Shivering a little, he finally lifted the tent flap and stepped through.

It was not, as he had feared when Jeremias brought him the prince's summons, a council of war. Such things made him feel completely useless. Only a few waited-Josua, Sir Camaris, Duke Isgrimnur, all seated on stools, Vorzheva propped up in her bed, and the Sitha-woman Aditu, cross-legged on the floor at Vorzheva's side. The only other person in the tent was young Jeremias, who had apparently been very busy this afternoon. Just now, he was standing before the prince, trying to look attentive while gasping slightly for air.

"Thank you for your haste, Jeremias," said Josua. "I understand completely. Please just go back and tell Strangyeard to come when he can. After that, you are released."

"Yes, your Highness." Jeremias bowed, then headed for the door.

Tiamak, who was still standing in the doorway, smiled at the approaching youth. "I did not have a chance to ask you before, Jeremias: how is Leleth? Is there any change?"

The youth shook his head. He tried to keep his voice even, but the pain was obvious. "Just the same. She never wakes up. She drinks a little water, but takes no food." He rubbed fiercely at his eye. "No one can do anything."

"I am sorry," said Tiamak gently.

"It's not your fault." Jeremias moved uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "I have to go take Josua's message back to Father Strangyeard."

"Of course." Tiamak stepped out of the way. Jeremias slipped past him and was gone.

"Tiamak," the prince called, "please come and join us." He pointed to an empty stool.

When the Wrannaman was seated, Josua looked around. "This is very difficult," he said at last. "I am going to do a terrible thing and I apologize for it now. Nothing can excuse it but the strength of our need." He turned to Camaris. "My friend, please forgive me. If I could do this some other way, I would. Aditu feels that we should know whether you went to the Sithi home of Jao e-Tinukai'i, and if you did, why."

Camaris raised his tired eyes to Josua's. "Is a man permitted no secrets?" he asked heavily. "I promise you, Prince Josua, that it is nothing to do with this struggle against the Storm King. On the honor of my knighthood."

"But someone who does not know all the history of our people-and Ineluki was one of us, once-may not know all the ties of blood and fable." Aditu spoke without Josua's reluctance, clearly and forcefully. "Everyone here knows you are an honorable man, Camaris, but you may not realize whether what you have seen or learned is useful."

"Will you not tell just me, Camaris?" Josua asked. "You know I hold your honor as high as my own. You certainly need not spill all your secrets to a room full of people, if that is what you fear, even though they are your friends and allies."

Camaris looked at him for a moment. His gaze seemed to soften; he struggled visibly with some impulse, but after a moment he shook his head violently. "No. A thousand pardons, Prince Josua, but to my shame I cannot. There are some things that even the Canon of Knighthood cannot drive me to."

Isgrimnur was wringing his large hands together, clearly pained by Camaris' discomfort. Tiamak had not seen the Rimmersman so unhappy since they had left Kwanitupul. "And me, Camaris?" the duke asked. "I have known you longer by far than anyone here. We both served the old king. If it is something to do with Prester John, you can share it with me."

Camaris sat straighter, but it seemed to be weak opposition to something that was bending him down inside. "I cannot, Isgrimnur. It would put too great a burden on our friendship. Please, ask me not."

Tiamak felt the tension in the room. The old knight seemed to be backed into a corner no one else could see.

"Can you not leave him alone?" Vorzheva's voice was raw. She draped her hands over her round belly as though to protect the child from so much unpleasantness and sorrow.

Why am I here? Tiamak wondered. Tiamak wondered. Because I traveled with him when he was witless? Because I am a Scrollbearer? With Geloe dead and Binabik gone, the League is a sorry collection just now. And where is Strangyeard? Because I traveled with him when he was witless? Because I am a Scrollbearer? With Geloe dead and Binabik gone, the League is a sorry collection just now. And where is Strangyeard?

A thought suddenly came to him. "Prince Josua?"

The prince looked up. "Yes, Tiamak?"

"Forgive me. This is not my place, and I do not know all the customs ..." he hesitated, "but you Aedonites have a tradition of confession, do you not?"

Josua nodded. "Yes."

He Who Always Steps on Sand, Tiamak prayed silently, Tiamak prayed silently, let me walk the right path now! let me walk the right path now!

The Wrannaman turned to Camaris. The old knight, for all his dignified bearing, looked back at him with the eyes of a hunted animal. "Could you not tell your story to a priest," Tiamak asked him, "-perhaps Father Strangyeard, if he is the proper kind of holy man? That way, if I understand things rightly, your story would be between you and G.o.d. But also, Strangyeard knows as much about the Great Swords and our struggle as any man living. He could at least tell the rest of us whether we should truly look elsewhere for answers."

Josua slapped his hand on his knee. "You are indeed a Scrollbearer, Tiamak. You have a subtle mind."

