'Have you something to say, Brother Zacharias?"

The frater stammered out a meaningless denial. "N-n-no, my lord prince. N-nothing."

'Have you ever seen such a creature yourself?"

The hesitation betrayed him.

'Tell me," he commanded.

Hathui bent closer to her brother and said a few words into his ear, too quietly even for Sanglant to hear above the whispering of the folk around him and the lap of water against the ship's hull. The wind brought the smell of the marsh, heavy with decay.

'It was a dream, my lord prince, a vision. You know that I traveled for a time with your mother, who took me to a place she called the Palace of Coils."

'The spiral gate!" muttered Wolfhere, but Zacharias paid him no heed as he went on.

'There I saw many visions, but it also seemed to me that for a short time I became such a creature as we saw today. I swam with my fellows, out in the salt sea, following a fleet of ships."

Zacharias shuddered. "That's all."

He was lying; there was more, but Sanglant doubted he could coax it out of him. Perhaps Hathui could.

'That is all?"

'First we hear tales of a phoenix and now we see a merman," remarked Lady Bertha with pleasure. Strife and difficulty amused her.

'It was damned ugly," said Wichman. "I thought mermaids had great milky breasts huge enough to smother a man. This was a nasty fiend!"

Bertha smiled. "It's said that in the end times all the ancient creatures of legend will crawl out of their hiding places to stalk the earth once again."

'Now we shall see the truth of it," said Sanglant, looking at Wolf-here as he spoke. The old Eagle made no reply as he crossed to the railing to stare at the scattering of fires along the shoreline.

They returned to their places, but no man washed in the river water. No one knew how close in to shore the merfolk could swim. As he did every night, Sanglant gave orders to bring the chained Bul-kezu up from the hold to take the night air, under guard. Only a few men were fit for the task, since Bulkezu might in the middle of the night taunt them in his soft voice, which was his only weapon, trying to make them angry enough to get within his reach.

After Bulkezu was chained to the mast, Blessing crept up close to her father where he stood at the stem of the ship; she stared at the Quman chief. His chains clanked and rattled as he stretched, flexing his muscles, testing the limit and strength of the chains. Bulkezu never stopped testing those chains. He never despaired. Perhaps he was too crazy to do so. Perhaps he was too cunning, or too sane. It was the only way he had to keep up his strength.

'I would rather be dead than a prisoner like that," Blessing whispered, leaning against her father and wrapping her arms around his waist. Her head came almost to his chest. "Wouldn't it be more merciful to kill him? He must hate you."

As I hated Bloodheart.

'No prisoner loves his jailer," he said at last.

'Do you think if I'd jumped in the river that merman would have eaten me?"

'I don't know."

The river flowed past, more sluggish now as it was glutted with waters leaking out of the marshland. A chorus of frogs chirped, then fell silent as though a passing owl had frightened them. There came a moment of deeper silence, with the flowing waters of the river and the steady lap of waves against the hull the only sound. A hard slap hit water out on the river, answered by a second and a third.

'They're talking," said Blessing.

'Who is talking?"

'The merfolk."

'How can beasts talk?"

'They do! They're watching us."

He smiled, but an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades made him reluctant to laugh at her comment. "It's too dark to see them."

'No, it isn't. There are eleven of them. They travel in packs. Like dogs. They came to spy on us."

Was she just making up a fanciful story to amuse herself on the long journey? Or had she inherited an uncanny sense from the blood of her parents?

'Is there more you can see that you haven't told me?"

'Well, I can see Mama sometimes."

The casual comment came like a jolt, like a man riding a placid gelding that suddenly bucks and bolts. He broke out in a sweat, skin tingling as if he were beset by a swarm of gnats. "What do you mean?"

'Only sometimes. She's still trapped in the burning stone. She's trying to find her way back."

How difficult it was to keep his voice calm. "Is there anything we can do to help her?"

She shrugged, painfully unconcerned. "We just have to wait. The merfolk are waiting, too, you know."

'What are they waiting for?"

He could feel her concentration by the way her small body tensed against his. At the mast, chains scraped against wood as Bulkezu shifted position again. His guards-Malbert and Den tonight- chatted quietly with each other, reminiscing about a card game they'd lost to a pair of cheating Ungrian soldiers.

'Oh!" said Blessing, sounding surprised and a little intrigued. "They're waiting for revenge."

