"All the artifacts in here are dead," the other mage concurred. "Oh, Kas and Zahn! My experiments!

How far did it reach?" He ran from the room and had to leap over a dead man to get out the door.

Candlemas could only stare. Finally, he said, "That man who clutched his chest-"

"-had an erratic heart. A chirurgeon implanted a heavy magic ma.s.sage spell that squeezed his heart gently, endlessly. It stopped. Nibaw there, I suspect, was using magic to keep her face looking young. And Karsus seems to have st.i.tched his clothes with magic thread."

The chief yelled at someone to fetch water, either for her nose or the fires.

Candlemas watched the mad mage Karsus chortle with glee, tapping his head and listing dire fates for his imaginary foes while his skinny b.u.m stuck out through a rent in his garment.

Candlemas was alone, but muttered aloud, "I've had enough for one day."

Limping, he made for the door.

Later, washed and splinted, fortified with a small brandy and leaning on a borrowed cane, Candlemas limped through the long journey to Lady Aquesita's abode. He told himself he went only to consult about this latest madness of Karsus's, since she was his cousin and, sometimes, keeper.

He hoped she didn't giggle in her knowing woman's way at his bald excuse. Actually, he liked her giggle too.

When he was shown into her study, he found her instructing an artist on how capture the afternoon light while simultaneously dictating a letter to a secretary. Yet when Candlemas was announced, she dropped both tasks and sprang up like a newborn fawn. Her smile faltered at his distressing limp.

Nothing would do but he must sit immediately while a servant fetched a cool drink and a pillow for propping his foot. Candlemas objected to all the fuss, but secretly liked it. It was such a pleasure to see Aquesita he felt no pain.

He explained how his injuries involved Karsus's latest mad blunder. As his story drew to a close, Aquesita gnawed her plump lower lip. Her comment was odd. "More bad news ..."

Candlemas was instantly alert, and jerked forward so suddenly his foot rang. He asked gently, "What troubles you, Sita?" (How naturally that name came to his lips in a crisis.) "Portents, dear Candlemas," she said. Her pudgy hand stroked his pate. "I do so admire a man with a smooth scalp. Have I told you that? It's a sign of great intelligence, I think. And very s.e.xy to boot.

But alas, there are portents no one likes."

"Who? What?"

"I'm not altogether sure who's divined them."

She sat on a low stone railing, patted his shoulder, and left her hand there.

"It was either the sages of Mystryl or the Keeper of the Eternal Sun-you know, what's his name,"

she continued. "There have always been prophecies, of course, especially when donations are slack. The story about the fountains of blood that will precede the fall of the empire is one. Skulls will rain like hail is another. But this one ... several sages have dreamt of a woman with starry eyes who blots out the sun just before the city falls."

"Which city?" asked Candlemas, already knowing the answer. "Not this one. Not with you in it!"

"No, silly, not us," she tried to sound soothing. "Some other city, I guess. Sunrest fell, you know, everyone in it killed through a magical mishap. And there's more. I correspond with a great number of people, you know, and many have mentioned the storks being disturbed, that they're not laying as many eggs as usual this spring.

"The white storks are the blessing of the empire, you know. 'The Eyes of She Who Shapes All.'

That might be nothing, too. But spells have gone amiss, I know. Mid-wives are worried that babies are stillborn or freakish, but of course no one can show one. But someone mentioned the loss of the 'first of the brightest,' which is supposed to mean stars, we think. It's hard to say. The G.o.ds work their will, and we mortals bear up."

"You've nothing to fear," Candlemas said suddenly. He took Aquesita's pudgy hand and patted it.

"I'll see that no harm comes to you."

"You will?" Her smile lit up the world as she said, "That's very kind of you, dear Candlemas. That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me."

The mage didn't know how to reply, but didn't need to. The two just sat and stared. And each would have sworn the other's eyes were lit with stars.

Chapter 11.

Down in the bowels of the earth, tornadoes like stone cones plotted.

The super heavy magic works its will.

The one named Karsus will blow himself and all the others to destruction soon.

Good. He alone among the humans can sense us.

And the humans think him mad because he rails against us.

All the better.

The Phaerimm had hatched their plot over many generations of humans, leading Karsus to the star- metal and a new application of heavy magic. In all that time, some of these ancient beings hadn't even stirred from the black cavern.

