The sharp, metallic sounds as she loaded a bolt into the crossbow seemed an obscenity against the quiet backdrop of Jasker's murmuring voice. Indigo was too for from the bed to hear the words of the blessing he gave, but she could discern an eagerness in Chrysiva's soft-voiced responses, a renewal of hope, and-though it only served to reinforce her sense of unreality-a joy. Grimya sat silently watching, and Indigo took a little comfort from the knowledge that the she-wolf did not condemn her; it was, Grimya had said sadly, better that they should all grieve awhile than that Chrysiva should be in pain.

Jasker rose suddenly to his feet, making Indigo start nervously. She looked back; the sorcerer nodded, and Indigo's hands tightened on the bow.

Chrysiva's eyes were closed and she was smiling. Indigo stood over her and, feeling strangely detached as though a dream self were watching her real self from a great distance, aimed the crossbow at the girl's heart.

Old days, other days, when her father had given her her first lessons in weaponry. She remembered those lessons now. The accurate eye, the steady aim, the quiet hand. And calm. Above all, calm.

She fired.

*CHAPTER*IX*.

The last notes of the Island Pibroch shimmered in the cave and faded to a distant echo, and Indigo set the harp down.

"It was a poor elegy," she said harshly. "It's been so many years since I played it that I've all but forgotten...."

Jasker, who sat cross-legged before the shrine of Ranaya, spoke without looking up. "It was beautiful." His voice was filled with emotion. "It brought me visions of things that I didn't know existed under the great sun. Vast stretches of water, places where the day never ends yet where the air is cold and clear... I saw endless green forests, and white mountains that shone like polished gla.s.s...."

"The southern glaciers." A faint, wistful smile touched Indigo's lips; the image allayed a little of the seething dark rage tight within her, but only for a moment before her voice hardened again. "But what use is an elegy to Chrysiva now?"

"It will speed her on her way to Ranaya." Jasker made a last obeisance before the shrine, then moved back. "Your music, and my prayers. We can do no more, Indigo."

The harp uttered a discordant cadence as with a surge of frustration Indigo thrust it ferociously aside. She checked herself-the harp had done her no disservice, and to vent her anger on it was childish-and pushed her hands into the folds of her robe. She couldn't look toward the motionless shape, shrouded now in a piece of linen that Jasker had used as a blanket, which lay by the tunnel entrance ready for its final journey. Jasker had told her a little of Ranaya's funeral rites, the committal of the body to earth and to fire, but she didn't want to think about that yet. Chrysiva was still too alive in her mind.

Unthinkingly her hands closed on the pewter brooch that had been the girl's gift to her, and she felt a mental knife thrust of sick fury. When Jasker's formalities were done, there would be another matter to attend to, and impatience was beginning to eat at her. She wanted Quinas's blood. She wanted his bones to gnaw on, his marrow to drain. She wanted his soul.Jasker rose to his feet and the movement broke the vortex of her thoughts.

"I shall take her to the fumarole now," he said quietly. "Will you come with me?"

"No." She shook her head. "I think I'd prefer to be alone for a while."

I wish to go, Grimya said. To say farewell.

Go then. And say her a prayer for me. Aloud Indigo added: "When you return, Jasker, we shall have work to do."

"Don't think I've forgotten it." He paused by Chrysiva's shrouded form and looked back at Indigo with a pity in his eyes that she didn't want to acknowledge, let alone accept.

An aura flickered about Jasker's silhouette as he vanished into the dark of the tunnel with the dead girl in his arms, and when he was gone, with Grimya a silent shadow at his heels, Indigo gave way to a great shudder that seemed to twist her spine and vibrate to the roots of her being.

Quinas. Hatred blossomed like a poisoned flower within her as she thought of the overseer.

Jasker had confined him in a narrow chimney deep in the volcanic tunnels, a cell of hot rock and sulfurous fumes where, as the sorcerer had put it, he would survive long enough to pray for death. He had already put the overseer to the test of the fire cord, but the experiment had failed: unlike Indigo, who had been subconsciously willing to reveal the truth to him, Quinas had mentally fought the cord's influence with a strength that the sorcerer found surprising, and without at least a small measure of cooperation the cord was useless. Other methods would be required to persuade Quinas to speak.

