"My humble thanks, Your Highness. I wonder if I'll ever be able to find it again, though."

"Oh, ask one of the pages. Tell them I said you could come here. I'd best get this milk to Melynna."

She trotted off back inside, and Maddyn walked across the bridge and sat down cross-legged by the little stream. In the warm sun, sheltered by the rise of stone all round him, he felt a bit more of his grief ease. Aethan would be proud, he thought, if he knew I've gained the queen's favor. In a solemn crowd many-colored gnomes materialized around him, and his blue sprite appeared to hunker down near his harp and stare up at him.

"Oh, I'll heal, little one," he said to her. "But you ease my heart, you truly do, with your concern."

When she smiled, an honest soft smile instead of her usual malicious grin, for the briefest of moments he thought he saw true feeling in her empty eyes. Then she yawned, showing her needle-sharp teeth, and lay down on her stomach in the gra.s.s to listen while he finished tuning the harp and started practicing a few runs and trills. Since he was quiet and alone, Maddyn lost all track of time that morning; he stopped playing only when his stomach protested loudly enough to make itself heard over the music. By then he could see the sun over the high walls around him.

"Ye G.o.ds, it must be nearly noon!"

At the alarm in his voice the Wildfolk vanished. He gathered up the harp and went back inside, wondering if he could find his way to the great hall, but as he stood uncertainly at the foot of a staircase, Branoic came pounding down.

"There you are, you slimy little b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Where have you been? The whole cursed troop's hunting for you, and part of Tieryn Elyc's guard as well."

"What? What do they want me for? What have I done?"

"Naught, you stupid dolt! We were afraid you'd drowned yourself or suchlike out of grief."

"Oh, by the Lord of h.e.l.l's black b.a.l.l.s! Have I been that bad off?"

"You have, at that."

Branoic was studying his face with a fierce intensity, as if he were trying to read every clue that might be there, no matter how small, to Maddyn's heart.

"Ah well," Maddyn said. "I wouldn't do anything that foolish, not when the king needs every man he can get. I'll swear it to you if you like."

"Your word'll be enough for me."

"Done then. You have it."

As they were walking out to the ward, Maddyn was wondering how much more grief lay ahead of him in the long wars. Branoic, Caradoc, even sullen Owaen in his own arrogant way-they all meant far too much to him for comfort's sake. A prudent man would have hardened his heart and sworn that he'd never let himself feel this kind of grief again, but then, Maddyn decided, he'd never been a prudent man, and he was too old to change his ways. Better to lose a friend than never find one, he told himself, truly, much better all round.

In the bright sun they paused for a moment while Branoic yelled at a Cerrmor man to tell everyone he'd found the wretched fool of a bard at last, and Maddyn happened to look up to one of the high towers. When he saw the young queen, leaning out the window and laughing and waving to him, his black hiraedd lifted a little more. At least she's happy, he told himself, and by every G.o.d, we'll all fight to keep her that way!

Some days after the wedding, Nevyn remembered the lead curse-talisman that he'd found back in Pyrdon and been carrying ever since. Although he hated keeping it, he was quite simply afraid to destroy it, just in case melting or shattering it should work some harm to Maryn by an induced sympathy. Logically, the act of magic that had created the curse should have had no true power, because it fell somewhere between outright superst.i.tion and the lowest rank of dark dweomer, yet whenever he held the lead tablet in his hands, he could sense a malevolent power oozing from it like a bad smell. Three times he tried to perform banishings and exorcisms; three times it stayed stubbornly the same. He tried meditating about it and scrying over it, all to no result. Whoever had charged it with evil had worked a spell beyond his powers to remove.

The question was, then, what to do with it. His first thought was simply to bury the thing deep in some out-of-the-way spot in the dun, but since it had been meant to be buried, he would possibly be increasing its power by doing so. If he left it hidden in his chambers, someone might stumble across it or even be actively seeking it. The enemy who had worked the spell was still at large, after all, as either an honest opponent in Cantrae's court or a traitor here in Cerrmor. Soon Nevyn would be accompanying the king on his ceremonial progress and his first campaign; if he carried the curse charm on his person, what would happen if he were captured and searched? It also occurred to him that if one of Maryn's friends and allies found him with it, he would have some hard explaining to do. He considered taking it to one of the great temples down in Cerrmor town proper, but priests had been corrupted or temples entered and robbed too many times before for him to consider it safe there. If he threw it in the ocean, its slow dissolution might perhaps work the king harm.

