"Early investigation had revealed that several portions of the mirror's frame concealed small compartments. a.n.a.lysis of these compartments showed that despite the pa.s.sage of time and many years in clumsy barbarian hands, traces of powder remained.

"We a.n.a.lyzed the powder and, when merely manipulating the mirror did not prove sufficient-even when combined with the wondrous incantations of the first Healed One-we tried refilling the compartments with appropriate powders."

Lady Melina smiled upon king and minister both.

"To our joy and wonder," she said, her voice filling the chamber despite the superficial softness of its tone, "the experiment worked. A shadowy figure clad in a blue robe of a hue that all confirmed was not present in the tower room at that time appeared in the face of the mirror."

Zahlia took up the tale again, seemingly unaware that she had been upstaged for the most important single part. As she droned on about the duration that the apparition had appeared, about plans to renew the attempt and confirm what was essential, and similar details, Peace scanned the room as was his custom and duty.

On the faces of those privileged to witness this audience he saw a variety of responses-astonishment, pleasure, awe, joy, even a trace of jealousy from those members of the Defeatists who had been loudly proclaiming that magic was not the means to power and prosperity.

His training alerted him to something peculiar about the dynamics of the gathering, even before his conscious mind could isolate what it was. As Zahlia and Posa droned on, embellishing on their plans and all but openly bragging about their success, Peace isolated the wrongness.

All about the room, the little person-to-person interactions that would be usual at such an audience-even one where the Healed One was present-were reduced. They still went on where those of comparatively lesser importance were grouped-a nudge, a wink, a quick whisper or scribbling of a note. Among those of highest rank-even those members of the Defeatists who should be thinking of how to shift this development to their own advantage-there was nothing.

They listened to the speakers with rapt attention, nodding or frowning when appropriate, even laughing at an inadvertent pun on Posa's part, but still there was a singular lack of spontaneity among them. Peace noticed how their gazes continually drifted to the trio of speakers-even when it might have been more appropriate for one or more to be glancing at the Healed One or Apheros-to judge their reactions.

After a time, Grateful Peace became certain that it was not the entire trio they were looking toward, but rather to Lady Melina alone.

Once he became aware of the wordless pull the foreign woman was exerting, Peace himself realized that he had to struggle not to look into her eyes whenever she glanced in his direction.

Each time her gaze drifted through the quarter of the room where he was seated, Peace found himself fighting a luxurious la.s.situde similar to the sensation of drifting off into sleep. He succeeded mostlybecause of the nature of his location in the room-as usual he was set off to one side where he could watch and report rather than in the front-and because Lady Melina continued to dismiss him as less than important.

Or maybe, Grateful Peace thought, a cold chill penetrating to the very center of his heart, she believes me already lulled and thinks that she need not renew her hold on me. What sorcery might she have worked during our long talks in the sleigh on the way to Dragon's Breath? Certainly, I talked more freely to her then than I usually would to some dubious foreigner.

The idea was so startling and so terrifying that Peace nearly lost track of what was being said. Long practice made it possible for him to scan the room without seeming to move even his eyes. What he saw frightened him to the core.

Apheros, the Dragon Speaker, listened to the report with solemn dignity, gravely shifting his attention from one speaker to the next. Yet to Peace, who had known him for years-who had long ago been chosen as a member of this Dragon's Three-there was a diminution of the animating spark.

This was the Apheros the outer world regularly saw-the act he put on his const.i.tuents. What was missing was the true Apheros, the signs of which Peace had long ago learned to watch for. Anger and arrogance were as natural to Apheros as were gravity and dignity-and more normal. They were the fires from which his ambition to power had been lit: anger when things were not done as he thought they should be, arrogance that his way was best.

And his gaze never drifts to me as it usually would, Peace thought. That's what I've been missing!

That casual looking that is not looking, the checking to learn what I have seen so that he may antic.i.p.ate trouble or encourage a supporter. Apheros is like an actor expertly playing the part of a politician, but the politician is not there.

The thaumaturge had no doubt who was writing Apheros's script. His only question was how she had managed it. Surely it had something to do with how her gaze restlessly played over the room. Under the guise of awed foreign visitor inspecting the gathering of the Primes, she was keeping her hand tight on invisible reins.

