"Eh? Oh, yes, milord. All night, every night. But we gotta be off the streets by sunrise or the straw bosses scream. But me and Mandisa, we're slow, but steady. Still, we gotta be off soon . .."

"Why soon?"

"Oh," the man avoided his eyes, fussed with the dead men and woman in the cart. The old woman shuffled slowly, helmet lamp making a white blob bounce on the ground, and sorted through the trash on the street for anything valuable. "Some nights the city's more boisterous than others, is all. There's what, nineteen cleanup crews, all told. We're busy, but glad for the work."

Sunbright supposed they were. This man looked as starved as the bodies he'd loaded onto his cart.

He didn't understand what "boisterous" might mean, but a casual comment had arrested his attention.

"Nineteen teams work all night, every night, just to pick up corpses?"

"Aye, milord. 'Course, that's just the poor 'uns, you understand. Strangers or folks no one cares to give a funeral to. Good families take care of their own, of course. Some of 'em are even buried down on the ground, I hear tell. Now look at that, ain't that curious?" He took hold of a white object suspended around one tough's neck and broke the thong. Peering, waggling his head lamp, he still couldn't see, so he handed it to the barbarian. "What is that, good sir?"

Sunbright took the thing. It was yellowed by sweat and grime, but polished from lying between the dead man's skin and clothing. "It's a hunk of knucklebone. Too big for a deer's."

The old man waved a crooked hand. "Good luck charm. Worthless. Keep it. Ready, Mandisa?" He helped his wife climb onto the seat with creaking knees, checked that their next stop, according to the guards, was the Street of Lilacs.

As he clucked to the old mule, Sunbright asked, "Can you point me to Castle Karsus?"

The man squinted, nodded with the reins, indicating a yellow-lit structure high up in the distance.

Sunbright nodded: he should have known. Of all the odd buildings in this city-state, it was the only one with tilted walls that met at odd angles.

The old man said another curious thing. "You better be off the street by sunrise yourself, young master. Rumors are milling again ..."

"Rumors of what?"

"Oh, troubles in the marketplace. Same old same old. . . ." The deaf man slapped the reins and rolled away.

The barbarian found himself still clutching the knucklebone, the only artifact left of a man he'd killed for no clear reason, except that the man had tried to kill him. Somehow, it didn't seem a good enough reason right now. He pocketed the polished bone and trudged on.

His opinion of the empire sank lower with every new sight, if such were possible. Before the doorway of a large meeting hall, citizens had dragged a man with pointed ears by his hair, lashed him to a signpost, and doused him with strong liquor, probably brandy, for when they applied a torch, the man (or half man) ignited, to die screaming while the crowd cheered.

Sunbright saw it all in the length of a block. His legs wanted to run that way, but he stood rooted.

There were fifty or more villains, yowling men, and shrill women. He couldn't save the victim, could only get himself killed. Wondering what had become of his pride, or common sense, he trudged until the flaming pyre was past. Farther on, he saw a man and woman sprawled in the gutter, their throats cut, their clothing looted. He saw starved horses. .h.i.tched to glittering coaches, saw a row of gap- mouthed heads spiked on iron pilings around a park, some of them children's. He saw more children pick through garbage and fight with dogs for a bone, and city guards chase both with silver-tipped clubs.

There was no end to the corruption of the empire, he saw. It was built on the bones of the unjustly- treated dead, and the hunched backs of the dying living.

Back in opulent Castle Karsus, Candlemas was learning the opposite. And the same.

Chapter 6.

One second Candlemas was pinned against a wall and throttled, then Karsus waved a hand and Sunbright flickered away like a snuffed candle flame. The pudgy mage dropped, lost his footing, and plopped on his bottom.

"There," said the younger mage. "He'll be a while returning. Servants are such a bother, aren't they?

I turned one into an orc last week. The soup was cold."

Candlemas rubbed his throat and nodded absently. Sunbright was hardly a servant, nor was he a proper apprentice or even an equal partner. That was the problem with their relationship: neither was really certain how they meshed. The barbarian was too quick to hammer things for a solution: a man of pure action. Yet Candlemas, a man of science, was too quick to ply magic as a cure-all. Between them, he reflected, they should be able to solve any problem. Instead, they only seemed to end up stalemating, sinking deeper into a mora.s.s of trouble.

Karsus had wandered off, calling orders to attendants and lesser mages, sailing like a war galley scattering tiny ships. Ma.s.saging his throat, Candlemas trotted to catch up.

He soon forgot his troubles, for Karsus's workshop-which stretched over many buildings-proved a wonderland of spells and magic that Candlemas could only have dreamed of. Karsus had hundreds of experiments going on simultaneously, and kept track of each in his tousled head.

