Then something smashed into him, knocking him off the boy and sending him rolling through the undergrowth and up against the nearest cottage. At first Theron could see only the eaves above him and the monstrous little men swarming down from their strange nests. One of his hands was still tied to his face, and he had a sudden horror that the tiny creatures would fall into his mouth and choke him. He rolled over and climbed awkwardly to his knees just in time to see the nameless pilgrim swinging a tree branch almost as long as he himself was tall, smashing the hanging nests under the eaves so that the pulpy, barklike material dropped to the ground in great chunks, along with dozens of little, kicking bodies.

The hooded man now began to use the ma.s.sive branch as a hammer, pounding at the tiny shapes as they darted through the gra.s.s, macerating the pieces of the creatures' nests, crushing as many of the little men as he could reach. Theron could sense rather than hear the change of tone in the little men's shrill voices, aggression and anger now taking a sharp upward turn into terror as the nameless pilgrim began to attack all the nests in earnest.

Theron finally tore his hand free of the binding strings-he could see them now, dangling from his fingers, miniature ropes not much thicker than spiderwebs-and got back onto his feet, grunting as he continued to be struck by the occasional invisible dart. He kept himself as low as he could and made his way to the boy Lorgan, then lifted him up and carried him away from the cursed village as quickly as he could go. He stepped on several of the tiny men as he went and did not regret it.

Theron grabbed as much of their baggage as he could hold, dragging it behind him as he stumbled back down the path and away from the houses. Only when he had put the bend in the river behind him and could no longer see any of the cottages did he finally set the boy down and let himself slump to the ground as well, gasping for breath.

By the time the hooded man returned, Theron had found a slightly more sheltered spot and had dug out his flints to start a fire. The nameless pilgrim did not speak, but only settled down beside the blaze so gingerly that Theron could never have guessed less than an hour earlier the man had been slaughtering the tiny little goblins by the dozens. The strange figure accepted a bit of dried meat, taking it in his bandaged hands, which were now stained with new blood. Theron did not think much of it was the man's own.

Lorgan was feverish during the evening, and Theron feared some of the minuscule arrows might have been poisoned, but he himself felt nothing worse than the great lethargy that follows a fight for one's safety. Lorgan moaned and thrashed a long time, but near middle-night seemed to pa.s.s through the worst, and from that point on slept quietly.

The boy appeared much better in the morning light, to Theron's great relief. Lorgan's face and hands and arms were covered with welts and pinpoint wounds, many with part or even all of the doll-sized arrows still in them, and Theron had to spend a good part of the early light cleaning the boy's injuries as best he could before he saw to his own. It was clear to him that the time to turn back had come earlier than he had previously thought, but there was no way he was going to risk himself or the boy traveling any deeper into a land that was clearly overrun with madness and the worst sorts of black magic.

As Theron put the last bits of the evening's camp back into his pack, the boy finished talking in whispers with the hooded man and turned toward Theron.

"He wants to know when we will reach Southmarch. He thinks we must be close."

"We?" Theron snorted. "We? We are not going to reach Southmarch. We are turning back."

The boy looked at him strangely, but turned obediently to hear what his master had to say. "He says it is not far-a few days' walk at most, he feels sure. And the G.o.ds do not truly oppose our journey, or they would have sent worse than that."

Now Theron laughed, astounded. "Ah! So if we continue we may be allowed to discover what the G.o.ds consider worse than being stabbed by a thousand needles and likely roasted and eaten by little goblins? A shame to miss it, but still, I think I will pa.s.s."

After another near-silent colloquy the boy asked, "Will you leave us, then?"

"If you mean will I leave you you, child, no. I am not the best man who ever lived, and often I have forgotten that it is love of the G.o.ds itself which has given me my livelihood, but no, I will not leave you to follow this madman into danger and death. Either he lets you go with me or he will have to fight me." But he had seen the hooded man fight now, if only for a few moments, and it was daunting to think of going against him.

Now the boy stared at him for a long time before turning to hear the words of the hooded man. As the child listened, Theron dug into his jerkin and pulled out his purse. A strange feeling was on him, but he felt as though the time had come to do what was right and do nothing else. Strange things were afoot, both in the wide world and right here between himself and this mysterious man. By nearly taking his life the G.o.ds had reminded Theron that they were always present. He would not forget again.

