"Open the doors," I shouted, running up the stairs to the wall that connected the gatehouse at the head of the bridge to the barbican at the far end, which was surrounded by the Stehnite host.

I didn't know how long I had before some form of normalcy would return. Maybe it never would, but I had to do this while I had the opportunity. Behind me, spilling out of the library, were Garnet and Lisha and Renthrette, with half a dozen uncertain-looking Arak Drul and some equally uncertain-looking Stehnites following behind.

"Open the gate," I repeated, shouting at the first officer I saw. "Who's in charge here?"

He looked around, unsure, then pointed to a turret where a man in brilliant armor stood beside a white and gold banner: King Halmir, son of Velmir, lord of Phasdreille. I had almost forgotten him, and now I found myself wondering how he would adapt to what had just happened in the library. Would he fight to the death for all that the city and court had been, or would he wake up like the others had done as from a strange and consuming dream. He turned to peer at me, since I was the only thing moving and making noise on the otherwise silent battlements, and his armor flashed in the sun. He was about fifty yards away, but his visor was up and I could see his face. It was blank, perhaps confused.

"Open the gate," I shouted. "Give the order."

He watched me for a second, then seemed to glance sideways, as if waiting for some counselor to offer advice. Not finding one, he looked back to me and-without great conviction, but clearly, unmistakably-nodded his a.s.sent. Almost immediately, the grinding mechanism of the gates began to creak into action, and I ran back down to where the others were a.s.sembling.

The guards on the walls continued to watch, impa.s.sive and not making a sound. Some had set down their weapons and leaned out over the ramparts to get a better view, but no one was speaking or moving.

It was utterly surreal. The ma.s.sive doors groaned their way open, and I found myself gazing out across the bridge to where a great Stehnite army stood as silent and still as the defenders of Phasdreille. Then, at last, there was movement: The army began to shift to let a figure pa.s.s with slow and silent purpose through the ranks of Stehnite warriors in their outlandish armor and masked helms, onto the bridge, and into the city. It was a man, sitting astride a great black bear, and behind him came the chieftains of the Stehnite Council, but it wasn't until he was at the gates themselves that I realized that the bear-rider was Mithos.

SCENE XXI

Aftermath

"And that, Rose, is how I won the war," I concluded.

Orgos gave a single howl of laughter.

"What?" I protested, injured. "It's true."

"Kind of," laughed Orgos. "In a Hawthorne-esque fashion."

"Hawthorne-esque?" I exclaimed. "What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?"

"I think you know what it means," said Orgos.

"I'm pretty sure I I know what it means," said Toth, smiling, "so I know you do." know what it means," said Toth, smiling, "so I know you do."

"Come on, Rose," I said to Lisha's former informant, now stripped of her courtly makeup, "let's go somewhere where we are appreciated."

Orgos roared again and poured himself another beer.

It was good beer, rich and dark and sweet, and we were drinking it in the palace in Phasdreille, something I wouldn't have believed possible a few weeks before. But things had changed in the White City. The beer, the books, and many other things but, most importantly, the faces. The Stehnites had reentered their ancient city and the pale invaders had left or surrendered. Memory slowly came back to them, and some refused to believe what those memories brought, but most quickly abandoned any claim to the lands they had so recently conquered. Lisha and Mithos negotiated a settlement between King Halmir and the Stehnite chieftains in which areas of the city were preserved for the Arak Drul community, though the nature of their housing and employment was still under consideration. Resentments lingered on both sides, and twice in the last week there had been incidents of fighting between the rival factions, but a bipartisan force had been established to police such incidents, and casualties had been minimal. Things would improve in time, we hoped. How much time, it was impossible to say. In my darker moments I was sure that a real settlement would take generations and squabbling might erupt into open war again before then, but things seemed to be progressing as well as could be expected.

Garnet was not so sure. He had, I suppose, surrendered to the hatred more than any of us, but he had also been the one to reverse his position most drastically. It took me a while to realize that what resentment lingered in his mind was directed not at those he had considered goblins, but at the fair soldiers and courtiers who had ridden with him and who had taken him in, in more ways than one.

"They are liars," he said simply, on the one occasion I persuaded him to talk about it. "Just like you said."

"Were liars," I corrected him. "That was in the past, when they were under some kind of controlling influence. Now they're different. Most of them." liars," I corrected him. "That was in the past, when they were under some kind of controlling influence. Now they're different. Most of them."

"Maybe," he said.

"And that's why you attacked that ... whatever it was, their soul?"

He shrugged, as if unsure, or unwilling to talk about it.

"It never occurred to me that any of us could attack him physically like that," I said. "I was racking my brains to think of some brilliant way to undermine the heart of a culture, and while I'm standing there anxiously philosophizing, you just drew your axe and smacked him one."

"Maybe I'm just a shallower person than you, Will," he said. "Less complex."

"I didn't mean it as a criticism," I stammered, blushing.

"I didn't take it as one," he said. "I never particularly valued complexity. Sometimes it seems paralyzing."

