A hand cracked across her right temple and she rocked back, almost biting through her tongue as her tirade broke off in midflow. As she struggled to right herself, head reeling, she saw that a rope had appeared in her tormentor's hands; a rope made of blue flames that flickered and shivered yet did not seem to burn him.

"Oh, it is easy for the sc.u.m of Charchad to swear by the Great G.o.ddess." His voice was soft, deadly. "But we will see, saia, how your righteous protestations fare in the face of trial!" He tautened the fire rope between his fingers. "Stand up."

Indigo's shoulders heaved with the effort to suck air into her lungs. "I will not!"

He smiled. "Then die in pain, here, at the behest of my little servant, and prove yourself afraid of the truth."

Truth? Indigo thought dizzily. But it was enough to goad her.

"No." Trying to maintain some semblance of dignity, she struggled to her feet and stood facing him. "Your pet may wait. Try me, if that's what pleases your warped mind. And truth is what you will have!"

He stared at her for a few moments; then a small, sour smile deepened the lines on his face.

"That way." He indicated the dark tunnel she had seen earlier. "The salamander will be at your heels; if you hesitate or run, you will feel its breath. Do I make myself clear?"

"You do." She gave him a withering look and turned toward the tunnel mouth.

The tunnel was unlit, but the flickering green glow of the salamander was enough to illuminate their way.

Indigo felt the heat increasing as she walked, until, when she was finally told to halt, she felt as though she stood on the brink of an open furnace. Choked by the stifling air, she turned to look at her captor.

"What now?" Her voice echoed horribly: she tried to inject a note of defiance into her tone, but it was a poor attempt; she felt claustrophobic, and her earlier fury had ebbed, leaving her vulnerable and fearful."Be silent." He brushed past her, the salamander skittering at his heels, and by the light emanating from the elemental's body she saw that the tunnel ended a short way ahead, seemingly at the lip of a deep well that dropped away into darkness. Sulfurous smoke rose in dense, lazy coils from the darkness, and she realized that the well was a fumarole from one of the ancient volcanoes.

But surely the volcanoes were dead....

"Sit." A hand pushed her back; she stumbled and dropped to her knees. From somewhere in the depths of the fumarole light flickered suddenly, painting the tunnel walls a fiery red; against the glow her captor was a skeletal silhouette as he turned toward her and held out the burning rope. He uttered five harsh, foreign syllables-and the rope came alive, snapping from his hands to snake like a whiplash toward Indigo. Involuntarily she jerked back, but her reactions were too slow; the flaming cord coiled around her and she felt as though something huge and hot had breathed out in a great, gusting sigh. Warmth that was all-embracing yet stopped short of the threshold of pain enfolded her. The rope didn't burn. But as it settled about her body she realized that she was held fast, could neither move nor-and the second realization came much in the way that she sometimes knew she was slipping from wakefulness into dreaming-think clearly. Consciousness was fading in and out, rising and falling as though to the rhythm of a slow, inexorable heartbeat. Her captor-tormentor, sorcerer, nemesis (that concept had a crucial meaning. But what? What? She couldn't remember)-was a black silhouette before her, an outline etched in sparks. He was speaking, but the words made no sense.

"You see the power of the cord of fire, that binds death to life, sleep to wakefulness, reality to illusion. And truth to falsehood. Now we shall learn the truth, saia. Now we shall learn."

Smoke rolled from the fumarole, and she could smell sulfur again and feel the heat of the crackling rocks around her. But there was more than sulfur and heat. There was a sound in her head, like the chiming of a strange, mechanical timepiece. There was the murmuring hiss of flames. There was the softer murmur of a river current, flowing sluggishly into the baked southlands. And further. There was the sea, forever breathing with a cool, slow rhythm against tall cliffs. There were ships and there was the sharp bite of cold salt spray. There was a sh.o.r.e, and woods, and plains, and- And the old terrors of her homeland superst.i.tions, when a warm, living creature who was lonely and outcast cried in the night for a friend and said wolf in her drowsy mind...