Indigo didn't know what tortures Jasker might be capable of inflicting on their captive, but she admitted without a shred of conscience that no price would be too great for the information they wanted of him. If any living being could lead them to Aszareel and the true heart of Charchad, Quinas was the man. And he would do it. If she had to take him apart, limb by limb, sinew by sinew, with her own hands, he would tell her what she wanted to know. And when he was drained of all he could give, there would be the sweet, savage joy of retribution for Chrysiva, and for Chrysiva's husband, and for the countless others whose lives and hopes and dreams had been shattered by the evil that dwelt in that poisoned valley.

"Ahh!" It wasn't a word but a shapeless cry of protest, an attempt to articulate something that she couldn't even comprehend. Chained energy jack-knifed Indigo to her feet and she strode across the cave, only stopping when she all but collided with the far wall. She pressed her palms to the rock, feeling the subterranean warmth from the volcano's deep-buried heart pulsing through her fingers, and shut her eyes against the tidal wave of rage that threatened to unhinge her mind.

The power of fire. Jasker had told her a good deal about the nature of his sorcery, the energy that he drew from the heaving, molten seas far down in the earth's core. Fire was his element: he was brother to salamanders, cousin to dragons, master of flame and smoke and molten magma. He had told her of his great ambition-to make contact with the t.i.tanic fire spirits, first sp.a.w.n of Ranaya Herself, who slept deep, deep beneath the volcanoes' dormant cones; to harness their awesome power and to orchestrate their final vengeance on the Charchad and all it stood for. But though he had stretched his mind and his soul to the limits of mortal endurance, Jasker had been unable to wake those gargantuan powers. And- And it wasn't enough. What burned in Indigo was more than fire, more than the pent fury of Ranaya's Daughters in their long sleep. Since her first encounter with Jasker, she hadn't consulted the lodestone, for she had had no need to: she knew without a single spark of doubt what it would tell her.

North. To the valley called Charchad. To the glowing, festering heart of the corruption which it was her task, and hers alone, to eradicate from the world.

A bitter sense of weary futility washed over Indigo then, a feeling of hopelessness that no amount of willing would drive away. She sat down, her back slumped dejectedly against the wall, and drew out Chrysiva's brooch to look at it. The dull pewter of the little bird shape glinted in the candlelight, and she remembered an old Southern Isles belief that at the moment of death the soul left the body in the form of a white and ghostly seabird that flew away over the sea, singing a final and beautiful song, to follow the sun and at last become one with it. If she had been able to glimpse Chrysiva's soul bird, she thought, she would have seen not a proud white gull but a poor, crippled sparrow.A tear fell suddenly on the pewter brooch and trembled there for a moment before trickling off onto Indigo's hand. She had begun to weep without realizing it, and she brushed quickly at her eyes, squeezing the lids tightly shut. Crying would achieve nothing. It was the anger she needed to recapture now, the rage she had held in check but which had been burning in her, eating at her, since she had first set foot in Vesinum. The brooch was a focus for her wrath, for the brooch symbolized all the innocence, the hope, the life, that the Charchad had corrupted in this land. And at the root of that corruption, the soil from which it fed, was the demon that she, by her crime, had released into the world.

Her fist clenched on the brooch in a sudden, involuntary gesture as the fury burst on her mind with a hot desperation that made her feel queasy. Chrysiva's symbol; and her own, too, for wasn't it a bitterly poignant emblem of the curse she had brought upon herself? She had promised to keep the little pewter bird and treasure it. And she would keep that promise with a vengeance, for the brooch was now to her what it had once been to Chrysiva: a token of something lost which she would strive to recover, no matter what the cost.

Footfalls in the tunnel: Indigo raised her head quickly and was in time to see Jasker enter the cave. The sorcerer's burden was gone, and his eyes were empty of all emotion. Behind him, Grimya walked with head low and tail dragging; her mind was closed and she seemed reluctant to meet Indigo's gaze but instead took herself off to the far side of the cave, where she flopped down and appeared to want nothing more than to sleep.

