Kestrel lunged to a halt and stared. This indeed was madness. The affairs of archimage and demon prince might be of great importance to some, but they were no concern of his. Let some other so-called hero step forth for the honor and the glory. In the end, the rewards would turn to bitter ashes. The one who jumped through the hoops would find that he had been manipulated merely for the benefit of others who would not take the risks themselves. This was no role for Kestrel the woodcutter. There was nothing whatever in the bargain for him.

Kestrel looked at Phoebe as she slowly drew closer to the waiting djinn, her nose clamped shut to hold out the pungent odor. His thoughts tumbled in confusion. He was here only to clear his name and perhaps win a few pieces of gold from the archimage so he could boast of it in the tavern.

But there was Phoebe as well. Her life probably was forfeit as soon as the leathery wings closed around her

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willing frame. He thought of his rescue from the foundry of the alchemist, the pleasure when she had pressed against his side, and her insistence in seeing good in him when there was none to be found.

While Kestrel hesitated, there was a sudden commotion at the door. Four wizards in sweat-dampened robes burst into the room. "There they are," the first one shouted. "The very ones who conspired to cheat the august council of Brythia. Come forward, Maspanar and the rest. We have caught them at last."

Alodar looked sharply at the intrusion, but before he could speak, the high windows along the wall above the doorway shattered in a spray of tiny shards. Two demons almost as large as the one in the hearth plunged into the room, circling overhead with crackles of blue flame pulsing from their fingertips.

One of the wizards who rushed in added his voice to the commotion. "Please forgive the interruption, master archimage. Forgive the interruption, but we come to rectify a great wrong to our craft."

"Yes, and since I have had time to ponder it," another one said, "I recognize the one bearing the rucksack from before-some five years ago in Laudia to the south." He pointed at Kestrel, his face beet-red with anger. "A swindle then of my hard-won gold, just as it was at her cabin. Do not be deceived, archimage. Their words are smooth, but carry not a word of truth, not even the ones of the demons that they command."

One of the wizards raced up to Phoebe and tugged at her robe from behind. Kestrel slapped his arm away. He looked into her eyes and saw her bold composure begin to falter in the confusion. Stepping to the side, he barely missed a searing bolt of blue that crackled from above and sputtered the hard stone at his feet into a bubbly slag.

He saw Alodar move toward Phoebe as well and made up his mind. "It is because of her and no one else," he yelled above the noise of the others. "For her alone, do you understand. Not for the sake of great princes or the well-being of mankind. Only for Phoebe am I doing

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this. The rest of you matter no more than you did before."

He grabbed Phoebe firmly about the waist. Desperately, he put the thoughts of what might be even worse than smacking lips and soaring lithons out of his mind. Closing his eyes, he pushed her forward toward Ca-monel's chest. He felt a smothering heaviness on his back as the wings closed around them and Astron's elbow pressed painfully into his side. Almost absently, he grasped the book the demon thrust at him and shoved it over his shoulder into his rucksack. He reeled from the dizziness. Reality seemed to spin. The last thing he remembered was the words of the archimage:

"If they escape, I want the word broadcast even across the sea. Apprehend them at all costs and bring them back. There is to be no place in the realm of men where safety will be theirs."

PART THREE.

The Realm of the Fey

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Rings of Power

ASTRON watched the djinn vanish back into the flame. He glanced at Kestrel and Phoebe and saw what he more or less expected. Both stood transfixed in wide-eyed wonder. He remembered how his own stembrain had seized control on his first visit and how he had barely hid in time.

The trio stood next to one of three small fires, beside a stream that flowed between the gently rising slope of a rustic glade. The hillsides were covered with a carpet of thick gra.s.s, each blade the size of Astron's legs. Scattered here and there were huge flowers of red and gold, towering into the sky on giant stems from clumps of thick foliage. The proportions were all wrong, but in the realm of men they would be called foxglove, white-thorne, primrose, and thyme. A ring of mushrooms, each as big as a small hut, circled the hillsides in a single precise line halfway up the slopes. On the crests, the flowering bushes merged into a thick forest of glistening leaves.

No one else appeared to be present, but behind them on the bank stood a large granite-gray boulder with what looked like a wooden door in the side. The trilling of distant pipes blended with the sigh of a gentle breeze.

Astron pointed to the hillcrest. Gently, he guided the other two upward and into the shadowy cover. They moved perhaps fifty steps and then ducked beneath a low-lying leaf that was easily the size of the largest djinn. The soft sky glow that was everywhere the same winked out into inky blackness. The click of large insects in the distance blended with the crunch of lichen underfoot. Astron sniffed the fungal pungency of his surroundings

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and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

The canopy of leaves was not complete. After a moment, Astron could see the diffuse light from the pale blue sky trickle between jagged edges and paint the thin spots between the huge, webby veins with an iridescent glow. Behind him perhaps some ten paces, Astron knew, was a coa.r.s.e and woody trunk that soared as high into the sky as the tallest structure in the realm of men. Thick emerald branches cantilevered out into a shower of leaves that hung nearly to the ground. Between the stem and the circling umbrella of foliage was the shelter in which they hid. One had to proceed cautiously in the realm of the fey, much more so than in the worlds of men.