And there was Carn Caille. Old, beloved Carn Caille, fortress of the Southern Isles where the summer sun never set and the winter snow swirled through the daylong dark from the ramparts of the glaciers. And there was King Kalig, whose nine-times-greatgrandfather had wrested power and founded a dynasty within Carn Caille's worn and mellowed walls. And Kalig's queen, and his children; Kirra, who would be king in his own time, and- And- "Nnnh..." The word wouldn't come; her lips were frozen and she couldn't speak it. But the denial was in her mind, the fear, the terror, as Fenran's dying face screamed to her from the carnage of battle, as the Tower of Regrets crumbled on the tundra, as horrors that should never have walked the earth vomited from the ruins to bear down on home and life and love, and tear her world apart- And Fenran wasn't dead, but in limbo, in a demon world where thorns tore his flesh and nightmares stalked his endless waking hours. And she alone could save him. But only when her quest was finally over, if it took ten years or a thousand- "No!" The chains that held Indigo's mind heaved and broke, and she screamed like a banshee, thrashing on the floor of the tunnel-The salamander screeched, its form burning brighter until it rivaled the brilliance of the light spilling from the fumarole. Smoke belched upward to form a black cloud over her head; she tried to fight the hands that gripped her, pulled her back, glimpsed a face white with shock that swam before her like a demented vision, and- And- * * *

Someone was holding a cup to her lips. The water was warm and a little brackish but she drank gratefully, feeling it ease the strangling constriction in her throat. Some caught in her windpipe and made her cough; reflexively she raised one hand to cover her mouth, and only then, remembering, did sherealize that her bonds had been cut.

Her wrists felt sore, but otherwise she seemed to be unharmed. Again the water was held out to her; she drank more and her mind abruptly began to clear, focusing recollection of the last few hours. She had believed that her captor meant to kill her, and had antic.i.p.ated the horrors of perhaps days of unending torment before he realized that she could not die as any other victim would have done. Now though, it seemed that someone or something had intervened to rescue her.

Confused and not knowing what to antic.i.p.ate, Indigo opened her eyes.

She was back in the cave. The candlelight still flickered, but the salamander had gone. And a voice said quietly: "Saia Indigo, Can you ever forgive me?"

He was kneeling at her side, the cup held in a hand that shook perceptibly. Some of the plaits in his hair had come unfastened, making him look more than ever like a crazed scarecrow, and his face was streaked with soot. But the dementia in his eyes had gone, and in its place were fear and shame.

He extended the cup again and involuntarily Indigo drew back, breath catching sharply in her throat. "Don't touch me!"

Chagrined, he set the cup down, and she saw that several plates of food-some cooked meat, a melange of rapidly wilting vegetables, a small cake with a crust of dried fruits-had been placed in a semicircle before her, much as a pet.i.tioner might lay an offering before a temple shrine. She looked at him again, suspicion tensing every muscle.

"What game are you playing with me now?"

He shook his head emphatically. "No game, saia. An attempt-pitiful I know, but an attempt-to make reparation to you." His gaze met hers, painfully candid. "If such a thing is possible."

Warily, Indigo watched his face as she tried to gauge how tar she could trust this apparent change of heart. If the man was as mad as he'd seemed earlier, he might simply be trying to lull her as a prelude to some devious new a.s.sault, Then in the distance, and m.u.f.fled by a vast density of rock between them, she heard the chilling howl of an angry wolf.

"Grimya!" She started to scramble to her feet, then realized that she couldn't judge the direction from which the sound had come. She whirled on the man. "Where is she? What have you done to her?"

"Please," He held up both hands in a pacifying gesture. "The animal is unharmed. She has food and water, and she is perfectly safe." He smiled wryly. "I had no choice but to use my sorcerous skills to confine her in another cave, or she would have torn my throat out. But I swear to you, she has suffered no hurt."

Quickly, Indigo focused her mental energy on the direction from which the howl had come, and immediately felt the red heat of Grimya's inchoate anger. The she-wolf's mind was in too much turmoil for her to be able to make telepathic contact, but her captor had spoken the truth: Grimya was unharmed.