Ironic, really. The simplemindedness that had made him believe everything that the Arak Drul had stood for had also made him the only one capable of destroying them. I considered this for a while, but couldn't turn it into a useful lesson to take away. Perhaps it served to remind me merely of the extent to which all of us-Lisha, Renthrette, Garnet, Mithos, Orgos, and myself-depended on each other. Perhaps it meant nothing, and any attempt on my part to read significance from it was no better than Sorrail reading the signs of evil in the perceived deformity of a Stehnite. Perhaps it was just a warning, a reminder that when things look too good to be true, you can bet there's something nasty and dangerous underneath, just waiting for a moment to leap out and expose your stupidity by tearing your limbs off. I don't know.

Whatever control the "soul" in the library had exerted, not everyone had needed it. The Pale Claw cabal melted away, but within hours of the surrender it became clear that they had not simply thrown down their weapons with the rest. They had left, quiet and close to powerless, but with an unsettling deliberation. Where they were now, no one knew for sure, but there had been reports of attacks on Stehnite hunting parties in the mountains, and the newly formed city council had started compiling a list of the Arak Drul's key courtiers, generals, and politicians who could not be accounted for. The Pale Claw had needed no hooded sorcerer to make them hate goblins, and I suspected that Phasdreille had not heard the last of them. Whether some of those still in the city were only masking their true feelings about the present detente, and how close to the throne the Pale Claw's influence had spread, no one knew. As tidy as the end to the war had been, there were loose ends, though how far they would trail into the future, I could not begin to speculate.

I returned to the attentive Rose and my excellent beer, but our little chat was disturbed almost immediately by a knock at the door. It was Renthrette.

"We need you in the banquet hall, Will," she said, her eyes falling on Rose. "Now."

I scowled at her and tried to look imploring. "Right now?"

"Right now," she answered, still looking Rose up and down unabashedly.

I sighed and muttered a promise to Rose that I would be back soon.

"I'm not sure you'll keep that promise," said Renthrette as we closed the door behind us.

"Why?"

"You'll see."

We walked along the cold corridors of the palace, through empty antechambers that had once been packed with courtiers entertaining themselves and pressing for a glimpse of the king. Inside the banquet hall, the party was gathered in a whispering huddle. At the far end of the room stood a man in black, the same man who had offered us a ride in his coach from Stavis.

"Will," said Renthrette, "you remember Amba.s.sador Lina.s.si?"

I stopped in my tracks. How could I forget?

I had planned for this meeting, rehea.r.s.ed my anger and outrage, mentally staged the way I would fly at him and beat him. But now that the moment had come, I forgot my lines and could not think what to do. I was corpsed. My mouth opened and nothing came out.

He looked at me, smiled his undertaker smile, and it was almost like being back with the hooded soul of the Arak Drul. But I felt his thoughts and they were at once benevolent and mildly amused. I said nothing. He looked at each of us in turn, then said, "Ready to go home?"

No praise, no thanks, no apology; just that. I found my voice again. "Oh, no," I began. "Not that easy, mate. You're going to do a lot of talking before I get in that magic hea.r.s.e of yours. You can't just whisk us across the world-presuming we're still in the world-and drop us into a war from which we emerge by the skin of our teeth, having been chewed by talking bears and generally inconvenienced by an elaborate collection of things that shouldn't exist in any rational ..."

"Shouldn't exist?" he smiled.

I hesitated. I was suddenly overcome by the sense that I had a significant moment in my grasp, and could easily get us all into a lot more trouble by saying the wrong thing. The rest of the party seemed to be holding their breath. "Shouldn't exist," I said, "but apparently do. Here. Wherever that is."

Lisha moved. I caught her eye and she nodded fractionally, as if with approval.

"But, look," I began. "I still don't understand a lot of this. That's a state of mind that I've gotten quite used to. But the fact is that I think we need some explanations. I mean, we were prophesied prophesied to be here, or something. Now what's all that about, for a start?" to be here, or something. Now what's all that about, for a start?"

"I don't think there was ever a real prophecy," said Orgos. "Not in the sense you mean."

"But they knew we were coming," I said. "They said we would have a hand in their war and they were right."

"There's nothing in the library," said Lisha. "I've been looking. I think the prophecy was just a rumor that came from paranoia and xenophobia. The world of the Arak Drul was defined against the Stehnites. It makes sense that the one thing they might fear above anything else was people who would not fit in either camp, outsiders who would not see good and evil in the ways they wanted. Such people might erode the Arak Drul's sense of order just by being here."

"So they learned to watch for strangers," agreed Orgos, "for anyone who wasn't 'goblin' but didn't see the world as the Arak Drul did."

"That's it?" I said. "No prophecy? No cosmic hand writing us into the future? No promise that we were destined to shape the world?"

"No," said the amba.s.sador, simply.

I thought for a moment and then nodded.

"Good," I said. "I don't believe in destiny."

Everyone looked to the amba.s.sador to see how he would respond to this, and when, after a tense moment, he smiled, you could feel everyone breathing out with something like relief. I caught Lisha's eye and she nodded again, but this time the approval held a note of warning. I was being told that what I had said thus far was plenty, and now I should shut up. I thought about it, and shut up as requested.

"Then we are ready to move on," said the amba.s.sador.

