'They are.' Garin was grinning at his amazement. 'We dwarves arc patient sorts. We keep chipping away, a bit here, a bit there, and soon enough, it all adds up.'

'But the river -'

'Plowed underground once, that's all. No doubt it's happier, here in the light of the sun.' Garin waved his arm vaguely in the direction of the meadow - no, the lawn really - that covered the basin. 'We saved the topsoil, of course. We do like a bit of green and all, in a view.'

'Ah.' Rhodry could manage nothing more.

'Digging the first shaft was the hard part,' Garin went on. 'Once we had a good start made and room for a good many families to live, well, then! It all went forward smoothly. By the time we had the tower chipped away, the basin was about -' He glanced at Otho. 'I was just a lad, then, and I don't remember it so well.'

'About half a mile across and some thousand people lived round it. The only way in, then, was this.'

Otho waved at the ten-foot gap between the spire and the cliffs. 'The spire didn't stand free in those days. It was connected on the other side to rock long gone to make a gate, like.'

As they approached, they were looking at a side of both spire and cliff that was perfectly smooth, offering not the slightest handhold to an enemy. They walked through the deep shadow of the cleft and "came out again into the sunlight. Rhodry paused to look back and found that here on what had once been the inside of a fortress the spire sported ramparts, stairs, and little towers, all sculpted out of the rock.

'Look up the cliffs.' Garin pointed in the general direction. 'See how the top fifty feet or so is smooth as gla.s.s? Any invaders who thought they could just go up-top and avoid the gate would have to climb down on ropes. And if they did, well, then, we could send archers out into the flat. It would have been less sporting than those contests your people hold at fairs, the ones where they tie chickens to poles for a target. Now, of course, Lin Serr's open, as you can see.'

'This was dangerous country, then, when you started building it.'

'Any new country's dangerous.'

'Hah!' Otho snorted. 'The very soul of diplomacy, aren't you, Garin? Why not tell him the truth?'

'Curse you and your ill manners hoth.' Garin sounded more weary than enraged. 'The man's our guest.'

Rhodry thought he saw the answer to the question of Otho's ill will toward the elven race.

'You can tell me,' he said. 'What was it? Some sort of war between you and my father's people?'

'Not your father's people. Your mother's. We used to live farther west and to the south, but when the invasion started, we moved here.'

'Invasion?' But Rhodry was remembering Jahdo's tales as well. 'From our old Homeland, you mean.'

'Just that,' Garin went on. 'Gallia or whatever you called it. But it was the Horsekin who were the real trouble. I don't understand all of it, but it seems plain enough that your ancestors fell upon the Horsekin first, and they fled any way they could to get out of danger. One of those ways was ours. They don't make good neighbours, you might say. We had some warning, time enough to retreat to the mountains and hide out till the worst was over. Then we fled here. We thought your ancestors would be marching upon us next, but they never came.'

'Luck and naught more,' Otho sneered. 'Sheer luck that dwarven heads weren't decorating their cursed walls. Oh, it's a lovely lot your people are, Rhodry Maclwaedd. Is it any wonder that everyone hates you? You never belonged here, and it's a pity you don't all go back where you came from.'

'Otho!' Mic and Garin barked in unison. 'Hold your tongue!'

Rhodry felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. Not from the elderly dwarf's venom - he was used to that - but from the shock of this new view of a history he'd barely considered before.

'Oh ye G.o.ds,' he whispered. 'And the Hordes fled south, didn't they? That's when the Great Burning - oh ye G.o.ds! They destroyed the elven cities because they were fleeing us.'

'Just so.' Otho grinned, all smugness. 'It's your people behind that, just as sure as if you'd lit the torches yourself.'

Garin snapped three dwarven words that wiped the smile off Otho's face, then continued for another sentence that had the old man turning pale.

'Ton didn't know.' Garin said to Rhodry. There was no way you could have known, and from what I understand, your people came here because you'd been driven out of your home, too, conquered and slaughtered by some stronger enemy.'

'We were. The Rhwmanes they were called, and a ruthless lot they were, but still! Ye G.o.ds! How can I ever go back to my father's people now, knowing what I know?'

Garin merely shrugged, waving helpless hands in the air. Rhodry reminded himself that his living to see the Westlands again was too unlikely for him to be vexing himself with the problem. If he did live to see his father once more, he decided, then he'd tell that learned bard what he'd discovered and let him deal with it. Until then, like the warrior he was, he put the past out of his mind, but the surprise lingered for a long time, and with it a real unease.

