'What was all that about?' Jurrai asked.

'That man,' Temrai answered, 'wanted me to make him a sword.'

Jurrai shrugged. 'More fool him.'

Temrai turned round in his saddle, and Jurrai saw by the torchlight reflected on the water that there were tears running down Temrai's face. 'Jurrai, do you realise who he was?'

'A drunk. Oh, yes, an advocate, whatever that means. I got the impression he's some sort of hired fighter.'

'That's what he is now. Think, Jurrai; a man who knows about silver soldering, says he learnt about it twelve years ago. Work it out, Jurrai.'

A moment's thought; then Jurrai swore under his breath. 'Maxen's raiders,' he muttered. 'You think he was one of them?'

'Twelve years, Jurrai. Someone who learnt about silver soldering on the plains. And he was no merchant, believe me.'

'Dear gods. If I'd been you I'd have killed him where he stood.'

Temrai shook his head and smiled. 'He'll keep. Actually, he did me a good turn. Do you know, I've been here so long I'd nearly forgotten what I came for.'

Jurrai clicked his tongue. 'I doubt that's possible,' he said.

'I did say nearly,' Temrai replied. (Forget Maxen? No, he was a stain that couldn't be shifted, no matter how often you washed or how hard you rubbed with the pumice. Twelve years and he was still there, sunk into the fibres, along with the smell of burning bone and hair, like the lingering scent of cedar in a clothes-press.) 'Everyone else in the arsenal takes their shirt off to work, because of the heat. Not me.' He half-wriggled out of his coat and pulled his shirt down over one shoulder, to reveal the edge of a shiny white scar. 'I didn't fancy explaining where that came from, not when we were all getting along so well.' He slipped his shirt and coat back on - Jurrai noticed his slight clumsiness; been out of the saddle too long - and pulled his collar tight around his neck, then turned round to look at the lamps burning on either side of the gateway. 'I'm going to bar those gates from the outside when I burn the city, Jurrai, it's the least I can do. It's a pity,' he added, in the tone of voice of someone throwing out a still-wearable pair of trousers, 'I quite like them, really. But it's got to be done, and on balance I'd rather it was me that did it than some stranger.'

Jurrai looked at him, a little apprehensively. 'It's what your father would have wanted,' he said awkwardly.

'I dare say,' Temrai replied wearily. 'He was bloodthirsty when he was young, weak when he first became the chief, and pretty well bunged up with frustration and hate the rest of his life. He could never have burnt Perimadeia. But I will.'

His companion regarded him steadily. 'You reckon?' he said.

'Oh, yes. Now they've been kind enough to show me how.'

CHAPTER SIX.

Trawl the streets of the city, Gannadius had said. Walk down every thoroughfare and through every square till you feel that tug on the reins that means you've found the natural. It's the only way.

Quite possibly true, Alexius muttered to himself, sitting on the steps of a fountain with his left boot in his hand, but my feet hurt. And what they'll say if ever they find out I've spent the last three days walking the streets . . .

Was it possible, he wondered, that he'd got the whole thing completely out of proportion? True, he was still getting the sudden attacks - blinding headaches, sweating fevers, sharp pains in his chest and legs, vomiting and diarrhoea - but they were becoming less severe and less frequent, and he was at last beginning to sleep again, now that the dreams were fading. Triple-reinforced wards and protective fields were probably helping, though the strain of keeping them up was possibly worse for him than the attacks themselves, and even then he had the feeling they wouldn't have done any significant good without Gannadius working virtually full-time on them as well. It was more likely, he felt, that the curse itself was slowly starting to decay, helped no doubt by Loredan's miraculous survival of the fight with Alvise and the fact that he'd apparently quit the profession. As he became steadily less vulnerable to the curse, so it declined for lack of something to feed on. Indeed, Alexius was toying with the idea of trying to break it up altogether; feasible, he felt certain, although of course it had never been done before.

No, he reflected, pulling the boot slowly over his heat-swollen foot, that's not the way. The only real hope lay in finding this dratted natural, and that was proving harder even than he'd expected. Maybe he had left the city, as Gannadius was sure he had. Alexius devoutly hoped he hadn't; having to put up with all this for the rest of his life wasn't an especially cheerful thought.

Wouldn't it be nice, he said to himself, if I could really do magic? I'd have a locomotion spell to carry me about, for one thing, and the hell with all this walking. Or, better still, I'd scry the pest out from the comfort of my cell and drop a thunderbolt on him. Of course, if I could do magic, I wouldn't need to be doing any of this; I'd just take the curse to bits and get rid of it, and everyone'd be happy then. Except that loathsome and elusive girl who got me into this in the first place; and her happiness no longer concerns me all that much. Should've listened to what my mother told me about talking to strange women.