"It's done." Jasker picked up a waterskin and filled a cup for himself. "Her body and her soul are with Ranaya."

Indigo rose to her feet. A sharp edge of the brooch had cut into her hand where she had been gripping it overtightly, but she didn't notice. "What's the hour?" she asked.

"Dawn, or thereabouts. Maybe a little later." Jasker looked up, his face expressionless. "Why?"

"Quinas." She became aware of the pain in her hand now and it brought her thoughts into focus, sharp as gla.s.s in her mind.

Jasker studied her face for a moment, then said, "I doubt if he'll be ready to cooperate with us yet. Leave him a little longer; let his prison do some of our work for us."

"No." She shook her head. "I've waited long enough, Jasker. For Chrysiva's sake I want what Quinas can give us-now!"

The sorcerer continued to watch her. "For Chrysiva's sake?" he repeated quietly. "Or for yours?"

"Hers, mine, ours-d.a.m.n you, what difference does it make?" She turned away from him, hunching her shoulders with taut anger, then a moment later spun around again. "You said you could break him, you promised it. If now you haven't the stomach for it, say so, and I'll do the task myself!"

"Indigo." He came forward and laid both hands on her shoulders. Furious at his attempt to pacify her, she tried to pull away, but he gripped her, forcing her to look at him.

"Very well," he said at last. "Since your patience is at an end, we shall go now and do what must be done. I would have preferred to wait, but no matter."

She was trembling under his touch, every muscle alive with tension. "Each minute we delay might see the death of another innocent like Chrysiva," she said hotly. "Is that what you want?"

"You know it isn't."

"Then-"

"Then there's no more to be said." There was expression in Jasker's eyes now, and what she saw there made Indigo feel shamed, though she fought furiously, silently against the sensation. At last Jasker released her and stepped back.

"If you're ready, come with me," he said. "Though I'd feel happier if you left me to do this alone."

She gave him a searing look and he shrugged. "Come, then."

Grimya raised her head as they started toward the tunnel mouth, and Indigo paused, looking back at the she-wolf.

Grimya? Will you come with us? she asked silently.

No. The reply was vehement and unhappy. I do not want to see. A pause. There is darkness here, Indigo; a cruel darkness that I cannot understand and do not like. Please... are you sure thisis right?

Of course I am. She could sympathize with Grimya's simplicity that gave rise to such fears, but she couldn't share them. She forced a smile, but it wasn't convincing. Sleep for a while. I'll be back soon.

I know. But when- The she-wolf hesitated.

When what? There was a faint tinge of impatience in Indigo's thought.

No matter. Grimya looked at her, sadly she thought. I will try to sleep, as you suggest.

She lay down again, head turned away, as Indigo followed Jasker out of the cave.

"He's stronger than I'd expected." The sorcerer walked back to where Indigo stood at the top of the slope that led down into the shallow pit deep in the mountains. His bare torso was slickly filmed with sweat and his hands and arms smoke-blackened to the elbows. His eyes were like chips of ice-cold stone in their sockets, and when he smiled, the smile had not the smallest trace of humanity. "But a few more minutes, I think, will see a change."

Unwilling to meet his gaze, Indigo looked past him to where Quinas lay spread-eagled on the pit floor. The overseer was still conscious-Jasker had taken good care to see that he didn't lose his mental faculties-but his mouth hung slack, gasping slowly, silently like a stranded fish, and his eyes were blank with shock.

What she had witnessed in this hot, sulfurous, and claustrophobic place had tested Indigo's faith in her own determination to have information at any price. She hadn't believed that any human being could be capable of inflicting such tortures as Jasker had worked upon Quinas, let alone with such steely and utterly detached dedication. The sorcerer had called upon the most subtle nuances of his art, and for upward of three hours Quinas had writhed and shrieked and suffered under the touch of fire in every imaginable manifestation. He had seared, he had bled, he had choked; he had been dangled over the chasm of complete insanity and been brought back with his mind intact but monstrously scarred. His body was now a battered hulk, hair burned away, skin blistering and peeling, fingers fused together where the flesh had melted and reformed. And throughout the operation-his own term for it-Jasker had been a man of stone, the skilled, precise, and supremely indifferent orchestrator of his victim's torment.