With a sudden chill Grateful Peace realized that here in this very chamber sorcery was being performed, sorcery so subtle that perhaps only a victim on the edge of the spell's power could have detected its workings.

This realization was followed by one even more terrible. After a lifetime devoted to the reawakening of the power of magic within his land, Grateful Peace looked upon the invisible force of sorcery and realized that if this was magic he wanted nothing to do with it.

Treasonous as the thought might be, Peace recognized that what he felt as he looked upon true magic was not desire, but fear.

Chapter XXVIII.

Making a map of Thendulla Lypella proved to be a laborious process. First of all, it could not be escaped that the birds saw differently not only from humans, but from each other. The falcon's eye was keener, meant to distinguish the movements of field mice and rabbits among often self-colored surroundings.The eye of the crow was more oriented toward the general, more, Derian thought, like that of a human.

Where Elation saw movement, Bold saw difference-that which had not been present at an earlier time.

This was necessary, of course, for a creature who made many of its meals from carrion.

Moreover, neither crow nor falcon tended to distinguish man-made landscape features from natural features. That these two were Royal Beasts, sophisticated beyond their lesser cousins and educated by experience, made the task simpler. After a few requests, they learned to state whether the feature they were describing was natural or created-or at least if they were uncertain.

Had Derian not been responsible for Firekeeper's earliest education in human society-a time when she, too, had struggled to grasp that oddly shaped hillsides might be made by humans and called houses or castles-he might have given up in frustration.

Then there was the problem of Firekeeper herself. Although she was learning to use maps, even beginning to accept that flat two-dimensional sketches might represent a much more complex reality, it was another matter to have her to look upon the work in process and tell whether or not art represented reality. Oddly enough, the birds themselves intervened before the situation could become a deadlock.

They were accustomed to seeing the landscape from above and thus had less trouble accepting the "bird's-eye view" that cartographers had adopted as a convention.

Once they understood how a circle might represent an entire tower, how a pair of lines might represent a road, how a thicker line might represent a wall, they were quite willing to critique Edlin's efforts. Bold, with his sharper eye for detail, was the harder to satisfy, but in the end even the crow was satisfied.

The spire in which Bold had pinpointed the New Kelvinese at work was situated among many surrounding buildings. Distances would have been difficult to estimate, for the winged folk rarely worried about any distance that could be traversed in a short flight, but here the towering height of the spires themselves a.s.sisted.

Lord Edlin had little trouble estimating the spires' relative heights and distances from each other, a thing Firekeeper found untellingly annoying.

"If he do that," she complained to Derian after they had finished and the birds had been sent off to continue gathering information, "why we do all this with the winged folk? He just draw from his own eyes then. Surely even he see that towers must rest on earth even if we cannot see that."

Derian shook his head. They had stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. The air was crisp, the light almost impossibly clear and bright. He had seated himself on a bench backing the stone wall of the house.

Cold seeped up through his coat and trousers.

"Don't be a pig, Firekeeper," he replied wearily-the mapping had been hard on him, even if he hadn't had to draw a line. To him had fallen the job of translating for Firekeeper as she translated for the birds.

"We needed to know what lies between the spires," Derian went on. "Many of them-as you well know-are mounted on the tops of other buildings. Since we can't fly, we're going to need to go in from the bottom up. That means knowing what's at the bottom-where the paths are, where the guards are, where the cover is, even where we might create the best distraction from outside."

Firekeeper grimaced, but accepted Derian's reprimand without protest. It was, Derian thought, one of the advantages to her wolf mentality. She accepted criticism and correction-when merited-far more easily than most humans her age did.

Fleetingly, Derian thought of his sister, Damita, and her increasingly frequent arguments with their mother.Dami was a few years younger than Firekeeper, but as she grew into her woman's body she was less willing to accept her mother's guidance, was more and more eager to prove herself an adult.

But Firekeeper, Derian thought with a sudden flash of understanding, doesn't need to prove that to anyone. She's proven herself to wolves and humans alike-and now apparently to the Royal Beasts as well or they wouldn't have given her this task.

Thinking of Damita made Derian fleetingly homesick. He knew that Elise had begun writing home now that it would be impossible for Baron Archer to force her to return. Derian thought he should start doing so himself.

