Cyndere sat down and drew a chalk tattoo on the palm of her hand.

"You wish you'd gone with him."

"You'd never allow it. And you're master of Bel Amica."

"Cyndere ... the Deathweed."

"I know. But Jordam's out there."

"Jordam might survive a Deathweed attack. But you ..." He turned a tab on the tharpe's wooden neck and a spring broke with a loud, sour sproing! "Krammed out-of-tune piece of butterfly dung!"

"I'm in just as much danger here."

Partayn sat beside her and touched her forehead, her nose, and her chin as he had when they had played as children. "What're you going to do, little sister? You can't live with Jordam in the wild. You can't keep him here. But you're unhappy when he's gone."

"He's my closest tie to my husband. When I'm with him, I feel like Deuneroi is close."

Partayn rose and went to the window. "What if I were to find the source of the Deathweed, Cyndere?"

"Partayn, I don't want to talk about this."

"Just pretend. Like when we were kids dreaming up adventures. What if I led a force down into the Core?"

"You're not leaving me here."

"The beastmen are weakening, Cyn. They have no chieftain. I spent enough time in slavery there to know my way around. What if I were to find the source of the Curse and destroy it? Imagine."

"We've just sent mother off. I won't be left alone. Not with things in such a state."

"Free the forest of Deathweed, and Tilianpurth could be a station where we work to cure the beastmen. Jordam could help you. You could live there. I know how you love the place."

"The well's gone, Partayn. We'd need to find another source of the enchanted waters. And Deathweed isn't our only problem."

"Ah, yes. Ryllion and Cesylle. That brings me to my news."

She looked up.

Partayn leaned against the window frame. "Cesylle's dead."

Cyndere slid from the edge of her seat to kneel on the floor. Her initial response-a surge of relief-was quickly erased by a wave of questions. "Emeriene. She must be devastated," she said. But she'll be free, she thought. "What happened?"

Partayn related Myrton's account of the Seers' deadly secret, the fire, and Cesylle's demise.

"The forest," Cyndere whispered. "What if Myrton's right? We'll have to seal up the city like a tomb and surround it with fire."

"I must go back to the Core, Cyndere. It may be our only chance. We have to find the source and set it ablaze. Stop the Curse at its root."

"Emeriene." She climbed back to the couch. "Little Cesyr and Channy must be sick with all they witnessed. I should go to her."

"Emeriene's asked to be left alone with the boys. Even by you, Cyndere."

"Even me?"

"She's a wreck. She's as upset about King Cal-raven as she is about losing Cesylle."

"Cal-raven? Why is she upset about ..." Then she gasped. "He's out there. In the forest."

"I've sent a company north. On vawns. They'll catch up with Tabor Jan. They're carrying torches and seabull sacks full of torch oil. We'll hope they don't need it."

"Who? Who did you send?"

"Eight defenders, two healers from the infirmary, and that one-eyed glassworker."

Cyndere joined him at the window. "Are you sure Emeriene said I couldn't visit her?"

He shrugged. "You don't have to obey her." Cyndere walked out of the chamber.

She chose the stairs-she wanted to keep moving, without having to wait for the lift.

A couple of sisterlies passed her on the stairway, startled at her fierce demeanor.

Emeriene's free of Cesylle. But it won't give her any peace. And her boys ... To see their father burned up before their eyes ... They were already angry and reckless. What will she do?

She turned the corner and strode swiftly to Emeriene's chamber. The answer to her own question hovered within reach, but she was too terrified to reach for it.

A rope dangled from the handle to Emeriene's door-a cord of towels knotted together.

"What is this?" She pushed the door open. "Emeriene?"

The room was quiet. The window's curtains seemed restless in the chill. Everything was just as it had always been, except for the broken mirror and the arrow that lay among glass shards spattered with dark, dry blood.

Emeriene's sisterly uniform was tossed across the table, cast aside like a cocoon.

Cyndere returned to the entryway and took the rope of towels in her hands. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.