But who is this star-eyed woman with her warnings?

A deity, one of theirs. Not one of ours.

Can she warn them in time?

We'll see she doesn't.

I wonder, can this new super heavy magic penetrate even to our domain?

Best we not find out.

They will destroy themselves long before that.

Perhaps. But we'd best be ready to strike if need be.

We're ready.

Sunbright woke with a start when a small hand with metal on it touched his leg. "Get up, outlander!

Something's hunting us!"

Tumbling from his nest of rags, the barbarian grabbed his sword and scabbard before putting on his boots. Knucklebones had shaken him, the bra.s.s knuckles across her palm like a branding iron on his bare skin. She was already padding from the cavern, having shouldered aside the iron door.

Sunbright followed, his body alert, but his mind still groggy from another night of dread premonitions. It was one drawback to being a shaman, he knew; they lived in dreamworlds as much as in the real one. Knucklebones had drawn only the smallest stripes of illumination along her wrists and ankles. Sunbright thought that cold light trick the handiest cantra he'd ever seen. He'd have to ask to learn it. If she would deign to teach it to him.

Moving up, he touched her ever so slightly, then whipped his hand back. Sure enough, honed reflexes spun her around with the black elven knife outthrust.

"What?"

"What are we after? How do you know we're being hunted?"

"There're pigeons' eggs in the tunnels. Pigeons always lay in pairs, so the eggs are linked. We steal them from nests in the eaves. Half the pairs lie in my bedchamber. Should someone step on a distant egg, the one over my head breaks and wakes me."

Very neat, Sunbright thought.

"Any idea what hunts us?" he asked her. "Have you been hunted before?"

"At times, when the guards are angry," she said. "Like when two of their members are hacked to death in the street."

Obviously this was Sunbright's fault, she felt.

"Sometimes it's dogs," she continued, "sometimes ferrets. They're not hard to mislead. We lay false trails, walk across mats at crossings and then roll them up. They've never found us yet."

Then why not just do that now? the barbarian wanted to ask. But she'd already moved off, her lean back and b.u.t.tocks in worn leather reminding him of a mountain goat. He wondered how hard her interior was, for he'd glimpsed a woman's heart earlier. Now he was intrigued.

At cross tunnels, which might run up, down, at angles or even down as pits, she paused, sniffed, listened, and laid her pointed ears against the dirt. But the broken egg had told her that one certain tunnel had been breached, and she steered for it. Once they had to climb a cracked slope with hands and toes. Sunbright's moosehide boots slipped treacherously.

When the tunnel flattened, Knucklebones laid an ear to the floor again, then froze. Slithering on her belly, she inched to a bend and peered around. Sunbright had to lie atop her, half mashing her, to get a glimpse.

He had no idea what he saw.

A pack of city guards with batons lit by cold light waited behind a strange, crouching something. It was hard to see, being stone gray, but resembled a giant spider, or part spider, part man. It had carved features, a frowning elven face with a stone mustache, but the head was hollow. Inside, behind the eyes, rustled a scruffy gray-white shape. The animal's ratty tail slipped out one eye socket, then whisked back in. To Sunbright it looked as if a possum were caged inside an effigy of a black elf. Yet this statue bore six double-jointed limbs with claws like a crawfish. The statue crouched, nose to the ground, sniffing as a possum would.

Knucklebones b.u.mped Sunbright off with her rump. The barbarian slithered backward. Kneeling, the thief drew his head down, planted her mouth on his ear. Her warm breath sent a thrill of ecstasy through him, despite her daunting words.

"That possum's a sniffer. Their noses aren't that much, but magic makes them smarter, so they talk in squeaks. The statue is some kind of golem that follows the possum's movements."

Sunbright nodded as he sniffed her natural perfume: wood smoke, sweat, and that curious breath of wild-flowers. He patted his sword pommel to ask, do we fight?

A pause while she thought, then, "We'll lay a false trail in Blackwater Bog. It's confusing enough.

But if they pa.s.s that, our hideout is endangered."

Sunbright tapped his chest, made a walking motion with his fingers. Can we lead them astray?