He wondered, too, if he should tell Maryn that the curse existed, but in the end he decided against it. For the rest of that summer, at least, Maryn absolutely had to project a supernatural air of confidence and calm if he were going to repair the shattered morale of his new kingdom. The slightest worry that might have tarnished his golden presence could well mean disaster later. Round and round Nevyn went on the problem until it occurred to him that there was indeed one person in the kingdom who could guarantee its safety, at least for as long as it mattered: the queen. She would never leave Dun Cerrmor until the war was over and Maryn crowned High King in Dun Deverry; if Cerrmor fell and she was captured, that disaster would mean Maryn was dead, all their hopes irrevocably crushed, and the lead tablet quite simply irrelevant.

That very morning he went to Otho the dwarf, the silver daggers' blacksmith, who had been given a big hut of his own for a forge and living quarters both. Even though he could trust one of the Mountain Folk to keep an oath of silence more than he could ever trust any human being, he told Otho only that he needed a strong casket of dwarven silver to contain something evil without ever mentioning what the vile thing might be. Otho worked night and day for the better part of a week and finally produced, on the evening before king and councillor were to ride out, an amazingly strong and heavy yet stunningly beautiful casket, with double walls, two locking lids, and a secret compartment in the bottom to hide the actual tablet.

"I'll solder up the compartment, and you put a few spells on it, my lord," Otho said cheerfully, "and the Lord of h.e.l.l himself couldn't get in or out of it."

"I believe you. Why, it must weigh close to two stones."

"Blasted near, blasted near. And I put all that fancy work round the top, just like you asked, so no one will wonder why it's in a lady's chamber. I rather fancy the way the roses came out, myself. The ladies do like a nice floral design."

"I like it myself, actually. Name your price, and I'll get it for you."

For a long moment Otho hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back again, and from the agonized look on his face he was a man sorely torn and troubled. Finally he sighed as if his heart would break.

"Naught, my lord. Take it as a gift for the one true king and his grand little queen."

"Otho! My humble, humble thanks."

"Hah! I know what you're thinking. Never thought you'd see the day when I'd do a bit of work for free, did you?" All at once he grinned. "And no more did I."

That evening Maryn had one last council to hold with his warlords, and Nevyn took that opportunity to visit Bellyra up in the women's hall, which his great age would allow him to enter. He found her sitting in a high-backed carved chair, with her newly chosen serving women sitting round her and a ginger cat and four kits lying on a green silk cushion nearby, but even in her red silk dress with a queenly brooch pinned to her shoulder, she looked so young and lost that he had grave doubts about his plan. Yet he had no other choice, and when she greeted him, warmly and yet with the right degree of distance between their stations, he could see in her eyes the strong woman she would become.

"Your Highness, I beg a boon-a word alone with you."

"Of course." She turned to her women and dismissed them with a gracious wave of one hand. "You may rejoin us in a bit, and we can all have a nice goblet of wine or suchlike."

Smiling and curtsying, they all withdrew, and he could hear them chattering down the hall on their way to round up a servant to fetch the refreshments. Without waiting to be asked Nevyn sat down next to her and launched into his story, though he did omit telling her about the dismembered baby, just to spare her feelings. As she listened her wide eyes grew even wider, and she became all still attention.

"Will you take this thing and hide it, Your Highness?"

"I will, but I do wish you hadn't told me what it was. If this casket's got a secret compartment, you could just have shoved it in and sealed it up."

"You have to know what you're guarding, Your Majesty, and besides, never would I leave such an evil thing in someone's presence without their consent."

"Well, you're right, of course. Very well, I shall gush over the casket itself, and be very casual about what I put in it, as if it doesn't really matter much. And if ever anyone asks me for it, I'll refuse because to give it away would break poor stunted Otho's heart."

"Splendid, Your Highness! The exact right thing to say."

Yet even as he spoke, he felt a cold line of dread coil round his heart, wondering if he'd just given danger for a gift. Oh, don't be a dolt, he told himself irritably-the wretched thing can't have that much power, or you'd know! And sure enough, once it was bound inside the dwarven silver and sealed with his spells, he could no longer sense the slightest trace of evil leaking from either tablet or casket. On the morrow morning he and Otho together presented the casket to the queen, who in a fine show of being ever so surprised and pleased gave the dwarf a kiss, which made him blush and stammer and curse publicly-but from then on, Otho was the queen's man, heart and soul.