"Here, boy," he said. "Come and take the purse."

"He says to you . . ." Lorgan began.

"I do not care. I've not done all that I promised-I haven't taken him as far as Southmarch-town-so I do not deserve his money. It does not matter. He paid me more than generously with the first gold coin, back when he joined the pilgrimage. If he permits it, I will take one more for the trouble and expense of bringing him so far, and if he is mad enough to continue without us, I will swear to find a good home for you, boy, if I do not give you one myself. But we go no farther."

Lorgan's eyes were wide. The boy looked as though he might cry, but it was hard to tell with a face that had already been so dirt-streaked, and was now swollen and blood-smeared as well. He took the purse and conveyed it slowly, as in some ritual, to the hooded man, who accepted it with equal solemnity.

The three of them stood that way for a long succession of heartbeats. The silence was breached at last by the ratcheting call of a jay, which seemed to break the spell.

The nameless man rose, still looking down at the ground as he generally did. After a month of traveling together, Theron had still never properly seen his face, or any of his skin. He murmured something that Theron could not hear, but the boy did.

"He says it does not matter," Lorgan repeated. "He does not need living companions any longer. He thanks you for your honesty. When you die and are judged, as he was, he thinks the judgment will be a merciful one."

Then the man in the battered, dirty robe dropped the purse to the ground and turned away, walking north along the track, back toward the village where they had all nearly died, headed toward Southmarch where it must lie beyond the valley and the hills.

The boy was crying quietly. After the man had vanished into the trees, Theron shook his head and took a few steps forward. He hesitated, then picked up the purse and tucked its jingling weight into his jerkin again. It did not seem important now-nothing much seemed important just at this moment-but the day would come when he would be glad of it again. And at least he could be certain that the boy Lorgan no longer had to live as a beggar on the streets of Oscastle or anywhere else.

Still, it wasn't until the jay squawked again and something answered it from the depths of the trees-some bird or other creature he didn't recognize-that Theron the Pilgrimer shook off his strange lethargy and he and the boy turned south, back toward lands where things made sense.

"No, you fool, put your hand flat against the wood. Now spread your fingers."

Tinwright did as he was told, but it was hard with his arm trembling so.

"Open your eyes, poet." Hendon Tolly made it clear this was not a request. "It takes all the joy out of the thing if your eyes are squeezed shut and teary like a little boy waiting for the clyster pipe." He drew the knife back by his ear.

Other than the lord protector's guards, they were alone in the room known as the King's Counting House, which had for years been the office of the royal exchequer. The walls, paneled in golden fir, were stained with food that the lord protector had thrown against them and pock-marked with ominous, dagger-blade holes.

"Now, watch," Tolly said, and flicked the knife. Despite a slight flinch from Tinwright, it did not harm him, but buried itself nearly two inches deep between the tips of his right index and middle fingers.

Hendon Tolly drew another knife, seemingly out of thin air. "Stay . . . !"

This blade smacked into the wood only a few inches away from the first and stood quivering, almost touching the web of Matt Tinwright's thumb.

Tolly smirked. "By the Knot of Kernios, look at you! Pale as death and shaking like a leaf! What does a poet need all his fingers for, anyway?"

Tinwright swallowed. Hendon Tolly expected to be answered. "For writing . . . ? Remember, you wanted me to write about . . . about your triumph, my lord."

"Triumph, yes. Except that crocodile-swiving autarch is trying to steal it out from under me." A third dagger suddenly flashed through the air so close to Matt Tinwright's face that he could feel the breath of its pa.s.sage. As it shuddered in the wall beside the poet's head, Hendon Tolly stood up. "He believed I had this . . . what was it called? This 'G.o.dstone.' So perhaps it truly is necessary to the whole enterprise." He pointed at Tinwright. "You . . . you will find it for me."

Matt Tinwright was completely muddled. His hand stung where he had brushed the skin of his thumb against the blade of the lord protector's knife. "Me, Lord? I don't understand."