The worst of the Charchad murderers, no matter how mad or depraved they might be, were pale shadows by comparison.

Indigo knew that she should have been sickened by what she had seen. She didn't share Jasker's madness, or his personal need for revenge. No loved one of hers had been Quinas's victim. She should have interceded, should have spoken up for mercy and justice, and begged the sorcerer to find another way. But even now, looking at the ruined sh.e.l.l of a man lying quivering on the burning rock floor, she could find no pity in her heart for him, only a diamond-hard core of hatred and disgust.

At last she met Jasker's gaze, and felt an answering flicker of satisfaction within herself. "A few minutes?"

He shrugged carelessly. "Perhaps I should have implemented it earlier; but there's one more little trick I have up my sleeve...."

"Use it, Jasker." She felt a rivulet of sweat trickle down her spine and the sensation sent a hot surge through her. "Break him."

He smiled at her again. "You'd best keep well away from the pit floor. And if you want to retire-"

Raised eyebrows asked a question, and Indigo shook her head.

"Very well. But take care; the heat may be more than you'd bargained for." He turned, strode back down the slope. Quinas turned his head to watch him, and Indigo saw the muscles of the overseer's face tense in trepidation, though he tried to keep the fear from his expression.

Jasker smiled again. He raised his arms as though moving to embrace a lover: an instant later heat swelled in the cavern and burst like a storm wave, a wall of blistering, suffocating redness that sent Indigo staggering back, gasping as the breath was s.n.a.t.c.hed and burned from her lungs.

And in the shadows at the far side of the cavern foul black smoke belched out of nowhere, and something sprang to life within the smoke.The creature was three times Indigo's own height, but as thin as a sapling tree. It was neither a dragon nor a giant salamander, though it had elements of both in its shimmering form. Eyes that were shockingly human looked out from a pointed, reptilian face; membranous wings were folded over a body that seemed to be molten, slowly pulsing; and a hand-a human hand, but covered with scales instead of skin-reached out in a gesture that imitated Jasker's own.

Fire spat between the elemental and the sorcerer, and Indigo saw Jasker flinch momentarily as the white-hot bolt crackled against his outstretched arm. Quinas's head was straining back, eyes starting almost out of their sockets as he sought to find the source of this new threat. And again, Jasker smiled.

"Sister of the magma, daughter of the molten earth; you are welcome here."

The being hissed, the sound echoing in the cave's confined s.p.a.ce. To Indigo's ears the hiss had the distorted but unmistakable form of a single word: Feed. And she felt her stomach turn within her.

The sorcerer took two measured paces backward, and a cord of fire appeared in his hands. He stretched it taut, then with a nod of his head indicated the spread-eagled man on the floor and uttered five syllables in an alien tongue that seemed to be composed of inflections rather than words.

The elemental flowed forward, the smoke from which it had formed roiling with it. It hovered, swaying, above Quinas's head-then, so fast that Indigo's senses could barely register the movement, a tongue of white flame darted from the elemental's mouth and struck the overseer's right eye.

Quinas shrieked, his body flailing uncontrollably but uselessly against the bonds that held him.

Indigo had a momentary glimpse of blackened skin and melted flesh where his eye had been, before the elemental curved in toward him again- "No, sister!" Jasker held up the fire cord, which blazed suddenly with blue light. "Enough!"

The creature uttered a high-pitched whistle, protesting, but it was constrained to obey. It drew back and hovered, swaying like a snake trying to hypnotize its prey, and Jasker took one step forward.

