Shar patted him on the cheek, then departed with a smile, Hayden and Omen in her wake. Ekko shook his head slowly as he pa.s.sed Indris, a smile sketched on his thin lips.

"Shar is quite something," Ekko rumbled.

"Want her?" Indris asked caustically.

"I heard that." Shar's voice came from up the stairs.

He knew when to quit. With a last quick look around the gloomy cabin, Indris followed his friends out into the warm afternoon air.

It had not taken long to reach the Wine Dark River where it coasted down the lazy waters of the Anqorat River delta. There were other boats nearby, feluccas, skiffs, and water taxis that plied the silt-stained waters before the Anqorat poured, ink-like, into the Marble Sea.

The floating wine house was comfortably filled. He and his friends sat on cushions under an awning on the top deck, where the breeze was cool and their conversation would not be overheard.

Hayden, Omen, and Ekko took positions around the table, eyes intent on everything around them. Their forbidding expressions discouraged any casual patron from straying too close.

Roshana soon arrived with Nehrun in tow. Femensetri had decided to come with them, though she had forgone her usual Sq ca.s.sock and over-robe for a traditional silk jacket, kilt, and black silk boots. Her hair was braided, her mindstone camouflaged amid the black pearls and silver links of the circlet about her brow. There was no sign of her crook, though Indris knew it would be somewhere within easy reach.

Mari arrived shortly after the others had taken their seats. She sat at a vacant place at Indris's left hand, while Shar sat to his right. An apoplectic Nehrun reached for the knife at his side.

"Nehrun!" Indris glared at his cousin.

"What?" his cousin said belligerently. Mari locked her eyes on Nehrun; her lips quirked in a tiny smile. Nehrun snarled, "It's an Erebus! Why are you wasting my time? Roshana was a little light on the details. I've a father to find and a House to run in his absence."

"That sounds fascinating," Mari drawled. "Why don't you tell me how that's going, and we can compare your version with what I know?"

"On the topic of your father, I've questions for you, boy." Femensetri's voice was low and hard, her expression grim. "Seems you've been busy making friends in places Ariskander'd hardly approve of."

Nehrun shot to his feet, face drained of color. Roshana took his wrist in a white-knuckled grip that clearly caused her brother some pain. "Sit yourself down, Nehrun. Indris is here to help. You'd do well to let him."

He looked around at the others like a cornered dog. "How dare you-"

"We'll talk about who dares what very soon," Indris said quietly. "Now sit yourself down. Mari has information that might help us find Ariskander."

"Very well!" Nehrun held up trembling hands up to silence the Scholar Marshal. "I'll hear what this bit...what Pah-Mariam has to say."

Mari began the tale of what occurred after she left Samyala, though she did not speak to the hours she and Indris had spent in each other's arms. From Nehrun's nervousness, Indris had the impression Mari was omitting other details, though no doubt she had her reasons. She had not been welcomed yet into her father's schemes, though was sure she would be. Mari suspected she was being watched, though she was relatively certain she had eluded pursuit on her way to the Wine Dark River.

"I implicated the logical suspects in the plot," Mari offered. "Nazarafine, Kembe, Siamak, and Femensetri. I know the House of Pearl is prided for its neutrality, so I left Ziaire's name out of it. My father knows Indris is alive and that he'll attempt to rescue Ariskander."

"His reaction?" Femensetri said over the surprised protests of Nehrun and Rosha.

"What we expected." She smiled at Indris. "But there's more. My father is taking steps to ensure Nehrun won't be Awakened."

"That lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Nehrun growled. He clenched his fists until his knuckles and fingers whitened. "I should never-"

"Should never have what?" Rosha asked. Nehrun settled deeper into seat, lips turned in a sullen curve.

Mari went on to tell them how Thufan had been charged with collecting an Angothic Spirit Casque from Teymoud, which would then be taken to where Ariskander was being held in the Rmarq. Indris noted Femensetri's surprised expression at the mention of the casque, though the Stormbringer did not say anything. What point was there in frightening the others? Mari went on to give them the time and place where the casque would be collected.

"How did you discover all this?" Femensetri's voice held an undertone of approval.

"There are old, disused tunnels snaking through the residential chambers of the villa we're in," Mari said. "Most of the entrances have been sealed, though once you're inside the suites, it's relatively easy to get around. They're small but can be navigated. You can learn a lot if you don't mind tight s.p.a.ces and the dark."

"Won't the others find them?" Rosha asked.

"Possibly. Thufan probably already has, but he trusts the people who sleep in those rooms anyway. If not, it's my risk to take."