In the workshop across the street, two men were building a mechanical saw, to be installed in the sawmills down by the flood stream. The blade was held vertically, linked to a waterwheel at the bottom by a crankshaft and suspended at the top from a thick stave of yew, cut like a bowstave so as to have sapwood on top and heartwood underneath; this acted as a spring, drawing the blade up to make its cut through a log fed horizontally against it along a platform of rollers. Each turn of the waterwheel drew the sawblade down again, and then assisted the cut as the crank drove it upwards on the return stroke, giving the cut the same measured force that two men would achieve on either end of a long handsaw. The two carpenters were finishing off the final stage, fitting two slanting struts to hold up the gallows on which the yew spring was mounted.

No engineer himself, Alexius could still appreciate the design, the like of which he hadn't come across before. Another new machine, then, marking an improvement, most likely leading to increased productivity and cheaper, better-sawn planks. For a brief moment he felt incredibly jealous; why couldn't he spend his life in a craft where things could be improved, made better by a little intelligent thought and practical application? All over the city, men were working on projects like this; you could see them in every square, marking out designs in the dirt with a stick or scratching them on the back of a board with a nail, forever seeking a better way, more economical, more graceful, more pleasing to the eye. But the Patriarch of Perimadeia spent his life explaining that magic didn't work, the Principle was largely incomprehensible, and even the effects that could reliably be made to perform had no real practical use. And here he was in silk and linen, while the busy carpenters wore coarse wool and went barefoot.

Call themselves wizards? Frauds. Yah! Run the lot of 'em out of town on a handcart.

The two craftsmen finished driving in the last few dowels, and the older man sent his assistant to hand-crank the wheel for a test run. Hard work, it looked like, turning the handle; so much more sensible to make falling water do the job. Now here, if you liked, was an example of the Principle truly being put to good, productive use. The young man grunted, the wood groaned under the stress, and the wheel turned.

With an alarming crack, the yew spring snapped neatly in two. The saw-blade, no longer supported at the top, slowly toppled and fell sideways, ripping the crankshaft away from the wheel and sending the younger man diving frantically out of the way. He just made it; an inch or so more, and it'd have landed across his shoulders. At once the older man started swearing, and the young man swore back, shook his fist at his master, and gave the wooden frame a savage kick, which hurt his foot rather more than it did the machine. They were still yelling and cursing as Alexius, feeling rather more at peace with himself than he had been a minute or so ago, stood up and set off on his quest.

He was passing a locksmith's shop in the next square over when he felt the tug. It was nothing like what he'd expected, but it was unmistakable; an urgent pressure on his mind, like the feeling in the air when a thunderstorm is long overdue, except that it was massively concentrated in the proportion of say, cider to applejack. The sides of his head began to ache.

He stopped at once, certain that the source of the feeling was inside the shop. A glance through the doorway revealed the locksmith, an elderly man Alexius had once bought a padlock from (not him, then) and a man and a woman who were obviously foreigners. Interesting; so Gannadius' theory seemed to be correct after all.

The man was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and a friendly, slightly comical face. The woman, obviously his twin sister - he remembered something he'd read about twins and naturals a long time ago, an attractive theory about two minds with an inherent, spontaneous empathy somehow attracting the Principle, in the same way copper attracts lightning - was strikingly similar, yet at the same time beautiful where her brother was, at best, odd-looking. When Alexius glanced at her, the sides of his head throbbed painfully. So.

It would have been helpful, he realised, to have anticipated this moment and to have worked out in advance what he was going to say. There was, however, a reasonable chance that the locksmith would recognise him and greet him in a manner that would make it plain to a foreign visitor that they were in the presence of one of the local sights. He stuck his hand in his pocket, checked that he had some money with him and went into the shop.

It began well. The locksmith and the male foreigner had been engaged in some sort of complicated negotiation, and a distraction was apparently to the locksmith's tactical advantage, for he immediately broke off and made a show of welcoming his distinguished visitor, pointedly asking Alexius if the padlock he'd bought from him had been satisfactory. The words By Appointment to the Patriarch of Perimadeia seemed to hang in the air like sea mist in the early morning.

The foreigners exchanged glances. It was working.

'Don't let me interrupt,' Alexius said. 'I'm in no particular hurry.'

