"As far as Galcone could judge, most of the servants were killed by the Taers, but some survived and got away. Don't ask for names. As for the infirmary patients, I couldn't say. But here's the thing. We know what happened to the family. The Taers spared the magnifica, didn't want to kill a widow-woman, so they chased her off into the woods. But they slaughtered the sons. Tortured 'em all night, then killed 'em. Onartino and Trecchio Belandor are both dead."

Onartino is dead. The words found their way home-it seemed a minor eternity before their meaning reached her-and a light dawned in Jianna's mind. The invisible shackles fell away, and the weight that pressed down on her vanished in an instant. She took a great gulp of clean air, the first unobstructed breath she had drawn in days, and a sense of inexpressible gratitude filled her, bringing the tears to her eyes. Her father had produced one of his miracles. The rutting boar pig that owned her was gone, and she was free.

Free.

By the side of a stream in the depths of the woods, no great distance from Ironheart's remains, rose a stony ledge whose prominent overhang-its sharp thrust accentuated by centuries of erosion-offered natural shelter from rain and wind. At some point in past ages, unknown burrowing hands had improved upon the work of nature, enlarging the space beneath the overhang to create a cave, open at the front but protected on all sides, roughly circular in shape, modest in size, but large enough for human habitation. The cave had not been occupied within human memory. But it was occupied now.

A small fire burning before the entrance offered indifferent warmth. Beside it huddled a woman, arms clasped about her bent knees, greying head bowed. Behind her, nearly lost in the shadows, two motionless forms lay upon a man-made ledge or platform of stone-probably intended as a bed, now serving as a makeshift bier. One of them was fully clothed, the fatal rent in his throat visible; the other was completely covered with a yellowing linen sheet.

Some four days had passed since a small group of household servants had accompanied the Magnifica Yvenza to this place and left her alone with the bodies of her sons. They willingly would have done more for her. Although their mistress had always cultivated fear and respect above affection, still they hesitated to leave her alone and unprotected in such a forsaken spot. She had insisted, however. Declining their offers of transportation to civilization, declining the offers of two or three to remain and serve her, declining even the offers of assistance in burying the two corpses, she had firmly sent them on their way. They had pressed upon her stores of provisions, blankets, fuel, lanterns, tools, even a couple of weapons, and these things she had accepted. And having provided for the magnifica to the extent that she permitted, they had taken their final leave of her.

Throughout the ensuing hours, Yvenza had sat on the ground beside the fire, scarcely stirring save to feed the blaze and herself, keeping both alive. Her face was empty, her eyes open but blind, the contents of her mind unknowable. Almost she might have been distancing herself from the world and everything in it; from life itself.

The winter sun was setting again. Already it had dipped below the level of the surrounding trees, but Yvenza never noticed. The world was far away, it was almost gone-until a light footfall and a soft intake of breath brought everything back again.

Yvenza looked up. For a moment, the glare of the firelight confounded her vision, and then she discerned a slight, motionless figure, wrapped in a cloak the color of the twilight and all but invisible in the deepening gloom.

"You," she observed as if in accusation. "What are you doing here?"

Stepping into the circle of firelight, the newcomer let fall her hood, revealing a peaked little face, wreathed in mists of weightless pale hair.

"I followed you," Nissi replied in her tiny voice.

"Why?"

There was a long pause before Nissi answered, "I have ... nowhere to go."

"You don't, do you? Aureste's ruffians didn't hinder you?"

"They did not see me."

"That hardly seems possible."

"I am ... easily overlooked, at times."

"I see. If I allow you to stay, you won't be comfortable, you know."

"I know."

"I don't want fellowship. I'll have no companionable chatter, no reminiscences."

"I will not be companionable."

"Then you may stay, for now."

Nissi bobbed her head, then stood there waiting.

"Well? Are you hungry?" Yvenza demanded.

Nissi shook her head.

"Thirsty? Sleepy? There's a spare blanket you can use."

"Not yet."

"Find yourself some occupation, then. Don't look to me for entertainment. I'm not your companion."