"Mariam, you said the Great House of Erebus has parts of a Torque Spindle in its possession?" Femensetri scowled at Indris. "That's something we didn't know."

"It's in parts, though between Kasra and Brede they'll no doubt get it working." Mari sipped her drink.

"Brede, that shemdet kahouri," Femensetri snarled in High Avn. "Rotten cow should've taken her own life rather than allowed herself to be broken by the Angothic Witches."

"What?" Mari blurted, her eyes darting between Indris and Femensetri. "She was-"

"Yes," Femensetri muttered. "Brede was a very promising librarian of the Sq Order of Scholars. She was past ready to undertake the trials of knighthood when she was captured in Angoth and lost to us. Indris, you should do something about her if you get the chance."

"There's always something..." he mumbled into his drink.

"Eh?" Femensetri eyed him darkly.

"Nothing."

"What are you going to do, Indris?" Rosha asked.

Indris would not be drawn out. "The less you know, the less you can reveal."

"I'm going with you," Nehrun said stubbornly. He avoided Rosha's and Femensetri's angry stares.

"Whatever for?" Hayden drawled from his place nearby. "You ain't going to have a chance to tell Corajidin about what we'll be doing anyway."

Nehrun glared at the old man. "Ignorant dung-heel! What are you accusing me of? None of this is my fault!"

"I suspect it's all your fault," Indris countered. "Corajidin took your father for reasons of his own, but you gave him the opportunity. You've been profoundly stupid, Nehrun. You'll be lucky to walk away from this alive."

"Of course I'll walk away-"

"Don't be so sure," Rosha countered. She turned to Indris. "I'll go with you."

"Neither of you will come with us," Shar corrected. "Either one of you suddenly vanishing will attract notice. Omen, Hayden, Indris, and I know what needs to be done. With Ekko's help we're confident we can find Ariskander and Far-ad-din and bring them home. Besides, you'll be needed here."

"For what?" Rosha asked.

"To help depose Corajidin," Indris said. "He must be removed from power quietly and as close to legally as possible. He murdered the Asrahn and abducted a rahn of a Great House. On top of that, whether he's giving explicit orders to his agents or not, power is being abused here."

"Couldn't we wait until the next a.s.sembly?" Mari asked, troubled. "My father is so ill he'll fail the ritual, which means the problem will resolve itself."

Femensetri shook her head. "I appreciate your feelings in the matter, girl, but your father has proven himself capable of some heinous crimes. Regicide? Abduction of his peers? No, he needs to be dealt with sooner than the next a.s.sembly."

"We'll do what we can while Indris and his friends go into the Rmarq." Rosha almost shuddered at the name. The Rmarq. The place where nightmares walked.

"If Ariskander's there, we'll find him." Indris smiled at his cousin, though his heart was not in it. "And Far-ad-din."

Indris made his farewells. His hand lingered perhaps longer than it should have on Mari's arm, though he would have left it there longer if he could. Femensetri placed her hand firmly on Nehrun's shoulder as he made to rise from his seat.

"Not so quick, boy," the Stormbringer said. "You've some explaining to do."

The sun had not quite set when the small entourage arrived at Teymoud's residence.

"Figure that would be them, then." Hayden tapped his finger on the hilt of his broadsword, nodding at a group who approached Teymoud's. "We fixing on some imminent violence to find out where your missing uncle has got to?"

"Nothing quite so colorful." Shar turned her head to follow Hayden's gaze. Belamandris walked at the head of a group of ten people, all armed and lightly armored. Thufan stumped along beside, easily recognizable by his smaller stature and hook for a hand. Belamandris and Thufan climbed the stairs and were admitted to Teymoud's home, while the soldiery loitered outside. "When Belamandris and Thufan come out, we'll follow them. No need to cause a fuss."

"Right you are. He's a vicious-looking little fellow," Hayden commented in pa.s.sing about Thufan. "Figure the merchant will sing for his supper?"

"Teymoud won't try anything." Indris came to join them, a small cup of very thick coffee in his hand. "The man doesn't have the stones to go against Corajidin."

"So we'll track them into the Rmarq? Don't figure I'll be likin' that much. Is it really as adventuresome as you say?"

Indris clapped his old friend on the back.

The clock had struck the Hour of the Hart before another small group arrived in a Spool-Carriage. Three men disembarked, carrying with them a small box not much larger than a grown man's head. They remained inside for almost another hour. Darkness settled like a comfortable quilt over the city. Lanterns were lit, tiny amber beads bright against the black. An hour later the front doors opened again. Belamandris and Thufan walked down the stairs to their fellows, the chest carried between them. Within a few minutes, they had secured the box to a st.u.r.dy-looking pony one of Teymoud's retainers led into the street. Thufan took the lead as the small group headed south, toward Trader's Gate and the long trade road south. Teymoud stood at his door watching the proceedings, the men from the carriage standing at his side.