If I can find the energy, he thought, heaving himself to his feet. Firekeeper-and the ever-present Blind Seer-had vanished while he was lost in thought and when he opened the kitchen door he could hear her inside chivying Edlin.

"But what is that?"

"A map of the exterior of the spire we need to get inside," Edlin replied.

Derian waited for him to add "What?" or "I say!" or another of his numerous verbal ticks, but none followed.

Firekeeper said slowly, "But the tower-tower is spire, yes?"

"Pretty much," Edlin said, "though usually spires are thinner, pointed on top. Towers can be any tall building, either part of a building or standing on their own. Spires are usually on the tops of towers, right?"

Derian hurried back inside. It sounded like trouble was brewing. When he entered the surgery, which, because of its superior lighting, had been turned into a drafting room, he found that Firekeeper had crossed to a window and was looking out across the skyline toward the complex in question.

"Why," she continued, ignoring Derian's entry, "do we then call Thendulla Lypella the Earth Spires? Some have points, but some do not."

"I say," Edlin said, moving to stand next to her, "you're right, you know. There are as many towers as spires. I really don't know why they call it that."

Derian interrupted.

"You'd need to ask Elise about that," he said, "or Wendee. They're our translators."

"Oh."

Firekeeper gave one more hard stare out the window, then drifted back to inspect Edlin's latest sketch.

"This is the tower-spire?" she asked. "The one we need to get into?"

"That's right," Edlin replied. "From what you told me earlier-from what Bold and Elation told you, what?-I knew how many levels there were. I can even see some of the windows from here. I thought we might like a sketch onto which we can add our notes-you know-this window looks in on a small room, this onto a big one, what?"

"I say!" Derian said. "That's a great idea."Only after the words had escaped him did he realize he'd fallen into unconscious mimicry. Edlin's pattern of speech was contagious. He bit his lip, terrified that the young lord would take offense, but Edlin had only heard the praise.

"Pretty good, eh?" he said complacently. "It should help save time. No need to go charging in through a door if we know it leads to a closet or something."

Relieved that he hadn't given offense, Derian forbore from commenting that a window wasn't likely to be wasted on a closet. Edlin's logic was good, even if he wasn't the best at expressing what he meant.

Firekeeper, however, stood scowling at the drawing.

"But it is," she waved her hands in the air, miming straight lines, "like this-a box. The tower-spire is a round."

"Cylinder," Derian said automatically.

Edlin shook his head at her.

"Never happy, what?"

He picked up the stick of charcoal he'd been using to rough out his drawing and sketched in a few more lines. Derian wasn't sure how he managed, but suddenly the elongated rectangle possessed a visible quality of roundness.

Firekeeper blinked at the drawing, tilting her head slightly as if willing her mind to accept the representation. Then she smiled.

"Yes! That is more like, but this is-what?-maybe one half?"

"About a half," Edlin agreed. "I can't draw the entire spire in one drawing. It doesn't really have sides-not like a house does-but there's more to it than I can show. I could make a model..."

He selected a piece of paper and drew what to Derian's eyes seemed like a few random lines; then he rolled it into a cylinder and set it on one end. The lines marked where the windows were on the tower.

Firekeeper hit her thigh in a sharp clap of applause.

"I see!" she crowed.

"That's right," Edlin said approvingly, letting the cylinder fall flat again. "But for what we need, it's better to be less literal. It's hard to make notes on something standing up and harder still to read them, right?"

"Right," Firekeeper agreed firmly.

It was apparent to Derian that Edlin had just leapt again in her estimation-perhaps even higher than he had done after their skirmish with the bandits. After all, Edlin had been helpful, but she and Blind Seer were proven the more effective fighters. Human arts, especially when they were useful ones, impressed the wolf-woman more.

Feeling slightly unsettled, Derian wondered if Edlin might actually succeed in his irregular courtship of his peculiar adopted sister. Certainly, for all his foolish mannerisms, Edlin had noticed what Firekeeper liked and was playing to those likings.

Unbidden, Derian remembered how the wolf-woman's lips had brushed his cheek when she haddeparted for the western wilds. Derian fought down the memory, forcing himself to consider what Earl Kestrel would think if Edlin actually won Firekeeper's hand-for surely that reaction mattered more than what Derian himself might think or feel.