"I will see Trecchio and Onartino now," Nissi announced with surprising clarity.

"They're at the back. Mind your head; the ceiling dips."

In silence Nissi made her way to the rear of the cave. The two bodies lay in shadow, but she seemed to see them clearly. She went first to Trecchio, and spent some minutes staring down into his dead face.

"Good-bye," she whispered at last, and turned away from him.

Drifting to Onartino's side, she hesitated a long moment, then very carefully turned the sheet down to his shoulders.

"Oh," breathed Nissi, taking in the ruined face. Her lambent eyes filled. Very gingerly she laid a small hand across his blood-caked forehead. "Oh." For a time she stood motionless and staring as if paralyzed or stupefied. At last she turned away and with dragging steps made her way back to the fireside. Yvenza, gazing deep into the blaze, took no notice of her until she observed hesitantly, "Onartino's face ... his face ... it should not be covered up."

Yvenza did look then. "Want to enjoy the spectacle, do you?" she inquired. "Never thought you had it in you, girl."

"The sheet over his face ... will make it harder for him to breathe."

"Have you lost your wits? He isn't breathing, he's dead. They're both dead. Don't you understand that?"

"Not ... both." Nissi shook her head.

"Is this some sort of a game you're playing, or have you truly run mad?"

"Not both. Trecchio has left. But Onartino still lingers. Deep, deep inside, there is still a flicker."

"You are dreaming." Skepticism notwithstanding, Yvenza was already climbing to her feet and hastening to the rear of the cave. Nissi floated like a bubble in her wake. When she reached her son, she applied her fingers to the pulse point in his neck; twitched back the sheet and pressed her fingers to his wrist, then laid her ear to his chest. Straightening, she met Nissi's eyes and reported deliberately, "Nothing. Nothing at all. He's cold, he's dead, and there's the reality of it."

"Not reality. He is almost gone, but there is still the last fiber of the final thread. He cannot find his way back without help, the path is too dark, but my call can guide him. Let me."

"Who or what do you imagine that you are?"

Silence.

Yvenza studied the other. Nissi's eyes were enormous and luminous. Almost against her own will, she found herself demanding, "Why would you do this thing? He was never kind to you."

"He lives," Nissi replied, as if in explanation.

"He is finished, but I see that nothing will convince you. Very well, you may call him by any means you choose-this one time only. And when you are done, and you have learned that you cannot recall my dead son to life, then you will give up all arcane practice once and for all, and you will never speak of it again. Do you hear me?"

Nissi nodded.

"Then look to it." Yvenza returned to her place by the fire, where she seated herself with her back to the cave. For a time she heard nothing beyond the crackle of the blaze, but presently a soft murmuring issued from the shadowy space behind her. The voice was small, light, girlish, and the rhythmic utterance verged on exotic melody, but there was something about the sound that seemed to deepen the chill of the winter night. Wrapping her arms firmly around her bent knees, Yvenza strove to exclude the voice, musical though it was. In this she was only partially successful. Her former state of deep abstraction eluded her, she was dimly aware of time's passage, and eventually aware that the voice within the cave had fallen silent.

Yvenza blinked and returned to the present. The fire was dying. The cave behind her was silent, appropriately enough, as a tomb. It would seem that Nissi had lost her contest with death.

Yvenza took time to replenish the fire before reentering the cave. At once she spied a slight form wrapped in a grey cloak, curled up on the floor. Heedless of the damp and cold, Nissi lay fast asleep, head pillowed on one arm. Her young brow was creased, and tired shadows smudged the hollows of her face. Behind and above her, Onartino still rested full length upon the ledge, just as the Ironheart servants had placed him. Nothing had changed, but for the disarrangement of the linen sheet formerly covering his entire body. Even in the soft glow of the firelight, the dreadful condition of his exposed face was apparent. She did not want to see him or think of him in such a state; he should be covered.

Yvenza started toward him. Before she had taken more than two or three steps she froze, transfixed by the slow, steady rise and fall of Onartino's chest. The spell broke and she advanced to his side, where she stood staring down at her oldest son-broken and mutilated, but alive.