One room sported a stone fountain and pool. A dozen mages were at work, and when Karsus swept in, they scurried to show him their latest results. Holding hands in a ring around the pool, they chanted a short command. Instantly a rainbow fountained up from the center well. Streaks of color shot upward, fanned out, and spilled into the retaining pool. Karsus clapped his hands with delight, like a child, and Candlemas joined him. But there was more. The rainbow looked and behaved like water, but maintained its stripes. So as the colored fan hit the pool, the streams separated out, and made a swirling whirlpool of color: a circular rainbow.

A mage leaned over the pool, gesturing. "There's more, Great Karsus. Look!" Dipping his hand into the pool, he demonstrated that the color stuck to his hand. Fingertips stayed green, his palm blue, his wrist violet. Shaking his hand, the colors spattered on the floor to make a tiny rainbow-like from a prism gla.s.s-that slowly faded.

"I love it!" Karsus dipped his hand, painted the front of his dirty robe in stripes, painted Candlemas's nose blue. "My invention! Heavy magic! It works for everything!"

Karsus dipped in the pool, scooped a multicolored ball and hurled it against the wall, where it stuck. "They'll pay scads of money for this one. Everyone will want one for his garden. You'll all be rich, and the name of Great Karsus will be even greater!" Candlemas chuckled but shook his head.

These lesser mages had accomplished something he never could have even attempted.

Quitting the room, Karsus sailed down another corridor. Candlemas was getting used to the archwizard's abrupt starts and stops, and scurried to catch up, but he tripped over a loose floor tile and crashed on his hands and knees.

Karsus scurried over to help him rise. "Clumsy, clumsy. Keep up, now. We've much to see, much to do." His sparkling golden eyes roamed around in their sockets. Candlemas found the effect unnerving. The man was either a genius or a lunatic, perhaps both. The pudgy mage looked where he'd stumbled. Floor tiles had cracked and separated as the floor shifted. One edge was four inches too high. The crack even continued across the floor to one of the tilted walls, reaching with spidery fractures all the way to the ceiling. The steward of Castle Delia (or former steward) pointed. "Shouldn't you summon a mason to patch that? Someone could trip and spill-"

Karsus was thirty paces away. He never seemed to walk, only jog from one task to another. "No time, no time! We don't use masons anymore anyway. Wouldn't know where to find one. I'll have someone seal it magically. Brightfinger's stonebind should work! Come on, come on!"

With skinned hands and knees tingling, Candlemas trotted after. It occurred to him that hiring a mason would be cheaper than plying magic, but then, they had plenty of magic to spare. Yet no one seemed interested in maintaining the building, a fact he found strange. As steward of Castle Delia, he knew how quickly things deteriorated if neglected.

Then he was witnessing other miracles and soon forgot about repairs.

In a smaller room near the cellars stood a trio of female arcanists before a big, scarred, wooden table. In the corner, watched by a city guard, was a starved and shabby man shackled wrists to ankles.

Clanking awkwardly, the man gulped down a bowl of porridge with his fingers.

A woman with blonde hair and a high forehead greeted him. "Great Karsus, we've perfected the spell you requested!"

"Wonderful, wonderful! Which one was it?"

"Imprisonment, milord," replied the apprentice patiently. "The more powerful version of Yong's imprisonment?"

"Oh yes, oh yes!" Turning, he said, "You'll like this, Candlemas. The city guards asked for it. Show us, show us!"

Candlemas nodded attentively, but he couldn't help but wonder about the prisoner in the corner.

The man was nothing but skin and bones. The planes of his forehead and cheeks were sharp enough to cut, and his eyes were sunken and vacant as he licked the wooden bowl for the last specks of porridge.

What was his crime? Had the city guards been starving him for months?

Smiling in the spotlight, the mage picked up a small globe of pale green gla.s.s. With one hand, she gestured to the city guard that he should stand aside. The nervous soldier retreated to the other corner.

Lightly, the mage lobbed the globe at the prisoner. It broke on the floor with a quiet tinkle.

A whirling mist of green spun from the fragments, rose, expanded, and, like a hunting hawk, zoomed at the prisoner. The man yelped as the magic touched him. Instantly the green mist turned to a layer of slime that spread on contact. The green raced up the man's thin arms, spilled over his shoulders, chased down his skinny body and closed over his head like a hood. Within seconds, the man was encased in shimmering green-and was suffocating.

Candlemas could see through the slime, see the man's eyes bulge, see his mouth gape in surprise.

But as soon as it did, the green coating flowed into his mouth. With slimy hands the man grabbed his green slick throat, clawed at his mouth, pounded his chest for air. He thrashed, beat his face against the floor, kicked and jerked, all uselessly.