"Where are we?" Kestrel finally found his voice. "And look at the size of this-this ragwort! What kind of giants are we among?"

"We were lucky we arrived when we did," Astron said as he retrieved the book of thaumaturgy from Kestrel's rucksack. "From the looks of things, the ring has not yet begun to form."

He wrinkled his nose, wondering what to do next. Somewhere in this realm, according to Palodad, was the answer to the riddle. But beyond that, there was no clue. And from the tone of his prince's voice, what little time had been left was almost totally gone.

Astron felt the tug of his stembrain, but wrestled it into submission. All of the imps that had pursued him in the realm of men did not help matters. And in the ward of the archimage, two colossal djinns had appeared as well. With all the traffic between the realms, Caspar could not help but be close behind. It would be a race to see if he or Elezar would be the first to fall.

And what of the humans? At least one would be needed to wrest the harebell pollen through the barrier when the time came, but what would happen after that? Their own realm had grown increasingly inhospitable, and his was no place for any other kind.

He saw Phoebe draw near Kestrel, and the woodcutter put his arm about her waist. The crease in Astron's

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nose deepened. He had been with these two far longer than with any other mortals and he had learned many things. But if he were asked to explain their behavior to his prince, he would not be able to do so.

The one called Kestrel could speak of things that had no existence whatsoever in the reality of any of the realms. After the flight from the cabin of the wizard, he had seemed reluctant to continue the journey to the archimage. Then, after the terms of their agreement had been satisfied, he had continued the quest through the flame, not in response to the command of any prince, but apparently of his own volition. Despite these contradictions, Kestrel had the skill to manipulate a half-dozen imps as if he were a practiced wizard. There was much more to be learned from this mortal and new experiences to be felt and tasted before their journey together was over.

Astron looked at Phoebe, who was smiling at Kestrel in the dimness. A bonding was growing between the two -perhaps even the one that men wrote so much about in their sagas. What could be so different from the duty to couple with a broodmother whenever a prince commanded?

"I knew you would come," Phoebe said.

"Yes, and evidently now we must see it to the end." Kestrel answered. "Instead of merely weaving a story for the archimage, all we have to do is solve a demon's riddle, discover the most powerful natural law of them all, transport harebell pollen, whatever that is, across a flaming barrier, and restore a prince to power, thereby saving the entire realm of men. Then we might have a chance somehow to return to the archimage and convince him that we were right all along."

Phoebe laughed. "You left out the part about a female wizard proving her worth," she said.

Kestrel snorted. "At least it does not appear quite as bad as I had imagined. Except for the size of things, this could well be a sheltered valley in any of the the kingdoms that border the great sea. Once we understand better what goes on here, we just might survive after all."

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Astron looked out onto the glade a second time. The trill of the pipes was louder, and soon there was motion on the crest across the way. A row of flute players bobbed into view. Behind them, several rows of dancers were leaping in unison to the sad melody that wafted through the air.

The leaves rustled at Astron's side and he smelled a sweet fragrance as Phoebe drew near. "We must be dreaming," she said as she squinted up at the procession. "Look, Kestrel, besides the creatures of a childhood tale, what else could they be?"

Astron looked intently at the procession. The pipers and dancers were drawing close enough that rough features could be seen. The tallest would tower two heads above Astron, but a weighing scale would tip in the demon's favor. Slender limbs protruded from tunics of deep green, and long delicate fingers arched gracefully over the shafts of the flutes. Tumbling curls of gold bounced above delicate features that gave no hint of gender. They were lithe and thin, like the skyskirr, but somehow shrouded in a delicate beauty, rather than a repulsiveness that made men want to turn away.

The step of the pipers was light, and those of the dancers lighter still. In impossibly long glides, they darted from one point of the slope to another, hovering in midleap till they barely touched the ground.

"Men know of the fey?" Astron asked. "The words of the archimage lead one to believe that this realm should be as new to your kind as was that of the skyskirr some few time-ticks ago."

"Only in legend," Kestrel whispered back. "Tales for wee ones to send them to sleep. Strange beckoning music that one must at ail costs avoid. Outwelling light from deep forest mounds. Tiny enough to hide in the bowl of a flower or under a curling leaf-not the size of a man; the scale is all wrong."

Kestrel stopped and darted a quick look around at his surroundings. Cautiously he reached upward and stroked the fine hairs that lined the underside of the leaf over-

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head. "Legend," he muttered, "a coincidence. It can be no more than that."