I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, and was suddenly struck by a reluctance to leave at all. Rose was waiting for me in my room, I thought. I was a hero, an honored guest.

But "guest" was right. I didn't belong in this land of sorcery and chocolate-covered birds. I didn't know where I did belong, but it wasn't here.

"All right," I said. "Let's go."

There was a tiny ripple among the group, a kind of resolution that did not come easily, but came definitively.

"My coach is outside," Lina.s.si said. "As is your stallion."

"Tarsha!" exclaimed Renthrette, and everything else, the pain of parting from Toth and his people, the strangeness of all we had seen, and the various extreme feelings that accompanied all we had done since we had got here was forgotten. As soon as Renthrette imagined meeting her beloved warhorse, her memories of Sorrail and what, if anything, she had felt for him evaporated as only the memories of old love can. I defy any man to compete for her affections with that b.l.o.o.d.y horse.

We didn't even get to say good-bye, though that was probably a blessing. I had been popular briefly enough that I wasn't sure I knew how to leave those who valued me, if only as someone who had done Significant Things. I wouldn't even be leaving any friends, not exactly. I was on the verge of getting to know Rose, and I no longer jumped a foot in the air when Toth showed up at my door, but I had spent too much of my time here alone to have made lasting acquaintances.

I left Rose a book of poems that I had been carrying about with me. They were addressed to people with dark eyes, but I didn't think she'd mind. It was odd to think that a few weeks before she might have been revolted by them.

Toth was there to see us off, but no one else knew we were leaving. He bowed to each of us in turn, including me, and embraced Orgos and Mithos. Then the coach was moving off, silent and dark as before, with Renthrette mounted on Tarsha at our rear and Garnet sitting beside the coachman. Orgos's eyes met mine and he smiled. "Worried, Will?"

"Always," I answered, honestly.

Mithos grinned, a real smile that split his face so you could almost see his teeth. It was like glimpsing a very rare bird, and within moments I had convinced myself that it had been a trick of the light. I peered out of the window as Phasdreille, white and glorious, receded slowly behind us and we got onto the road proper. It was a clear, cold day, and the early afternoon light was turning the city to gold as it had been when I first saw it. Back down the road, a familiar silver wolf with a flash of white on its throat was loping easily after us. The amba.s.sador touched my arm and I leaped in my seat.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," I muttered. "It's like rolling over and finding you're in bed with the grim reaper. No offense."

"None taken," he replied. "I was merely going to suggest that you pull your head inside the carriage. I think I hear a storm coming."

I glanced hastily out of the window and saw that the land around me was darkening fast. Overhead, I heard the distinct rumble of thunder. Then the heavens opened and a great torrent of rain came crashing down upon us, lashing the carriage and the horses. As the lightning flashed hard and white, I remember thinking that so much water might just wash the world away.

"Brace yourself, Will," said Orgos. "We're going home."

"That," said the amba.s.sador, "remains to be seen."

I was about to ask him what the h.e.l.l he meant by that, when there was another brilliant flash which seemed to linger impossibly, and then I was thrown face-first onto the carriage floor. When I opened my eyes and got up to my knees, everything had changed. There was no storm, and the light from outside had dropped to almost nothing.

I fought with the latch on the carriage door to get out of that oppressive darkness and bundled myself out into the dim courtyard of the Fisherman's Arms, the tavern where we had first met the amba.s.sador.

"Stavis," I muttered to myself. "We're back in Stavis."

"Like we never left," said Mithos, cautious, as he stepped down from the carriage behind me.

"But we did," I said. "Right? You're not going to give me that 'and-I-woke-up-and-it-was-all-a-dream' b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, are you? Because that is the single worst ending to a story ever."

"No," said Orgos, wonderingly. "It was real. I can still feel the ache of my wounds."

I felt my face, but the bruising Sorrail had given me had healed long before the amba.s.sador had showed up in Phasdreille. I glanced wildly around, expecting to have lost some of the group, but they were all there, Garnet still sitting beside the driver with a dazed look, Renthrette sliding out of Tarsha's saddle, Lisha stock still, her spear somehow ready.

"The same place," said Orgos, still in an awed whisper, "and the same time."

"What?" I said. "What do you mean?"

I was trying to sound defiant, dismissive, but a part of me knew what was coming and guessed he was right. He was staring at the corner of the sky where a quarter moon was beginning to rise.

"This is how it was when we left," he said.

"Oh my G.o.d," I said. "There will be Empire troops all over looking for us. We're right back where we were!"

"Almost," said the amba.s.sador, stepping down from the carriage.

I had a.s.sumed he was gone, and his voice made me jump, but I recovered quickly.

"What do you mean, 'almost'?" I said.

"Times change," he answered. "See for yourself."

As he was speaking, the door into the tavern had been thrown open and a bored-looking stable boy trudged out with a bag of oats. Orgos, ever stealthy, ducked behind the carriage, reaching for his sword. Mithos and Lisha followed. The boy, who was about fourteen, frowned at us.

"Oh," he said to me. "I didn't know anyone was here. I'll get my master."

"Wait," I insisted. I had no idea how to proceed. "So," I said. "How's business? Busy night?"