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes the square had become so crowded that she could see nothing through the press of bodies.

Keep to the wall, she thought to Grimya. We 'II try to find a less obstructed view. They began to thread their way along the narrow aisle between the buildings and the jostling throng, but progress was slow, for more and more people were converging on the square from every direction. Somewhere toward the square's center light danced brilliantly, and occasionally Indigo glimpsed the flickering, fiery crown of a flamboy raised above the heads of the crowd. Some folk, too, were reacting to the discordant music, beginning to shuffle in an odd, sidestepping dance that carried them slowly counterclockwise around the square. Many of the dancers, Indigo saw, wore the glowing amulets that seemed to be a badge of the Charchad cult, and she couldn't shake off the uneasy feeling that these symbols had united their wearers in some indefinable way into one ma.s.s ent.i.ty with a single, mindless purpose.

Suddenly the music stopped. The tide of dancers broke into a hundred small eddies as they shambled to a halt, and for a moment the silence was absolute. Then torchlight flared anew, the crowd pulled back, and a low but intense murmur rippled through the square. Indigo stood on tiptoe but still could see nothing; frustrated, she looked about her for some vantage point and glimpsed a wall topped with an ornate iron bal.u.s.trade a few paces on from where she stood. Pointing to indicate to Grimya what she meant to do, she elbowed her way through, hitched up her robe, and scrambled onto the wall. The stonework was crumbling but the bal.u.s.trade seemed sound enough; taking a grip, she hauled herself upright and at last was able to see the square in its entirety.

The bizarre timepiece glowed as though red-hot in the light of the dozen huge flamboys that surrounded it. Each torch was held by a robed and hooded figure standing stiffly at attention, and each figure bore an amulet that proclaimed his allegiance to Charchad. Beyond the group of sentinels Indigo saw for the first time the "piles of wood" that Grimya had described; unless the celebrants planned to highlight their festival with bonfires, she too could see no purpose for them.

She was about to climb down and describe the scene to Grimya when a section of the crowd parted to admit a newcomer to the middle of the square. By his height and his dress Indigo identified him immediately: Quinas, He strode toward the torch bearers, who drew back respectfully, and surveyed the crowd with an air of authoritative satisfaction. Then he began to speak.

At first his speech was what might have been expected of any dignitary at such a celebration: he extolled the town's prosperity, the virtues of honest labor, and the rewards of diligence-but after a few minutes the tone of the oration began to change. The word Charchad grew more prevalent: Charchad was to be thanked, to be praised, to be honored. And to be obeyed. Those who did not obey were misguided, and until such misguided souls saw and admitted their error they must be led on the properpath by those who had achieved enlightenment. Indigo felt the food she had eaten curdle in her stomach; this was merely a repet.i.tion of the fanatical homily with which the cultists had a.s.sailed her in the taproom.

But as she listened she realized suddenly that there was a far more dangerous undercurrent to Quinas's speech: and a chill crawled through her veins as she heard him speak the word heresy.

Heresy. She recalled the dread in the eyes of her fellow diners when Quinas walked into the House of Copper and Iron, as though he were some avenging angel who might without warning turn and point the finger of fate at them; and she realized with a shock that that a.s.sessment was perilously close to the truth. A heretic, in Quinas's terms as he was now forcefully outlining, was one who refused to acknowledge and accept the authority of Charchad. And heretics who would not recant and repent of their wrongdoing must be punished.

"Brothers and sisters, we of Charchad have been patient." Quinas would, Indigo thought with a chilly shiver, have made a persuasive bard; his voice had a fine, carrying timbre and he had taken good care to judge the mood of his audience and play upon it. "But our patience is not infinite, and Charchad demands its rightful due." He surveyed the throng, his eyes glittering. "The time has come, my brothers and my sisters, to prove our loyalty and our fealty. The time has come to renew our faith. And for those who have not seen the light of Charchad"-now he raised an arm, fist clenched, and his words rang across the square-"the time has come to repent!"