And together at the head of an army, Nevyn and Maryn set out on the long ride that later historians call the Rousing of the River Valley, the summer that would eventually bring lord after lord and warband after warband round to the new king's side and turn the hope of victory from an impotent dream to a sound gamble. Since he could foresee neither success nor failure that bright morning as they left the towering stone rings of Dun Cerrmor behind, Nevyn could only hope that he'd made the right decisions in more than the matter of the curse-tablet. Although the dweomer and the priesthoods had schemed and plotted and planned for many a long year, the matter was now far beyond their control. With the High King rode not their politicking, but his Wyrd.

The Wmmglaedd copy of the chronicle broke off in the middle of a page. Jill suddenly realized that gray morning light had overwhelmed her candle flame, and that her back was aching and stiff from her long night's trance. With a grunt of pain she turned from the lectern and found the fire dead in the hearth. Annoying though it was to lose the rest of the story, she didn't really need it, she supposed, because she could now remember the detail she needed. Otho the dwarf had made the rose ring for the queen to give to Maddyn the bard, years later, just as a token of thanks for some little favor he'd done her. In the closed and cloistered atmosphere of that court, where all the women were as confined and guarded as a treasury, there were those who had chosen to misunderstand the token, just-or so Jill suspected, looking back-to give themselves something to do. Whatever the reason, envy had come of it, and whispering rumor. What came of it she didn't know, though she could guess that the story had ended badly. In fact, as she thought about it, her ignorance was so complete that she could a.s.sume that Branoic had died shortly after the ring was made and given-in some battle, most like.

Those battles were long gone, their stories told by a thousand bards and chroniclers, but their repercussions still echoed, though it was two hundred years and more ago. And what of the other people involved? The young queen, for instance-would in time her soul reappear to add another knot to this puzzle piece? Jill felt that in its own way, the dweomer owed Bellyra a great deal to make up for that ancient tragedy. And what about those women who had helped move the tragedy along? They too had a debt to pay, perhaps, to the rose ring and its bearer. Otho the dwarf, of course, was still alive, though getting on in years even for one of the Mountain People. Did he still have some tie or bond with the ring he'd created so long ago? And then, of course, there was the soul once known as Maddyn-Rhodry of Aberwyn now-who'd been reunited with the rose ring and who wore it still ... or again. With Nevyn gone, these problems were all hers to solve, these people hers to guard and guide. It was time she set about it.

Yawning and stretching, a servant came into the hut with a bowl of milk and bread and a fresh pitcher of wash water.

"Good morning, my lady. His holiness was wondering, by the bye, how long you were planning on staying with us? He's in no hurry for you to leave, mind. Just a-wondering."

"Tell him I'll be on my way this afternoon. I've a long journey ahead of me."

"Ah. Going to Aberwyn?"

"A bit farther than that. Bardek."

"Fancy that! A long, long journey indeed! Not going there alone, are you now?"

"I am. I suppose." She paused, considering. "Well, you know, there does happen to be someone I could ask to go with me, and it might be a good idea, at that. He knows the islands a fair bit better than I do. Hum. I'll have to think about this."

present

Consider the roots of a dimple and mundane action, for instance, buying bread for your breakfast. A farmer had grown the grain in a field carved from wilderness by his ancestors; in the ancient city a miller has ground the flour and a baker prepared the loaf; the vendor has transported it to your house in a cart built by a cartwright and his apprenticed. Even the donkey that draws the cart, what stories could she not tell if you could decipher her braying? And then you yourself hand over a coin of copper dug from the very heart of the earth, you who have risen from a bed of dreams and darkness to stand in the light of the vast and terrifying dun. Are there not a thousand strands woven together into this tapestry of a morning meal? How then can you expect that the omens of great events should be easy to unravel?The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll

The Knave of Flowers Bardek, 1098.

Down in the public square Luvilae's market spread out, a lake of brightly colored sunshades and little stalls. Acrobats performed on improvised platforms; minstrels sat in the shade of trees and played for coppers. Wearing bronze helmets topped with red plumes, the archon's men strolled through in pairs to keep order. A warm breeze carried the scents of incense and roast pork, flowered perfumes and spiced vegetables. Off to one side, behind a line of stalls that sold blue and purple pottery, a fortune-teller was doing a reading for a client. In the midst of striped and faded blue sunshades and curtains, the two women haggled over the price from either side of a low table. Draped in black as befitted her trade in omens, the elderly one sank onto her cushions with a moist sigh. Dressed like a boy in a linen tunic and sandals, the young woman knelt on a pounded bark mat and ran both hands through her mop of frizzy black hair before she settled back on her heels. Wheezing a little in the heat, Akantha took an ebony box from under the table and slid out the ninety-six tiles of polished bone. Most fell facedown, a good omen, but as Akantha turned the few wayward tiles over, one slid to the ground. With a frown she s.n.a.t.c.hed it back.

