Not until Gerin lifted his eyes to the keep could he finger what was troubling him. Castles crowned many hills, but here and there the banks of their moats were beginning to crumble into the water. Some lesser barons let stands of trees big enough to shelter scores of warriors grow almost within bowshot of their walls. Gerin had no desire to claim shelter from any of these n.o.bles. The few he saw on the road distressed him. Their chariots were decorated with inlays of gold and bright stones, but they plainly had never seen combat. More than one man wore cloth instead of mail, and what cuira.s.ses were to be seen were covered with studs and curlicues of bronze: beautiful to look at but sure to catch and hold a spearpoint. The footsoldiers were not much better. They were well armed, but soft jaws and thick middles said these were unblooded troops. Behind the shield of the border, where the Trokmoi were always ready to pounce on the weak, Elabon's northern province was starting to rot.

Van saw it too. "This land is ripe for the taking," he said, and Gerin could do nothing but nod.

The sun rose high and hot. Gerin felt the sweat trickle down his back and chest and wished he could scratch through his armor. With his fairer skin Van suffered more, tanned though he was. He finally took off his proud helm and stowed it carefully in the back of the wagon, then poured over his head a bucket of cool water from the brook where they had stopped. He puffed and snorted as the water poured down his face and dripped through his beard. "Ahhh!" he said. "That's better, even if I do sound like a whale coming up for air."

"A whale?" Elise asked. She had shed her jacket, and in tunic and trousers was more comfortable than either of the men. Her hat she kept on, for her fairness was not like that of Van, who grew golden under the sun: she would burn and freckle and peel and never really become tan at all. She went on, "I've heard the word. Some kind of fish, is it not? But I've never seen one."

"Nor I," Gerin said. "The farthest I've traveled is to the City, and there are no whales in the Inner Seas."

"Well, Captain, I'll tell you-and you, my lady-I've seen whales right enough, and closer than I wanted, too. Do you know the land called Mabalal?"

Elise shook her head. Gerin said, "I've heard the name. It's far to the south and east, I think."

"That's the one, Captain. And sultry-why, this is nothing beside what it's like there! I thought I'd melt like a lump of wax in a fire. The people there are little and dark, and they seem to like it well enough. For all their swarthy hides, though, the women are not uncomely, and what they do-" Van broke off abruptly, and Gerin was amused to see that his huge friend could blush.

"But I was talking about whales," Van went on. "They come in all sizes, and the sailors like the little ones, and wouldn't think of harming them. But the big ones hate men and sink whatever boats they can. Now, one of them had lived outside the harbor at Jalor-that's the capital thereabouts-for years, and he'd sunk maybe twenty ships. He had a reddish skin they knew him by, and they called him 'Old Crimson,' since crimson is the color their kings wear. Five times they'd tried to kill him, and neither of the two harpooners who lived was whole.

"It got so bad the captains wouldn't ship out of Jalor, and if they did they couldn't find a soul to man the oars. Didn't that put a pretty squeeze on the merchants! So they decided to have another go at him, and when one of their big traders, a fellow named Kariri, saw me in some dive, he thought I would make a good oarsman, having more in the way of muscle than his countrymen. I was game; things had been dull since I'd had to leave Shanda, and the price he promised was good. It had to be, to get rowers for that boat! Most of us were foreigners of one kind or another: the folk of Jalor knew better.

"So off we sailed, the only ship in the water, though the docks and beach were black with people watching. Now, in those parts the way they lure whales is this: they catch a lot of fat tunny and pickle them with salt in big jars, and when they're nice and ripe, they soak rags in the fish-grease and dump 'em in the water where they think the whales are. The whales can scent this grease a long way off, and follow it to the boat. The first thing any of us knew of Old Crimson being round was a sort of a loud hiss and a cloud of evil-smelling steam. Whales aren't like other fish; they have to come to the surface every so often to get a breath of air and blow out the old. That's what he'd done, not fifty yards to starboard.