They'd come well out into the parkland in the centre of the horseshoe of cliffs. All the way across, at the deepest bend of the shoe, Rhodry could see the gleam of white water where the river poured out of a cavern, and beside that, marks that seemed to be stairs, marching up the cliff face toward a dark slit.

When Garin saw him looking that way, he pointed it out.

'The public entrance. Rhodry, I'm sorry, but we'll have to leave you in the envoys' quarters for a while.

That's what they're called, that is, a couple of houses, and quite nice they are, too, for visitors. We dwarves don't let strangers into the deep city, no matter how well we know them.'

'Fair enough, especially for a blood-thirsty barbarian like me.' Rhodry flashed him a grin. 'How long before we get on the road again?'

'Er well, that depends.' Garin hesitated, glancing Otho's way, then smiled in a rather unpleasant manner.

'Well, Otho, since you're so keen on throwing the truth into people's faces, surely you won't mind if I tell our guest yours.'

Otho made an inarticulate howl, but it was only half-hearted, as if he knew defeat when he saw it.

'Otho's got to stand trial, you see.' Garin went on. 'There's a certain matter of the old fault that got him exiled, and a fine will have to be a.s.sessed. I hope that it doesn't take too long. Things like this have been known to drag on for months at a time.'

Otho snarled, but feebly.

'I hope it doesn't indeed,' Rhodry said. 'Far be it from me to stand in the way of justice, but Jill seemed to think we'd best hurry and all that.'

'A postponement!' Otho said, and he actually smiled. 'We might we be able to ask for a postponement.

And then if this dragon eats me, well, then.'

'Then what?' Garin snapped. Tou'll be able to count your gem-stones in the Otherworld rather than paying them over here? But truly, I suppose you're right enough about getting that postponement. With a life-debt to be paid, and a geas laid on by a dweomermaster as well, the judges might listen to reason.'

As they walked on, Rhodry noticed a group of figures down by the river near the cliffs. They were kneeling on the bank, and all round them on the gra.s.s like pale flowers clothing lay spread out to dry.

Women doing laundry, he a.s.sumed, but he was surprised to find that while they were washing clothes, all right, the launderers were all young men and boys. When they recognized Garin, they rose and came running, damp and soapy as they were, to cl.u.s.ter round the leader and all talk at once in Dwarvish. Otho tossed Mic the mule's lead rope and hurried over to join them. Since Rhodry was part elven and the son of a bard as well, he had a good ear for languages; he'd already picked up a word or two of Dwarvish merely from listening to his companions on this journey.

'While I'm here,' he said to Mic, 'I should try to learn somewhat of your speech. Think I could find someone with the leisure to teach me?'

'I doubt that.' Mic turned guarded, looking away. 'Um, well, it's not likely.'

'Oh. Is it against your people's custom to teach others your tongue?'

'Couldn't say.' Mic began studying the gra.s.s. 'You might ask Garin.'

Rhodry let the subject drop. He was remembering Otho's remark, 'everybody hates you', and he wondered if the dwarven folk had left some splendid city behind when the invasions forced them to build Lin Serr. He became aware, too, that the men cl.u.s.tered round Garin and Otho kept turning to look at him, blank-eyed, carefully neutral, never offensive, but never friendly, either. Garin seemed to be making hard points, stabbing the air with one finger while he spoke.

'He's telling them how you saved Uncle Otho,' Mic said. 'And that you're our guest. That means a lot, you see.'

'No doubt. Here, if they don't want me inside, the mule and I can just camp out here.'

Mic grinned and called that information out to Garin, who nodded to acknowledge he'd heard and went on talking.

'You'll never get that mule up those stairs, anyway,' Rhodry said.

'True enough. We'd have to tether him out here till I get the chance to sell him for Uncle Otho.' Mic waved vaguely to the north and beyond the cliff tops. 'Some of our people are farmers, of course, out on the plateau,'

Carved from living rock, the stairs in question zig-zagged up the side of the cliff, heading first left, then right, then left again with about twenty stairs to a flight, over and over. Although they weren't as steep as the flights in Cengarn, they were much longer, leading up to the main entrance, a good hundred feet above the ground. From where Rhodry stood the stairs seemed to debouch onto a landing under an overhang of raw rock. In the shadows he could just pick out the form of ma.s.sive doors.

