"Come and sit with us." Jiriki gestured to an open place near Chekai'so.

Black-haired Kuroyi said something in the liquid Sithi tongue as Eolair seated himself on the ground. Jiriki showed a hint of a smile. "Kuroyi says that surely the Norns will come out and fight us before the walls. He believes that the Hikeda'ya would never hide behind stone laid by mortals when the Zida'ya have come to resolve things at last."

"I know nothing of the ... of those we call Norns," Eolair said carefully. "But I cannot imagine that if their purpose is as deadly earnest as it seems, they will give up the advantage of a stronghold like Naglimund."

"I believe you are correct," said Jiriki. "But it is hard to convince many of my people that. It is hard enough for most of us to believe that we go to war with the Hikeda'ya, let alone that they might hide within a fortress and drop stones on us as mortal armies do." He said something in the Sithi speech to Kuroyi, who replied briefly, then fell silent, his eyes cold as bronze plates. Jiriki next turned to the others.

"It is impolite for us to speak in a language Count Eolair does not know. If anyone does not feel comfortable speaking Hernystiri or Westerling, I will be happy to render your words for the count's understanding."

"Mortal tongues and mortal strategies. We will all have to learn," Likimeya said abruptly. "It is a different age. If the rules of mortals now make the world spin, then we must learn those rules."

"Or decide whether it is possible to live in such a world." Zinjadu's voice was deep yet strangely uninflec ted, as though she had learned Westerling without ever having heard it spoken. "Perhaps we should let the Hikeda'ya have this world of mortals that they seem to desire."

"The Hikeda'ya would destroy the mortals even more readily than they would destroy us," Jiriki said calmly.

"It is one thing," spoke up Yizashi Grayspear, "to fulfill an ancient debt, as we have just done at M'yin Azoshai. Besides, those were mortals we routed, and the descendants of b.l.o.o.d.y Fingil's ship-men besides. It is another thing to go to war with other Gardenborn to aid mortals to whom we owe no such debt-including those who hunted us long after we lost Asu'a. This Josua's father was our enemy!"

"Then does the hatred never end?" Jiriki replied with surprising heat. "Mortals have short lives. These are not the ones who warred on our scattered folk."

"Yes, the lives of mortals are short," said Yizashi dispa.s.sionately. "But their hatreds run deep, and are pa.s.sed from parents to children."

Eolair was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable but did not think the time was right for him to speak up.

"It is possible that you forget, n.o.ble Yizashi," said Jiriki, "that it was the Hikeda'ya themselves who brought this war to us. It was they who invaded the sanct.i.ty of the Yasira. It was truly Utuk'ku's hand-not that of the mortal catspaw who wielded the dagger-which slew First Grandmother."

Yizashi did not reply.

"There is little point in this," Likimeya said. Eolair could not help noticing how the depths of Likimeya's eyes cast the light back, glowing orange as the stare of a torchlit wolf. "Yizashi, I asked you and these others, the House of Contemplation, the House of Gathering, all the houses, to honor your debts to the Grove. You agreed. And we are set upon our course because we need to thwart Utuk'ku Seyt-Hamakha's plans, not just repay an old debt or avenge Amerasu's murder."

Black-browed Kuroyi spoke up. "The mortals have a saying, I am told." His voice was measured and eerily musical, his Hernystiri somehow over-precise. " 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend ... for a little while.' 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend ... for a little while.' Silvermask and her kin have chosen one set of mortals to be their allies, so we will choose those mortals' enemies to be our allies. Utuk'ku and her minions have also broken the Pact of Sesuad'ra. I find no shame in fighting beside Sudhoda'ya until the issue is settled." He raised his hand as though to ward off questions, but the circle was completely still. "No one has said I must love these mortal allies: I do not, and feel sure that I will not, whatever happens. And if I live until these days end, I will return to my high house in hidden Anvi'janya, for I have long been surfeited with the company of others, whether mortal or Gardenborn. But until then, I will do as I have promised to Likimeya." Silvermask and her kin have chosen one set of mortals to be their allies, so we will choose those mortals' enemies to be our allies. Utuk'ku and her minions have also broken the Pact of Sesuad'ra. I find no shame in fighting beside Sudhoda'ya until the issue is settled." He raised his hand as though to ward off questions, but the circle was completely still. "No one has said I must love these mortal allies: I do not, and feel sure that I will not, whatever happens. And if I live until these days end, I will return to my high house in hidden Anvi'janya, for I have long been surfeited with the company of others, whether mortal or Gardenborn. But until then, I will do as I have promised to Likimeya."

There was a long pause after Kuroyi had finished. The Sithi again sat in silence, but Eolair had the feeling that some issue was in the air, some tension that sought resolution. When the quiet had gone on so long that he was beginning to wonder again whether he should leave, Likimeya lifted her hands and spread them flat in the air before her.