Seeking distraction from these uncomfortable thoughts, Derian glanced to where Blind Seer rested on the hearth rug, head on paws, blue eyes fixed unwinkingly on the young lord. Derian felt an uneasy surge of fear as he tried to decide what Blind Seer might feel about the idea of his pack mate joining with a human.

The giant wolf had become such a usual part of Derian's day that the young man no longer really saw him. He forced himself to do so now and felt his blood chill. Weeks of travel had honed away the fat the wolf had acc.u.mulated through easy living in the cities. Even through a thick winter coat, muscle was evident. As if sensing Derian's inspection, the wolf yawned in lazy arrogance, showing gleaming fangs set in jaws that could break a man's arm as a afterthought.

Derian felt visceral, atavistic fear flow through him. Looking upon Blind Seer, even though tie wolf was at rest, he knew who was the hunter, who was the prey.

It seemed to Derian, as he watched Blind Seer's gaze, never wavering from Edlin Norwood, that Blind Seer knew so, too.

The possible secrets of the comb were the matter under discussion that day, two days after Lady Melina and her a.s.sociates had reported their success with the mirror.

On the day that had followed the initial report, the mirror, yielding to a complex series of rituals, had revealed itself as a device for scrying. Its range, however, appeared to be limited both by distance and by the scryer's own knowledge of the area being scried.

Despite this evident limitation, success-as heady as any drink distilled or brewed-kept the researchers working night and day. Some felt that the right combination of powders would increase the mirror's range, others felt certain that the mirror possessed other powers whose secrets they would learn in time.

Following the lead of those who had been working with the mirror, the team dedicated to the ring had begun mixing various powders and secreting them in a minute compartment that had been discovered when the moonstone was slid free from its setting in the beast's jaws.

Once or twice, the stone had glowed with a pale, eldritch light, thus encouraging the researchers in their belief that-as with the mirror-the proper powders combined with the right words or the correct manipulation of the ring itself would grant them success.

The comb, however, had stubbornly refused to yield anything to those who had set themselves to discover the manner of its workings. Pry as they might, they could find no compartment into which an energizing powder might be placed.

Stoneworkers from among the most skilled members of the Sodality of Lapidaries had been called in to offer their opinions as to what material the comb might have been crafted from.

After some study, these had insisted that the material was both stone and plant-simply put, a plant that had been transformed into stone. They even claimed that originally the wood had been some form of oak, thus gaining the ire of the botanically minded among the researchers, who resented their arrogant certainty.Moreover, there were those who insisted that this muddled the entire question of which type of spells were applicable. The first Healed One had dictated great volumes on the ways and traditions of magic.

He had even broken with the long-established traditions of the Founders and set down some spells in writing.

Usually, as was the nearly universal custom of the colonial powers, those colonists who had shown promise in the magical arts had been sent back to the Old Country to be taught. They were only permitted to return home once they were initiated and their tongues sealed so that they might not unwittingly reveal that which would be dangerous to the untutored.

However, all of the material set down by the Healed One was firmly based on a single foundation-that magical power was best understood when studied in discrete units. These units had become the basis for the thirteen sodalities. Unhappily for those who must work with the comb, the fact that it was made of both stone and yet somehow of wood meant that it crossed the boundaries of two sodalities-the Lapidaries and the Herbalists-and these were jealous of their secrets.

Had it been the Lapidaries and the Smiths who had been so challenged there probably would not have been as many difficulties. These sodalities considered themselves closely allied. Among those who worked with the earth and those who worked with that which grew from it, however, there was a long rivalry, its origins lost in the days of reestablishment following the Burning Death.

Impatient with delays, the Dragon Speaker had commanded that these differences be set aside. Acidly, Apheros had reminded them that the teams working on the mirror and ring had progress to show whereas those who had devoted themselves to the comb had nothing.

Lady Melina had insinuated herself into this meeting by offering her services as a mediator between factions. Even had she not ensorcelled many of those involved, Peace thought sourly, her offer would have been accepted. The truth was, it was a good offer-a wise offer-for she alone stood outside of these rivalries and could not be said to entertain favoritism even by extension or alliance.

Peace himself was present in his role as a member of the Dragon's Three. He noted with a certain degree of ironic detachment that Lady Melina had begun to treat him with a touch more interest and deference.

One of her tools, he supposed, must have told her precisely who the Dragon's Three were and how influential they could be.