She looked at the sorcerer again. "And what of Chrysiva?" she demanded.

"Chrysiva?"

"The girl who was with us. She's sick, and if you-"

"She too is safe, saia. I found her at your camp in the defile, and I brought her to my hideaway along with your possessions. I have made her as comfortable as I can.... Please-" Tentatively he extended a hand, and although Indigo still refused to unbend, this time she didn't shrink away. He clenched his fingers. "I must explain my actions to you, why I reacted so violently to your arrival. You may think me mad, saia, but I beg you to believe that I am not." He paused, and his face muscles worked into a peculiar expression that she couldn't begin to interpret. "Tormented, yes; and angry, so angry... But not mad."

Reserving judgment, Indigo said, "And do anger and torment alone justify your behavior toward strangers?"

"Under normal circ.u.mstances, no." He acknowledged the point with a wry glance. "But circ.u.mstances here are not normal, saia; nor have they been for the past five years. When I was first alerted to your presence in the mountains, I thought you must be one of them, searching for me-"

"Them?" Indigo interrupted."The followers of the filthy abomination that has blasphemed against Ranaya, and taken all that was good and strong and..." The furious words trailed off abruptly and he got a grip on himself. "Let us say that I have learned through bitter experience that any stranger is more likely than not to be an enemy."

Indigo began to understand, and she said softly, "The Charchad?"

He nodded, his face tight. "I can hardly bear to hear the name spoken aloud, even now. And when you told me that you were here to seek them out, I-" He expelled a harsh breath. "I didn't stop to consider what your motives might be; the rage in me was too strong and I wanted only to exact vengeance on you. It was only when I used the cord of fire and saw what was in your heart that I realized the mistake I had made."

A cold, dead hand clutched at Indigo's stomach as she saw suddenly what he implied, and she remembered the nightmare experience she had undergone by the fumarole in the tunnel. A sorcerer of such power-and he was powerful; she had seen more than enough to convince her of that-could look into the depths of another mind, draw out all that was there, and see the naked soul beyond.

She met his gaze and her fears were instantly and horribly confirmed by the underlying pity she saw in his eyes. He knew what she was. Unwittingly, unwillingly, she had shown him everything: her past, her crime, the curse that the Earth Mother had laid upon her. He knew.

She turned away as a sick wave of misery and shame washed over her, and put a fist to her mouth, biting the knuckles. "I-"

"Please, saia." He touched her arm with a gentleness that surprised her. "What's done is done and neither of us can change it. I don't pretend to understand what lies behind your quest, and I don't mean to try. Let no more be said of it, if it's what you will. But don't you see that we're two of a kind?"

She lowered her fist and looked at him uncertainly. "Are we?"

"Yes! I feel I know something of what you've lost. And I know the grief that such a loss brings, for I have suffered in the same way. We share a goal, saia Indigo, and I believe that the quirk of fate that brought us together is nothing less than the deed of Ranaya herself!"

His eyes were beginning to light again with the unmistakable glow of fanaticism, and Indigo felt herself overwhelmed by his eagerness-though not altogether unwillingly, for suddenly he had struck an answering chord within her.

She said: "I'm not sure that I see-"

"You must see! It's so clear! The G.o.ddess meant us to meet, for She has a task for us. Your quest and mine are one and the same-and where alone our powers are limited, together we can work to do Her will and we can succeed!"

A tight, uneasy knot of excitement grew abruptly in Indigo. "The Charchad?"

"Yes!" He caught hold of her hands, gripping them so tightly that she winced. "Ranaya has answered my prayers, and you are Her instrument. Together, Indigo, we can face the Charchad-and we can destroy it!"

*CHAPTER*VI*.

