"For now." Mykel rose as well.

"Don't push it. There'll be a time when you can't. Just ride away when that happens."

"I will." Mykel had no desire for a so-called glorious death in the face of impossible odds. He'd tried not to roll the bones except when the odds favored him. That wouldn't change.

"See that you do. We need you."

Mykel inclined his head, then left the study. He appreciated Dohark's warning about the gunpowder, and the fact that the overcaptain had explained, rather than just dismissing the idea, as Majer Vaclyn would most likely have done.

Once outside the headquarters building, Mykel had to squint for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the bright morning sunlight. A light wind blew out of the south as he walked across the courtyard toward the structure holding the officer's cell-and Rachyla. The air was far warmer than it had been, giving the compound the feel of early summer in Elcien.

Mykel had no desire to remain in Dra-mur for the long hot summer that was sure to come.

Even before he reached the cell, one of the guards was watching him.

Mykel stopped in the shade cast by the overhanging balcony and blotted the dampness off his forehead.

"Sir?" asked the guard.

"Overcaptain Dohark sent me. If you want to check-"

"No, sir. He already told us that you were in charge of questioning the woman."

Mykel suppressed a smile. He owed Dohark for that. He wasn't sure what he owed the overcaptain-a thank-you or a practical joke, or both.

Rachyla did not even look at Mykel until the guards closed and locked the door. She said nothing. In turn, for several moments, he just looked ather.

"Your splinter wound has healed," she finally said.

"Yes." He waited, still standing a good two yards from her.

After a moment, she asked, "Why are you here? Again?"

"Because I want to be, because the overcaptain asked me, because..."

He shrugged.

"You are losing?"

Mykel shook his head. "Not so far. It might be easier if Fifteenth Company were."

"Do not ask me for sympathy, Captain."

"I'm not." He paused. "More than a week ago-it seems longer-we were attacked by bluecoats at the mine. Some prisoners tried to escape. The bluecoats stopped shooting at us long enough to shoot down all the prisoners. Why?"

"A slave or a prisoner can never be allowed to be free again. That is the law of the seltyrs."

"What about you?"

"I will not be freed. When my usefulness is over, I will be killed."

"That's why you talk to me?"

"I must talk to someone, or I will have no usefulness. You are honest.

You are as sharp and as direct as a dagger of the ancients, and with that edge you will likely cut your own throat." !

"As sharp and as direct as a dagger of the ancients? What does that mean?"

Rachyla looked hard at him. "You are a dagger of the ancients, Captain.

That is a curse and a prophecy, but the daggers are real. I have only seen one. It was my grandfather's. He gave it to his worst enemy. Where it is now, who can say?"Mykel couldn't help but wonder if the dagger concealed i in his belt was the same one. He doubted it, because he couldn't imagine a seltyr stooping to have a chandler as his worst enemy, but one never knew. "Don't you think the seltyrs are cutting their own throats?"

Rachyla shrugged. "Do they have any choice? Do you?

Do I? Only the stupid talk of choices. Wisdom is.when you see that there are no true choices."

"You don't believe that we have choices?"

A laugh filled the cell, that same ironic and melodic laugh that he tried to recall once he had left her-and never could. Mykel waited, hoping she would say more.

"We have choices, Captain. We have one true choice at any one time.

The rest are but illusions."

"The illusion of choice," he said softly.

"You understand. You wish you did not, but you do."

"So I am fated to kill hundreds of men whose only fault is that they follow an unwise seltyr, and that seltyr is fated to fail because he sees no other choice?"

"Not if he would remain a seltyr," Rachyla replied.

"You're saying that the Myrmidons are using the Cadmi-ans to destroy the seltyrs."

"Are you not? My father is dead. How long before the others are dead-or wish that they were?"

Mykel didn't have an answer for that, not an honest one. "What of you?"

"I told you. Unless someone makes a foolish choice, I will die."

"Then why don't you just give up?" Mykel managed not to snap the words out.A sardonic smile crossed her lips. "Because, Captain, there are enough men who make foolish choices that I see no point in seeking death. Death comes to all, sooner or later, but I would rather not hasten it. Besides, it is amusing to see you try to avoid your fate."

"What is my fate?"

For the first time, her face showed just a touch of indecision, but that indecision vanished even as he read it in her green eyes. "You will be tormented by the One Who Is until you no longer know what you believe or whom to trust- and that is but the beginning." Abruptly, she turned away.

"So... what do you suggest, Lady Rachyla?"

She didjiot turn or respond.

She would not. That he could tell, and he bowed, even though she could not see the gesture. "Good day, Lady. Until the next time."

He rapped on the door, and waited until it opened.

Once he was outside, the guards looked at him.

Mykel shook his head.

"Seems to go that way, sir."

"Still... each time, I learn a little more." Mykel wasn't about to reveal all that he learned, and some of what he learned didn't seem applicable. Not yet.

As he crossed the courtyard, he hoped that the reports from the scouts would offer some ideas on what he could do with Fifteenth Company.