"So," she said. "Now we must think about this Naglimund. We must consider what we will do if the Hikeda'ya do not come out to fight."

The Sithi began to discuss the upcoming siege as though there had been no dispute over the honorability of fighting beside mortals. Eolair was puzzled but impressed by their civility. Each person was allowed to speak as long as he wished and no one interrupted. Whatever dissension there had been-and although Eolair found the immortals difficult to fathom, he had no doubt there had been true disagreement-now seemed vanished: the debate over Naglimund, although spirited, was calm and apparently free of resentment.

Perhaps when you live so long, Eolair thought, Eolair thought, you learn to exist by such rules you learn to exist by such rules-learn you must must exist by such rules. Forever is a long time to carry grudges, after all. exist by such rules. Forever is a long time to carry grudges, after all.

More at ease now, he entered the discussion-hesitantly at first, but when he saw that his opinion was to be given due weight he spoke openly and confidently about Naglimund, a place he knew almost as well as he knew the Taig in Hernysadharc. He had been there many times: Eolair had often found that Josua's was a useful ear for introducing things into the court of his father, King John Presbyter. The prince was one of the few people the Count of Nad Mullach knew who would listen to an idea on its own merits, then support it if he found it good, regardless of whether it benefited him.

They talked long; eventually the fire burned down to glowing coals. Likimeya produced one of the crystal globes from her cloak and set it on the ground before her where it gradually grew bright; soon it cast its cool lunar glow all around the circle.

Eolair met Isom on his way back from the council of the Sithi.

"Ho, Count," the young Rimmersman said. "Out for a stroll? I have a skin of wine here-from your own Nad Mullach cellars, I think. Let's find Ule and share it."

"Gladly. I have had a strange evening. Our allies ... Isorn, they are like nothing and no one I have ever seen."

"They are the Old Ones, and heathen on top of it," Isorn said blithely, then laughed. "Apologies, Count. I sometimes forget that you Hernystiri are ..."

"Also heathens?" Eolair smiled faintly. "No offense was taken. I have grown used to being the outsider, the odd one, during my years in Aedonite courts. But I have never felt so much the odd man as I did tonight."

"The Sithi may be different from us, Eolair, but they are bold as thunder."

"Yes, and clever. I did not understand all that was spoken of tonight, but I think that we have neither of us ever seen a battle like the one that will take place at Naglimund."

Isorn lifted an eyebrow, intrigued. "That is something to save and tell over that wine, but I am glad to hear it. If we live, we will have stories to amaze our grandchildren."

"If we live," Eolair said.

"Come, let us walk a little faster." Isorn's voice was light. "I am getting thirsty."

They rode across the Inniscrich the next day. The battlefield where Skali had triumphed and King Lluth had received his death-wound was still partially blanketed in snow, but that snow was full of irregular hummocks, and here and there a bit of rusted metal or a weathered spearhaft stuck up through the shrouding white. Although many prayers and curses were quietly spoken, none of the Hernystiri had any great interest in lingering at the site where they had been so soundly defeated and so many of their people had died, and for the Sithi it had no significance at all, so the great company pa.s.sed by swiftly as they rode north along the river.

The Baraillean marked the boundary between Hernystir and Erkynland: the people of Utanyeat on the river's eastern side called it the Greenwade. These days, there were few living near either bank, although there were still fish to catch. The weather might have grown warmer, but Eolair could see that the land was almost lifeless. Those few survivors of the various struggles who still scratched out their lives here on the southern edge of the Frostmarch now fled before the approaching army of Sithi and men, unable to imagine any good that yet one more troop of armored invaders might bring.

At last, a week's journeying north of Nad Mullach-even when they were not in full charge the Sithi moved swiftly-the host crossed the river and moved into Utanyeat, the westernmost tip of Erkynland. Here the land seemed to grow more gray. The thick morning mists that had blanketed the ground during the ride across Hernystir no longer dispersed with the sun's ascension, so that the army rode from dawn to dusk in a cold, damp haze, like souls in some cloudy afterlife. In fact, a deathly pall seemed to hang over all the plains. The air was cold and seemed to reach directly into the bones of Eolair and his fellows. But for the wind and the m.u.f.fled hoofbeats of their own horses, the wide countryside was silent, devoid even of birdsong. At night, as the count huddled with Maegwin and Isorn before the fire, a heavy stillness lay over everything. It felt, Isorn remarked one night, as though they were pa.s.sing through a vast graveyard.

As each day brought them deeper into this colorless, cheerless country, Isorn's Rimmersmen prayed and made the Tree-sign frequently, and argued almost to bloodletting over insignificant things. Eolair's Hernystiri were no less affected. Even the Sithi seemed more reserved than usual. The ever-present mists and forbidding silence made all endeavor seem shallow and pointless.