Tolly looked at the guards along the far wall, who were grimly doing their best to seem attentive to their duty while never looking directly at Hendon Tolly for fear he would notice them; bad things happened to people the lord protector noticed. "You will examine Okros' books and scrolls and find out about this G.o.dstone the autarch needs. You will get it for me."

"But, my lord, I know nothing about such things . . . !"

"And I do?" Tolly glared at him. "Get on your knees, poet. I grow weary of you."

"My lord... ?"

"Down!"

Matt Tinwright pushed his forehead against the cold stones of the King's Counting Room. He heard the lord protector's footsteps getting closer, then the sound of one of the knives being yanked out of the wooden paneling. A moment later something cold and sharp slowly traced the spot where his left ear connected to his head.

"It would be the easiest thing in the world to take your ear, poet," said Tolly sweetly, almost as though he were soothing a small child. "Or both of them. What kind of poet would you be then? A deaf one?"

Matt Tinwright didn't bother to point out that he might still be able to hear even with his ears cut off. In fact, he didn't even breathe as the knife tickled his tender skin.

"I have other things I need to do, poet. You can read and you are not the dullest man in my kingdom. I'm sure you can make sense out of all those old, learned fools rabbiting on and on. Find out what the autarch meant. Then find out where the stone is." For a moment the blade of the knife pierced the skin and Tinwright had to struggle not to cry out. "Or bad things will happen-and not just to you. Lest you think you can simply flee my employ and hide from me, you should know that I have a watch on your sister's house. Your mother is living there, too, I believe. It would be sad for them both to be burned for witchcraft in Market Square." Tolly suddenly laughed. "No, I suppose we will have to burn them somewhere in the inner keep, won't we? Too many cannonb.a.l.l.s landing on Market Square these days. Wouldn't want the autarch doing our work for us . . ."

Matt Tinwright was struck dumb with horror, not so much at the idea of his mother and sister being burned as witches-although his sister, at least, had done nothing to deserve such a fate-as the thought that if Lord Tolly's men entered the house, they would find Elan M'Cory there, and that would certainly be the end, both for her and Tinwright.

"Of course, Lord," he managed to say at last. "I will do just as you ask. You needn't worry about me or my family."

"Good man." The cold, sharp thing was no longer against his head. Hendon Tolly had turned and was walking back to his chair, allowing Tinwright to breathe freely again. "In a while I will show you to Okros' chambers-I think his books are still there. But first, I have had a thought. Put your hand against the wall again." He settled into the chair, pulled a kerchief from his pocket and draped it over his face. "I think I can do this without being able to see you, but you'd better talk, just to be on the safe side-that will help me aim. Recite something, poet." He lifted the knife.

This time Matt Tinwight did close his eyes. If the lord protector couldn't see, he didn't want to either.

An hour later Tinwright was waiting outside Avin Brone's cabinet, through some miracle still in possession of all his fingers. He could not help feeling impatient. He was off Tolly's leash for the first time in over a tennight and he had many things to do, visiting Avin Brone only the first.

Tinwright had seen no one either following him or watching for him when he left Hendon Tolly, but just to be cautious, he had left and then come back into the residence through a minor gate, then promptly lost himself in the warren of tiny rooms that had been made in the past two centuries out of what had once been the broad heights and expanse of the old King's Chapel on the ground floor. More recently, it had been a school for the sons (and a few daughters) of n.o.bility. Now the siege had driven all the castle's defenders back to the inner keep, and the boxy maze was serving as the lord constable's chambers, crowded with pages and soldiers. Brone, in exile only a month or so before, had been given his own small suite of rooms.

The men in Eddon livery guarding Brone looked very serious-Tinwright could tell this was no sleepy backwater. However much Brone infuriated and terrified him, he had to admit that the man was formidable. Only a few months ago he had been all but imprisoned in his house at Landsend and roundly mocked at court. Now he was back in the thick of things again, his chambers right next to those of Berkan Hood-the man who had replaced him! Brone had outmaneuvered them all. With Olin gone and so many of the March Kingdoms' best dying in battle during the last year, no one else commanded near the loyalty Brone still did-certainly not Hendon Tolly.