Rachyla hadn't been helpful there, except to reinforce his feeling that the seltyrs weren't about to surrender or submit-just as she would not.

78.

Dainyl had felt exhausted after his two Table trips on Duadi, brief as they had seemed, and had gone back to his guest quarters in Lyterna to rest.At the evening meal, Asulet had reassured him, "The first trips are tiring. With each translation, it gets easier. You'll hardly notice it when you go back to Elcien tomorrow."

"No more secrets?" Dainyl had asked, with a smile.

"There are always more secrets," Asulet had replied with a laugh, "but those you don't know won't help you until you master what you've just learned."

That had been the end of the information, as Asulet had asked about the latest music from Ifryn, and about the weather in various places where Dainyl had recently been.

I.

He politely refused to answer any questions that dealt with substance.

Early on Tridi morning, wearing his flying jacket and gloves, Dainyl had stepped onto the Table in the chamber in Lyterna, his saddlebags over one shoulder. He concentrated... and felt himself dropping through the silver barrier...

... into the chill blackness. He extended his Talent, seeking out the brilliant white wedge at Elcien. With his Talent-link, he rushed through the darkness, yet without a real sense of motion, toward another silver barrier, one limned in white. White silver sprayed from him...

He stood on another Table. For a moment, he shivered. The jacket and gloves had not helped against the cold blackness between Tables. The Table was identical to the others he had used, or so it seemed. The walls of the Table chamber were of white marble, and the floor of green. He stepped off the Table and walked to the heavy white oak door: He opened it and stepped into a small foyer, with a second door. The second door had a Talent-lock, and it took a moment for Dainyl to release it.

After he stepped into the familiar lower-level corridor in the Hall of Justice, he replaced the Talent-lock and walked toward the Highest's study. Even before he reached it, he could tell it was empty. He made his way to one of the other smaller chambers, one where the door was ajar.

An assistant who vaguely resembled Kylana, Dainyl thought, looked up."Submarshal? Can I help you?"

"The Highest?"

"Sir... he and Marshal Shastylt are in Ludar today. He hoped to return this evening."

"Oh. I've been traveling. If you would tell the Highest that I've returned."

"Yes, sir. I'll make certain he knows."

"Thank you." With a nod, Dainyl turned and made his 'ay to and up the hidden staircase, out through the Talent-oncealed stone doorway, and through the Hall of Justice, (utside, the fat and chill flakes of a spring snowstorm elted him.

It took almost a quarter glass before a hacker and car-iage drove by the Hall. It took less time than he had waited 3 get him back to Myrmidon headquarters, since there was I io reason to go to his house, not when Lystrana would not ie there for glasses. The interior of headquarters was wel-omingly warm as Dainyl stepped inside, still carrying his ;ear.

"Welcome back, sir," offered Undercaptain Chelysta, landing by the duty desk.

"Thank you." Dainyl smiled, gesturing toward the win-low from where the duty officer could see the flight stage. 'Fourth squad has the duty? Is anyone flying?"

"Viosyna lifted off on the dispatch run to Ludar before he snow came in. I told her to hold there until she was sure he storm had blown through." j "Good. What else has gone wrong while I've been away?"

"You mean outside of the mess in Iron Stem, the missing skylances in Dereka, the wild Talent in Hyalt, the rebellion in Dramur, the furor in Coren, the floods in Catyr, or the missing pteridon and Cadmians on the North Road?"Dainyl managed to offer an ironic smile. "Let's start with the missing pteridon and Cadmians. Does this have anything to do with the Cadmian relocation from Scien to Norda?"

"Yes, sir. An entire company of Cadmians vanished riding south to Norda. An unseasonal blizzard hit, and there's no sign of them anywhere.

Third Company in Alustre sent two pteridons to Pystra to see if they could find the Cadmians. One pteridon is missing."

"Missing? How could a pteridon be missing?" Sometimes a rider had a mishap, and the pteridon returned with-out the flier, but there was no record of a pteridon and rider vanishing. Not in recent years, at least.

"Could they have landed somewhere to wait out a storm?"

"We don't know," replied Chelysta. "It's never happened before. We heard on Londi, and they had been missing for a week. The report's on your desk."

"What about Iron Stem?"

"The mines are open, but third squad has been patrolling there..."

"What about the skylances? Are more of them missing?"

"One more. No one knows how it happened."

Considering then-Majer Dhenyr hadn't known how the first disappearances had occurred, that there was nothing new on the second wasn't exactly surprising. "Hyalt?"

"Yuasult lost Synetra to the Talent-wielder, but they flamed him down, finally. Everything's under control there."

"Coren?".

"The marshal's been handling that, and he hasn't said anything, sir."

"What about the floods?"

"Catyr. That was another case where the locals logged a section of the lower mountains, in a place where we don't usually overfly. They had warm rains, and some of the hillside slid across the river. Then there was more rain, and a big lake built up behind the mud-""The mud gave way, and all that water washed downstream and flooded the town?"

"Yes, sir."