Yasammez silenced him with a harsh gesture. "We do nothing simply for vengeance, much as it might be deserved. But know that I will do whatever I must to make certain that the G.o.ds and their gateway do not fall under the control of any mortal."

"Are you not putting your own wisdom above that of the G.o.d himself?" Aesi'uah protested. "Why should Crooked himself not decide what is right to do?"

"Because the G.o.d is dying," Yasammez said coldly. She did not like being questioned by her own eremite, however long and honorably the half-Dreamless had served her. "He is scarcely still there-certainly his thoughts have been strange for some time. It could be he is trapped in nightmare and will no longer even be able to understand us. No, we must not rely on even the G.o.d . . . on my father . . . to make our decisions. The People must choose their own way forward."

"But ..." Aesi'uah was searching for words, her own thoughts clearly complicated. "But I fear for them, my lady."

"For whom?"

"Our allies, the mortals-the sunlanders. I find it harder to hate them now. They are . . . different than I expected."

"Think you so?" asked Yasammez with no small amount of scorn. "They are exactly as I expected. Exactly."

The boat with Hendon Tolly, Matt Tinwright, and two of the lord protector's guards landed at M'Helan's Rock first. While Hendon Tolly and Tinwright climbed carefully up the ancient dock stairs, the boat with the other four guards tied up and began to unload. Tinwright paused on the steps to look out across the rocky island and the lights of the castle just across the water, overwhelmed with fear and wonder.

It was plain to see why Tolly had chosen the spot: it was accessible from the mainland but far enough from both the sh.o.r.e and the castle that even in daylight an observer would have had trouble seeing who landed there. And the rock itself was so craggy and studded with caves and inlets that Tinwright thought three or four different ships might land on the island and never see each other.

The lodge at the top of the hill smelled musty when they opened the great doors, and little surprise: Hendon Tolly said no one had used it since he had taken power. Tolly complained about the lack of amenities and having to wait in the cold and damp while one of his guards lit a fire in the great room-even now, in late spring, the island was a windy, wet place. All the guards were well armed, some carrying swords and spears, others with loaded crossbows.

"He will be here soon." Tolly settled into a high-backed chair. "Oh, yes-he will have been watching us land, to make certain we brought only six guards and no more, as we agreed."

Something made a skittering noise in the ceiling and Tinwright looked up.

"Rats," said Hendon Tolly. "The place has been empty so long that it must be full of them. Do you fear rats, poet?"

"Fear them?" He didn't like them much, but he also wasn't certain what Tolly wanted him to say. "Not too much ..."

"They are the cleverest of cattle, as the country folk say." Hendon Tolly grinned. "I knew a man once, a keeper in our hunting lodge in the Summerfield hills, who raised one almost like his own child. It would sit upon his shoulder, and when he commanded it to, it would sing."

"Sing?" The noise of someone shouting down on the dock wafted through the unshuttered windows.

"Well, as much as a rat can," Tolly conceded. "It would squeak along when he sang. And it could fetch him his purse if he dropped it, or find coins in the straw under a table. Then somebody tired of the trick and stepped on the creature." He tilted his head. "Ah, do you hear? He is coming." The lord protector stood, which was a surprise in itself, but as Tinwright watched him shifting from foot to foot, he realized something even stranger: Hendon Tolly was worried, perhaps even frightened.

One of the Summerfield guards opened the door and let in two dark, hard-faced men carrying long, ornamented rifles and wearing helmets in the shape of some grinning, spotted cat, a lion or a pard. After a moment's wary inspection of the room, they stepped to either side of the door and stood at rigid attention. Before Tinwright had time to do more than gawk at these newcomers with their hard, brown faces, a third figure followed them through, a portly, older man with a long and carefully tended beard and an air of almost ludicrous gravity.

This must be the Xixian envoy . . . Tinwright thought. Tinwright thought.

"Out of the way, priest," said another voice. The heavyset man scuttled to the side so that a new figure could duck underneath the lintel and enter the hall.

He was very tall, that was the first thing Matt Tinwright saw-more than a head taller than Hendon Tolly, taller also than the bearded man or any of the guards, who were not small men. The newcomer was dressed strangely, in a long white linen robe and a hat unlike anything Tinwright had ever seen, a tall cylinder encrusted with gems and wound with gold wire, which with his height made the newcomer literally tower above everybody in the room. Only as he stared up at this apparition did Matt Tinwright finally understand it was not just an odd and expensive hat the tall man wore: it was a crown. The autarch himself had come.

In that precise, terrified second of recognition the two Xixian guards crashed their rifle b.u.t.ts on the ground so hard that Matt Tinwright jumped and Tolly's guards grabbed at their own weapons.