There were few traders outbound at this time of evening. Roadrangers, as well as the fear of the wetlands the road pa.s.sed dangerously close to, kept most traders close to civilization at night. One large caravan made its serpentine way through the gate as Indris and the others followed Thufan's group. There were approximately thirty wagons in all, driven by a mixture of Avn and Seethe. Some were Spool-driven, though most were drawn by draft horses. Seethe warriors rode brightly colored harts; the antlers of the large beasts were capped with steel, silver, or bra.s.s. Some had their coats dyed crimson or yellow or blue. In the dark the Seethe seemed spectral, with their pale skin and hair and their gla.s.s armor bright with an inner, gemlike radiance.

It was almost the Hour of the Spider, high night, when Thufan and his companions turned west. They forded the Anqorat River near the ruins of an old lodge, its scorched skeleton little more than faded streaks of jade-washed black, gray, and white under moonlight. Flowers had run riot. A cypress tree grew against one wall. The irregular bricks seemed to bend around it, as if the tree gave them the strength they needed to stand. A small tributary fed into the Anqorat River on the west bank, where willows bobbed their sad, s.h.a.ggy heads to the burble of the water.

Indris and the others let the caravan pa.s.s on for a few minutes before they followed Thufan and the others across the river. As they neared the riverbank, the remains of a bridge could be seen, though it was little more than a cl.u.s.ter of rotted stumps that rose like broken teeth from the sluggish river.

"Could you not just..." Ekko waggled his fingers in what was no doubt meant to be an esoteric gesture. Shar laughed while Hayden shook his head, a grin on his weathered face.

"Not an option," Indris said. "Not here, Ekko. I'll use the ahmsah to sense what's out here, but I'll only use it to weave disentropy if I've no other choice. We'll have to rely on Hayden's eyes and your nose and ears to follow our targets, I'm afraid."

He looked out across the dappled patchwork of the Rmarq, senses heightened as they always were here. The Rmarq was flooded with the disentropy produced by all living things. Yet it was inconsistent. In some areas disentropy flowed with natural harmony, a vibrant corona that flowed around everything. There were other places where it spiked, like myriad geysers spouting energy into the air. In others, vortices spanned, shimmering gray-black whirlwinds of power. Wherever the disentropy flowed, it felt tainted, wrong.

People often forgot the Rmarq had not always been a marsh. It had been a lush, fertile, beautiful land before Nasarat fa Amaranjin-the first mahjirahn-had sunk most of the Seethe nation of See-an-way beneath the Marble Sea. The Rmarq was the lowlands nearby. While it had not sunk completely, it had been forever changed as the waters washed away most of what had been built there. For almost a century, the Avn had avoided it as uninhabitable, letting nature take hold over what older cultures had wrought. Yet in time the Avn, like the Seethe before them and the Rm before them, had ultimately been drawn there by the abundant energies that made all manner of arcane science possible.

The barriers between the natural and supernatural worlds were weaker here. The Rmarq had become a place conflicted, twisted, by the clash of impacted laws of existence. If Indris's teachers were correct, it was the tampering of older cultures that had made it so.

At their height the Rm had made the Weaveway, the anch.o.r.ed web of paths that crossed the ahmtesh, so a person could step from one place and arrive at the next, crossing between points in heartbeats. In time the Rm had taught the Elemental Masters how to use the Weaveway. It had proved to be the beginning of the end.

In his last writings, during the great decline of the Rm, Irth discussed the presence of slumbering, antediluvian beings long thought extinct, woken by the eddies of those who explored the fluid infinity of the ahmtesh. As these being had woken, stirred from their ancient places over the centuries, the depths of the ahmtesh had darkened like a hand stirring the sediment in a pond. The old saturnine shadows had called out to those of similar mind. Filled the holes in their hearts with dark dreams. Some, those of power and imagination and influence, had answered the call. The shadows had lengthened. More people had become Lost in the myriad pathways of dark desires, the promises of dreams to be fulfilled. Now those depths were the Drear: a place where one forgot all the good things about oneself and saw only the dark, bitter, melancholy that pooled in the most hidden depths of the soul. And the Rmarq reeked of it.