Tiamak stored Josua's compliment away to be appreciated later and kept his gaze on the old knight.

Camaris stared. "I do not know," he said slowly. His chest rose and fell as he took a long breath. "I have not told this story, even in the confessional. That is part of my shame-but not the greatest part."

"Everyone has shame, everyone has done wrong." Isgrimnur was obviously growing a little impatient. "We do not want to drag this out of you, Camaris. We only wish to know whether any dealings you might have had with the Sithi can answer some of our questions. d.a.m.n it!" he added as an afterthought.

A wintry smile moved across Camaris' face. "You were always admirably forward, Isgrimnur." The smile fell away, revealing a terrible, trapped emptiness. "Very well. Send for the priest."

"Thank you, Camaris." Josua stood up. "Thank you. He is praying at young Leleth's bedside. I will fetch him myself."

Camaris and Strangyeard had walked far down the hill together. Tiamak stood in the doorway of Josua's tent and watched them, wondering despite the praise of his cleverness if he had done the right thing. Perhaps something he had heard Miriamele say was correct: they might have done Camaris no favor by waking him from his witless state. And forcing him to dredge up such obviously painful memories seemed no kinder.

The pair, the tall knight and the priest, stood for a long time on the windy hillside-long enough for a long bank of clouds to roll past and finally reveal the pale afternoon sun. At last Strangyeard turned and started back up the hill; Camaris remained, staring out across the valley to the gray mirror of Lake Clodu. The knight seemed carved in stone, something that might wear away to a featureless post but would still be standing in that spot a century from now.

Tiamak leaned into the tent. "Father Strangyeard is coming."

The priest struggled up the hill hunched over, whether against the cold or because he now bore the burden of Camaris' secrets, Tiamak could-not guess. Certainly the look on his face as he made his way up the last few ells bespoke a man who had heard things he would have been happier not knowing.

"Everyone is waiting for you, Father Strangyeard," Tiamak told him.

The archivist nodded his head distractedly. His eye was cast down, as though he could not walk without watching where he set his feet. Tiamak let him pa.s.s, then followed him into the comparative warmth of the tent.

"Welcome back, Strangyeard," said Josua. "Before you begin, tell me: how is Camaris? Should we send someone to him?"

The priest looked up in startlement, as though it was a surprise to hear a human voice. The look he gave Josua was curiously fearful, even for the timid archivist. "I ... I do not know, Prince Josua. I do not know much ... much of anything at this moment."

"I'll go see to him," Isgrimnur grumbled, levering himself up off the stool.

Father Strangyeard raised his hand. "He ... wishes to be alone, I think." He fidgeted with his eye-patch for a moment, then ran his fingers through his spa.r.s.e hair. "Oh, merciful Usires. Poor souls."

"Poor souls?" souls?" said Josua. "What are you saying, Strangyeard? Can you tell us anything?" said Josua. "What are you saying, Strangyeard? Can you tell us anything?"

The archivist wrung his hands. "Camaris was in Jao e- Tinukai' That much ... oh, my ... that much he told me before he asked for the seal of confession, knowing that I would tell you. But the reason, and what happened there, are locked behind the Door of the Ransomer." His stare wandered around the room as if it hurt him to look at anything too long. Then his eye fell on Vorzheva, and for some reason lingered there as he talked. "But this much I can say, I believe: I do not think that his experiences have aught to do with the present situation, nor is there anything to be learned from them about the Storm King, or the Three Great Swords, or any of the other things you need to know to fight this war. Oh, merciful Usires. Oh, dear." He patted at his thin red hair again. "Forgive me. Sometimes it is hard to remember that I am merely the doorkeeper of the Ransomer, and that the burden is not mine to bear, but G.o.d's. Ah, but it is hard right now."

Tiamak stared. His fellow Scrollbearer looked as though he had been visited by vengeful spirits. The Wrannaman moved closer to Strangyeard.

"Is that all?" Josua seemed disappointed. "Are you certain that the things he knows cannot help us?"

"I am not certain of anything but pain, Prince Josua," the archivist said quietly but with surprising firmness. "But I truly think it unlikely, and I know for certain that to force anything more from that man would be cruel beyond belief, and not just to him."

"Not just to him?" Isgrimnur said. "What does that mean?"

"Enough, please." Strangyeard seemed almost angry-something Tiamak had not imagined possible. "I haye told you what you needed to know. Now I would like to leave."

Josua was taken aback. "Of course, Father Strangyeard."

The priest nodded. "May G.o.d watch over us all."

Tiamak followed Strangyeard out through the tent door. "Is there something I can do?" he asked. "Perhaps just walk with you?"

The archivist hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. That would be kind."

Camaris was gone from the spot where he had stood; Tiamak looked for him, but saw no sign.

When they had traveled some way down the hill, Strangyeard spoke in a musing voice. "I understand now ... why a man would wish to drink himself into oblivion. I find it tempting myself at this moment."