"By the three benevolent brothers, where have you you been, little Tinwright?" said the big man when the poet was finally allowed in. "I've got Perch and Chaffy looking for you with the aim of breaking your legs." been, little Tinwright?" said the big man when the poet was finally allowed in. "I've got Perch and Chaffy looking for you with the aim of breaking your legs."

"Hendon Tolly has kept me at his side for the last tennight and more."

Brone only snorted at this and didn't even offer Tinwright a drink (he never did), but underneath the usual bl.u.s.ter, he seemed fairly pleased to see the young man alive and well.

"I'll keep the guards out a bit longer, then, eh?" said the count. He took a comfortable listening position with his sore foot on a ha.s.sock. "Tell me everything you have seen and heard, poet. Give me something useful and there's gold in it for you."

Gold? I'll be grateful just to get out of all this alive, Tinwright thought, but of course he didn't say it-he could certainly find use for a few coins of any metal. He did his best to tell Brone everything that had happened, starting with the strange scene in the cemetery and Okros' corpse in the Eddon family crypt, continuing through everything he could remember of his days of personal service to Hendon Tolly. He was only halfway through, and had just finished telling Brone in a slightly stumbling fashion about the lord protector's meeting with the autarch, when the older man did something that astonished him. Brone lifted his hand to silence Tinwright in mid-sentence, then shouted for a page.

"Oyler, bring some food for Master Tinwright," he told the dirty-faced boy when he came in. "And nothing cold and nasty, you little devil. Make sure you take something that's been on the fire."

The boy scuttled out. Then, as Tinwright was already wondering if he'd fallen asleep and was dreaming, Brone lifted a jug of wine out from behind his chair-not without a great deal of grunting and cursing-and poured a cup for himself and also one for Tinwright. Unprecedented!

"When you've had something to eat-you look terrible, lad, by the by-you'll tell me all that autarch bit again, and slowly, so I can write it down. Go on, drink up." Brone frowned at Tinwright for a moment, as if it was the poet who was playing out of character instead of Brone himself. "In the meantime, while you're eating, tell me everything else that's happened since then." He shook his head. "So that was what truly happened to Okros, was it? His wound never looked much like he had been caught under a wall-the Three alone know how many walls we've seen knocked down since those cannons started booming, and how many dead and dying we've pulled out from under the stones. Not to mention that there was no arm to be found. No, I couldn't make sense of it, myself-murder, certainly, but taking an arm off like that, neat as a butcher . . . ?"

Tinwright stayed with Brone for what must have been at least another hour and was likely more. Brone kept asking him questions, which sometimes made him change what he had said before, which Brone would then cross out from the parchment with a great many sulfurous curses before laboriously writing down the new version.

When the questioning was over, Lord Brone told Tinwright some ways he could get a letter to him in sudden need. Then, to make the topsy-turvy evening complete, he offered Tinwright a handclasp of farewell. "You've done well," the large man said. "This is much and much to think about. Try to stay alive. It would mean a loss of useful information if Tolly put a knife in your throat."

This last was much more like the Brone he knew, and in a way it made everything that had come before seem even more impressive. The man hadn't gone mad: Tinwright must have actually pleased him.

After leaving Brone, he had an overwhelming urge to go and see Elan, but if Hendon knew about his sister's house as he had claimed, then the worst thing Tinwright could do would be to draw further attention by actually going there. Since for once he wasn't hungry, he decided to take advantage of this unusual feeling of well being and have a start at the work he was supposed to be doing.

Okros' rooms were also in the residence, only a few corridors away from the old royal chambers that Hendon Tolly had commandeered for his own. The sour-faced guard waiting in front of Okros' doorway wore the key on a chain around his neck, but when he saw the message bearing Hendon Tolly's seal, he sprang to attention. After unlocking the door, he clearly intended to follow Matt Tinwright inside, but the poet told him, "I need to be on my own here. 'It is not enough to see with the eyes of my body,' 'It is not enough to see with the eyes of my body,' " he added, quoting from the Kracian bard Tyron. " he added, quoting from the Kracian bard Tyron. " 'I must see with my soul as well, or I am no better than blind.' " " 'I must see with my soul as well, or I am no better than blind.' "

The guard gave him a look that suggested speaking Kracian poetry was a suspicious thing to do even at the best of times, but reluctantly agreed to remain outside.