And as she ached for yet another loss, the tower shook. A sound like a thousand shattering mirrors daggered the quiet. The air filled with dust. The Seers' Keep had come crashing down, and nothing was left but chalk white clouds wisping away on the wind.

16.

THE RIVER GUARDIANS.

shadow among shadows, Aronakt clung batlike to the wall high above the gathered underground travelers. With the crisscrossing strands of elaborate ivy as his ladder, he ascended with his eyes on one of the narrow, daylit breaks in the cavern ceiling.

As others watched him, murmuring about his chances, the ale boy looked at the mouth of the river where the outgoing wind met the incoming water and stirred it into froth. The air sang a soft, whirring note, and he remembered blowing lightly into empty ale bottles in the Underkeep.

The river's mouth was wide enough for five rafts side by side, and the passage upriver glittered green. "We should keep going," he said to himself. "It's too soon to climb back to the surface."

Petch scowled at the ale boy. "We have no choice. That passage might become too narrow, or the ceiling might drop too low. And then where would we be?"

There was a sound like a ripping canvas. Aronakt scrabbled at the wall, the ivy tearing loose under his weight. As others backed away from the rain of dust, debris, and insects, Aronakt plummeted, his ragged overcoat fluttering like a brascle's wings. "Aronakt, my love!" screamed two Bel Amican women, and then they looked at each other in disgruntled surprise.

Batey jumped forward, reached out, and caught the gangly climber.

Aronakt seemed unfazed. He stared intently at a tremendous ivy leaf he had torn from the wall. He tried to bite off a shred, but his teeth left only a dent, and he spat out red juice as he cast it down. He walked away, the two anxious women rushing to his sides, each eager to express greater concern than the other.

The travelers began to sit down, bowing under the rush of the wind. Even the Abascar survivors were looking defeated. The hungrier they became, the more their dreamlike delirium faded and their attention became affixed to the urgent, practical work of staying alive.

Batey stood rubbing his mustache with his knuckles and looking down at the ivy leaf. "Some of these leaves are big as bedsheets. They'd make good tents. Or ..." He walked down to the shore, then flung the leaf out like a flag over the water. Wind whipped it violently, sucking the length of it toward the tunnel.

He pulled it back, grinning. "Let's put a raft in the water."

Three of the Bel Amicans pushed the foremost float out and then climbed aboard while two others held it fast to keep it from floating back across the space they'd covered. Batey climbed onto the raft and gave an edge of the leaf to another passenger. "Hold it tight. Lift it upright. I've built enough boats in Bel Amica to know-all you need for a sailboat is water, wind, a raft, and a canvas. Now ..." He turned to the waders who held the edge of the raft. "Climb on."

When the raft began to move against the current, the wind filling the leaf-sail, Batey looked back, eyes flashing bright white and wild. "And that is today's lesson," he shouted.

Petch, who had watched all of this with arms crossed, suddenly dropped his skeptical pose, snatched up a glowstone, splashed anxiously into the water, and climbed on the raft with Batey and his five helpers.

The raft picked up speed, and a few moments later it was gone, Petch's glowstone fading like a spark.

After a stunned silence, the other travelers rushed to the wall to tear at the large ivy leaves.

The ale boy was the last to climb aboard one of the sail-borne rafts. In the tunnel as he lost sight of the gold-lit cavern, he thought he saw something splashing against the current-something like a large hand, its fingers striking the water and paddling hard in pursuit.

The tunnel roared with wind, with the spray of water against the rafts' leading edges, and with the excited cries of the passengers.

But after the initial thrill of swift progress, there came the fear of what might happen next. Occasionally the ceiling dipped so low that it ripped at their sails.

They sailed for what seemed like several hours, right on through what they assumed was a night. In time they found themselves scudding between banks of terraced earth, where shining eyes watched them, thick as fields of stars.

Irimus Rain saw Kar-balter reach for an arrow. "I wouldn't do that. If you hit one, the others might be angry. And we don't know what they'll do."

The boy scooped up a handful of water, examining it in his glowstone's light. "Water's clearer here. Still too gritty to drink, but better."