'Rhodry?' Mic said suddenly. 'I owe you an apology. You saved my uncle's life, and here everyone's treating you like you're carrying plague.'

'Well, I appreciate it, lad, but don't vex yourself. I've always heard that the Mountain People stick to their own, and now I know they've got good reason to. Certainly the fellows down in the inn in Cengarn treated me decently enough.'

'True. It's easy to be friendly and suchlike in Cengarn or one of the other towns where we know we're welcome. When you get near home you get protective, like. But I don't know. Most of the men won't even go to a human town, anyway. That's why Garin's so important. He can get along with anyone.'

'Even a wretched elf like me?'

'Oh, that's just Uncle Otho! Most of us young men have never even seen an elf. I mean, there's some old story about during the invasions. A band of dwarves tried to take shelter in some elven city or some such thing like that, and the elves wouldn't open the gates because they were afraid of Horsekin, and so all the dwarves got killed.' Mic shrugged with the profound indifference of the young. 'But that was over a thousand years ago. Who cares any more about a thing that long gone?'

'Well, old grudges die hard and all that.'

Yet Rhodry found the story disturbing, as another dishonour that his human kin had bred in their pa.s.sing.

Eventually Garin came back, shaking his head in disgust.

'Rhodry, lad, my apologies. I'm afraid my people are a stubborn lot all round, but I've made them see reason in the end.'

'Well, here, I can always just camp -'

'With those creatures prowling round after you?'

'Er, well, truly, I'd forgotten about that.'

'Imph. I haven't. Mic, Larn and Baro here are going to take the mule up top and find a farmer to stable him till we see what's going to happen. We may need the creature again, for all I know.'

With extra hands to help they got the mule unloaded and the packs distributed. By then their supplies were so low that the packs were light, and Rhodry could just sling his over one shoulder for the climb up.

As they all puffed and panted up switch-back after switch-back, he was glad of it, too. Finally they reached the top and a landing of worked pale stone, long enough for a warrior troop of some hundreds to a.s.semble if they needed to. Garin walked over to a big bronze gong hanging in a wood frame near the doors, picked up the stick chained to it, and struck hard. The boom echoed round the silent basin for a long time.

'The doorkeeper will get round to letting us in sooner or later,' Garin remarked.

While they waited, Rhodry had a chance to study the stone doors, firmly shut, that nestled under the overhang of living rock. Some twelve feet high and eight wide, both doors were divided into panels, each a bas-relief portrayal of some event in the building of the city. He found the earliest one at the bottom right hand corner of the right hand door and hunkered down for a better look. A band of ragged refugees stood on the plain that would become the city. He realized that he'd been half hoping for, half dreading, a portrayal of his own ancestors.

Suddenly from deep inside came an answering stroke of a gong. Rhodry got up and moved out of the way just as the doors opened smoothly outward, with not so much as a creak or groan, to reveal a vast natural cavern, stretching on and on into a blue-lit dimness.

'Well, here we are, lads,' Garin said briskly. 'Come along.'

As they walked into the dimness of the entry hall, it took Rhodry's eyes some moments to adjust. Off to either side he could see worked stone openings, the mouths of tunnels, apparently, leading various ways, and he could hear water running over rock at some distance. In the spill of sunlight from the open doors he could see that the floor was paved in slates and that directly ahead lay a huge decorative roundel, worked in different colours of slate into a complex and coiling maze. All at once Otho strode forward and stepped onto the beginning of the maze. While the others watched in dead silence the elderly dwarf began to walk, weeping convulsively as he did so, quickly and without the slightest hesitation, as if even after hundreds of years of exile he still remembered the pattern.

When he reached the centre he fell to his knees, kissed the floor, then sat back on his heels, flinging out his arms as he cried out one phrase or sentence in Dwarvish. Garin answered him, other voices answered as well, shouting from the tunnels, echoing from the far side of the entrance hall. As the outer doors slid shut, the blue light of phosph.o.r.escence brightened in the cavern. Figures emerged out of the murk, standing quietly round the edge of the cavern, huddling in tunnel mouths, hundreds of them, Rhodry realized suddenly, all come to see their kinsmen come home.

Otho rose. While he retraced the path out of the maze, Garin caught Rhodry's arm and whispered to him.

'His brother - Mic's father - is the fellow over there in the white tunic, waiting to receive him. They'll have a lot to say to each other, I wager, and then of course we'll have to go talk with the judges soon enough. Here, come with me.'