So suddenly that Indigo was almost startled into falling from her precarious perch, the cacophonous music burst out again, and at its signal the torch bearers surrounding Quinas spread out and began to move in pairs toward the throng. From the far side of the square Indigo heard a shriek, then a ragged figure burst from the crowd and ran to the central tableau. The man-she thought it was a man, but the creature was such a raddled scarecrow that it was impossible to be sure-was waving his arms wildly, and his face, under a wild sc.u.m of graying hair, was distorted with an ecstatic, dervishlike mania. On his scrawny chest a glowing amulet bounced at the end of a long chain.

"Charchad!" the creature screamed. "Charchad save me, Charchad bless me!" And he hurled himself to the flagstones, where he lay twitching and convulsing at Quinas's feet.

The overseer flung both his arms skyward, his own face almost as twisted as that of the gibbering celebrant on the ground. "See how our brother is uplifted!" he roared. "Witness the glory of his unwavering faith-and look into your own hearts! Are you wanting? Who among you will dare to fail the Charchad?"

Another figure, a woman this time, stumbled from the crowd to throw herself to the ground, tearing at her own hair. Then another, another, more and more fighting their way through the press of people, screeching and jostling and fighting in their efforts to outvie one another in displaying their faith.

Quinas watched the growing chaos with a faintly supercilious smile on his face. From time to time he inclined his head in recognition of one worshiper, occasionally he would deign to make a sign of blessing toward another, while his acolytes stalked among the crowd exhorting people to new heights of adulation. And all the while, whipped up by the music's frenzied discords, lit by the guttering flamboys, the scene grew more and more like something from an unhuman h.e.l.l. In the sky overhead the eerie light from the north glared down, adding its own terrible dimension to the shadows, to the wild faces, and to the flame-lit figure of Quinas, who orchestrated the mayhem like a demon king presiding over his court.

Horrified, Indigo began to scramble down from the wall to join Grimya, who was snarling, hackles raised and eyes red with fear. The she-wolf couldn't see what was happening, but had heard Quinas's exhortations among the furor and felt the psychic shock wave erupting in the square. But as the girl prepared to jump to the ground she was almost knocked off balance by the hunched figure of a woman who scuttled out of the press of bodies and darted past her toward one of the dark side streets.

Indigo had only one glimpse of her face, but it was enough to tell her that the woman was terrified. And from somewhere nearer the center of the crowd came a scream; not of ecstasy this time, but of stark fear.

Quickly she swung herself upright again, gesturing to Grimya to wait, and peered over the sea of bobbing heads. Torchlight illuminated a section of the crowd, and she saw two of Quinas's acolytes wrestling with a young man who fought them with all his strength. People jostled to get out of the way,and the captive was dragged into the central circle, where his hands and feet were bound and he was forced to kneel. No one in the throng made the smallest move to protest, and now Indigo saw that there were other such skirmishes taking place, other victims, chosen seemingly at random, hauled from the anonymity of the crush to sprawl shivering on the flagstones.

But the choice was not as arbitrary as it at first seemed. Quinas still stood like an evil demiG.o.d in the square: he watched the crowd intently, then called out and pointed. At his signal two more acolytes darted into the press, and another struggling figure was brought forward. Nine, ten, a dozen-and not one of the captives, Indigo saw, wore a Charchad amulet.

At last it seemed that Quinas was satisfied with his cull. At another signal the acolytes began to pull the bound figures to their feet, and as they were manhandled toward the woodpiles behind the central timepiece, Indigo realized with a sudden, nauseated shock what their fate was to be-for one of the torch bearers had stepped forward and was touching his brand to the first of the pyres.

"Mother of all life blind me!" She gripped the iron bal.u.s.trade, frozen by an inability to believe that anyone was capable of such mad barbarity. One of the prisoners started to scream, a mindless, repet.i.tive wail that his captors ignored. Tongues of yellow flame were catching in the wood of the pyre, brightening the scene; and Quinas, who had been watching with satisfaction, turned to the throng again.

"Thus do we prosecute the just retribution of Charchad against the unbeliever!" The prisoner's screams faded to a series of unsteady whimpers. "I call upon you now, brothers and sisters-open your hearts and look to your own salvation, lest you lose your last hope of grace and blessing and share the doom of the irredeemably d.a.m.ned! I exhort you; look to your souls! Who else among you will dare to turn their face from the all-seeing Charchad?"