"The Golden One, Master of the Great Tent and the Falcon Throne," one of the Xixian guards announced in a loud voice, "Lord of All Places and Happenings, a thousand, thousand praises to His name-bow before the glory of Sulepis Bishakh am-Xis III, monarch of all Xand and Elect of Nushash!"

Once their master had been announced, the leopard-clad guards ushered him to one of the room's two princ.i.p.al chairs. Hendon Tolly took the opposing seat, his face a careful mask. The autarch gestured for his fat, bearded priest to stand behind him. Tolly did not stoop to introducing Matt Tinwright which did not bother the poet at all: even a momentary glance from the autarch's odd, golden eyes was enough to make him want to start explaining things, or apologizing, or even throwing himself on his belly and begging not to be killed. Yes, he was a coward-Tinwright was the first to admit it-but what compelled him now was something more primitive, more basic. The master of the southern continent seemed to the poet a completely different kind of creature, a predator to Matt Tinwright's hapless prey, and if flight was impossible, the only defense against that kind of murderous threat was to remain unimportant.

At first the autarch and the lord protector exchanged only small talk. The autarch spoke their tongue well, and it was clear this was not the first time he and Tolly had communicated. What was going on? How could the master of Southmarch sit down for a friendly conversation with the Monster of Xis?

The autarch was certainly a monster, but Tinwright had to admit he was a fascinating monster, and much younger than Matt Tinwright could ever have guessed: from the stories about the catalog of horrors his armies had visited upon his own continent and in the last year on Eion itself, Tinwright would have expected some wiry, scarred old desert hawk instead of this doe-eyed creature who despite his great height looked to be scarcely grown. The autarch's character was not what the poet would have expected, either. He seemed quite cheerful, although at times that cheeriness seemed as weirdly stilted as Hendon Tolly's. Some of the things he said made no sense at all, as though the southerner spoke words straight out of his deepest thoughts, thoughts that ordinary men would never speak aloud.

". . . But, of course," the autarch said at one point, smiling at Hendon Tolly all the while, "others who thought themselves wise died in shrieking ignorance. Just as you will."

Tolly stared in surprise, but the autarch went back to speaking of the war in Hierosol (which he considered to be all but over with himself the victor) and other strangely mundane topics as if he had never said it.

Hendon Tolly spoke with the cautious manner of someone walking down a path he suspected to be strung with snares. He kept looking to Tinwright each time he made some point as though expecting Tinwright to agree, perhaps even out loud, but it was painfully clear to Tinwright that either of these two men would have his throat slit as blithely as if swatting a fly.

"But now," the autarch said abruptly, clapping his hands together with a sound as loud and as sudden as the guards' gun b.u.t.ts. .h.i.tting the floor earlier, "let us speak of . . . more important things. You have something I need, Lord Protector."

"We could equally say you have something I I need, Your Highness." need, Your Highness."

"Autarch must always be addressed as 'Golden One,' " growled the Xixian priest.

Sulepis waved a long-fingered hand at the priest. "We will not stand on ceremony, good Panhyssir." The autarch took a moment to admire his long brown fingers, each finger capped with odd little baskets of gold. "We both have needs, Lord Tolly. How will we resolve them?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Hendon Tolly's voice had suddenly gone sharp. "You made several promises to me . . . Golden One . . . and I fulfilled my part of the bargain ..."

"Yes, but clumsily," countered the autarch with a hard smile. "You have the throne, but it is not secure. There are elements inside your own walls that will resist you, and thus will resist me, too. And you have stalled and bungled the simple protection of your island keep so that the Qar are now a factor as well."

"The fairies?" Tolly shook his head. "No factor at all. They have fled, balked by my defense at first, then frightened away for good by the arrival of your ships."

"What?" The autarch stared at him, then suddenly threw back his head and laughed, a shrill, childlike bray. "Do you really not know?" He turned to the priest. "Panhyssir, tell him where the Qar may be found."

The glowering priest said, "They are in tunnels beneath your own castle, Lord Toh-lee. They fled there when we landed."

Matt Tinwright could tell that Tolly was truly startled. "Impossible!"

"All too possible," the autarch laughed. "And you still think you bargain with me from a position of strength? Your family has not held power long, have they? Mine came out of the deserts to throw down the thrones of men ten centuries ago, and we had already been rulers there." He sat up. "Ah. I am reminded. I brought you a gift."

Tolly was again taken by surprise. "Gift . . . ?"

The autarch clapped his hands. One of the guards went out and came back with a wooden chest not much bigger than a lady's jewel box, which he set down in front of Hendon Tolly.

"Open it," the autarch told him.

Tolly looked mistrustful. He leaned over and gingerly lifted the lid, then let it drop again and sat up, carefully expressionless. Tinwright had only had time to see something with matted hair and blood.