SEVENTEEN.

Thick mists veiled the northern hills, and a cold breeze drove rain into the face of a lone traveler. Grix Orlazzu paused to wipe the moisture from his eyes with a damp handkerchief. He pulled the edge of his hood forward a bit, to little avail. His wiry beard was thoroughly soaked.

He had come to the top of a stony rise that might on a rare clear day have offered a view out over a considerable expanse of jagged countryside. Today-as on almost every day in these desolate lands-the world was invisible, lost in limitless mist. He could see no more than a few short feet in any direction before the soft grey walls closed down. He could hear nothing more than the patter of rain hitting the dead winter grasses underfoot, and he had not encountered another human being in days. He did not, however, feel himself to be alone, much though he would have preferred it.

The evidence of his physical senses suggested solitude. But another set of receptors-the trained portion of his mind attuned to uncanny phenomena-spoke of an incorporeal presence; something vast, ancient, and profoundly alien inhabiting the fog. He had felt it for the first time some days earlier, upon reaching the border of that dim region known throughout history as the Wraithlands. Initially it had been a mere whisper of foreign intelligence brushing his consciousness; a subtle, almost tentative exploratory touch that a mind less acute than his own might have overlooked altogether. He had noted it at once, however, and he had immediately attempted to initiate communication, which had sent the visitor flying from his mind for hours thereafter. Almost the presence had seemed timid, but this early impression had been misleading.

He had pushed on into the trackless hills, and the alien consciousness had soon returned. Nothing timid about it now; its inquisitive attention had pressed with increasing insistence, and he had soon come to recognize this bodiless entity's gigantic size and power. That it was aware he did not doubt, but its thoughts and intentions were closed to him, with one exception. It wanted to absorb him unto Itself; it wanted to own all that he was. This was unmistakable.

He might have turned back, he might have sought a safer path. But the Wraithlands almost vibrated with the energy of the Source, energy that he was determined to tap. And so he had traveled on into the charged mists in search of the ideal locale, and as he went the attempted mental incursions waxed in power and frequency. His arcane mastery enabled him to repel them all, but the task demanded constant vigilance.

And he was vigilant now, as he stood at the crest of the rise in the rain. He could see very little of his surroundings, but his mind quested, probing the fog in all directions. He caught no sense of the vast Other's proximity, but sensed something like a small echo of its existence. He also recognized that he was not alone, but strain his eyes, ears, and mind though he might, he discovered no recognizable sentience.

On he went, his path descending now, and as he went the mists began to darken about him, for the short winter day was drawing to a close. In all likelihood he would have to sleep out in the open again this night-a prospect that held no terror, for the intense energy of these lands willingly expressed itself in the form of big campfires capable of burning throughout the night untended.

But he did not need to stop just yet, there was still some daylight left. He could hike on for a while longer in search of the right spot, which he would know on sight, on instinct.

He was certainly not alone. The pressure of hidden regard was all but palpable. Orlazzu wheeled suddenly and the mystery was solved. Only a few feet distant, an animal sat watching him. It was small, not much larger than a house cat-long, lithe, and low, with a blunt little muzzle, round blue eyes, and heavy front claws designed for digging. Its grey coat faded almost invisibly into the grey fog. Orlazzu smiled. He confronted an ordinary meecher, a commonplace burrowing creature found throughout the Veiled Isles.

"You're a bold one," he observed aloud.

The meecher did not move. Its blue gaze, fixed on his face, did not waver. Orlazzu's smile vanished. This creature of the wild should have fled at sound of a human voice. He took a long step toward it, and then another. Two more, and he stood within touching distance, but the meecher never stirred. Its blue eyes were filmed, and it was terribly emaciated. A light froth whitened its muzzle. Rabid?

No. Worse. Occupied.

Some sudden reckless impulse impelled him to ask aloud, "Can you speak?" And perhaps he was a fool to stand there out in the middle of nowhere, addressing the dumb brute in absurd expectation of a spoken reply, but he did not feel like a fool. He felt afraid.