The sluggish light of a single candle cast distorted and grotesquely elongated shadows across the cave floor and walls. For some minutes now the silence had been broken only by the painful, irregular breathing of Chrysiva, who slept on a sack of linen stuffed with dry leaves and twigs that served Jasker as a bed. Indigo was reluctant to look at the girl; something in the sounds coming from Chrysiva's throat made her skin crawl with unease. And they added a poignant but ugly counterpoint to the story she had just heard.

She raised her head and met the unquiet, green-brown eyes of the man sitting opposite her.

"Jasker, I grieve for you," she said softly. "Truly, I grieve for you."

At her side Grimya shifted restively and added her own sympathetic agreement in a soft whine.

The sorcerer glanced at the she-wolf, then smiled sadly and cast his gaze down.

"Your friend has more forgiveness and kindness in her heart than I have any right to expect," hesaid.

"Grimya isn't hampered by human weaknesses. But her feelings are as strong as any man's or woman's." Indigo looked at the rough-cut stone platter before her, then slowly pushed it away. Jasker's story had diminished her appet.i.te to the point where thought of food made her stomach queasy; instead she picked up the waterskin he had set beside the plate, and refilled his cup and her own.

Jasker-he had, she gathered, no family name; they were not customary in these parts-had done all he could to make amends both to her and to Grimya for the ordeal of their first encounter. When the truth came out, Indigo herself was willing enough to forgive and forget; however, calming Grimya sufficiently to make her understand that the man need no longer be regarded as a threat hadn't been easy.

Indigo had finally managed to make telepathic contact with her, and patiently persuaded her not to launch herself at Jasker's throat the moment he released the sorcerous barrier that held her trapped in a smaller cave. When she finally emerged, Grimya had been crimson-eyed and bristling with angry suspicion; but Indigo's rea.s.surances and a dish of fresh meat had mollified her at last, and she agreed to join them in the main cave to hear Jasker's story.

That story, as the sorcerer had now told it, did not make pleasant hearing. With a quiet, grim determination that couldn't mask the pain evoked by his memories, Jasker explained that he was-or, more accurately, had been-a member of the respected sorcerer priesthood of the fire G.o.ddess Ranaya, avatar of the Earth Mother who had been worshipped in the region for generations. But with the arrival of the Charchad had come violent and hideous change. The cult-and as yet Jasker had told Indigo nothing of its origins-had grown with chilling rapidity, until its officers felt themselves powerful enough to challenge the reign of Ranaya through the deposing of her priesthood.

Perhaps, Jasker said bitterly, he and his fellow priests had been fools to resist. Perhaps they should have realized before it was too late that a direct confrontation with the Charchad would bring only disaster; for its devotees had used fear and torment to spread their influence through the mining lands and no ordinary man or woman dared raise a voice, let alone a hand, against them. But they had resisted; and their fervent hope that the people for whom they had interceded with Ranaya for so long would rise with them proved false. Jasker's friends, his dearest companions, were slaughtered. They tried to use their sorcery, but Charchad had powers of its own that they could neither comprehend nor combat. And when the torture and the killing were done, Jasker's own wife, whom he adored, was among the torn and broken corpses that the Charchad left behind.

The icy detachment with which the sorcerer related the manner of his wife's death shocked Indigo to the core, for she could sense the t.i.tanic strain that the retelling put upon him. One momentary lapse, one small hint of emotion, and Jasker would have broken down uncontrollably. His wife-he would not tell Indigo her name; by his tradition it was taboo to speak the names of the dead aloud-had been tortured for the duration of an entire night. He didn't reveal the details of her torture, and Indigo did not ask. But he described how he, drugged almost insensible and unable to call on his power or on any physical strength to help her, had been forced to watch her slow and agonizing journey toward death.

Jasker's own end would have come on the evening of the following day; the Charchad, it seemed, wanted to preserve a few victims to provide a public example for doubters and unbelievers, and so they had imprisoned him, with two barely conscious comrades, in his own temple. How he had escaped was something he couldn't now remember; his only recollection was of being overcome suddenly, as the drugs wore off and freed his body and mind, by a rage the like of which he had never known before, a berserker fury that wiped out all reason and all fear. He had broken from his prison and had killed two men, perhaps three; from then his mind was blank until the moment when he came to his senses to find himself in the volcanic mountains with the sun setting in an angry crimson blaze at his back.