"I tell you, I missed a stroke, and I wasn't the only one. Then he came all the way out of the water, and I never want to see such a sight again. That ruddy hide of his was all scarred and torn from the ships he'd sunk, and I saw three spear-points stuck in just back of his head, but not deep enough to do more than drive him mad with pain over the years. I don't lie when I say I'd sooner have been elsewhere right then. He was bigger than our boat, and not by a little, either.

"But the harpooning crew knew what to do if they-and we-were going to come home alive. They tossed ten or twelve pounds of that pickled tunny toward the monster, and he snapped it up. It's a funny thing, but the stuff makes whales drunk, and Old Crimson lay still in the water. If he were a kitten, he would have purred.

"Once that happened, the harpooners slipped out of their clothes (not that they wore much, just rags round their middles) and swam over to him as quiet as they could. One trailed his barbed harpoon, the second a little stand for it, and the third, who had more brawn than most men of Mabalal, took a big mallet with him. They climbed up on Old Crimson's head, and he never stirred. We lay dead quiet in the water for fear of rousing him.

"They set up the harpoon just aft of his head, right behind the others that hadn't gone deep enough to kill. Then the fellow with the mallet swung it up over his head and hit the b.u.t.t end of the harpoon with everything he had. I swear by all the G.o.ds there are that the whale leaped clean out of the water, with the harpooners still clinging to him. They might have screamed, but we never would have heard them. We were backing water for all we were worth, but still I saw that great tail like a fist over the bow. When it came down the ship just went all to splinters. I'm hazy about what happened next, because something hit me right between the eyes. I must have grabbed an par; the next thing I remember is being fished out of the water by one of the little boats that came out as soon as the people on sh.o.r.e saw Old Crimson was really dead. Thirty-four people were on our boat when we set out, and six of us lived. Anyway, the fishermen who rescued me took me to sh.o.r.e, and the Jalorians took the whale's carca.s.s ash.o.r.e too, for they valued the meat and oil of it. The head of the merchants' guild kissed all of us who had lived, called us the saviors of the town, and gave each of us a tooth worried out of the whale's head: I don't lie when I say it was more than half a foot long.

"But do you know what? I didn't make a copper more from it, for that fat merchant sitting on his a.r.s.e on the sh.o.r.e just called me a filthy foreigner and wouldn't pay. For all that, though, I drank my way through the grogshops for ten days straight without touching a coin of my own, and to this day no-one in Jalor knows how old , Kadiri's warehouses burnt down."

"You know," Gerin said thoughtfully, "if they were to put a line on the end of their harpoons with floats-sealed empty casks, maybe-every hundred paces or so, they could spear their whales without having to climb onto them, and if the wound didn't kill on the spot, the whales couldn't escape by diving, either."

Van stared at him. "I do believe it'd work," he said at last. "Why weren't you there then to think of it? The G.o.ds know I never would have." He looked at Elise. "Gerin, I do believe our guests thinks my yarn would be good for making flowers grow, but not much else, though since she's kind as she is fair she's too polite to say so. Hold the reins a bit for me, will you?"

Elise started to protest, but Van was not listening to her. He stepped into the back of the wagon; Gerin heard him rummaging in the battered leather sack where he kept his treasures. After a minute or two he grunted in satisfaction and emerged, handing what he held to Elise.

Gerin craned his neck to look too. It was an ivory tusk unlike any he had ever seen: though no longer than the fangs of the longtooth he knew, this was twice as thick and pure white, not yellowish. Someone had carved a whale and the prow of an unfamiliar ship on the tooth; the whale was tinted a delicate pink. Seeing the baron's admiration, Van said, "A friend of mine made it while I was out roistering. You'll notice it isn't done, but I was in a hurry when I left Jalor, and he didn't have time to finish."

Elise was silent.

Gerin kept the reins; Van had been yawning all morning, and now he tried to s.n.a.t.c.h some sleep in the cramped rear of the wagon. The Fox was looking for one particular dirt track of the many joining the Elabon Way. Each path had a stone post set beside it, carved with the marks of the petty barons to whose keeps the roadlets ran. It was past noon before Gerin saw the winged eye he sought. He almost pa.s.sed it by, for the carving was so ancient that parts of it had weathered away, and startling red lichens covered much of what remained.