"Help me mix them up, little one. Bring them over to the right side of the table-my right, that is."

Marka laid both hands flat on the layer of tiles and mixed with a sound like thunder.

"Enough," Akantha said at last. "Draw five to start with."

The old woman turned the chosen tiles faceup to form a square. The two of spears and the four of golds appeared, followed by three different tiles from the suit of flowers: the knave, the six, and finally the princess, which Akantha laid in the center of the square.

"Is that me?" Marka asked.

"It might be, it might be-or else, you will someday serve the princess. Not sure which yet. But I don't much like the look of this knave. Hum. A lover, maybe; he's the same suit, but he's no prince, is he? Watch out for him, girl. I do like the look of this six. Good fortune, girl, very good fortune indeed, though not without some trouble." She laid a long and bony forefinger on the two of spears. "But nothing your wits won't be able to get you out of, I'd say. Three flowers in the first draw is very lucky, very lucky. Now draw me four groups of three."

Each group formed a triangle. For a long time Akantha sucked her teeth in silence while she studied the layout; once or twice she started to speak, then merely shook her head. Marka knew just enough about the tiles to understand that the expanded reading simply wasn't coalescing into a whole. Omens of splendid good luck lay right next to signifiers of the grimmest bad fortune, while the minor, numbered tiles contradicted all the important trumps around them. The first was the three of flowers.

"Well, then, the reading should be a good one. Here's a flower coming up from the Earth. Now, we've got the nine of swords for Air, so you're in for a bit of rough sailing, sure enough. And now for Water we've got the queen of birds, which is not the kind of location I'd like to see for that tile. No, water and birds aren't a happy marriage, girl, not at all. But well, look at this! For Fire here's the ten of golds! Very good luck, the best there is. And finally, for the Ether, we have the... the prince of Swords? Oh, by the Star G.o.ddesses themselves! This isn't making sense again. Listen, young Marka, sometimes the G.o.ds just don't want us to know the future. That's all there is to it. Don't you pay one bit of attention to anything I've said this morning, and as for your money, come back after dark and I'll try again for free. Sometimes letting the sun set on a reading changes things."

"Thank you, but I can't. We'll be putting on our show once it's dark."

"Ah. You're one of that bunch from Main Island, then?"

"Yes. I do the slack wire. I mean, I used to." She stopped herself just in time from venting all her bitterness on this sympathetic if hired ear. "I juggle now."

As she hurried away, Marka tried to leave the reading behind, but its bad aura hung round her like a wet cloak. Nothing, it seemed, was going right these days, not even a simple thing like getting her fortune told. Although Luvilae was the capital of Zama Manae, the southernmost island in the Orystinnian archipelago, at a mere twenty thousand inhabitants it was not the sort of place where a wandering troupe of acrobats could make its fortune. Marka wondered why her father had brought them there, but then, these days her father did a lot of things that made no sense. She felt a constant dread, a line of ice down her back, a knowledge that she refused to face. He promised, she would think, it couldn't be that again.

She forced her mind away from old memories with a wrench of will. She'd been sent into town, after all, for more important reasons than just hearing her fortune. She bought a chunk of roast pork on a stick and wandered round, nibbling her meal and looking over the other street performers at the fair. The only jugglers she saw were clumsy; there were no slackrope walkers at all. Although she found a band of tumblers, they couldn't compete with the complex routines that the men in her troupe performed. Most of the solitaires were musicians. Overall, the best show she saw in that first look round featured trained monkeys and apes.

As she was buying herself a piece of sugared cake, she noticed a small crowd gathering off to one side in the shade of a big plane tree. The cake seller gestured with snow-white fingers, all sticky from her wares.

"If that's the barbarian, you should take a look at him. Puts on a good show, though I swear the man's demented!"

Marka went over, paying as much attention to the cake as anything, since it was impossible to eat without getting sugar all over her chin. She found a spot off to one side, but at first she could only see scarves flying into the air above the heads of the crowd and hear the fellow's patter, a running mix of topical jokes and sheer nonsense, all delivered in a musical voice without any foreign accent whatsoever. She a.s.sumed that his barbarism was nothing more than a good costume until she wormed her way closer to the front.