Someone in the crowd screeched "Charchad!" and several others took up the cry with a kind of desperate urgency. A few people close to Indigo began to jump and wave their arms, calling out and striving to attract attention to themselves, as though they feared the consequences of failing to draw Quinas's approving eye. But for the most part, the crowd merely stood and watched in silence.

Wildly, Indigo looked at the faces around her. Apathy-tightly controlled fear-careful indifference-not one person would protest against this madness, not one would move to stop it, despite the feet that Quinas and his henchmen were vastly outnumbered. And suddenly her control snapped.

"Do something!" Heads turned, expressions registering blank surprise, and she realized that in her agitation she had screamed at them in her own tongue. She sprang down from the wall and ran for the person nearest to her, a burly man.

"You've got to stop this!" She switched to his language, grabbing him by the arm. "You can't let them do it-it's murder, it's insanity-"

The man threw her off with a convulsive movement, as though he'd been touched by something unclean. For a moment she saw naked terror in his eyes: then his look hardened.

"Foreigner!" he spat. "What do you know of anything? Look to your own affairs!"

A woman beside him shook her fist in Indigo's face. "Get away from us! Heretic! Heretic!"

Infuriated, Grimya snarled and crouched to spring at the woman, but Indigo cried out, "Grimya, no!" She held out a hand to ward off the she-wolf, at the same time backing away from the couple. They don't understand, Grimya. They 're too frightened.

The wolf's snarls dropped to a threatening growl, but she held back. Indigo looked at the man again, but before she could speak there was a sudden gasp from the front of the crowd, and an unhuman screech of agony. Light flared up in the center of the square, and even over the cries Indigo heard the eager crackling of fire- "Please!" She held out both hands in supplication, her voice choked with emotion. "You can't want to see innocent people die in such a way! You could stop it, all of you, if you'd only-"

The woman interrupted her shrilly. "Leave us alone, outlander! Get back to where you came from, and leave us be!"

It was hopeless. Indigo swung round, blocking her ears against the screams of Quinas's burning victims, and with Grimya at her heels, plunged away through the crowd, fighting to get back to the House of Copper and Iron. She couldn't think, couldn't stop to consider; all she felt was an overpowering,inchoate need to flee the scene of the carnage and shut herself away before she, too, was tainted by the madness of Charchad.

Close to the hostelry the crowd was denser as the main press of people in the square met and merged with latecomers trying to jostle in from a side street. Indigo fought her way through, Grimya snapping at recalcitrant ankles, and at last they were past the worst of the congestion and the door of the inn lay only a few yards away. Indigo started to run toward sanctuary-but as she reached clear s.p.a.ce the throng before her suddenly parted, forming an aisle from the middle of the square. Torchlight bobbed and flared, and a small procession came striding from the direction of the pyres, with Quinas at its head.

The look of fanatical self-satisfaction on the overseer's face stopped Indigo in her tracks. She stared at him, feeling a tide of fury swelling within her-then suddenly her attention was s.n.a.t.c.hed by a scuffle at the edge of the crowd. A woman in worn and stained garments, her black hair tied in a single, heavy braid, rushed from the mill of people and threw herself in Quinas's path, s.n.a.t.c.hing at his garments and forcing him to halt.

"Please!" The woman's voice was shrilly hysterical. "Sir, take pity! Don't turn me away again; hear me, I beg you-"

"Out of my way, woman!" Quinas tried to brush her aside but she clung on, heedless of the fact that he was dragging her painfully along the ground.

"No! Hear me, you must hear me! Sir, my- She got no further, for Quinas turned and with the flat of his hand struck her full across the face.

She lost her grip on him, tumbling back with a cry of pain, and one of the acolytes who had been following Quinas kicked her viciously in the small of the back.

Indigo didn't pause to think rationally. Her rage needed an outlet and she ran forward, drawing her knife.

"You!" She barred Quinas's way, eyes ablaze, feeling that at the smallest provocation she'd plunge the knife into his stomach. "Is this your idea of mercy and justice, you filth-ridden abomination?"

"Saia Indigo." Quinas regarded her calmly. "Well, well. Do I detect a change in your manner from our first meeting?"