"Your brother Caradon," said the autarch. "His head, anyway. I sent some of my men to find him while he was out riding." The G.o.d-king grinned mockingly. "A most dangerous pursuit for members of your family, I would say-didn't your other brother Gailon die that way, too? Ambushed on the road?"

"What . . . ?" Hendon Tolly blinked. Tinwright had never seen that particular expression on his face before. "But why . . . ?"

"Because Caradon promised me something and never delivered. Your brother had an enemy of mine-well, of my father's to be precise, but the enemy of one Xixian Autarch is the enemy of all autarchs-had him within easy reach, but failed to secure him for me. Instead, your brother clumsily let him escape in some miserable little town named Landers Port, and he has not been seen since. Perhaps you have heard of the fellow-Shaso dan-Heza?"

Tolly looked as though he were going to choke on his own saliva. "But . . . Shaso escaped from me as well."

The autarch nodded. "Yes. Unfortunate." He brightened. "But at least now everyone is happy-I am, because your brother has been punished for failing me, and you are because you need no longer look over your shoulder to Summerfield Court. Felicitations! You are now the head of your family, Lord Tolly! I imagine that makes you the . . . what is the t.i.tle that your brother held? Duke?"

Tinwright could not help looking at the closed box beside Hendon Tolly's feet. Hendon Tolly could not stop looking at it, either.

"But, we have distracted ourselves with these family matters when there are important issues to be discussed," the autarch continued. "You have something I want, Tolly. I feel certain you were not foolish enough to bring it with you . . . were you?"

Tolly shook his head but did not seem to trust his tongue.

"As I suspected. Panhyssir, how long do we have to resolve this negotiation?"

The priest stirred. "Midsummer is but a few days away, Golden One."

The autarch nodded. "And I must have everything in place by midnight of Midsummer's Day or the G.o.d will not come to me. Tolly, you will send the stone to me by tomorrow."

"The . . . stone ..." Tolly said slowly.

"Exactly-the G.o.dstone. And I promise I want nothing else but that from you, and that in return you will be allowed to do what you please-remain if you wish and continue to rule your little kingdom or go elsewhere, unmolested. When I have summoned the G.o.d, it will no longer be of any interest to me what you or anyone else chooses to do." Sulepis grinned again, the contented grin of a jackal gnawing a shinbone and thinking fondly on mortality. "Do you understand, Lord Tolly? Tomorrow. If not, I will have to come and take it from you, and your suffering will be unimaginable. Understand?"

Tinwright couldn't understand why Hendon Tolly didn't say anything-couldn't he see this man was serious, that the autarch would destroy them all without a thought if it suited him? But the lord protector of Southmarch had the look of a man suddenly feeling very ill indeed.

"But I . . . I didn't ..." Tolly shut his mouth with a snap, but it was too late. The autarch was staring at him.

"You have it, do you not?" the autarch demanded. "You told me you had it."

"Of course . . . !" Tolly had realized his mistake. "Of course, but I thought . . ."

"Describe it to me." The Autarch of Xis leaned forward, his yellow cat's eyes fixed on Tolly. "Tell me what the stone looks like, northern dog!"

"Like ..." Tolly could not manage even to come up with a lie. He pushed his chair back. His crossbowmen pointed their weapons at the Xixians. The Xixian guards lowered their rifles. Tinwright thought carefully about throwing himself to the floor, but was afraid he might startle the guards and then everyone would die, Matt Tinwright definitely included. For a long moment Tolly and the autarch and their respective guards stared at each other across a gulf no more than three paces wide.

The Xixian broke the silence, his face now as hard as copper and shiny with the blood of his anger. "You swore that you had the G.o.dstone. You lied to me-to me me! I lowered myself to come here and speak to you . . . !" His yellow eyes seemed to glint and spark, as if Sulepis was burning inside, as if at any moment he might burst into flame. Tinwright could barely look at him. "Only good fortune allows you to live another day in freedom instead of as fodder for my torturers-but that will change!" He rose. Tolly's guards stared at him, determination and sheer terror battling on their faces, but the autarch only waited for his own guards to open the doors, then followed them out, so confident of his safety that he didn't even look back.

When the southerners were gone, the lord protector of Southmarch fell back in his chair.

"We are all dead men," said Hendon Tolly.

As they were trudging down the stone steps to the dock, Matt Tinwright looked back and saw a movement in the nearest window of the lodge. He decided it must be a trick of the light. Hendon Tolly and the guards were in front of him, making their way to the boats with the slow, dispirited air of a funeral party, and the autarch and his men had already left M'Helan's Rock-Tinwright could see their boat in the distance, heading toward the waiting Xixian fleet. Who else could still be in the lodge?

Tinwright did not work up the courage to speak until they were halfway back around Midlan's Mount with the castle's sea gate in sight. "Lord Tolly, I did not understand. What happened there? I don't understand any of what we have just seen and heard."