That slaughter had taken place two years ago, and since then Jasker had lived here alone, an outcast and a fugitive. Even in these barrens it was possible to sc.r.a.pe out an existence, however meager: there were edible plants and even some animals-of sorts, the sorcerer added cryptically, though he didn't expand on the comment-to be found, and a few small springs of metallic water among the rocks to make life sustainable. Shelter wasn't a problem: the old mountains were riddled with caves, tunnels, wells, all carved out by molten lava in the days when volcanic activity was at its height. There had been noeruptions now for more than three generations, and so the network of pa.s.sages and caverns made an ideal and near-impregnable refuge. However, Jasker told Indigo, the volcanoes were by no means extinct. There was life in the deepest shafts of the fire mountains-shafts such as the fumarole she had seen-but it was dormant, he said with an odd smile. Not dead; dormant. As though it waited for something to break its long quiescence.

Whether the Charchad leaders were aware of Jasker's presence he didn't know. Throughout his exile only four strangers before Indigo had strayed into the area of his stronghold, and none of them had lived long enough for Jasker to establish whether their presence was mere accident or something more sinister. She had asked him why he stayed in the mountains rather than seeking out a new life elsewhere, and his answering smile turned her cold.

"For vengeance." His eyes glittered in the cave's gloom and she saw a sudden resurgence of the old mania. "The world has nothing to offer me, Indigo, for nothing could replace what I once had and lost. So I have dedicated my life to one purpose and one alone: retribution." A fist clenched unconsciously and his knuckles whitened. "I can't begin to explain the true meaning of wrath to one who hasn't experienced its greatest heights. But I have schooled myself and driven myself and steeled myself, to the point where I am a living weapon; I eat and drink and breathe vengeance, and vengeance is incarnated in my flesh, ray bones, my soul. I am vengeance." He drew in a sharp, quick breath and looked toward the shrine, adding in a soft undertone: "Ranaya has granted me that gift, and I will not fail her."

Indigo had looked down at her own clasped hands, aware of Grimya's uneasy thoughts and, too, of an answering frisson within herself that responded involuntarily to Jasker's words. She had tasted wrath, had felt its hot fires in her veins; and the atrocities that had set light to it were such that it would take little to trigger it anew. She shared Jasker's wrath-and that was a dangerous contagion; for despite the change in his manner she was well aware that Jasker wasn't sane. Intelligent and lucid he might be, but his insatiable rage against the Charchad had unhinged him, and now fueled and fed his already considerable sorcerous skills. It would be all too easy to succ.u.mb to the same tide of emotions that drove him, to abandon caution and reason and hurl herself headlong at their common cause. That, Indigo knew, could be a fetal mistake, for of one thing she was now certain: Jasker's hated Charchad and the demon she sought to destroy were one and the same ent.i.ty.

Silence had fallen again. In this cave it was impossible to judge the hour; outside, Indigo surmised that dawn must be breaking, but here day and night were one, and the sense of timelessness was dreamlike and a little eerie. Grimya had fallen into an uneasy doze; the she-wolf was still suspicious of Jasker and every so often her amber eyes opened and she regarded him mistrustfully before lapsing back to sleep. Chrysiva, too, slept on; her breathing had grown a little quieter, and Indigo turned to look at her. What she saw did nothing to ease her mind. Chrysiva's skin was deadly pale, almost the color of a dead fish. And the marks on her arms and face, the blotches, the sores, seemed if anything to be worsening.

"She'll sleep for a good few hours yet," Jasker said quietly.

"I know." Indigo turned back. "But those scars she bears... they're showing no signs of healing."

"No." He paused, regarding her intently, then added: "They won't heal. Not now. If I'd found her two days earlier, there might have been hope, but it's too late."

Indigo stared at him, feeling as if worms moved in her stomach. "Too late?"