For a moment she could only gawk openmouthed. Never in her life had she seen anyone so pale, as if he'd been bleached like a strip of linen soaked in lemon juice and left in the summer sun. His skin was a light pinky-beige, and his hair, as fine and straight as silk thread, was the silvery color of moonbeams with just the barest hint of yellow in it by contrast with his steel-gray eyes. He was wearing a strange sort of tunic, with long, full sleeves, and gathered into a yoke at the shoulders and belted over a peculiar garment that encased his legs in baggy tubes of blue cloth. So he was indeed one of those fabled barbarians from the savage kingdoms far to the north! It took Marka a few moments to recover from his appearance before she could appreciate his skill.

And skill he had. In his long, slender hands the silk scarves seemed to come alive, whisking through the air, floating up only to plummet down, circling round and round or weaving in and out while he kept up his stream of jokes and s.n.a.t.c.hes of song. Watching him, she was bitterly aware of what a beginner she was at juggling and how clumsy she was going to look when her turn came to perform. When he paused, looking significantly at the crowd, a rain of coins flew his way. Laughing and bowing, he flicked the scarves into his sleeves, then hunkered down to pick up the coins, making them fly round his head in a little stream before they all disappeared into his clothes.

"The Great Krysello is pleased!" he announced. "Allow him to delight your n.o.ble selves with his humble tricks for a little while longer."

When he bowed again, three eggs seemed to appear out of nowhere and settle into his hands. Before he began this new routine, he happened to glance Marka's way. His eyes widened; he broke into a smile of pure delight; then he wiped the smile away and turned firm attention to his performance. Marka felt utterly flabbergasted. Although she knew that she was a pretty girl, she'd never had a man look at her that way before, as if the very sight of her had made him happy beyond dreaming. Her second thought was that there was powdered sugar all over her face. Blushing furiously, she elbowed her way through the crowd and fled the Great Krysello and his smiles.

She found the public fountain and washed the sugar off, then headed for the city-owned caravanserai at the edge of town. The troupe had four tents and two wagons of its own, set up in a circle under some palm trees at the edge of the campground. It was better to stay away from other travelers, always quick to accuse wandering showmen of being thieves. The five acrobats were practicing their tumbling turns behind the tents, while their leader, Vinto, watched and commented. Out in the middle of the tent circle a big cooking fire was burning. Marka's stepmother, Orima, along with the two other women in the troupe, Delya and Keeta, were stewing spiced vegetables in a hanging pot and slapping rounds of thin bread onto an enormous iron griddle. They fell silent when Marka came up.

"What's wrong, Rimi?"

"Nothing. What makes you say that?"

Marka hesitated on the edge of forcing a confrontation. Orima's dark eyes turned narrow. In the silence Marka could hear the sea booming on the nearby sh.o.r.e and the men chanting out practice cadences.

"Where's Father?"

"Sleeping." She turned away, frowning into the pot. "He's resting before the show tonight."

Before Marka could say anything more, Keeta came up behind her, grabbed her elbow, and steered her away from the campfire. Arguing with enormously tall Keeta, who was as strong as two average men, was a waste of time.

"If you're going to learn how to catch a flaming torch," she said, and firmly, "you've got to start practicing."

They walked to the edge of the sea cliff and stood for a while, looking down at the waves rising higher and higher on the graveled beach. Far off at the horizon the sea made a line like a stretched wire, perfectly flat and landless. Sail far enough to the south, or so Marka had always been told, and you'd come to an enormous waterfall, pouring down into the fiery underworld where the sea boiled off. The water rose again as clouds of steam to make the rain and start the cycle all over again.

"You don't really want to give me a lesson now, do you?" Marka said at last.

"Well, yes, actually I do." Keeta grinned, a flash of white teeth in her dark face. "But I also happen to be sick of hearing you fight with your mother."

"That woman is not my mother, thank you very much."

Keeta sighed sharply.

"Well, how much older than me is she, anyway? Four years, five? How do you expect me to-"

"I don't expect you to do anything." Keeta held one huge hand up for silence. "Except to try not to make things worse. Listen, I know she lords it over you. She lords it over everyone, doesn't she? But we're in a very bad position, stuck here at the edge of nowhere. Your father won't even talk about money. I'm willing to bet that there's not a lot left to talk about."

All at once Marka felt sick to her stomach. She sat down in the scruffy gra.s.s and stared fixedly out to sea. After a few minutes Keeta hunkered down next to her with a dramatic sigh.

"You're old enough to know these things now. If the audience gives you special tips, keep them hidden, will you? Don't turn them over to your father. I'm doing the same. We might all need a few extra coins if we're ever going to see Main Island again."

"All right."

"I wonder what's he doing with it?" Keeta got up and stretched. "Spending it all on her?" her?"