They slipped away from the gathering crowd and into a side tunnel, which travelled only some ten yards before dead-ending into a wooden door, carved with a vertical design of chained links, much like the one on the stone roadside shelter. Garin opened it and ushered Rhodry into sunlight.

'I asked the lads we first met what was available, you see. Welcome to one of the envoys' quarters.'

Although the stone-faced room was small, it had a high ceiling and a big window that opened directly onto a view of the gra.s.sy basin, far far below. A pair of wooden shutters hung to either side in case of rain. For decoration, there were panels of steel, engraved and chased in various patterns and pictures, that ran from floor to ceiling at intervals down the walls.

'Alshandra and her followers are going to have a hard time troubling anyone here,' Rhodry said with a grin.

'Just so.' Garin was looking with some satisfaction at a steel plate engraved with stags' heads. 'Lin Sen is full of this sort of thing. It's been popular, like, for hundreds of years now. That and thin ropes of wrought iron, twisted into a sort of filigree. We like our baubles to last, we do.'

The bedstead, in fact, was just that sort of iron work, forming a pattern of iron vines and flowers all down the side. The bed itself was low but long enough, no doubt designed with one of these mysterious "envoys' in mind. A low round table and a wood chest, both carved in a pattern of spirals, stood against the other wall. Rhodry dropped his pack on top of the chest.

'I'll have water and suchlike sent in,' Garin said. 'And Mic and I will be back in a bit to dine with you. I need to do some asking and see where you'll be allowed to go and suchlike. But don't worry. We're not going to leave you here to rot all alone.'

With a brief smile Garin left, leaving the door part way open behind him, a little sign, no doubt, that Rhodry was no prisoner whether or no he was welcome. Rhodry shut it, then went to the window to look out. The late afternoon sun was beginning to creep down behind the cliffs, and the long shadow of the old watchtower lay on the gra.s.s like a spear. On the cliffs themselves he could see just how beautifully worked the triangular bays were, no doubt housing rooms like the one in which he sat, while directly in front he could look down and pick out the launderers, gathering up their wash and packing it into big baskets. Out beyond them and under a clear blue sky the green lawns spread, a good mile or more to the tongue of land forming the entrance ramp. In the golden light of an afternoon's peace it all struck him as inexpressibly beautiful.

'Lin Sen,' he whispered aloud and, to his surprise, his eyes filled with tears.

Then he looked down, straight down for two hundred feet to hard ground. He grabbed the windowsill with both hands and gulped for breath as the world seemed to jerk to one side and back again.

'You coward,' he said aloud.

Rhodry made himself sit on the window ledge and turn to look out and down. Even though his shirt stuck to his back with cold sweat, he made himself stay until the sun had gone, leaving the basin filled with night. From outside the city he heard the huge gong, echoing in long strokes, and then, more clearly, the answer of a gong inside. He decided that it would do as a signal and released himself from his watch.

Rhodry was just rummaging in the carved wood chest for candles when Garin and Mic returned, bringing with them two servants carrying trays of food, pitchers of water, and other necessities for a guest. Once the food was laid out and the other things stowed, the servants left, shutting the door behind them.

'Sorry about the delay.' Garin said. 'The council was more concerned about what to do with Otho, and I had to shout to get their attention and all that. Well, let's sit down, lads, and pitch in. I'm hungry.'

So were Rhodry and Mic, and for some time no one spoke. The food was mostly mushrooms, stewed in various sauces with various vegetables and scooped up with rounds of a thin herb bread. On one platter, however, lay what seemed to be disjointed birds, crisped with some sort of batter and fried.

When Rhodry tried a bite it tasted of meat, not fowl.

'Bats?' he said.

'Just so,' Garin said. 'Er, hope you don't mind.'

'Not in the least. Rather tasty, they arc.'

'Good. You never know how guests will take to them, like. And, speaking of guests and all, the council says it'll allow you the run of the main cavern though that's about all. My apologies, but I couldn't get them to give you a look at the high city. No one goes into the deep city, of course, who wasn't born here, not even other dwarves.'

'Well, that's that, then.'

'But you can go out into the basin all you want,' Mic broke in. 'And over to the old watchtower. It's kind of interesting. The doorkeeper's been told to let you in and out.'

'Just don't go wandering too far, with that Alshandra creature lurking about. There's enough iron in the city that I think you'll be safe outside if you stick close to the cliff walls in daylight.'