Jasker's expression changed. In the dim light he looked suddenly like something carved out of stone. "She didn't tell you what was done to her?"

"No... all I know is that her husband has been 'sent to Charchad'-whatever that means-and that she'd been to the mines to plead for him when I found her."

Jasker stared at her. "Then you haven't realized yet what is wrong with her?" His eyes glittered like cold crystal. "I'll tell you, Indigo. I'll tell you that poor woman's story, and while I tell it, you can reflect that hers is only one among hundreds!"

" Jasker-"

"No," Jasker interrupted her with a searing edge to his voice that made her want instinctively toback away from him. "If you want the whole truth, you'll have it. I've talked to Chrysiva. When I brought her here, she was awake and in great pain, and she told me exactly how she had come to this pa.s.s." He made to pour himself another cup of water, then s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand away from the skin and clenched his fist, as though it were barely under his control.

" 'Sent to Charchad'... ach! They haven't even the courage or honesty to call it what it is- slaughter!" Suddenly he reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed hold of Indigo's wrist, gripping it so tightly that her fingers were numbed. He leaned forward and the glitter in his eyes caught fire as shadow gave way to candlelight. "Do you know what afflicts that woman? Do you?"

"No-"

With his free hand Jasker pointed at Chrysiva, and his entire arm began to tremble with rage that he could barely control. "She has been granted the honor and the glory of achieving a state of grace!" He pulled on Indigo's wrist, almost dragging her off balance. "A Charchad state of grace! You don't know what that means-you're a stranger, a foreigner; you've been spared the blessings of that knowledge, haven't you? Pray to Ranaya that you never find out at first hand!"

His furious voice roused Grimya, who raised her head in alarm. Seeing what was afoot, she sprang to her feet, snarling, but Indigo pulled her wrist free from Jasker's grip and made a pacifying gesture. "No, Grimya; it's all right." Her gaze didn't leave the sorcerer's face. "What do you mean, Jasker? What did they do to her?"

He subsided, but it took a great effort and for a few moments he had to struggle before getting his breathing under control. At last he said, "You've seen them. If you spent a single night in that filthy town, you must have seen them. The exalted ones, the favored of Charchad. The scarred, festering, mutated monsters!"

The celebrants on the road, the creatures who had a.s.sailed her in the House of Copper and Iron-Appalled, Indigo looked wildly at Chrysiva. "But she isn't-"

"One of them? Oh, she is, Indigo; she is. But she had no choice in the matter!" Jasker shut his eyes tightly and ran both hands ferociously through his hair; his shadow jerked crazily on the cave wall.

Indigo heard him suck air into his lungs, then his shoulders slumped.

"There is a substance," he said, straining to contain his fury. "Metal or stone, I don't know its nature. But it glows."

Grimya growled softly and Indigo put an arm about her furred shoulder. "We've seen it."

"Then you doubtless know that it's a symbol of power to those Charchad demons."

"Their amulets?"

"Yes, their amulets. A badge of rank, of favor. And it kills. Indigo. Slowly, and as surely as the course of the sun in the sky, that unearthly abomination warps and erodes the bodies of all who come into contact with it, until there is nothing left for them but death!"

Indigo hugged Grimya more tightly. "Then the disfigurements we saw, the mutations... they were caused by this-this stone, this ore?"

"You saw the least of it. You saw the ones who can walk, the ones who can still speak, the ones whose mouths haven't yet rotted away so that they starve even before the last stages of the sickness can claim them. You did not see the horrors of those final stages, the agony, the thrashing, dying, screaming h.e.l.l of it... ah, Ranaya!" He covered his face with his hands.

"Jasker." Indigo moved toward him, laying a hand on his shoulder and feeling helpless in the face of his torment. "Jasker, please-"

He shook her off. "'Why should I not rail against it? I have failed this little miner's wife-just as I failed my own wife, my friends, my companions." Abruptly then his shoulders stiffened, and with an effort, he brought himself under control. "Forgive me, saia," he said with tight formality.

"There's nothing to forgive."