Eolair found himself hoping that there would be some sign of their foes soon. The sense of foreboding that hung over these empty lands was a more insidious enemy, the count felt sure, than anything composed of flesh and blood could ever be. Even the frighteningly alien Norns were preferable to this journey through the netherworld.

"I feel something," said Isorn. "Something p.r.i.c.ks at my neck."

Eolair nodded, then realized the duke's son probably could not see him through the mist, although he rode only a short distance away. "I feel it, too."

They were nine days out of Nad Mullach. Either the weather had again gone bad, or in this small part of the world the winter had never abated. The ground was carpeted in snow, and great uneven drifts lay humped on either side as they rode up the low hill. The failing sun was somewhere out of sight, the afternoon so gray there might never have been such a thing as a sun at all.

There was a clatter of armor and a flurry of words in the liquid Sithi speech from up ahead. Eolair squinted through the murk. "We are stopping." He spurred his horse forward. Isorn followed him, with Maegwin, who had ridden silently all day, close behind.

The Sithi had indeed reined up, and now sat silently on their horses as if waiting for something, their bright-colored armor and proud banners dimmed by the mist. Eolair rode through their ranks until he found Jiriki and Likimeya. They were staring ahead, but he saw nothing in the shifting fog that seemed worth their attention.

"We have halted," said the count.

Likimeya turned to him. "We have found what we sought." Her features seemed stony, as though her whole face had now become a mask.

"But I see nothing." Eolair turned to Isorn, who shrugged to show that he was no different.

"You will," said Likimeya. "Wait."

Puzzled, Eolair patted his horse's neck and wondered. There was a stirring as the wind rose again, fluttering his cloak. The mists swirled, and suddenly something dark appeared as the murk before them thinned.

The great curtain wall of Naglimund was ragged, many of its stones tumbled out like the scales of a rotting fish. In the midst of its great, gray length was a rubble-filled gap where the gate had stood, a sagging, toothless mouth. Beyond, showing even more faintly through the tendrils of mist, Naglimund's square stone towers loomed up beyond the walls, the dark windows glaring like the empty, bone-socket eyes of a skull.

"Brynioch," Eolair gasped.

"By the Ransomer," said Isorn, just as chilled.

"You see?" Likimeya asked. Eolair thought he detected a dreadful sort of humor in her voice. "We have arrived."

"It is Scadach." Maegwin sounded terrified. "The Hole in Heaven. Now I have seen it."

"But where is Naglimund-town?" Eolair asked. "There was a whole city at the castle's foot!"

"We have pa.s.sed it, or at least its ruins," Jiriki said. "What little remains of it is now beneath the snows."

"Brynioch!" Eolair felt quite stupefied as he stared first at the insignificant-seeming lumps of earth and snow behind them, then turned back to the huge pile of crumbling stone just ahead. It seemed dead, yet as he gazed at it his nerves felt tight as lute strings and his heart was pounding. "Do we just ride in?" he asked no one in particular. Just thinking about it was like contemplating a headfirst crawl into a dark tunnel full of spiders.

"I will not go in that place," Maegwin said harshly. She was pale. For the first time since her madness had descended, she looked truly and completely fearful. "If you enter Scadach, you leave Heaven and its protection. It is a place from which nothing returns."

Eolair did not even have the heart to say anything soothing, but he reached out and took her gloved hand. Their horses stood quietly side by side, vaporous breath mingling.

"We will not ride into that place, no," Jiriki said solemnly. "Not yet."

Even as he spoke, flickering yellow lights bloomed in the depths of the black tower windows, as though whatever owned those empty eyes had just awakened.

Rachel the Dragon slept uneasily in her tiny room deep in the Hayholt's underground warrens.

She dreamed that she was again in her old room, the chambermaids' room that she knew so well. She was alone, and in her dream she was angry: her foolish girls were always so hard to find.

Something was scratching at the door; Rachel had a sudden certainty that it was Simon. Even in the midst of the dream, though, she remembered that she had been fooled once before by such a noise. She went carefully and quietly to the doorway and stood beside it for a moment, listening to the furtive noises outside.

"Simon?" she said. "Is that you?"

The voice that came back was indeed that of her long-lost ward, but it seemed stretched and thin, as though it traveled a long distance to reach her ear.

"Rachel, I want to come back. Please help me. I want to come back. " The scratching resumed, insistent, strangely loud.... " The scratching resumed, insistent, strangely loud....

The onetime Mistress of Chambermaids jerked awake, shivering with cold and fear. Her heart was beating very fast.

There. There was that noise again, just as she had heard it in the dream-but now she was awake. It was a strange sound, not so much a scratching as a hollow sc.r.a.ping, distant but regular. Rachel sat up.

