"Come down, Inardle."

She twisted her head a little, looking once more to the sky.

"Please, Inardle."

Now she sighed once again and, feeling more wretched than ever, slid down from the railing so she stood on the balcony floor. "What do you want, Georgdi?"

"Insharah and I would like to speak to you about what you said to Axis. That you could deliver him the Skraelings."

"Does Axis know you are here?"

"Yes."

"Yet he does not come." Inardle felt even more wretched. She brushed past Georgdi and Insharah and walked into the room, sitting on a stool and spreading her wings behind her.

Both men followed her and sat on chairs. Georgdi still looked open and friendly, but Insharah looked more uncomfortable than ever.

"I will not bite, Insharah," Inardle said. "And, surely, you and I have much in common . . . all this swapping about of allegiances and such."

The two men were silent a moment, then both chuckled and the mood between the three relaxed. Even Inardle dared a small smile -- that comment had been an enormous risk, but ultimately worth it.

"I think we are a tower of mismatched allegiances," Insharah said. "I have never before met a more disparate grouping of loyalties, ambitions and races in one sad, besieged tower."

"I am sorry for the way Axis has been treating you, Inardle," Georgdi said.

She waved a hand, dismissing it.

"Georgdi says that you told Axis you could bring him the Skraelings," Insharah said.

Inardle gave a very small smile. "I was furious with him."

"Inardle," said Georgdi, "can you bring him the Skraelings?"

"Do I want to?" Inardle said, then apologised. "Look, I am half Skraeling, something StarDrifter never fails to remind everyone, so I do have some kinship with them. On the other hand, the Skraelings have always disliked the Lealfast as we have tended to look down our long, long Icarii noses at them. I suspect the Skraelings also resent and hate the Lealfast for their alliance with the One. The Skraelings are jealous creatures and I think that they like to think themselves as the senior partners in any alliance with the One."

"How does this help Axis?" Georgdi said.

Inardle considered a little before continuing. "They may be turned against the Lealfast."

"To ally with Axis?" Insharah said. "They loathe Axis!"

Inardle now grinned. "They curse with his name! So, yes, this might be difficult -- but hear me out. The Skraelings have ever looked for their own lord. They are servile creatures, and naturally gravitate to any who proclaims dominance over them in return for a homeland and lots of eating."

"Thus Gorgrael so many years ago?" Insharah said, who had spent his youth listening to tales of Axis' battles with his half-brother, the Lord of the Skraelings.

"Yes, as with Gorgrael," Inardle said. "And as also with Kanubai, and later with the One. The Skraelings are habituated to servility --"

"But to Axis?" Georgdi said.

"Were not Kanubai and the One equally preposterous choices?" Inardle said. "I believe that all someone has to do to win the Skraelings' loyalty is to offer them something bigger and better than their last master. That, coupled with their deep instinctive need to actually have a master -- a Lord of the Skraelings -- and even an ant with a deep enough promise bag and enough pretty tricks could win them over. It is worth a try, anyway. Better to have the Skraelings on our side rather than on someone else's."

Georgdi and Insharah exchanged a glance.

"But Axis?" Georgdi said once again.

"Is not the line between love and hate a thin one?" Inardle said. "Am I not enough example of that? One moment Axis' favoured commander and the next his most reviled enemy. It swings back the other way as easily, believe it or not. Axis only has to offer them enough and they will suddenly proclaim Axis their new master." She gave a chuckle. "Axis, Lord of the Skraelings."

Both men smiled. The t.i.tle did have a distinctive ring to it.

"Would Axis agree?" Insharah said.

Inardle shrugged.

"And what could he promise them?" Georgdi said.

"Axis would need to decide that," Inardle said. "I am sure he could invent something."

"We'll take this back to Axis," Georgdi said. "But I cannot promise that he will accept it."

"Tell him he does not have much time," Inardle said.

Georgdi frowned in question.

"The rest of the Lealfast Nation is undoubtedly on their way here," Inardle said. "I am a little surprised they are not here already . . . but I can sense them approaching. They will be here by morning, and I doubt we can escape the cordon after their arrival. It must be tonight."

"Wait," said Georgdi. "I don't follow. Who is this 'we'? And you will need to leave Elcho Falling?"

"No one can afford for the Skraelings to get to Elcho Falling," said Inardle, "where we will have almost no chance at all of deflecting their current loyalties. No doubt Axis will need to tell them some solid lies in order to swing their love toward him. He won't be able to do that with the Lealfast --" Strange, Inardle thought, how she spoke of her brethren as if they were no relation at all "-- so close and able to disprove any artifice Axis comes up with. And as to the 'we' -- Axis and myself. Axis because he needs to be there to persuade the Skraelings to their new master, and I because . . . well, because the only way I can get Axis away from Elcho Falling is through the use of my Lealfast ability to invisible myself . . . I can take just one person with me and cloak them as well. I cannot take more than one. So it has to be Axis and myself only, and it must be soon, no later than tonight. Even then it will be a dangerous task to slip through the Lealfast cordon. Tell Axis this. He must decide if he wants to dare it, and whether or not the dare is worth the risk.

"But," Inardle finished, "it might just save Isaiah."

Chapter 5.