After a moment's hesitation, the foreigner and the locksmith resumed their duel, which seemed to be about a special rate for four dozen padlocks with keys and fixings. Alexius was just wondering how to start up a conversation with the female when he found it wasn't going to be necessary.

'Excuse me,' she said, 'but I was wondering. I've heard ever so much about you, and what you do. Is it really true you can do magic?'

It would have been better if his head wasn't hurting so much, but he managed to tune out the discomfort. He smiled.

'Not really,' he said. 'It's true that the philosophical and scientific researches we engage in offer us some rather abstruse insights into principles of nature that, generally speaking, the layman cannot observe for himself; in consequence, and purely incidentally to what we actually set out to do, we can perform certain, well, let's call them effects, which lay observers confuse with magic. But we can't change lead into gold or men into frogs, or fly through the air or hurl lightning.'

It took her a while to translate all that; then she looked a little disappointed. 'Oh,' she said. 'I've always wanted to meet a real magician. Oh, I'm sorry. That sounded awfully rude.'

Alexius' cue to smile avuncularly. 'Not at all,' he said. 'I've always wanted to meet one too. But the nearest I'm ever likely to get to a real magician is what we call a natural.'

'Oh? What's that?'

Out of the corner of his eye, Alexius observed the state of the negotiation; if anything, it was getting more entrenched. His head was splitting- She's doing this. She wants to talk to me without being interrupted, so she's making the deal get complicated. How-?

'Ah,' he said. 'I wish I knew. You see, naturals are very rare, and the chances of actually encountering one are very small, at least here, in the city. We just don't seem to produce them locally.'

'I see. Where do they come from, then?'

Alexius raised an eyebrow. 'Oddly enough,' he improvised, 'a surprising number of the documented instances appear to have originated on the Island. Am I right in assuming that you-?'

The girl beamed. 'That's right,' she said, 'that's where we're from. Oh, I suppose it must be obvious,' she added, 'from our accents and clothes and such. It's odd, though, because I've never heard of any of our people being able to do magic.'

'That word again,' Alexius said. 'The point is that you could live in the same town as a natural for fifty years and never even guess. The most that a natural can do is make things happen - perfectly ordinary, everyday things, nothing anybody would notice; a slate sliding off a roof, two men falling out over the price of milk - but he would make them happen. Quite possibly,' he added, involuntarily massaging his temples, 'without even knowing it.'

'Fancy,' the girl said. 'So I could be one myself and never even know?'

The pain was no longer an irritation; it was downright intolerable, and it was as much as Alexius could do to keep it from showing. Even so, he couldn't help feeling that this was all too easy.

'It's possible,' he said. 'Extraordinarily unlikely, of course, simply because there are so few-'

'That you know about,' the girl interrupted. 'What I mean is, if what they do is just ordinary things, as opposed to raising storms and turning people into frogs, how would you know? Or could someone like you recognise one if you met one?'

Perhaps, Alexius wondered, the pain is a sort of diversionary tactic, to keep me so preoccupied that I won't realise I'm being led by the nose. But why would she want to?

'Never having met one, I wouldn't know. That's the point, you see; the phenomenon is so rare that next to nothing is known about it. For all I know,' he added, all too aware that potentially he was walking into the most desperate ambush - but all he wanted was for this to be over so that he could take his head away and stop it hurting - 'For all I know, every one in six Islanders, or one in twelve, or any proportion you like; perhaps all Islanders have the ability to a greater or lesser extent. It's possible, but of course nobody's researched the point yet. It would be an interesting study,' he added, with as much conviction as he could muster.

'Would it?' The girl looked interested, pleased. 'Then how'd it be if - No, please forget I spoke. I'm sure you're very busy.'

As he replied to the effect that if she was volunteering herself and her brother as specimens for study, he and his colleague would be only too delighted, Alexius could almost feel the hook catch in his lip. It was too late now, of course, and this damned headache- 'Assuming,' he added, 'that your brother could spare the time-'

'Oh, we hadn't got anything planned for this afternoon. Venart,' she added, nudging him in the ribs, 'we aren't busy this afternoon, are we?'

'What? Oh, no. At least, weren't we going to have a look round the second city? I thought you wanted to see the Academy and-'

'In that case,' Alexius said, and he could almost feel strings pulling him, like a wooden puppet in a children's show, 'please allow me to be your guide. There are a number of features of interest not open to the general public-'

'Oh, how wonderful!' The girl's eyes were shining, and the pain in his head-'Oh, Venart, do let's! It'd be such fun.'