Karsus hopped in place, fists in the air. "Wonderful! Even better than we hoped! Do you see, Candlemas? Candlemas is my new special friend, everyone! Do you see? The heavy magic takes the shape of whatever it touches! So when he opened his mouth, it slipped right inside to coat his throat- all the way to his lungs! Oh, won't the city guard be pleased. This is just the thing they need to halt the food riots."

Food riots? thought Candlemas.

Lungs emptied of air, the prisoner didn't suffer long. Within a minute his twitching stopped. And as with the colorspray magic, the green heavy magic gradually flowed off him and evaporated.

Chuckling, Karsus went over the details. Why was the magic green? The city had requested it be colored, not clear, so they could identify it more quickly in a mob. Karsus suggested it be changed to blue, his favorite color, and the blonde mage a.s.sured him it would be done.

Again, Candlemas jogged as Karsus sped from the room. But now his feet dragged, as if part of him were reluctant to keep up. Indeed, his brain kept asking, What had the prisoner done to deserve such a horrid fate? And how many more folk would it be used against?

The day wore on. Candlemas was exhausted, but Karsus never flagged. Indeed, as he displayed more wonders to his "new special friend," he grew more animated, until he jabbered nonstop and Candlemas's ears rang. Certainly he saw wonders, only some of which he even understood. In a separate, heavily guarded building, he watched teams of mages chant rhythmically to summon monsters. Lined in huge cages were things Candlemas had never known existed. A weird antelope with a brown-checkered head but a white-striped body. A twisted goblin-thing like a bag of broken bones covered with warts. A tank of fish, some thin as axe blades with luminous...o...b.. of cold light. A three-foot salamander with a toothless mouth at either end. Birds with brilliant tails longer than their bodies. And much, much more. Karsus examined each, named people in the city who would pay for these freaks for their private zoos, and squealed with delight. Nor was his enthusiasm dampened when told that one conjured beast had howled so loud that three mages died from the sound before a guard speared the creature to death. Karsus waved their deaths away as necessary to research. Tugging one mage aside, Candlemas asked where the beasts were summoned from, but no one knew or cared.

Candlemas shook his head in disbelief.

He witnessed demonstrations of spells and artifacts until he was dizzy. A tin triangle that shattered steel with its ping. A pair of mirrors that reflected one's image into infinity, but also showed one's age from infancy to old age, or in one mage's case, no image at all beyond age forty. A taunt spell that enraged another starved prisoner to beat herself senseless against iron bars. A worldweave spell that distorted all sizes and distances, until Candlemas looked like a mouse standing alongside Karsus's dirty foot. And much, much more, including a circular workroom where sixty mages a.n.a.lyzed a single object: the shooting star Candlemas and Sunbright had dug up.

Finally, when he could see the night sky through high windows, Karsus called a halt. Snapping his fingers, he summoned a page to lead Candlemas to his chambers. The stocky mage expected a room, and was grateful for the hospitality. He was astonished when escorted into a suite of rooms bigger than his workshop in Delia. There was, in fact, an entire household of fourteen servants, cooks, and maids awaiting his single word. Stunned, Candlemas called for a loaf of bread, cheese, and wine, and sat in a brocaded chair before a roaring fire. A maid drew off his sandals, a manservant washed his feet. He was so tired he could barely munch the bread-they'd brought five different loaves on a silver tray- and the wine made him groggy.

But he did ask the manservant, "Please, a moment. Karsus says I'm his 'special friend' because I've brought him a shooting star. But how many 'special friends' does he have?"

The butler tidied up the tray. Very carefully, he offered, "Karsus has many friends, for everyone loves him. But he always has just one 'special friend' at a time. Sometimes for a month, sometimes for only a day. One never knows."

Candlemas watched the man walk away, silent on a thick, embroidered rug. "Oh.. . ."

Drifting off in the soft chair, he wondered what had happened to Sunbright. And what would happen to him.

The next morning, after climbing out of voluminous sheets and quilts, eating an opulent breakfast, and dressing in a fine short robe of brown and red brocade hand st.i.tched for him that very night, Candlemas searched for Karsus but failed to find him. No one knew where he was, a common occurrence. Candlemas welcomed the fact, actually, for it gave him time to orient himself. Asking around in the vast echoing and ornate halls, he found a library run by a lesser mage with a squint and fuzzy red hair. She showed him racks of arcane books, mundane histories, and other such ephemera.

Candlemas studied them all ravenously. He had three hundred and fifty-eight years' worth of catching up to do.

The more he read, the more disturbed he became.

It was late in the afternoon when a page cleared his throat and bowed to Candlemas. "Milord?"

"Eh?" Candlemas grumbled, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes. "What is it? You're not with ..."