No reply was forthcoming, but he saw comprehension in the filmy eyes, he was sure of it. The meecher sat motionless as a dead thing. Orlazzu backed away step by step. The blue regard never wavered. There was no overt menace. Just as he started to turn away, the meecher rose and advanced several unhurried paces, reducing the separation between them to a distance of some ten feet, whereupon it halted, watching him steadily. He took another step backward and again the meecher advanced, maintaining that ten feet of separation.

"Useless. I am not easily disconcerted," he warned. There was no answer. Turning his back with apparent finality, he resumed his trek. But as he went, from time to time he cast quick glances back over his shoulder to behold the meecher following a constant ten feet behind. The minutes passed, the mists darkened, and the grey animal all but disappeared from view, but its silent presence was unmistakable, the weight of its stare heavy on his back, heavier than ever, in fact, almost as if the creature were somehow growing- He looked back and his brows arched at sight of two meechers, walking side by side ten paces behind him. The animals were almost indistinguishable in appearance, both skeletal and film-eyed. Meechers, he recalled, were habitually solitary creatures, eschewing packs, tribes, or colonies. Even in the aftermath of mating, they did not live or walk in pairs. He quickened his footsteps. The meechers kept pace. They were silent, but impossible to ignore. Minutes later, when he could no longer forbear stealing another look, he spied three of them close on his trail. And now he felt a distinct sense of invasive mental pressure, a distant reverberation characteristic of the unseen Other.

On through the mists, and the pressure increased. There were four of them behind him now, and Orlazzu began to consider emergency measures. Not that he couldn't hold his own, but the prospect of a night spent out of doors, the sleepless hours given over to constant watchfulness and arcane exertion, lacked appeal. Certainly it lay within his power to kill the meechers-they looked half dead already-but the thought of destroying the ordinarily harmless small creatures was repugnant.

Darkness deepened around him, and now five meechers trooped quietly in his wake. He would have to kill them-a regrettable necessity. But even as he slipped a faintly iridescent pale pastille into his mouth, even as he readied his mind for lethal action, the mists parted and a small structure stood revealed.

It was narrow and low, with walls of sod, stone chimney, and a thatched roof. Too insignificant to be called a cottage, it was not much more than a glorified hut. There was no immediately apparent explanation for its existence in that isolated spot. The land had never been farmed, and did not seem to lend itself to any conventional human endeavor. In all probability the shelter housed some misanthropic hermit seeking refuge from the bustle of humanity-a desire entirely comprehensible to Grix Orlazzu. But the hermit, if such there was, did not appear to be in residence. No light glowed within, and no smoke rose from the chimney.

Orlazzu marched to the door, the meechers padding close behind him. A crow swooped down out of the mists to perch on the roof, scarcely an arm's length above him. The bird appeared to be molting. Its plumage was dull and its eyes were filmed. When he exclaimed sharply and waved his arm, the crow remained motionless, its eyes fixed on him. The hairs stirred at the back of his neck, and he knocked on the door with more than necessary force. There was no response from within. After a moment, he opened the door and stepped inside. There remained enough feeble daylight to tell him at once that the little dwelling was empty and probably had been for some time. A layer of dust and grime overspread all, and the few articles of unfinished wooden furniture sported luxuriant growths of mold. Still, the place was habitable. Its walls and roof could support intangible reinforcement sufficient to thwart invasion and repel arcane assault. More to the point, the ground below and around the building all but sang with power. Surely at some point along the course of its vast underground circuit, the Source must pass directly beneath this spot. And the place was even furnished. Its true owner might always return, at which point he would have to surrender the new domain, but in the meantime- "Home?" Grix Orlazzu murmured, half in statement, half in inquiry.

He shut the door in the faces of the attendant meechers, and the room sank into near darkness. An almost effortless flex of his mind kindled fire on the hearth and lit an oil lamp on the table. It was easy, so easy in this place. The Source seemed almost urgent in its willingness to bestow its bounty. Upon this ground, a skilled arcanist might hope to transcend the limits of a lifetime.