Not long afterwards, Alexius escorted his two new companions through the second-level gate. Every time he took a step, it was like jarring a broken bone. One small consolation: fairly soon, Gannadius was going to have a bad headache as well. On balance, he felt it would serve him right.

After a day's ride, Temrai was stiff and sore, although he dared not admit it. He was, after all, the chief of a nation of horsemen.

'We'll stop here,' he announced, when the pain at the base of his spine became more than he could bear. 'There's water, and we can camp under the trees.'

Jurrai shrugged. 'There's an hour more of daylight,' he replied. 'I was thinking we could make Okba ford before dark if we pressed on.'

'We'll stop here.'

'All right.' Jurrai reined in and slid off the back of his horse, landing easily on his toes. I could do that once, Temrai reflected in awe. Only a few months ago, I could do that. Instead, he waited until his companion's back was turned before levering himself off the horse and alighting awkwardly on the side of his left foot.

Interesting, he reflected; I've known Jurrai since I was a kid and he was my father's First Rider. Gods, how I looked up to him then; and now here he is, doing what I tell him to.

He decided to experiment.

'Jurrai,' he said, as casually as he could manage. 'Run and fill my water bottle, would you?' He held the bottle out, fully expecting a clip round the ear. Instead, Jurrai took it without a word and ran - yes, ran, after a hard day's ride - down to the stream. Amazing, Temrai thought; I can order him about, almost as if I was my father . . .

Yes. Well, just because I can doesn't mean I have to. 'It's all right,' he called out, as Jurrai set about picking up sticks for the fire. 'I'll do that. You see to the horses.'

There was a grin on Jurrai's face as he tied the hobbles and took off the bridles; of course, he knows me as well as I know myself, should do after all these years. Except he doesn't know what happened while I was in the city. Not that there's all that much to know.

'Well, then,' he said, once the fire was glowing (at least I can still light a fire; thank the gods for that) and they'd built the low wall of dry thorns that no traveller on the plains would think of neglecting when sleeping away from the caravan. 'You'd better fill me in on what's been happening.'

'Apart from the main thing, not much,' Jurrai replied, and at once embarked on a succinct but nonetheless interminable report that covered the state of the herd (including losses from wolves, disease, straying and beasts swept away in river crossings), old horses lost, new geldings broken in, milk yields, cheese production, the number of hides cured, tanned and in store; sundry quarrels, fights, conspiracies, adulteries, betrothals; the results of horse races, polo matches, chess games, archery tournaments and musical contests; a brief itinerary, with reports on the state of important roads, fords and mountain passes; old folk dead, children born, a few fatal accidents, injuries serious and trivial, illnesses lingering and likely to prove terminal; one man blinded for hamstringing his enemy's horse; two tents blown away by a freak wind, all losses and damage made up by special dispensation of the chief from clan reserves; an abortive raid by bandits forestalled by an observant herd-boy (duly commended for his actions and rewarded with a horse from the chief's own herd), a few arrows loosed, no stock lost or men hurt on either side.

'And that's about it,' he concluded, taking a sip of water from his bottle. 'How about you? I get the impression you got everything you went for.'

Temrai nodded. 'If I say it's going to be easy,' he said, 'the gods'll hear and it won't. Let's say I've got a reasonable idea of what's got to be done.'

'And the city?' Jurrai went on, avoiding his eye. 'What about it? What's it really like?'

'Ah.' Temrai shook his head. 'Jurrai, you just won't believe what it's really like. It's . . .' He hesitated. 'It's different,' he said.

'Just different?'

'Really different.' Temrai gestured despairingly. 'In small ways mostly, except for the really big differences, of course.'

'Lord Temrai,' Jurrai interrupted, his voice low and faintly sarcastic, 'I find it hard to believe that a mere three months among the enemy have made you forget completely how to file a coherent report.'

Temrai looked up; angry at first, then ashamed of his anger. The voice had been his father's, the soft, sardonic tone that cut more deeply than a hazel switch. He nodded abruptly.

'You're right,' he said. 'Very well, then. It'll be good practice for when we get back.' He paused, and concentrated for a moment. 'The walls of the City of the Sword on the sides that face the confluence of the two rivers are approximately forty-two feet high, eighteen feet thick at the base and fifteen at the top, so that two carts can pass each other on the walkway. There are watchtowers every hundred and fifty yards, each tower rising a further twenty-four feet above the line of the ramparts and capable of providing full cover for a dozen archers, a siege engine and a full crew of engineers. Each tower carries a store of fifteen hundred arrows and fifty projectiles for the engine, and guards the stairway connecting the rampart walkway with the ground.