This was no dream, she knew. She thought she had heard something like it as she was falling off to sleep, but had dismissed it. Could it be rats in the walls? Or something worse? Rachel sat up on her straw pallet. The small brazier with its few coals did no more than give the room a faint red sheen.

Rats in stone walls as thick as these? It was possible, but it didn't seem likely.

What else would it be, you old fool? Something is making that noise.

Rachel sat up and moved stealthily toward the brazier. She took a handful of rushes from her carefully collected pile and dipped one end into the coals. After they had caught, she lifted the makeshift torch high.

The room, so familiar after all these weeks, was empty but for her stores. She bent low to look into the shadowy corners, but saw nothing moving. The sc.r.a.ping noise was a little fainter now but still unmistakable. It seemed to be coming from the far wall. Rachel took a step toward it and smacked her bare foot against her wooden keepsake chest, which she had neglected to push back against the wall after examining its spa.r.s.e contents the night before. She let out a m.u.f.fled shriek of pain and dropped a few of the flaming rushes, then quickly hobbled to her jug for a handful of water to put them out. When this was done, she stood on one foot while she rubbed her smarting toes.

When the pain subsided, she realized that the noise had also stopped. Either her surprised cry had frightened the noise-maker away-likely if it were a rat or mouse-or merely warned the thing that someone was listening. The thought of something sitting quietly within the walls, aware now that someone was on the other side of the stone, was not one that Rachel wished to pursue.

Rats, she told herself. she told herself. Of course it's rats. They smell the food I've got in here, little demon imps. Of course it's rats. They smell the food I've got in here, little demon imps.

Whatever the cause had been, the noise was gone now. Rachel sat down on her stool and began to pull on her shoes. There was no point trying to sleep now.

What a strange dream about Simon, she thought. she thought. Could it be his spirit is restless? I know that monster murdered him. There are tales that the dead can't rest till their murderers are punished. But I already did my best to punish Pryrates Could it be his spirit is restless? I know that monster murdered him. There are tales that the dead can't rest till their murderers are punished. But I already did my best to punish Pryrates, and look where it got me. No good to anyone. and look where it got me. No good to anyone.

Thinking of Simon condemned to some lonely darkness was both sad and frightening.

Get up, woman. Do something useful.

She decided that she would set out more food for poor blind Guthwulf.

A brief sojourn to the room with a slit of window upstairs confirmed that it was almost dawn. Rachel stared at the dark blue of the sky and the faded stars and felt a little rea.s.sured.

I'm still waking up regular, even if I live in the dark most days like a mole. That's something.

She descended to her hidden room, pausing in the doorway to listen for the sc.r.a.ping noises. The room was silent. After she had found suitable fare for both the earl and his feline familiar, she donned her heavy cloak and made her way down the stairwell to the secret pa.s.sageway behind the tapestry on the landing.

When she arrived at the spot where she customarily left Guthwulf's meal, she found to her distress that the previous morning's food had not been touched: neither man nor cat had come.

He's never missed two days running since we started, she thought worriedly. she thought worriedly. Blessed Rhiap, has the poor man fallen down somewhere? Blessed Rhiap, has the poor man fallen down somewhere?

Rachel collected the untouched food and put out more, as though somehow a slightly different arrangement of what was really the same dried fruit and dried meat could tempt back her wandering earl.

If he doesn't come today, she decided, she decided, I'll have to go and look for him. He has no one else to see to him, after all. It's the Aedonite thing to do. I'll have to go and look for him. He has no one else to see to him, after all. It's the Aedonite thing to do.

Full of worry, Rachel made her way back to her room.

The sight of Binabik seated on a gray wolf as though it were a war-horse, his walking-stick couched like a lance, might have been comical in other circ.u.mstances, but Isgrimnur felt no urge even to smile.

"Still I am not sure this is the best thing," Josua said. "I fear we will miss your wisdom, Binabik of Yiqanuc."

"Then that is being all the larger reason for me to begin my journey now, since it will be ended so much more soon." The troll scratched behind Qantaqa's ears.

"Where is your lady?" Isgrimnur asked, looking around. Dawn was creeping into the sky overhead, but the hillside was deserted except for the three men and the wolf. "I would think she'd want to come. and say farewell."

Binabik did not meet his eye, but rather stared at Qantaqa's s.h.a.ggy neck. "We were saying our farewells in the earliness of the morning, Sisqi and I," he said quietly. "It is a hard thing for her to see me riding away."

Isgrimnur felt a great wash of regret for all the unwise, unthinking remarks he had ever made about trolls. They were small and strange, but they were certainly as bold-hearted as bigger men. He extended his hand for Binabik to clasp.

"Ride safely," the duke said. "Come back to us."