"Look." Kar-balter folded the sail and handed it to Em-emyt, so the float slowed. "The rafts ahead are moving in to shore."

Among the crowd on the bank, they faced a sobering realization. "We've hit a spot that's too tight," said Alysa, a Bel Amican woman who had proven so resilient with an oar that she'd taken turns steering several rafts. "We can't sail on. The ceiling's low ahead, and the river's narrow. But it's shallow. We can walk."

"We're not all here," said Irimus. "Where are the first and second rafts?"

"They've gone on," said Alysa.

And so the procession moved on, most of them striding forward against the slow and tepid flow. But the weariness proved too much for some, and they lay on the rafts that the line pushed upstream.

The ale boy, too small to walk upright in the current, lay on the foremost raft with all their collected glowstones so he could illuminate their path.

In this stifling vein, they labored on, the sounds of their gasps and groans echoing all around them, loud and close. In time it seemed they were imprisoned in an everlasting travail, and one by one they would stumble, catch one another, and carry each other along. But the Abascar survivors, feeble as they were, began to sing the songs of the night hours. Their harmonies seemed to strengthen them, propelling them like a march-chant for a troop of soldiers.

The songs faded twice at a sound like distant thunder. Dust wafted from the trembling ceiling.

"What was that?" asked Nella Bye. "Earthquake?"

No one had an answer. But each time the flow of the river changed-the first time it quickened and the level rose slightly, and the second it slowed and grew shallower, as if somewhere a great wheel had turned.

"Eat," whispered Nella Bye.

The ale boy woke to something bitter on his tongue and a circle of blurred faces around his raft, looking at him.

"It's just some bits of a fish that Cormyk caught."

"No," he breathed, closing his eyes. He felt waves of heat wafting through his head and shoulders. "Not yet. Wait." He tried to call up a face for the name Cormyk. How far had they traveled together without even knowing one another's names?

"Ale boy." Irimus Rain's silver beard wagged over him. "We admire your discernment. And if there were good fish from clean water in front of you, you would be a fool to eat this tasteless meat. But this is what we have. Cormyk was a fisherman in Bel Amica, so he should know if it's likely to make you sick."

The fisherman. The ale boy remembered him now. An aging, quiet man whose face still wore the horror he'd suffered in captivity.

"Are there fish for everybody?"

"No," said Irimus. "We're passing around the two he caught. Feeding the weakest first."

The ale boy tried to refuse, but his body worked against him, taking the piece that Nella Bye pushed into his mouth with her thumb. He chewed it, then swallowed and choked. She lifted her cupped hand to his lips. "I strained this through a clean stretch of cloth on my cloak. You need it."

He swallowed. The water tasted like grass tea at first and then the ferment of an orange peel. He gagged and coughed.

As he came to his senses, he saw that they were moving into a more spacious passage. The exhausted walkers clambered back onto the rafts and argued over who would take up the rowing. But the debates quieted as they looked up in amazement.

Torchlight revealed that the ceiling was thickly webbed, and there was movement in the silvery mesh.

An enormous cavespider slipped out through the milky weave and hung suspended in the space behind the last raft. Its slender, glassy legs twitched as if it were counting the bodies. Then it sprang away out of sight.

When Irimus whispered the news to Nella Bye, her unseeing eyes widened. "Please don't say any more," she whispered.

The spider reappeared, scuttling across the water's surface on the fibrous pincers of its feet. As it did, it drew a thin, almost invisible taut line, just above the water.

"What is it doing?" whispered Irimus. "It almost looks like it's setting a trap for us."

"But it's behind us," said the boy. Nella Bye shrieked, and they turned.

A smaller spider, this one about the size of a rain canopy, had alighted on the front of their raft. Its body was as big as the ale bottle that the boy had stashed in the travelers' cargo and just as green and glassy. The glowstones' light filled its form, highlighting delicate organs that pulsed and twitched. Its eyes were like clusters of purple fish eggs, and its teeth were like little knives that sharpened one another.

Three of its feet were fastened on Nella Bye's head.

"Don't move," the ale boy told her.