'The four gates on the landward side are each flanked with bastions, capable of accommodating two hundred archers, five of the ordinary siege engines and one of the heavier sort for use against siege towers and rams. The bridges that cross the rivers end in drawbridges, and the water is something in the order of twenty feet deep, although the bottom is reasonably firm. The walls and towers are in good repair, the drawbridge mechanisms are well-maintained and adequately shielded, and the engines are frequently examined and used for target practice by permanently assigned crews...'

Jurrai nodded. 'Carry on,' he said.

'Once inside the walls,' Temrai continued, 'an invading force would be faced with severe difficulty in making an orderly advance in the event that the lower city is diligently defended. The streets are narrow enough to be readily blocked, and the arrangement of side streets and alleys would make it a relatively simple matter for an insurgent force to be outflanked and surrounded with very little warning. Setting fire to the lower city would probably result in the insurgents being trapped and unable to escape.

'The defences are designed to be held by a relatively small number of men, and any number significantly above the optimum would most likely prove a hindrance rather than a help. I would put the optimum at roughly five thousand archers and three thousand men-at-arms, which more or less agrees with the numbers of trained men on standby at any given time. This force can be mobilised and in position within twenty minutes of the alarm being raised; there are also reserves of some ten thousand able-bodied men with the relevant training and equipment. As for military stores of all kinds, I wasn't able to get any definite information, probably because none exists; they've been stockpiling for many years, and for all practical purposes the stores can be regarded as infinite, leaving aside the daily production capacity of the city arsenal.'

'All right,' Jurrai grunted. 'But will they fight?'

Temrai nodded. 'Oh, yes,' he said. 'No question of that. They are not an overtly warlike people, but their history is full of sieges and attempted assaults both by land and sea. They are brought up from childhood to expect attacks - the most recent attempt was thirty years ago, when an armada of significant size and quality was dispatched by a coalition of states from the western cities, which was effectively destroyed by the long-range siege engines installed on the sea walls before the ships were able to come within bowshot. They claim to have sunk over two hundred vessels in the course of one day, and the claim is credible if you've seen the engines.'

'So,' Jurrai said, 'suppose you've managed to force the lower city. What then?'

Temrai nodded. 'The wall dividing the lower city from the second city is not as tall or as thick as the land wall, but the gradient on which it stands and the crowded nature of the buildings at its foot make it, if anything, a more daunting proposition. The watchtowers are of a similar pattern, and are placed at intervals of a hundred yards; they hold only a token garrison, but are fully supplied with arrows and other stores. The main granaries are all in the second city, as are the principal cisterns from which the lower city draws its water. In an emergency, there would be enough room for the entire population to withdraw to the second city should it prove necessary to evacuate, and plans for this contingency have been in existence for many years and are well-known to the citizens, although there hasn't been a full evacuation drill for some years. About the upper city I have no information, as only a few high-ranking officials are allowed to go there; there are rumoured to be large rainwater tanks and separate granaries up there, and a permanent garrison of elite troops who form the Emperor's personal guard.'

'I see,' Jurrai said, poking the fire with a long stick. 'And you reckon you've worked out a way of prising this strongbox open?'

'Not me,' Temrai replied with a grin. 'They did it themselves, years ago. Then they forgot they'd done it.' He sighed, and lay back on his saddle. 'That's the Perimadeians for you. Too clever for their own good.'

'So? Are you going to let me in on the secret, or have I got to wait till the council?'

'You'll wait rather longer than that,' Temrai replied with a yawn. 'You'll know soon enough, believe me. Actually, it's all pretty simple.'

Jurrai grunted, and broke off a handful of bread. 'Beats me how they can live on this stuff,' he said. 'It bloats you out and then you feel hungry again soon after.'

'You get used to it,' Temrai said drowsily. 'Only the rich can afford meat more than once or twice a month, and even then it's salted and spiced to buggery. You can have all the cheese you can eat for two coppers, but it doesn't taste of anything. Oh, and they eat fish.'

'So I've heard,' Jurrai replied, frowning. 'I had fish once. Won't forget that in a hurry. They're welcome to it.'

'Theirs comes from the sea,' Temrai murmured, his eyes closed. 'Mostly it's dried and salted, or else they smoke it. You get used to that, too. It's cheap.'