"At least a year, maybe two."

Old Hummingbird sat there unblinking and spat questions. He ig-nored mosquitoes landing on his face.

He had a mind like a dancing scorpion and Wolf was making an utter fool of himself. It was worse than being shredded by Quintus.

The Conch-flute asked, "And what do you seek in return for these wonderful things you promise?"

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Seeing a chance to let Dolores take over,Wolf grabbed it."Wisdom, Highness.To explain that, I must ask you to hear the words of my wife." It was a great relief to stop talking and rest his aching skull.

But it was too late for Dolores to save the situation, and she fared even worse. Oh, she knew exactly what it was she wanted to learn about the knights' techniques, but the technical terms she had learned from Intrepid and her other instructors would not translate into Tlixilian. Even Wolf had trouble understanding what she was saying and any Blade knew a fair bit about conjuration-certainly more than the aristocrat-politician, Hummingbird, did. It began to seem that Tlixilian and Chivian views of what conjury actually did were worlds apart.

When she finished, the Conch-flute just sat and stared at her for a while without expression.Then he said, "Extraordinary!"

Rojas was seething. "I was misled, Highness. I am deeply sorry that you came so far to no purpose."

"Never fear, it has been instructive. But I do not think we can trust these strangers. What does the exalted Shining-cloud think?" The old man had not raised his voice, but the answer came in a screech out of the sky.

"The man was trying to cheat you, benevolent one. The woman is merely crazy."

Dolores cried out in shock. An eagle knight stood on the ridgepole of the house like a giant weathervane.

4.He was only a black shape against the stars-bulbous, as if he had muffled himself in a quilt from his ears down to his knees, with only the top of his head showing. The way he held his balance up there brought back memories of the giant talons that had marked the snow at Quondam.

"That the man was lying was obvious," Hummingbird said dryly, 306.

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not looking up."What was the woman trying to say, could you tell, lord of the skies?"

"It was babbling, baby talk." Shining-cloud's discordant croak was a knife on a plate. "She wants to pry into the sacred mysteries of the knights, but her reasons for this madness are more madness. Kill the man for insolence, but the girl is worth something. I will take her myself if you do not want her." His laugh was even more dissonant than his voice.

Wolf gripped his sword, aware that he was hopelessly outnumbered, even without counting the mighty Eagle. Much too late, he remem-bered what gave him headaches.

"Wait! Your Highness, this freak up on the roof sullies your honor! I am an emissary of a great monarch, entitled to respect. He used the Serpent's Eye on me! Is not an envoy sacrosanct?"

A surge of pain cued him to cry out and clutch his head. Sometimes it helped to dramatize. "What is this?"The Conch-flute was frowning. "Shining-cloud, are you blessing the foreigner?"

"Certainly not, scion of heroes."

The pain eased, though.

"He was! I am sensitive to the spirits."

Hummingbird peered around his entourage."Prickly-pear, what do you say?"

"I may have sensed some blessing, valiant prospect," one of the older men muttered unhappily."But I am sure no more than would be prudently applied to disable treachery." A good courtier could straddle any fence.

"Shining-cloud does not want the great ones of Yazotlan furnished with sky-metal weapons!"Wolf said."He hoards the secrets of his order, so he seeks to block an agreement between us."

"By your leave, mover of mountains," the Eagle said, "I claim his precious jewel." "Wait."The Conch-flute was frowning harder now, but at Wolf."You slander a mighty warrior, stranger, and the penalty for that is death."

Wolf saw he was on to something. "Is it slander? Are the eagle knights of Yazotlan different from those of the floating city-Sky-cactus, say, or Bone-peak-runner, or the great Amaranth-talon?"

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There he scored his first real hit of the evening.That he could quote such names caused hisses of surprise and disapproval all round.

"You deal with our enemies also?" the Conch-flute said. Sudden death was now on the table.

Even Rojas, who had been having trouble following the Tlixilian chatter, had caught the gist. He was displeased, but perhaps mostly at the thought that a dead Chivian could not pay his commission.

"To deal with those I named is impossible,"Wolf said."They live in dreams of the past. Jaguar knights-like Lizard-drumming, say, the mighty son of Quetzal-star-are wiser, and wish their warriors to be well armed." He was gambling that Lizard-drumming was not known for conservative views. No one contradicted him.

"August ruler," said the thing on the roof, "I confess that I did cast a very slight blessing on the strangers.They came bearing many strange, outlandish blessings of their own, so they were first to breach the rules of negotiation. I feared those were evils that might imperil you. It is pos-sible that I disturbed the aim of the man's thoughts a little, but I put no filth in his midden mouth. I made him less able to deceive you, that is all.The foulness he revealed was his own."

"Your powers are undoubted, wind rider."

"As for the sky-metal weapons and other abominations, I argued against them only until the Great Council in its wisdom made its deci-sion.We are always loyal to the Council."

"Your loyalty has been proven times beyond reckoning," the Conch-flute admitted. "But the stranger's charge was true and I am shamed."

"I claim his precious jewel!" the knight repeated stubbornly."Emis-sary or not, a commoner who insults a knight must make recompense."

"What does Don Ruiz say?"

TheAlcaldewas an unhappy man, anxious to collect his fee. "Our traditions are similar, Highness. We did invite this worm to a parley. However foul his words, in our ways he would be allowed to depart freely."

"In your house we shall be bound by your ways." Hummingbird raised his elbows and two men sprang forward to lift him to his feet. Everyone rose."We have been honored by your hospitality, Don Ruiz."

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TheAlcaldedoubled over in a bow. "Nay, my house is exalted by Your Highness's shadow on the floor.

I deeply regret that your journey was in vain. I am unworthy of the noble gifts Your Highness brought me and humbly beg that I may be allowed to decline them without giving offense."