"Where are we going?" Elise asked when he turned down the track. She coughed as the horses kicked up dust.

"I thought you'd heard all my plans," Gerin said. "I'd like to hear what the Sibyl at Ikos may tell me. I stopped there once before, when I went south for the first time, and she warned me I'd never be a scholar. I laughed at her, but two years later the Trokmoi killed my father and my brother and I had to quit the southlands."

"That I had heard," Elise said softly. "I'm sorry." It was no conventional expression of regret; Gerin could feel the truth in her words. He was touched, and at the same time half-annoyed with himself for letting her sympathy reach him. He was a bit relieved when she returned to her original thought: "Where we go matters little to me: I simply did not know. Any place away from Wolfar is good enough, though I've heard evil things of the country round Ikos."

"I've heard them too," he admitted, "but I've never seen much to make me think them true. This road goes through some of the deepest forest on this side of the Niffet and over the hills ahead before it reaches the Sibyl's shrine. It's said strange beasts dwell in the forest, but I never saw any, though there were tracks on the roadway that belong to no animals the outer world knows."

The more prosperous petty barons and their lands clung leechlike to the Elabon Way. A few hours' travel from it things were poorer. Freeholders owned their own plots, men not under the dominion of any local lordling. They were of an ancient race, the fold who had held the land between the Niffet and the High Kirs even before the coming of the Trokmoi whom the Empire had expelled. Slim and dark, they spoke the tongue of Elabon fluently enough, but among themselves used their own soft, sibilant language.

The road narrowed, becoming little more than a winding rutted lane under frowning trees. The sinking sun's light could barely reach through the green arcade overhead, and Gerin jumped when a scarlet finch shot across the roadway, taken aback by the flash of color in the gloom. As the sun set he pulled off the road and behind a thick clump of trees. He routed Van from his jouncing bed; together they unharnessed the horses and let them crop what little gra.s.s grew in the shade of the tall beeches.

They had but a scanty offering for the ghosts: dried beef mixed with water. It was not really enough, but Gerin hoped it would serve. Elise wanted to take one watch; the baron and Van said no in the same breath.

"Please yourselves," she shrugged, "but I could do it well enough." A knife appeared in her hand and then, almost before the eye could see it, was quivering in a tree trunk twenty feet away.

Gerin was thoughtful as he plucked the dagger free, but still refused. Elise cast an appealing glance at Van. He shook his head and laughed, "My lady, I haven't been guarded by women since I was old enough to keep my mother from learning what 1 was up to, and I don't plan to start over now."

She looked hurt, but said only, "Very well, then. Guard me well this night, heroes." She half-sketched a salute as she slipped into her bedroll.

Van, who was rested, offered to take the first watch. Gerin shrugged himself under a blanket, twisted until he found a position where no pebbles dug into him, and knew nothing more until Van prodded him awake. "Math is down, and-what do you call the fast moon? I've clean forgotten."

"Tiwaz."

"That's it. As well as I can see through the trees, it'll set in an hour or so. That makes it midnight, and time for me to sleep." Van was under his own blanket-the gold-and-black striped hide of some great hunting beast-and asleep with the speed of the true traveler. Gerin stretched, yawned, and heard the ghosts buzz in his mind like gnats.

In the dim red light of the embers the wagon was a lump on the edge of visibility, the horses a pair of dark shadows. Gerin listened to their unhurried breathing and the chirp and rustle of tiny crawling things. An owl overhead loosed its hollow, eerie call. Somewhere not far away a tiny stream chuckled to itself. In the distance a longtooth roared, and for a moment everything else was quiet.

The baron turned at a sound close by. He saw Elise half-sitting, watching him. Her expression was unreadable. "Regrets?" he asked, voice the barest thread of sound.

Her answer was softer still. "Of course. To leave all I've ever known . . . it's no easy road, but one I have to travel."

"You could still go back."

"With Wolfar's arms waiting there's no returning." She started to say more, stopped, then began again. "Do you know why I came with you? You helped me once before, long ago." Her eyes were looking into the past, not at Gerin. "The first time I saw you was the most woeful day of my life. I had a dog I'd raised from a pup; he had a floppy ear and one of his eyes was half blue, and because of his red fur I called him Elleb. He used to like to go out and hunt rabbits, and when he caught one he'd bring it home to me. One day he went out like he always did, but he didn't come back.