The Outlands.

The Skraelings had been approaching since dawn. Isaiah had expected a great wave of them to wash over the Isembaardians . . . but instead the Skraelings had crept closer and closer, never rushing, always cautious.

Now, at noon, there was an undulating wave of grey wraiths to the south, perhaps thirty paces from the edge of the juit birds, which had gathered in one great flock, putting themselves between the Skraelings and the Isembaardians.

Lamiah and Isaiah stood, surrounded by birds, at the southern edge of the flock, alternately looking south to the Skraelings or at the birds.

Isaiah was more concerned with the Skraelings, Lamiah with the birds.

"Do you think the juit birds might be any aid against the Skraelings?" Lamiah said.

Isaiah gave a small shrug. "Maybe."

Lamiah looked at him then again at the birds.

As one they had fluffed out their pink feathers and were weaving their beaks to and fro toward the Skraelings. They looked very, very angry, and every so often each bird would hiss.

"Perhaps save us?" Lamiah said, then grunted dismissively. "I suppose they could fluff out their feathers and hiss and look very, very angry."

Isaiah grinned. "Hasn't your wife ever done that to you, and haven't you backed down every single time she has done it?"

Lamiah chuckled. "But, seriously . . . "

"But seriously," Isaiah said, now returning his gaze to the distant line of Skraelings, "I have no idea what is happening. I wish Axis were here so he could advise us. I had thought the Skraelings might attack . . . what are they doing just gathering?"

"They look different to what I expected," Lamiah said.

"They are different," Isaiah said.

Very different. He had seen them in Isembaard, and they'd each had long thin limbs terminating in heavily clawed hands and feet, with the head of a jackal atop their grey, wraithlike bodies. Although many still looked like that, others had grown into half-wraith, half-great cat forms; others looked like the gryphons from the legendary tales of Tencendor and others had become all jackal; others still were misshapen lumps of creatures for which Isaiah could a.s.sign no descriptive name.

The Skraelings also appeared to have leaders, for some of the larger and more misshapen of the Skraelings moved about the greater ma.s.s, directing and ordering.

Isaiah shivered. What was happening? Were they now directionless for want of the One?

"The army is ready?" he asked Lamiah for the sixteenth time.

"Yes," Lamiah replied patiently, knowing the worry that underscored Isaiah's repet.i.tive questioning. "They are ready. Every man armed and in place."

And little good that would do, both men thought, if this ma.s.sive army of wraiths attacked.

The Skraelings stretched south as far as any eye could see, a ma.s.s of million upon million, undulating slightly in the clear noon sunshine.

"Look!" Lamiah said, and Isaiah nodded.

One of the Skraelings, among the largest of the misshapen leaders, had left the main pack and now walked across the open s.p.a.ce between the Skraelings and the Isembaardians.

Lamiah turned and shouted some orders, but Isaiah did not shift his eyes from the creature.

It was just one.

But, oh, what a one.

The Skraeling stood about the height of a very large bear walking on its hind limbs, and even looked slightly like a bear in the shape of its lumbering body. But its head looked like a piece of dough that a cook had crumpled in her hands until it bulged unevenly.

It had two silvered orbs, smaller than the usual enormous eyes of the Skraelings, tucked away in the left side of its face. Instead of being side by side, they were arranged one above the other . . . the lower one slightly skewed to the right.

It had a slit for a mouth . . . and clawed hands and feet at the extremities of its body.

That, at least, was normal for a Skraeling, as also the constant grey shifting nature of its body so that it faded in and out of view as it shuffled forward, the ma.s.s of its comrades often appearing in perfect focus through its body.

Of all its loathsomeness, Isaiah found its unbalanced eyes the most troubling.

"I have men coming to aid us," Lamiah said softly.

"Tell them to stay back," Isaiah said.

Lamiah stared at Isaiah a moment, then turned and waved to a halt the squad of men moving through the birds.

Isaiah moved forward.

"Be careful!" Lamiah hissed, and Isaiah paused to turn and grin.

"Was there not a time you could not wait to be rid of me?" Isaiah said.

"Once upon a time," said Lamiah, "when I was lost in fairytale ambitions."

Isaiah nodded, then his grin faded, and he turned back to wade forward through the hissing birds.

He walked to some five paces past them, and stopped.

The Skraeling had halted another three paces away. Its silver orbs, so obscenely unbalanced, watched him unblinkingly.

It looked very sure of itself.

In reality, the Skraeling was extremely unsettled.

The One, who had guided the Skraelings to this point with clear instructions and purpose, had vanished. His presence was no longer apparent to the wraiths. They could no longer sense him, although they did not quite believe him dead.

Just gone.

Off somewhere.

And he'd forgotten to tell them about it.

This was not only deeply hurtful to the Skraelings, it was highly unsettling. It made them nervous.

Worse, this army they had suddenly happened upon was led by Isaiah.

G.o.d of the waters.

The Skraelings hated water, and they hated and feared Isaiah because of who he was. When the One had been with them and had wrapped them in his power, they had been able to ignore Isaiah, even approach him.

But now, with the One vanished .

The Skraelings did not like Isaiah. He made them feel not only uncomfortable, but also ashamed of themselves, and they could not understand why.