Such knowledge weighed on Indris as he and the others waded across the river and climbed the shallow west bank. The gra.s.ses close to the river were shorter, softer than the razor-gra.s.s found farther in. As they progressed farther into the marsh, the trees around them grew more fragile. The foliage was not as thick, and the bark hung like peeling skin. Underfoot the ground was spongy, damp. Each of them walked in Hayden's footsteps. First Ekko, whose whiskers twitched almost constantly. Then Indris, followed by Shar, with Omen last in line.

Night settled more firmly around them as the moon straddled the horizon. Up ahead the lantern light from Thufan's group stopped. Hayden settled on his haunches to wait. Within a few minutes the orange haze of a campfire could be seen. Shortly after, the sounds of a viola and a kahi flute rose into the night sky in a rendition of a country reel.

"This near where you saw your king last?" the drover asked Ekko quietly. The sounds of the marshlands made it almost unnecessary to whisper. The kyok...kyok...kyok call of night herons rang clearly on the air. Giant rodents, kin to the Fenlings before they had been changed, scampered through the reeds and underbrush. The dry cough of a marsh devil came from nearby, as well as the high-pitched screech of the giant bats that haunted the Rmarq.

"No, Hayden Goode," Ekko replied. "We are further east and too far south."

"Don't worry." Hayden's eyes scanned the darkness about them. "We'll find this uncle of yours and bring him back, safer than sleeping."

"Can you be so sure?"

"I am if Indris is, and he wouldn't have set foot in here if he didn't think the job could get done." Hayden rose to his feet to address the others. "Looks like we're here for the night."

Indris nodded. "No fires, so we eat cold. I'll take first watch-"

"No need, Indris," Omen fluted. "We Nomads need no sleep, and night makes as little difference to us as day. Why do you not all rest until morning?"

"Thanks, Omen. Much obliged." Hayden touched his forelock, then started to unpack his bedroll. The others followed suit. Each took food from their baggage to share. Hard bread, dried fruit, cheese, cold meat. The portions were small, to Ekko's obvious disappointment.

With his back to a fallen log, Indris allowed the symphony of the night to flow over him. Through slowly blinking, ever-heavier eyes he watched Omen, a pale statue against the stars. The eternal champion was little more than a silhouette.

Before he had died of a terrible wasting illness, Sa.s.somon-Omen had been a celebrated philosopher and painter. Of course he had also been a warrior, though a duelist rather than a man of war. It had been considered admirable for somebody to be hamane. The High Avn word was subtle in its meaning, incorporating elements of being accomplished, determined, and learned. Another part meant cla.s.sic. In truth there was no word outside of High Avn for what it was to be hamane. Other than perhaps to say true.

Like all Nomads, time had distanced Omen from his mortality. From what it meant to be alive, with all its virtues of sensation and taste, or pleasure or pain, of the moments that reminded mortals they were alive. One day Omen would lose what was left of his connection to the world around him. Indris already saw the signs. On that day a brilliant, beautiful mind would lose what little connected it with the modern world. Omen's mind would forget why it had gone on as long as it had, what it meant to live. On that day he would simply stop, his soul locked in isolated contemplation.

On that day the world would be a poorer place. Yet it was not today, and for now, Omen's presence gave Indris comfort enough to sleep in peace.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"Too often our morality is based upon a mult.i.tude of factors of circ.u.mstance, rather than the singular factor of principle. How then can morality be consistent, how can it be a guide, if that which decides it is forever in flux?"-Sa.s.somon-Omen, philosopher and artist to the Sussain, 27th Year of the Shranese Federation Day 321 of the 495th Year of the Shranese Federation Mari's eyes lingered on Indris as he walked away. If things went awry, it might be the last time she ever saw him. She shrugged to herself in an attempt to lighten the ache in her chest.

"He'll return, girl," Femensetri opined. "Always does. He's a hard one to kill, and, believe me, there've been plenty who've tried."

Nehrun tried to rise from his chair and was once more set back down by Roshana's firm grip on his wrist. "Try it again and I'll break it. We're not done with you, Nehrun."

"You're my sister!" he hissed. "I'm in command in Father's absence. Let me go!"

"I don't think so."

"I'll not sit here and be interrogated in front of her!" Nehrun thrust his chin in Mari's direction. The muscles along his jaw clenched. "This is family business."

Mari stretched out one leg under the table. She ground her booted toe into Nehrun's groin. The Nasarat prince grunted in pain. "You made it my business when you became involved with my father. Let's not forget you waylaying me in the Astujarte. Or have you forgotten that little b.u.mp in the road?"

Rosha shook her head with disappointment.

Nehrun held his hands up in a gesture of self-defense. "The Great Houses of Nasarat and Erebus have been at war for-"