"I was frantic. I looked for two days before I could find him, and when I did I wished I hadn't. He'd run down a little gully and caught his hind leg in a trap."

"I remember," Gerin said, realizing why the dog Ruffian had seemed familiar. "I heard you crying and went to see what the trouble was. I was heading south to study.''

"Was I crying? I suppose I was, but I don't remember. All I can think of is poor Elleb's leg shredded in the jaws of the trap, and the blood dried black, and the flies. The trap was chained to a stake, and I couldn't pry it loose from him.

"Hurt as he was, I remember him growling when you came up, still trying to keep me safe. You knelt down beside me and patted him and gave him a little water from your canteen, and then you took out your knife and did what needed to be done.

"Not many would have tried to make friends with him first, and not many would have sat with me afterwards and made me understand why an end to his pain was the last gift he could get from someone who loved him. By the time you'd taken me home 1 really did understand it. You were kind to me, and I've never forgotten."

"And because of so small a thing you put your trust in me?"

"I did," she answered simply, "and I have no regrets." Her last words were sleep-softened.

Gerin watched Nothos and the stars peep through holes in the leafy canopy and thought about the obligations with which he had saddled himself. After a while he decided he too had no regrets. He fed bits of wood to the tiny fire, slapped at the buzzing biters lured by its light, and waited for the sun to put the ghosts to rout.

At dawn he woke Van. His comrade knuckled his eyes and spoke mostly in sleepy grunts as they harnessed the horses. Elise doused and covered the fire before Gerin could tend to it. They breakfasted on hard bread and smoked meat; to his disgust, Gerin missed a shot at a fat grouse foolish enough to roost on a branch not a hundred feet away. It flapped off, wings whirring.

The track wound its way through the forest. Trailing shoots and damp hanging mosses hung from branches overhead, eager to s.n.a.t.c.h at anything daring to brave the wood's cool dim calm. The horses were balky, and more than once Van had to touch them with the whip before they would go on.

Few birds trilled to ease the quiet; almost the only sounds were the creaking of branches and the rustling of leaves in a breeze too soft to reach down to the road. Once a sound almost softer than silence paced the wagon for a time. It might have been the pad of great supple feet, or perhaps nothing at all. Gerin saw-or thought he saw-a pair of eyes, greener than the leaves, measuring him. He blinked or they blinked and when he looked again they were gone. The rattle of the wagon's wheels was swallowed as if it had never been.

"Place gives me the b.l.o.o.d.y shivers!" Van said. Gerin thought his friend's voice a bit louder than needful.

The baron thought the day pa.s.sing faster than it was, so thick was the gloom. He bit back an exclamation of surprise when they burst from the shadows into the brightness of the late afternoon sun. He had not realized how much the thought of again camping in the forest chilled him until he saw it was unnecessary.

The hills cupped the valley in which Ikos lay, letting travelers look down on their goal before they reached it. The main road came from the southwest, and Gerin could see little dots of moving men, carriages, and wagons, all come to consult the Sibyl. His own road was less used. The border lords usually put more faith in edged bronze than prophecy.

The temple itself was surrounded by a tiny grove of trees. Probably in days long past the forest had lapped down from the hilltops into the valley, but the sacred grove was the only trace of it. The shrine's glistening marble roof stood out vividly against the green of the trees. Around the temple proper were the houses of the priests, the attendants, and the little people who, while not really connected with the Sibyl, made their livings from those who came to see her: sellers of images and sacrificial animals, free-lance soothsayers and oracle-interpreters, innkeepers and wh.o.r.es, and the motley crew who sold amulets, charms, and doubtless curses, too.

Around the townlet were cleared fields, each small plot owned by a freeholder. Gerin knew the temple clung to its old ways and did not grudge it its customs, but still thought freeholding subversive. There was no way for a peasant to produce enough wealth to be able to equip himself with all the gear a proper warrior needed, and without the n.o.bles the border and all the land behind would be a red tangle of warfare, with the barbarians howling down to loot and burn and kill.