AS the river broadened and grew sluggish winding its way through marshy wilderness, Zacharias spent more time on deck watching the riot of birds that flocked everywhere: ducks, egrets, storks, terns that skimmed along the flat sheet of the water, cormorants. Once, but only once, a gray crane. Hathui never moved far from his side unless she was called away by the prince. It seemed strange and terrible to him to stand beside his beloved younger sister in this companionable silence. He kept waiting for Hathui to come to her senses and repudiate him, but she never did.

Instead, she questioned him about Sanglant's retinue, their names and character. "And the three young folk who attend Princess Blessing? There's trouble brewing there."

He glanced toward the bow where Anna stood between the two young men. Matto was shorter but broader through the shoulders, strong enough to wield an ax with deadly measure. Thiemo, half a head taller, still retained a whippet's slenderness, but he had a cool head in most circumstances, a loyal heart, and a charming smile.

Anna had changed markedly since that day in Gent when Sanglant had taken her into his retinue. She had bloomed.

'True enough," he said. "She was a scrawny thing when she first became Princess Blessing's nurse." Anna would never be truly pretty, but she had a quality of candor about her that made her as attractive as girls with unblemished complexions and handsomer features. She had also matured quite startlingly, with a voluptuous body that any sane man would crawl a hundred miles to worship.

'They're like dogs snarling over a bitch in heat. Doesn't anyone else see it?"

'What's to be done? They're young. They can't help it." "Poor girl," she said disapprovingly, but her gaze was caught by a thicket of dense shrubs hugging the shoreline, branches brilliant with red berries. "Look at the hawthorn!" she cried with real passion.

Briefly the land rose out of the mire, and poplars and willows took hold, leaves flashing as the wind disturbed them, before the ground leveled again into grassy banks that looked inviting but were more likely sodden, swampy traps infested by the ubiquitous stinging flies. He scratched his chin, batting away a swarm of gnats; it was bad enough out on the water.

'Hathui..."He wanted to speak, but he was too afraid.

'Yes?" When he did not reply, she went on. "Did you mean to say something?"

'No, no. A strange country, this one. There aren't many people living in these reaches. I admit I never thought a river could seem more like a marsh or a lake than a river."

'Yet there's still a current that pulls us east. Have you seen the Heretic's Sea?"

'I have."

'What is it like?"

'Filled with water." Slavers had captured him within sight of those waters. "The shores are crawling with heretics and infidels. Thus the name."

'What do the heretics and infidels call the sea?"

Surprised, he looked at her, but she was studying the shore, smiling as she watched sheep grazing on a spit of land watched over by a skinny boy and his companionable dog which ran to the edge of the water and barked enthusiastically, tail wagging. She kept her gaze on them until they were lost to sight and at last she said, "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

Nothing, he wanted to say sourly, but he was ashamed of his ill temper. "The infidels, who worship the Fire God whom they name Astareos, call it the Northern Sea, because it lies north of their own country. I don't know what the Arethousans call it. Maybe they call it the Heretic's Sea, too."

'Why would they do that?"

'Because they think we are heretics!" he said with a laugh, but Hathui stared at him.

'How could they think we are heretics when we are the ones who worship God in Unity in the proper manner? The skopos is God's deacon on Earth." Her expression darkened as it always did when she thought of Darre, and Aosta, and the stricken king. "I pray we will find what we seek, and quickly."

'The grasslands are wide. Do not think it will be so easy to find anything on those trackless wastes, and especially not griffins and sorcerer women."

'Have you ever seen these Kerayit?"

'I saw one of their war bands but I've never seen the cart of one of their sorcery women. Nor have I seen their masters, the Bwr people, the ones who were born half of humankind and half of a mare."

'Are there really such creatures?"

The water slipped past, a mottled brown ripe with vegetation and dirt. "I have seen one in my dreams. I was never more frightened than at that moment."

'Never?" she asked softly.

He flushed. "What do you mean?"

"Never, Zacharias?"

He said nothing, and when it was clear to her that he would not answer, she glanced toward the prince and spoke in a different tone, as if introducing a new subject. "What about the merfolk?"

'Let it be, Hathui! I beg you. Let well enough alone."

But he had exasperated her, although it was the last thing he wanted. "You can never be content, can you?" she said. "That's why you left the village, isn't it? You can't find peace."

'Peace was torn from me by Bulkezu! It's his fault I can't find peace!"

'Nay. You won't let yourself be at peace. You suffered. You did what you had to, to survive. I don't blame you for that. We've all done things we aren't proud of. But don't think you can run away from the Enemy. The demons can't give up their grip on you until you let them go."

He did not answer, and at last she let him be. For a long time they simply stood at the rail together, watching the shoreline slide past. It was a measure of peace. It was as much as he could ever hope for, that much and no more.