"Quinas." His voice was quiet, reasoned, chillingly indifferent. "You have seen"-a soft laugh as he acknowledged his own inadvertent and unpleasant joke-"the way in which my little sister of the magma likes to feed. A mortal man is a delicacy which she will take a long time in devouring; many days, perhaps. So I give you a choice. Tell me what I want to know-truthfully; and remember I have my own methods of testing for the truth-and I will dismiss her to sleep again in the molten rock from which she came. Refuse, and I will relax my hold on her and let her choose another morsel before I ask my questions again; and so the pattern will continue." He smiled. "I think you will tire of the game before she and I do."

The elemental whistled again, as though in agreement, and Quinas stared back at the sorcerer.

His remaining eye was completely red, whether with blood or with the effect of the bizarre crimson lens Indigo didn't know; and his twitching body now seemed beyond his control. It was impossible to imagine the pain he must be suffering, and when at last he tried to speak, he could at first only gasp, his scorched mouth opening and closing spasmodically.

Jasker waited, uninterested in his struggles, and at last a voice that sounded as though the larynx that formed it had been torn in shreds croaked: "I... will... answer...."

Indigo felt her own lungs expel a hot breath, and Jasker nodded. "Very good." He tautened the fire cord once more. "Then, while my little sister waits to ensure your continuing cooperation, we shall begin."

They needed no further torture. Quinas could barely speak and each word cost him fresh agonies, but slowly, falteringly, the information they wanted was revealed, until Jasker was satisfied that their prisoner could tell them no more.

"We have everything he can give us." Jasker came slowly back to where Indigo crouched near the cave mouth. "And it's enough."

She nodded. "We know that Aszareel is still alive, and dwelling in the Charchad vale," she said softly.

"Yes. I'm not sure how to interpret that; no normal man could survive that place for more than a few days. But it was the truth, as far as Quinas knows it.""Aszareel isn't normal," Indigo said with venom. "He's-" she broke off, shook her head.

Jasker sank down onto the rock beside her and pressed his fingertips to his eyes. He was close to exhaustion, and although the great elemental had departed, the cave was still suffocating and the heat and fumes were draining what strength he had left.

"We've no further use for that offal now," he said tiredly, gesturing toward the pit. "There's a fumarole nearby; I'll kill him and give the corpse to the salamanders that live there. They'll feed well for a while."

Indigo's head came up sharply and she looked at the overseer, who, mercifully for him, had lapsed into unconsciousness. Then she snapped viciously, "No. We'll take him back with us. I want him to live for a while yet."

"What's the point? He can tell us nothing more, and we have no further need of him."

"I don't care. I want him to live. I want him to suffer."

Jasker looked at her, disquieted. His own l.u.s.t for personal revenge was more than satisfied: in fact he had found much of the torture distasteful, preferring cleaner methods when it came to retribution.

A pragmatic execution and disposal now seemed only right. But Indigo felt differently. For her, Quinas's death wouldn't be enough.

A belated spark of humanity struggled through the numb weariness, and he tried again to reason with her. "Let him die, Indigo. Let him go to the h.e.l.l he deserves, and be done with him."

Indigo didn't reply immediately, but sat staring at the man in the pit. But she didn't see Quinas's ruined body; instead, in her mind's eye, she saw the ravaged face of Chrysiva, and felt the little pewter brooch hot under the folds of her robe. Then Chrysiva's face changed and became that of Fenran, her own love, torn, bleeding, eyes blank with shock and pain, and finally his features crumbled away into the vicious, silver-eyed countenance of another being, one that had never been human yet which took its evil life from humanity; a being from which she could not be free until her quest was done. Her Nemesis.

"No!" she said vehemently.

Jasker sighed. He didn't have the energy to argue any further: let her have her way, if it eased some gnawing devil within her. "Very well," he said resignedly. "We'll do as you wish." He stood up. "I doubt anyway that he'll come around for a few hours, and maybe by then-"

"By then you think I'll have changed my mind?" Fury flashed in Indigo's eyes. "Don't presume to know me, Jasker!"

"Saia, I presume nothing." Jasker turned back toward the pit, then paused. "I am simply a little disconcerted to find that your capacity for retribution outmatches even mine."