Tolly had told him that Dioketian Okros' rooms had been left more or less as they had been when he died. If so, Tinwright decided, the physician must have been something less than tidy. The place was in chaos, books and papers piled on every surface, as well as what looked like entire baskets of doc.u.ments dumped out and scattered across the floor. Tinwright suspected however that some of the havoc had been caused since the scholar's death and that more than a few people had likely rummaged through this chamber in search of any secrets or wealth Okros might have harbored, perhaps even the guard standing outside this moment. Tinwright knew that Hendon Tolly had taken many of the physician's books and artifacts himself on the night Okros died; he would not be able to examine those without Tolly watching over him. This was his one chance to see if Okros had left anything else.

What remained seemed to be divided between the most ordinary and the most esoteric sorts of texts, mostly to do with history and the divinatory arts. The only thing that caught his attention was a volume ent.i.tled The Agony of Truth Forsworn The Agony of Truth Forsworn, which he had never seen nor heard of, but whose author, Rhantys of Kalebria, he seemed to remember having once heard something strange about. Tinwright pulled it from the shelf and then began to look in less obvious places, testing the dead scholar's furniture for secret drawers, even examining the backs of all the cabinets for hidden compartments, but with no luck. While Tinwright was pushing the last of them back against the wall, he did notice something quite extraordinary. On the corner of the top of the cabinet, on a surface otherwise covered in a thick fall of dust, were several strange marks which looked almost exactly like the prints of tiny human feet.

It had to be some trick of the eye, he decided-probably they were only the marks of someone's fingers who had, like Tinwright, been moving the cabinet. Still, it was impossible to look at the half dozen small marks, obscured though they were by subsequent larger and less specific marks, and not imagine a human the size of a clothes peg leaving them behind in the dust like tracks in the snow.

To his great irritation, Tinwright then had to spend long moments quibbling with the guard as to whether he was permitted to remove something from the room, but he relied on his temporary power as Lord Protector Hendon Tolly's envoy and the guard, grumbling, finally gave up.

While he had this unwonted freedom, Matt Tinwright had no desire at all to go anywhere near Hendon Tolly himself, so instead he made his way back across the residence and out to the servants' dormitory near the kitchens where he and Puzzle had for so long shared sleeping quarters.

The jester was half asleep on the cot, a little the worse for drink, but began to move over to make room for Tinwright.

"No, I'll sit up," he told the old man. "I have reading to do."

"I haven't seen you lately," Puzzle said. "I worried about you."

"I've been waiting on the lord protector."

Puzzle sat up now, his eyes wide. "Truly? What good luck!"

Tinwright rolled his eyes, but it was foolish to expect the old man to understand the truth. "I suppose. I do not mean to disturb you, though. I just needed a place to read in quiet."

The jester would not take the hint. "Did you know that Lady M'Ardall asked me to come to their house in Helmingsea and entertain her friends and family? As soon as the siege has ended, they will take me in their coach and all!"

"That's wonderful." Tinwright opened Rhantys' book, trying to ignore the jester, who had apparently decided against sleeping and had begun to rattle off all the interesting things that had happened to him of late-interesting to Puzzle, in any case.

". . . And of course Berkan Hood said he didn't approve of talk about leaving, because, after all, we are are at war. Have you seen the lord constable lately, Matty? He has been at it less than a year-how long was Brone the constable, a dozen years?-but he already looks like a man who can hear the Black Hound at night, quite pale and drawn and years older . . ." at war. Have you seen the lord constable lately, Matty? He has been at it less than a year-how long was Brone the constable, a dozen years?-but he already looks like a man who can hear the Black Hound at night, quite pale and drawn and years older . . ."

"I'm sorry, Puzzle, but I truly need to read this." Tinwright had been staring for some time and had not recognized a single word, although it was in reasonably modern Hierosoline. "You should get to sleep now, and we'll catch up in the morning."