]B I the next morning the grassy banks became overrun with reeds until all through the afternoon it seemed they sailed upon a brown ribbon cast through a green sea that stretched to the horizon on all sides. So many channels cut through the reeds that Anna marveled that the ship-master could navigate so unerringly along the main channel, if there even was one anymore. They tied up that night alongside a spit of land, but no one dared disembark because of the flies, and because they had not forgotten that glimpse of the merfolk.

At dawn they set out again, passing spits of land overgrown with rushes. There seemed to be nothing but reeds, water, and sky; they had left the land behind them but not yet entered the sea. Yet in the end the last islands of rushes fell behind and the brown water of the river poured into the blue of the Heretic's Sea, mingling until the earthy color was utterly lost. The rushy delta lay green in the west. All else was either the blue of sky or sea.

Anna stood next to Blessing at the railing. She had never seen anything so vast in her life. Even Blessing, for once, was stricken to silence by the immensity of the waters and the answering sky, mottled with clouds. The wind whipped her braid along her shoulders and rippled her clothing across her skin like a caress.

'I've seen the sea before," Thiemo was saying boastfully to Matto. "The Northern Sea. I rode there with Prince Ekkehard, when we were at Gent."

'I'm just a poor country boy, my lord," retorted Matto in a tone that made her wince. "I've never seen such sights."

They both chose that moment to look at her, testing her reaction, and she flushed and looked away over the waters.

'They're following us," said Blessing, head turned to gaze at the ships behind. v 'Of course, my lady. We'll all sail together, just as we marched together."

'No. I mean the men-fish. They want to know where we're going. They're following us. But I don't think they can follow us up onto land."

Anna shuddered, but although she peered at their wake, she saw no merfolk.

For seven days they sailed north and east along the sea, always in sight of land and mostly in good weather, disturbed by one bracing squall out of the north. They often saw other ships sailing southeast, and three times the ship-master caught sight of a sail that looked like a skulking privateer, but no lone pirate wished to attack a fleet and so they continued on their way unmolested. On the eighth day they put into the port of Sordaia.

At least five hundred Arethousan soldiers stood in tidy ranks along the waterfront, alerted by the number of ships, and it quickly became obvious that any attempt to disembark would be met with force. The governor of the town, an Arethousan potentate from the imperial capital, had sent a representative to speak to the arrivals. The Most Honorable Lord High Chamberlain in Charge of the Governor's Treasure, Basil, had no beard but was not a priest. He was, Brother Bres-chius explained, a eunuch.

'He's had his balls cut off?" exclaimed Matto, horrified. He , glanced at Anna and blushed.

'Like Brother Zacharias," said Thiemo, "but this one doesn't look the same. He looks softer."

'What was done to Brother Zacharias was nothing like this," said Breschius gently. "That was mutilation. No doubt the operation on this man-if we can call him such-was carried out when he was, a boy. It's considered a great honor."

Thiemo laughed nervously, and Matto was too embarrassed and appalled to speak. After lengthy introductions and some kind of tedious speech on the part of the eunuch, Sanglant sent Brother Heri-bert, who spoke Arethousan, to the palace with an assortment of gifts-a cloak trimmed with marten fur, a gold treasure box, delicately carved ivory spoons, and an altar cloth embroidered with gold thread. The negotiations took the rest of the day, ending in the late afternoon after Prince Sanglant agreed to go with a small party to the palace the next day as a hostage for the good behavior of his troops.

'The Most Honorable Lord High Chamberlain Basil informs me that we are allowed to set up camp in an abandoned fort built by the former Jinna overlords outside the town walls," said Heribert, still flushed and sweating from traveling back and forth between harbor and palace in the hot summer sun.

'There won't be time to disembark many before it gets dark," said the ship-master, examining the sun. "Maybe it's better done tomorrow."

'Or we could send a smaller force tonight to begin setting up," said Fulk. "That's what I recommend."

'Is it safe?" asked Hathui. "The few who disembark tonight will be easy to kill, if these Arethousans intend treachery."

'It seems a foolish way to provoke our anger," said Sanglant. "We can disembark fighting, if need be. How would it benefit them to anger us in such a petty way?"

'They are Arethousans, my lord prince," remarked Lady Bertha, who had been rowed over from another ship. "They imbibe treachery with their mother's milk. You can't trust them."

'Nor do I. Nevertheless, Captain Fulk has the right of it. Captain, send one hundred men tonight. Not Wichman or any of his company. There should be time for them to reach the fort and reconnoiter before it's too dark to see."