"We have had . . . a setback," Tolly admitted at last. He looked down at the box the autarch had given him, which sat on the deck of the small boat, then abruptly bent and picked it up and flung it out over the dark green water of the bay. It landed with a small splash. "But we will find our way again," he said, his voice rising in triumph as if he had not just tossed his own brother's severed head overboard. "Because Sulepis does not possess this G.o.dstone either!"

Tinwright could only stare at Hendon Tolly in uncomprehending horror. Suddenly his rhymes about n.o.bles and G.o.ds seemed naive beyond belief. If this was how the rich and privileged behaved, how much worse must the G.o.ds themselves be? If he were ever fortunate enough to be able to write verses again, Matt Tinwright decided, he would tell the truth. He would write poems that would describe both the beauty and the true horror of existence. He would write the truth and shock the world!

"But what could it be?" Hendon Tolly was still talking to himself; in an instant, he had gone from glee to fury. "G.o.dstone? What is this cursed G.o.dstone? Okros never mentioned it, may the demons of Kernios gnaw his scrawny hide." He shook his head, face even paler than usual in his fury. "I could have been killed here!" He turned suddenly to Tinwright. "When the pagan b.a.s.t.a.r.d sent his messengers to me and asked me if I had the 'last piece,' I thought he meant Chaven's mirror. I bargained, but all the time I was mistaken-I was wagering with nothing in my purse! I could have been killed!" Tolly shouted this as though the universe could offer no greater tragedy-which, Tinwright reflected, Tolly undoubtedly believed. Men like him could not conceive of a world without themselves at the center of it. Matt Tinwright had been reminded since childhood that he would scarcely be missed.

Away in the distance behind them, halfway between their boat and M'Helan's Rock, the wooden chest was still bobbing on the surface. Tolly finally noticed it.

"So the Tolly family fortunes come down to this, brother," he called to the box. "Gailon rots in the earth, you will feed the fishes, and I will stake everything on a final roll of the dice." His eyes were again fever-bright. "The autarch is overconfident. He does not realize the virgin G.o.ddess waits for me-that she wants me to be the one who frees her! All else is trickery. Who knows if the southerner even believes his own lies? But I know what I know." The worry had left his face. Tolly looked toward the walls of Southmarch, which rose above them now as the little boat neared the sea gate. "Destiny has not carried me so high only to let me fall."

Tinwright thought that might be the most frightening thing he had yet heard.

11.

Two Prisoners "Although the boy was too small to be chained to the rowers' benches, he was worked in hard service for the ship's cruel master."

-from "A Child's Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven"

"I'M SORRY," Brionytoldhim. "I don't understand. What do you mean, we were wrong?"

"It is . . . it is just ..." Prince Eneas' face bore a strange expression, one she had never seen before. He had been so busy after the battle she had not seen him for half the day-he was still wearing all his armor except for his helm. "It would be easier for you simply to come with me," he said at last.

He led her to a stockade built in the middle of the Temple Dogs' camp, with a roof of st.i.tched skins stretched across one end for shade and to keep out the occasional rains that swept down out of the surrounding hills. To her surprise, all the prisoners in the enclosure were ordinary humans, some of them the very mercenary soldiers that the Temple Dogs had rescued only that morning.

"Where are the fairies?" she asked Eneas. "Did none of them live?"

"Wait." His face was still unusually grim. At an order from the prince one of the prisoners was led out of the newly built stockade. He was a big man, tall but stocky, with the full, untrimmed beard she a.s.sociated with the Kracian plains. From his battered armor, he seemed to be one of the mercenaries that had guarded the merchant caravan.

"Tell us everything you said before so this lady can hear it," Eneas ordered him.

"Again?" The man did not seem very frightened to be a prisoner.

"Yes, again, dog." Eneas was upset, that was clear-but why?

The man grinned without mirth. "As you wish." He looked Briony up and down with less than perfect respect, but did not let his gaze linger long. "I am Volofon of Ikarta. I am an officer of these men. Our leader was Benaridas, but he is dead." He looked at Eneas as though it were his fault somehow. "The fairies murdered him."

"Why are these men prisoners?" Briony asked.

"Wait." Eneas turned to the big mercenary. "Tell us again how you come to be in this land."

The man shrugged. "We were hired. Some of us do not have rich fathers and uncles. We must make our own way in this world."

"You address the prince of Syan!" snarled Lord Helkis. "Show respect, man, if you value your head."

Volofon looked intrigued for the first time. "A prince? So Syan, too, is sniffing for what sc.r.a.ps may be collected here in the north?"

Helkis s.n.a.t.c.hed at the hilt of his sword but Eneas reached out and touched his arm. "Enough, Miron." The prince turned his attention back to Volofon. "You are making no friends. A man in a cage should perhaps think more carefully before speaking. Who hired you?"