"Should we go down before the light fails?" Van asked.

Gerin thought of Ikos' dingy hostels and shook his head. "We'd get nothing done at this hour, and from what I recall of the inns, there will be fewer bugs here."

The evening meal was spare, taken from the same rations as breakfast. Gerin knew those had been packed with the idea of feeding two people, not three, and reminded himself to lay in more. Pretty sorry scholar you are, he jeered at himself, worrying over smoked sausages and journeybread.

He must have said that aloud, for Van laughed and answered, "Well, Captain, someone has to do it, after all."

The baron took the first watch. In Ikos below the lights faded until all was dark save for a central watchfire. The town watchman cast a huge flickering shadow as he paced about. The hills to the southwest were dotted with tiny patches of light Gerin knew to be camps like his own. In its grove, the temple was strange, for the light streaming out from it glowed blue instead of the comfortable red-gold of honest flame.

Magic, Gerin decided sleepily, or else the G.o.d was walking about inside. When Math's golden half-circle set he woke Van, then dove headfirst in- to sleep.

He woke to the. scent of cooking; luckier than he had been the morning before, Van had bagged a squirrel and two rabbits and was stewing them. Elise contributed mushrooms and a handful of herbs. Feeling much better about the world now that his belly was full, Gerin hitched up the horses and the wagon rolled down the path toward the Sibyl.

chapter 4.

It was not long before he discovered his memory had buried a great deal when it came to Ikos. First of all, the place stank. It lay under a cloud of incense so cloying that Gerin wished he could stow his nose in the wagon. Mixed with the sweet reek was the scent of charring fat from the sacrifices, as well as the usual town odors of stale cookery, garbage, ordure, and long-unwashed animals and humanity.

The noise was every bit as bad. Gerin's ears had not faced such an a.s.sault since he returned to the north country. It seemed as if every peddler in Ikos rolled down on the wagon, each crying his wares at something more than the top of his lungs: sword-blades, rare and potent drugs, sanctified water, oats, pretty boys, savory cooked geese, collected books of prophetic verse, and countless other things. A fat bald man in greasy tunic and shiny leather ap.r.o.n, plainly an innkeeper from the look of him, pushed his way through the press and bowed low before a bemused Gerin, who had never seen him before. "Count Stoffer, I believe?" he asked, back still bent.

Patience utterly exhausted, the Fox snapped, "Well, if you believe that, you'll believe anything, won't you?" and left the poor fellow to the jeers of his fellow-townsmen.

"Is this what the City is like?" Elise asked faintly.

"It is," Gerin said, "but only if you will allow that a map is like the country it pictures."

She used a word he had not suspected young girls knew.

Van chuckled and said, "It's the same problem both places, I think: too many people all pushed together. Captain, you're the only one of us with pockets. Have a care they aren't slit."

Gerin thumped himself to make sure he was still secure. "If any of these fine bucks tries it, he'll be slit himself, and not in the pocket."

They pushed their slow way through the swarming town of Ikos and into the clearing round the sacred grove. The sun was already high when they reached it, and they bought cheese and little bowls of barley porridge from the legion of venders. Men from every nation Gerin knew cursed and jostled one another, each trying to be the first to the G.o.d's voice on earth.

One lightly-built chariot held a brace of nomads from the plains of the east. They were little and lithe, flat of face and dark of skin, with scraggly charicatures of beards dangling from their chins. They dressed in wolfskin jackets and leather trousers, and bore double-curved bows reinforced with sinew. They carried small leather shields on their left arms; one was bossed with a golden panther, the other with a leaping stag. When Van noticed them he shouted something in a language that sounded like hissing snakes. Their slanted eyes lit up as they gave eager answer.

There were Kizzuwatnans in heavy carts hauled by straining donkeys: squat, heavy-boned men with swarthy skins, broad, hook-nosed faces, and liquid, mournful eyes. Their hair and beards curled in ringlets, and they wore long linen tunics that reached their knees.