She shook her head, told him, "We've used it too many times lately. They don't fall for the 'cripple fleeing' anymore." But he thought he detected warmth in her tone, as if she appreciated his offer of sacrifice. With a dirty hand, she urged him back down the tunnel.

Since he'd skidded coming up, Sunbright pulled off his boots, tied the laces together, and slung them around his neck to descend the cracked slope. Noise of a slip would bring the guards running.

Farther on, before a five way intersection called Blackwater Bog, Knucklebones bade him urinate on the pa.s.sage floor. She then stepped in it barefoot and padded up a tunnel leading away from the stronghold. Sunbright waited, and moments later she returned, having washed her feet in a puddle.

Now she crab walked half up the sloping tunnel wall, grabbing at cracks for support. Signaling he should crouch, Knucklebones squatted and vaulted across the intersection, into his arms. Catching her by torso and thighs, he found parts very soft indeed. But she immediately pushed away and tripped down the tunnel for home.

Farther on, she paused to listen and think, muttering, "This is very bad. Sniffers are one thing; they breed fast and cost nothing, but some top-notch mage worked hard to bring that golem to life. I've seen them used as pickets by doors, to slam axes on thieves, but I've never seen one act on its own, even with a possum thinking for it. The guards want us badly. We may have to abandon the homestead."

Her whispered tones laid the blame squarely on Sunbright, but he refused to take the bait and protest. He only waited until she shrugged and said, "Can't be helped. Let's lay an ambush."

She skittered off down the tunnel-and blundered into another crab-clawed golem.

The thing immediately whirled on Knucklebones, stone legs churning, claws clicking. The thief piped in surprise, but recovered instantly. Doing the last thing it would expect, she leapt in the air above the claws and landed nimbly on its broad back, strong toes latching on.

Sunbright saw two claws snap for him. Reminded they were stone, he flipped Harvester and slashed with the back of the blade, for a cubit-long edge below the hook was unsharpened and double thick for strength. He couldn't swing outright, for he was stooped in the tunnel, but the tempered steel clipped off one clawed arm at the joint like a lobster's leg. The other claw was batted down, and when the golem snapped again, he swiped sideways and broke that off too.

"Brace yourself!" he rasped, and squatted so he could swing overhead. The next leg in line was anch.o.r.ed to the ground, so his blow wasn't diminished, and it broke off clean. The golem lurched wildly on one corner leg.

Knucklebones, in the meantime, had struck at the beast's brain. Reaching along the monster's stone head, she slid her long, thin knife into the eye of the elven mask. The trapped possum shrilled and died, then the sh.e.l.l of stone flopped on its side. The stone legs stopped twitching. Blood oozing from the black eyehole made Sunbright turn away.

"Not so tough," panted Knucklebones. She hopped over the thing's back, staying clear of the severed claws lest they snap shut.

"Why shaped like an elf?" he asked. Sunbright's curiosity extended to all things. "Why not a spider or a-"

"Who knows? Tradition? Some old story? Probably the necromancer's recipe showed an elf on the page. Now, what to do?"

The carca.s.s needed disposal, since it was a clear sign they'd been here. Knucklebones rubbed her nose.

"See if you can heft it," she said, "If so, we'll pitch it down the mile hole."

"Mile hole?"

Sheathing Harvester, Sunbright bent, and hoisted the thing on his back. It was heavy, a couple hundred pounds, but he could walk hunched over if he was careful.

Knucklebones swabbed up a trickle of the possum's blood from the cave floor, even bent to lick up the last traces, then scuffed the spot with her foot. Sunbright marveled at her diligence, the incredible lengths she took to protect the trail to her homestead.

"The drop through the sky," she whispered.

Sunbright recalled the ancient, inverted bear cave, and his first real glimpse of the earth, where he truly belonged.

Knucklebones mused in a whisper. "Worse news yet. Two golems to hunt us? We've never been this great a nuisance before ..." She turned to glance at Sunbright.

Staggering under his burden and irritated by the thinly veiled accusation, he snapped, "What?"

She padded on, more alert since being surprised.

"Our lives were quiet and orderly until you came along."

"And shaky," Sunbright growled. "But you've guessed my secret. Shar Nightsinger, G.o.ddess of perverse winds and ill luck and petty revenge, bid me make your life a seething h.e.l.l."