"Oh! Oh, of... of course." Puzzle gave him a look like a child slapped for some other child's misdeed. "I'll just keep silent. While you're working."

"It's just that Lord Tolly will have my head if I don't . . ."

"Of course." Puzzle waved his gnarled fingers. "It's of no account. I'll just sleep." But when he lay back, he was rigid as a plank.

Tinwright sighed. He knew when he had been defeated-his mother had been the supreme mistress of disappointment used as a weapon. "Oh, very well," he said. "I'll go find a b.u.t.t-end of something to drink in the kitchen, and we'll catch up."

The old jester clapped his hands and bounced back upright, as pleased as if he'd found the Orphan's coin and sweetmeats in his shoe.

Hours later, when Puzzle had at last fallen asleep and was happily, drunkenly snoring, Tinwright picked up The Agony of Truth Forsworn The Agony of Truth Forsworn and began to look through it again. It was hard going-a series of cranky disquisitions on the great errors of history, as far as he could tell, many of which surrounded events of which he had never heard, like the apparently controversial Third Hierarchical Conclave. It was only as his cursory exploration reached the last part of the book that he discovered something which caught his attention, a heretical sect called the Hypnologues who had maintained that the G.o.ds did not merely communicate with mortal oracles during sleep, but were asleep themselves. This sect had been persecuted by the Trigonate Church all through the eighth and ninth centuries, and all but wiped out before the arrival of the year 1000, although some related groups had appeared during the madness of the Great Death when many folk in Eion lost faith in the Trigonate Church and other authorities completely. and began to look through it again. It was hard going-a series of cranky disquisitions on the great errors of history, as far as he could tell, many of which surrounded events of which he had never heard, like the apparently controversial Third Hierarchical Conclave. It was only as his cursory exploration reached the last part of the book that he discovered something which caught his attention, a heretical sect called the Hypnologues who had maintained that the G.o.ds did not merely communicate with mortal oracles during sleep, but were asleep themselves. This sect had been persecuted by the Trigonate Church all through the eighth and ninth centuries, and all but wiped out before the arrival of the year 1000, although some related groups had appeared during the madness of the Great Death when many folk in Eion lost faith in the Trigonate Church and other authorities completely.

But what was interesting was that Rhantys, writing in the early 1200s, seemed in no hurry to join in the condemnation of the Hypnologues. He even quoted from many of the Oniri and from pa.s.sages in the Book of the Trigon Book of the Trigon itself in a way that suggested the heretics might be correct-that the G.o.ds might truly be asleep and taking a less active role in the lives of men than had been true in the days when the texts of the itself in a way that suggested the heretics might be correct-that the G.o.ds might truly be asleep and taking a less active role in the lives of men than had been true in the days when the texts of the Book of the Trigon Book of the Trigon were first being a.s.sembled. were first being a.s.sembled.

Some of this, Tinwright thought, sounded more than a bit like what Tolly said all the time. More importantly, it sounded like what the terrifying autarch had said as well. If two powerful men from different ends of the world both believed in sleeping G.o.ds who longed to wake and escape back into the world, maybe there was indeed something to it.

Then his flagging, weary attention was caught again, and this time what he read made his skin itch and his hackles rise.

"The Hypnologues had at the center of their beliefs a tenet that was stranger still-that the center of the religious world lay not in the southern lands or Great Hierosol itself, or even in Tessis, the more recent capital of the Trigonate faith, but rather in the northern territories sometimes called Anglin's Land or the March Kingdoms, and specifically in the keep of Southmarch, the royal seat of those kingdoms. Their faith maintained that the entrances to the domains of the sleeping G.o.ds were to be found there, and that, in fact, the very struggle which had led to the G.o.ds' insensibility took place there, back in the depths of time.

"Trigonarch Gerasimos, a man who had seen the Korykidons burned alive for pretending to have found the Orphan's birthplace and making it a shrine, was not one to take a challenge to the church lightly, and he anathematized the Hypnologues in his Proclamation of 714 T.E. This did not end the heresy, of course-it would last until the plague era and beyond-but it marked the end of any public speculation about whether the G.o.ds were truly watching over mankind . . ."