Tiamak raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"Perhaps drunkenness and sleep are the only ways G.o.d has given us to forget," Strangyeard continued. "And sometimes forgetting is the only cure for pain."

Tiamak considered. "In a way, Camaris was as one asleep for two score years."

"And we awakened him." Strangyeard smiled sadly. "Or, I should say, G.o.d allowed us to awaken him. Perhaps there is a reason for all this. Perhaps there will be some result beside sorrow after all."

He did not, the Wrannaman thought, sound as though he believed it.

Guthwulf paused and let the air wash over him, trying to decide which of the pa.s.sageways led upward-for it was upward that the sword-song was leading him. His nostrils twitched, sniffing for the faintest indication from the damp tunnel air as to which way he should go. His fingers traveled back and forth along the stone walls on either side, questing like eyeless crabs.

Disembodied, alien speech washed over him once more, words that he did not hear so much as feel. He shook his head, trying to drive them from his brain. They were ghosts, he knew, but he had learned that they could not harm him, could not touch him. The chittering voices only interfered with what he truly wanted to hear. They were not real. The sword was real, and it was calling.

He had first felt the pull return several days before.

As he awakened into the confusion of blind solitude, as he had so many times, a thread of compelling melody had followed him up out of sleep into his waking blackness. It was more than just another of his pitiful dreams: this was a powerful feeling, frightful and yet comfortably familiar, a song without words or melody that rang in his head and wrapped him with tendrils of longing. It tugged at him so strongly that he scrambled clumsily to his feet, eager as a young swain called by his beloved. The sword! It was back, it was near!

Only as the last clinging remnants of his slumbers left him did he remember that the sword was not alone.

It was never alone. It belonged to Elias, his once-friend, now bitter enemy. Much as Guthwulf ached to be near it, to bask in its song as he would the warmth of a fire, he knew he would have to approach cautiously. Miserable as his current life was, he preferred it to what Elias would do to him if he was captured-or worse, what Elias would let that serpent Pryrates do to him.

It never occurred to him that it would be even better simply to leave the sword alone. The song of it was like the splash of a stream to a traveler dying of thirst. It drew him, and he had no choice but to follow its call.

Still, some animal cunning remained. As he felt his way through the well-learned tunnels, he knew he needed not only to find Elias and the sword, but also to approach them in such a way so as to avoid discovery and capture, as he had managed once before to spy on the king from a shelf of rock above the foundry floor. To this end, he followed the sword's compelling summons but remained at as great a distance as he could, like a hawk circling its master on a long trace. But trying to resist the complete pull was maddening. The first day he followed the sword, Guthwulf forgot completely to go to the spot where the woman regularly left food for him. By the second day-which, to the blind Earl of Utanyeat, was whatever came between one sleep and the next-the sword's call beating within him like a second heartbeat had almost dissolved the memory that such a spot even existed. He ate what crawling things his groping hands encountered, and drank from any moving trickle of water he could find. He had learned in his first weeks in the tunnels what happened when he drank from standing pools.

Now, after three sleeps full of sword-dreams, he had wandered far beyond any of the pa.s.sageways familiar to him. The stones he felt beneath his hands had never met his touch before; the tunnels themselves, but for the always-present phantom voices and the equally constant pull of the Great Sword, seemed completely alien.

He had some small idea of how long he had been searching for the sword this time, and, in a rare moment of clear thinking, he wondered what the king was doing down in the hidden places beneath the castle for such a long time.

A moment later, a wild, glorious thought came to him.

He's lost the sword. He's lost it down here somewhere, and it's just sitting, waiting for whoever finds it! Waiting for me! Me!

He did not even realize that he was slavering in his dusty beard. The thought of having the sword all to himself-to touch, to listen to, to love and to worship- was so horrifyingly pleasurable that he took a few steps and then fell to the floor, where he lay quivering until darkness took his remaining senses.

After he had regained his wits, Guthwulf rose and wandered, then slept once more. Now he was awake again, and standing before the branching of two tunnels, trying to decide which one was most likely to lead him upward. He knew, somehow, that the sword was above him, just as a mole beneath the ground knows which way to dig to reach the surface. In other lucid moments he had worried that perhaps he was grown so sensitive to the sword's song that it was leading him upward to the king's very throne room, where he would be caught and slaughtered just as a mole would be if it dug its way up into the kennels.

But even though he had been moving steadily upward, he had started very deep. He felt sure the rise had not been anything so great as he feared. He was also certain that in his roundabout way he was moving ever outward, away from the core of the castle. No, the beautiful, terrifying thing that drew him, the living, singing blade, must be somewhere here beneath the earth, coffined in rock just as he was. And when he found it, he would not be lonely any more. He only had to decide which of these tunnels to follow....