Thus it was the matter of mere moments for Grix Orlazzu to imbue the surrounding walls, roof, and clay floor underfoot with sufficient protective force to ensure his safety for months or years to come. This accomplished, he felt none of the sick exhaustion so often blighting the conclusion of significant arcane endeavor. Quite the contrary, he was alert, optimistic, and-hungry. At other times, in other places, he would not have been able to hold food down, following such a feat as he had just performed, but here and now he was quite hungry indeed.

Orlazzu's sack yielded bread, cheese, wine, and dried fruit. Seating himself at the table, he ate and drank moderately, then brought forth his copy of The Drowned Chronicle and read for hours by the light of the oil lamp. During this time he never sensed the slightest invasive touch of the Other's presence, nor did the hapless beasts absorbed into a greater consciousness disturb his new sanctum. The barriers were holding.

When his lids began to droop, he set the chronicle aside, banked the fire, extinguished the lamp, and took himself to bed, wrapped in his own blanket, spread out atop the previous owner's begrimed coverlet. In the morning he would give the hut and its furnishings a good cleaning; for now, he wanted sleep.

He did sleep, soundly and dreamlessly, until the dawn sent baby fingers of weak light poking in through the chinks in the closed shutters, and a tremendous assault upon the door commenced. Orlazzu sat up, wide awake. Someone was pounding loudly and imperiously. Emotion drove those blows. There was nothing uncanny or Otherly about them. There could be but one explanation: The hut's rightful owner had returned to find himself locked out of his own property. No wonder he was incensed.

Bad luck. Orlazzu muttered a curse. This hut had almost seemed made for him, waiting for him. He should have known that it was too good to be true. Now he would have to leave. And apologize-though it slid along the edge of his mind then that he need do neither. His powers more than equipped him to keep the hut if he wanted it-but he pushed the thought away at once, as he had pushed such thoughts away throughout his lifetime. It was natural and inevitable that an accomplished arcanist would upon occasion be tempted to employ his powers destructively, for the sake of personal gain or personal malice. But Grix Orlazzu had made the decision, many years earlier, to resist all such impulses. He had kept that vow and would continue to keep it. Therefore, with a sad imprecation, he rose and opened the door.

He found himself confronting a familiar chunky figure wrapped in an oilcloth cloak and hood. He saw a wiry black beard, beaky nose, heavy black brows above eyes of amber glass, and a swarthy square face, identical in feature to his own, but neatly upholstered in the finest glove leather.

A whirring of internal gears heralded mechanical utterance.

"Leftover, once known as Grix Orlazzu, I have overtaken you at last. Admit me, if you please," the automaton directed.

"What are you doing here, Junior?" Orlazzu's sturdy frame blocked the doorway.

"I have decided to rejoin you. And do not call me Junior."

"What shall I call you then? Inescapable? Unavoidable? Unmentionable?"

"You already know, Leftover. Do not pretend that you have forgotten. My name is Grix Orlazzu. I am the improved and perfected version of the Grix Orlazzu design. You may address me as GrixPerfect, or, as we are intimate, you may simply call me Grix."

"Very well. Grix. Why have you followed me? I left you with the cabin and all that it contained, everything that you could need, nearly everything that I had. Wasn't that enough?"

"Ah, how like an organic to think solely in terms of material possessions! You gave me things and thought they would suffice. Did you for one moment consider my feelings, my inner self, my needs, or the destructive effect on my personal development when you went off and abandoned me? Did you think of anyone beside yourself, Leftover? And are you going to let me in?"

"What for? You don't need a meal or a place to sleep. What do you seek here?"

"What do you seek here?"

"Enlightenment. Fulfillment. A place to work, so long as I can; to practice, and to develop my abilities to their fullest potential."

"That is what I want also."

"Very good. Seek elsewhere."

"I will not. My inner yearnings drew me north to these hills in search of a perfect locale. I was drawn to this spot, so humble in aspect yet so rich in promise. It seems that you were similarly drawn, and how should it be otherwise, when your mind is a primitive, incompletely realized first draft of my own? Are you going to let me in?"

"No, I'm not. This place is taken. You must find another for yourself."