"No, no. Keep them for friendship." Prince Hummingbird pulled his cloak about him. "If the glorious Shining-cloud will favor us once again, we are ready."

In response the eagle knight overhead uttered an ear-piercing screech and . . . he did not exactlyspread his wings,but he seemed to stretch out sideways and upward and continue to expand so that his darkness blotted out the sky and the stars.Wolf felt a blaze of pain as if red-hot irons had been thrust in his eyes.

He staggered and cried out.

Then the stars returned, fading in from pitch darkness. All the Ya-zotlans had gone.

"Darling, you were wonderful!" Dolores embraced him. "I was so worried, and you saved the day.That monster churning our wits! I loved the way you-"

"Later!" Wolf detached her gently and turned to face their irate host. Pedrarias and henchmen had emerged from the shadows. Negoti-ations were not over yet."We are grateful for your efforts on our behalf, Your Worship. It is regrettable that the other side did not play fair."

"It is more regrettable that you turned out to have nothing to sell, Sir Wolf." Bluster would have been easier to deal with than Rojas's icy charm, his calculated killer's smile.

"I do have the merchandise.We had a misunderstanding. I told you I wanted to trade with El Dorado, which has conjurers who could trans-port it.You never told me you were going to bring in the Yazotlans.

Ev-idently they are not so skilled in the spiritual arts."

"Nobody is," Rojas said. "What you ask is impossible.You betrayed my trust and shamed me in front of the most powerful men I know."

"With respect, Excellency, they admitted that the fault was theirs. Else why would they have left you the gifts they brought?"

TheAlcalde's eyes shone like steel in the starlight."What they left or did not leave is not your concern.

My fee is.You will produce it now."

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"It is a fair request,"Wolf admitted, having no choice. Knowing that the Yazotlan Great Council was eager to obtain weaponry that the Distliards either would not or could not provide, Don Ruiz had per-formed his role of middleman admirably and expected to be paid by both parties. "Seventy thousand pesos.Tomorrow morning?"

"Tonight. One hundred and ten thousand. I will offer your lady wife some refreshment while we wait.

Hurry back."

Wolf made a halfhearted effort to argue that the additional forty had been conditional on reaching an agreement; not surprisingly, he got nowhere. He had right on his side, but he had admitted having the ad-ditional money and Rojas wanted it. He offered a bodyguard for the journey.Wolf assured him that Diligencewas sufficient protection.

As if the night had not yet provided enough failure, he now had to suffer the shame of leaving his wife behind as hostage. He was shown the gate and hurried homeward.The street was thronged with revelers, but he traveled warily, for the presence of witnesses was no guarantee of safety in Sigisa.A man could be cut down in the midst of a crowd with-out anyone seeing a thing.Women and drunks moved to accost him and he snarled at them menacingly.

"You pee in the water jar, Wild-dog-by-the-spring." A hand like a paving stone dropped on his shoulder.

He glanced up at the scowling face of Heron-jade. "What means that?"

"It means you don't know your friends from your enemies." He was panting, out of breath.

"But you told me it was cowardly and dishonorable for eagle war-riors to use sky-metal swords.You told me the Yazotlans were dishonor-able and cowardly.Why do you object if I try to cheat them?"

The big man screwed up his face as he tried to work out the cor-rect response. "Shining-cloud is not the least of Eagles," he said grudg-ingly. "I recognized his shadow in Calero's."

Calero's was a long way south, reputedly the wildest, nastiest dive on the island. "What were you doing there?"

Heron-jade chuckled low in his throat. "Urging tranquility on the excited."

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"Calero pays you for that?"

"He lets me eat all I want for nothing." Heron-jade had never asked Wolf for money. His feeding bills were so high that Wolf had never felt obliged to offer him any, and doubted he even knew what it was. It was amazing that the big man could be eating elsewhere as well, but his peculiar ideas on warrior's honor might see bouncer as a per-missible occupation.

They walked in silence for a few minutes.

"Great and most trusted watcher,"Wolf said at last,"speak of some-thing near to my heart. If Shining-cloud or some other mighty eagle knight wanted to send me back to my homeland and then bring me back with a heap of valuable things, could he do it?"

The eagle warrior had been asked such questions before, but had al-ways sulked and refused to answer.This time he chuckled as if he found such ignorance amusing.

"Of course not! If you told one of those rats in that corner to run to El Dorado, would it know where to go?"

Wolf could see no rats where he pointed. "But Amaranth-"

"Soaring Amaranth-talon and star-walking Bone-peak-runner went to rescue Plumed-pillar."

So Celeste's jaguar pin had acted like a beacon, and without that guidance, the Dark Chamber's plans lay in ruins. There was no practi-cal way to import Chivian weapons into El Dorado.

At the villa, Wolf ran his golden key over the gate. Nothing hap-pened. He cursed and rang the bell.

Many strange, outlandish blessings,Shining-cloud had said.

Flicker opened the gate and stood foursquare in the entrance. "Where is she? What have you done with Dolly?"

"I sold her to the cannibals. You are between me and the ransom money."

He stepped back to let Wolf past."I told you to take the money with you!"

"Bless the spirits I didn't!"

"What do you mean?" Flicker yelled, following. For once he had dropped his personation.

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In the light of the first torch, Wolf paused to examine the three pesos he had been carrying in his pocket.

Then he continued, now trailed by Flicker, Peterkin, and Heron-jade.When he reached his bed-room, they were joined by Megan and Duff, both anxious.

Wolf handed Flicker the key."Open the box for me." He pulled off his sweaty shirt and reached for another from the closet.

"If you'd taken the money with you as I said, you wouldn't have had to abandon her to those criminals!"