Guthwulf raised his hands and reflexively rubbed at his blind eyes. He felt very weak. When was the last time he had eaten? What if the woman gave up on him and stopped putting out food? It had been so nice to eat real food....

But if I find the sword, if I have it all to myself, he gloated, gloated, I won't care about any of that. I won't care about any of that.

He c.o.c.ked his head. There was a scratching noise just beyond him somewhere, as though something were trapped inside the stone. He had heard that noise before-in fact, he heard it ever more frequently of late-but it was nothing to do with what he sought.

The scratching ended, and still he stood in painful indecision before the forking tunnels. Even when he put down stones for markers, it was so easy to become lost, but he was certain that one of these pa.s.sages led upward to the heart of the song-the crooning, sucking, soul-drowning melody of the Great Sword. He did not want to go the wrong way and spend another endless time trying to find his way back. He was weak with hunger, numb with weariness.

He might have stood for an hour or a day. At last, beginning as gently as a dust devil, a wind came tugging at his hair, a puff of breeze from the right-hand turning. Then, a moment later, a flurry of somethings somethings welled up out of the tunnel and floated past him-the spirits that haunted the dark nether-roads. Their voices echoed in his skull, dim and somehow hopeless. welled up out of the tunnel and floated past him-the spirits that haunted the dark nether-roads. Their voices echoed in his skull, dim and somehow hopeless.

... The Pool. We must seek him at the Pool. He will know what to do ...

Sorrow. They have called down the final sorrow ...

As the twittering things blew past, blind Guthwulf slowly smiled. Whatever they were, spirits of the dead or bleak products of his own madness, they always came to him out of the depths, from the deepest, oldest parts of the labyrinth. They came from below ... and he wished to climb.

He turned and shuffled into the left-hand tunnel.

The remains of Naglimund's ma.s.sive gate had been plugged with rubble, but since it was lower than the surrounding wall and the piles of broken stone offered purchase for climbing feet, it seemed to Count Eolair the logical place for an a.s.sault to begin. He had been surprised when the Sithi had concentrated themselves before a blank and undamaged stretch of wall.

He left Maegwin and the contingent of anxious mortal warriors under Isorn's command, then crept up the snowy hillside to join Jiriki and Likimeya in the sh.e.l.l of a broken building a few hundred ells from Naglimund's outwall. Likimeya gave him a cursory glance, but Jiriki nodded.

"It is almost time," the Sitha said. "We have called for the m'yon rashi m'yon rashi-the strikers."

Eolair stared at the contingent of Sithi before the wall. They had stopped singing, but had not moved away. He wondered why they should risk the arrows of the Norns when whatever their singing was intended for seemed finished. "Strikers? Do you mean battering rams?"

Jiriki shook his head, smiling faintly. "We have no history of such things, Count Eolair. I imagine we could devise such an engine, but we decided to fall back on what we know instead." His look darkened. "Or rather, what we learned from the Tinukeda'ya." He gestured. "Look, the m'yon rashi come."

A quartet of Sithi were approaching the wall. Although he did not recognize them, Eolair thought they looked no different than the hundreds of other Peaceful Ones camped in Naglimund's shadow. All were slender and golden-skinned. Like most of their fellows, no two seemed quite alike in the color of either their armor or the hair that streamed from beneath their helms; the m'yon rashi gleamed against the snow like misplaced tropical birds. The only difference the count could see between these and any other of Jiriki's people was that each bore a dark staff long as a walking-stick. These staffs were of the same odd gray-black stuff as Jiriki's sword Indreju; each was k.n.o.bbed with a globe of some blue crystalline stone.

Jiriki turned from the Hernystirman and called out an order. His mother rose from her crouch and added words of her own. A contingent of Sithi archers moved up until they surrounded the group near the walls. The bowmen nocked arrows and drew, then froze in place, eyes scanning the empty walls.

The leader of the m'yon rashi, a female Sitha with gra.s.s-green hair and armor of a slightly deeper green, lifted her stick and slowly swung it toward the wall as if she forced it against the flowing current of a river. When the blue gem struck, all the m'yon rashi chanted a single loud syllable. Eolair felt a tremor in his bones, as though a tremendous weight had struck the ground nearby. For a moment the earth seemed to shift beneath him.

"What... ?" he gasped, struggling to find his balance. Before him, Jiriki raised a hand for silence.

The other three Sithi stepped forward to join the woman in green. As they all chanted, each in turn brought his staff forward to strike in a rough triangle around the first; each syrup-slow impact reverberated through the earth and up through the feet of Eolair and the other observers.

The Count of Nad Mullach stared. For a dozen ells up and down the wall from where the m'yon rashi stood, the snow slid off the stones. Around the jeweled heads of the four staffs, Eolair saw that the stone had turned a lighter shade of gray, as though it had sickened somehow-or as though it were covered with a web of fine cracks.