There were a few Sithonians, though most of them preferred the oracle at p.r.o.nni in their own country. Slimmer and fairer than the Kizzuwatnans, they wore woolen mantles with brightly-dyed edgings. They peered about scornfully from under their broad-brimmed straw hats: though they had been subjects of the Empire for five centuries, they still saw themselves as something of an elite, and looked down on their Elabonian overlords as muscular dullards.

Even an Urfa from the deserts of the farthest south had come to Ikos. He must have ridden all the way around Elabon's Greater Inner Sea, for he was still perched atop his camel. Gerin looked at its harness with interest, thinking how fascinated Duin would have been. The desert-dweller looked down at the wains and chariots around him, and growled guttural warning when they came too close. That was seldom; horses shied away from his evil-looking mount. The Urfa was wrapped in a robe of grimy wool. Eyes and teeth flashed in a face blackened by dirt and long years of sun. Save for a nose even larger than the Kizzuwatnans', his features were delicate, almost feminine. He wore a thin fringe of beard and, for all his filth, seemed to think himself the lord of creation.

Gerin had a hard time putting names to some of the other outlanders. Van claimed one black-haired, fair-skinned giant belonged to the Gradi, who lived to the north of the Trokmoi. The man was afoot, and sweating in his furs. He carried a stout mace and a short-handled throwing axe. Of the Gradi Gerin knew almost nothing, but Van spoke of them with casual familiarity.

"Do your know their tongue?" Elise asked.

"Aye, a bit."

"Just how many languages do you know?" Gerin wondered.

"Well, if you mean to say h.e.l.lo in, and maybe swear a bit, G.o.ds, I've lost track long since. Tongues I know fairly well, though, perhaps ten or a dozen. Something like that."

"Which of them is your own?" Elise asked him.

"My lady," Van said, with something as close to embarra.s.sment as his deep voice could produce, "I've been on the road for a lot of years now. After a bit of time it matters little where I started."

Gerin grinned wryly: he'd had much the same answer when he asked that question. Elise plainly wanted to pursue it further, but held her tongue.

One group of foreigners the Fox knew only too well: the Trokmoi. Three of their chieftains had come to consult the Sibyl, their chariots staying together in the disorder. They were from deep in the northern woods, for Gerin, who knew the clans on the northern side of the border as well as he knew the barons warding it, recognized none of them, nor were the clan patterns of bright checks on their drivers' tunics familiar to him. Chiefs and drivers alike were tall thin men; four had red hair and two were blond. All wore their hair long and had huge drooping mustachios, though they shaved their cheeks and chins. Two clutched jugs of ale to themselves; another wore a necklace of human ears.

Priests circulated through the crowd. Gerin looked with scant liking at the one approaching the wagon. A robe of gold brocade was stretched across his over-ample belly, and his beardless cheeks shone pink. Everything about him was round and soft, from his limpid blue eyes to the toes peeking sausage-like from his sandals. He was a eunuch, for the G.o.d accepted no whole men as his servitors.

The tip of his tongue played redly across his lips as he asked, "What would your business be, gentles, with the Sibyl of my Lord Briton?" His voice was soft and sticky, like the caress of a hand dripping with honey.

"I'd sooner not speak of it in public," Gerin said.

"Quite, quite. Your servant Falfarun most definitely agrees. You have, though, a suitably appropriate offering for the G.o.d, I hope?'.'

"I think so," Gerin said, and swung a purse into Falfarun's pudgy fist.

The priest's face was blank. "Doubtless all will be well when your question is heard," he said.

"I do hope, my dear Falfarun," Gerin said in his suavest voice, "it will be heard soon." He handed the priest another, larger, purse, which vanished into a fold of his robe.

"Indeed. Yes, indeed. Come this way, if you please." Falfarun neared briskness as he elbowed aside less forethoughtful seekers of divine wisdom. Clucking to the horses, Van steered after him.

Gerin was conscious of the black looks he was getting, but ignored them. Falfarun led the wagon into the sacred grove around the temple precinct. Seeing the Fox's success, the Trokmoi pulled off rings, armlets, and a heavy golden pectoral and waved them in the face of another plum priest.

"You gauged the size of your second sack about right," Van whispered.