He stared. The young man wore a neat outfit of black-and-white like a jaybird's, not the shiny blues and greens of Karsus's household. Candlemas realized what the boy resembled when he was offered a card. On it was drawn a single black P with a white star in the loop.

"Is that ...?"

"Yes, milord. She bids you come right away. I'm to escort you."

Candlemas looked for irony in the lad's voice, found none, sighed and stood up.

"Very well, then," Candlemas sighed. "Lead on."

Near Castle Karsus's main gate-they walked half a mile through three linked mansions to reach them-waited a coach-and-four. The coach was white, piped with black, as were the coachmen and footmen. The horses were black with white blazes and exact white rings around their middles.

Candlemas wondered if they were bred that way or painted. He muttered, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Once Candlemas had crawled inside, the coach rattled through the streets, whip cracking to clear the way. Outside for the first time, Candlemas got his first look at the city. Below this high hill, where Castle Karsus was sprinkled like a handful of c.o.c.ked dice, lay the enclave, or city, of Karsus.

Candlemas knew he was atop an inverted, floating mountain, and in the far distance saw other mountains, yet he was hard put to discern the drop-off. Karsus was more like a floating mountain range. And the buildings! Towers fine as pencils, elongated tubes that arched to meet high overhead, delicate traceries like crystal spiderwebs that spun in all directions, dozens of onion-shaped minarets in a row, each more fantastic than the last. The streets were uniformly paved with even cobblestones, gasglobes stood poised to light every corner, and parks and gardens interspersed the high walls around gorgeous mansions. Public fixtures were just as beautiful, from a shimmering fountain a hundred feet tall to bridges that looked like silver jewelry.

All told, the Karsus enclave made Castle Delia look like a lily pad. And Candlemas felt like a frog atop it, backward, ugly, and ignorant. What he'd seen in Karsus's workshops and read about in histories had humbled him. The lowest apprentice sweating in the workshops cleaning jars knew more than he ever would-probably as much as Lady Polaris had known when she was master of Castle Delia.

But he'd know more soon.

The carriage finally stopped by a black iron fence studded with white dots to resemble pearls.

Beyond was a mansion of black stone and white mortar. But it took a while before Candlemas was admitted.

Oddly, the coach stopped on the wide avenue, and Candlemas was bidden out by a footman.

Amidst a flurry of apologies, Candlemas was searched, groped by two white-gloved hands. Only then was he allowed inside the gate, where he was searched again by a pair of black-and-white guards, then escorted to the front doors.

Inside the mansion, the search was repeated, though more extensively. To an unbelievable degree.

Braced by two guards, Candlemas was directed into a small room and ordered to strip. Wondering, he did so, even removing his loincloth. He was given a black-and-white robe, but the search continued. A maid went through his hair and beard with a comb, while a butler inspected each of his fingers, even p.r.i.c.king them with a needle to draw blood. Candlemas would have protested but for shock. After an inspection of his teeth, each one sounded with a tiny hammer, he was finally marched down a long corridor, handed to two more guards, marched farther, and so on.

Eventually he reached the top floor. A maid said, "Lady Polaris awaits you," and opened the door.

Wondering, Candlemas went in. He was already half shielding his eyes. Remembering how stunningly beautiful Polaris had been three centuries ago, he imagined she must resemble a G.o.ddess these days.

So his mouth fell open in shock as he entered the chamber.

The light was dim, filtered through thick white curtains. The room was vast but cluttered, mostly with couches and low tables. At the far end of the room, reposing on a wide couch heaped with pillows, was someone who reminded Candlemas, vaguely, of Lady Polaris.

Except she was huge. Ma.s.sively, obscenely fat.

The formerly beautiful face was lost in rolls of suet. Jowls suited to a hog framed deep-rooted, pouchy eyes and protruding lips. Her frost-blue eyes were lost under triple lids. Her hair looked dry enough to break, like frosted gra.s.s. Her body sprawled on the cushions, propped in a dozen places by flat pillows. From under her black gown stuck an ankle like a ham.

"Candlemas!" Even her voice dripped with fat, curdled and choked, unlike her cool tones of centuries gone by. Her skin, Candlemas saw as his eyes adjusted, was blotchy and veined from years of debauchery and gout, too much wine and fatty food. "Candlemas! You wretch! Where have you been? Have you been searched?"

Reeling with shock, the pudgy mage found it hard to respond. Slowly, he grasped her point. He and Sunbright had disappeared three hundred and fifty-eight years ago and had never been seen or heard from again (he supposed). Until today.

"Yes, I was. Um ..." he groped for a chair as he groped for words, but found only piles of pillows. Begging pardon, he sank onto them. He couldn't stop staring at his transformed liege.