His breathing was deep and rapid. The walls of the hallway reflected an orange glow, but the clothing had extinguished itself. His whole body tingled and euphoria mixed with his astonishment and fear. He wanted to dance again, but instead decided it was time to do some hard thinking.

 

 

About what? About something left untended. let out of control. And that was. yes?

 

 

Hyloka. He hadn't stopped the drawing of heat from the center. He shook his head in comic exasperation and concentrated on the center of warmth, gradually damping it down. His hand was still ruddy, so he damped the impulse further. Normal skin color returned.

 

 

With the heat went the euphoria. Michael suddenly realized he was standing naked in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by the blackened remains of his clothes.

 

 

In front of Helena's door.

 

 

It was worse than any nightmare of embarrassment he had ever had. He had burned his clothes off his back. He bent to pick up the book, and without thinking he pushed on the wicker door. It opened - there were no locks in Euterpe - and he darted inside.

 

 

Several seconds passed before he was calm enough to realize she wasn't home. Chilled again, he looked around for something to wear. The closet - a wicker armoire - yielded a long skirt which he tied around his waist. He found a kind of short jacket which barely fit his shoulders and was about to sneak out when the wicker door swung open again.

 

 

Helena came in with several scraps of cloth draped over her arm and a sewing kit in one hand.

 

 

"Hello," Michael said by way of warning. She turned slowly and regarded him with wide eyes.

 

 

"What in hell is wrong with you?" she asked a moment later. He was shivering, mortified, but he managed a miserable smile. "I burned my clothes," he said.

 

 

"Jesus H. Christ." Helena propped the door open with her foot, as if contemplating escape. She glanced down at the blackened rags in the hallway. "Why?"

 

 

"I was trying to keep warm," Michael said. "It got away from me. I was, you know, drawing heat from the center.... Spart calls it hyloka-"

 

 

"You're only making it worse," Helena said, relaxing. She folded the fabric over the back of a chair and laid the sewing kit on the seat. "Start at the beginning."

 

 

Michael explained as best he could, and when he was done, Helena nodded dubiously. "So you dress up in my clothes. That's my only skirt, you know."

 

 

"I wouldn't fit in your pants," Michael said.

 

 

"Indeed you wouldn't. What are you going to do? Wear my only dress around? How many clothes do you have?"

 

 

"Just those," Michael said, pointing toward the hall. "I was-"

 

 

"Why did you come here to burn your clothes?"

 

 

His mortification turned into agony. He stammered and felt the start of tears. Then he saw she was enjoying the whole situation, egging him on. "I was coming to visit. It was snowing."

 

 

Helena suddenly started laughing. She bent over and fell back on the chair, knocking the kit to the floor. "I'm so-o-rry," she cackled. "I'm really so-o-o-rry!"

 

 

Michael saw the humor, but couldn't bring himself to join her. "I'll go now," he said.

 

 

"Not in my dress, you won't. What are we going to do? I don't have any men's clothes here."

 

 

"Borrow some, maybe," he suggested hopefully.

 

 

She restrained her mirth and picked up the sewing kit. "Actually," she said, walking around him, "you don't look half bad. Maybe I'll let you wear it."

 

 

"Helena, please."

 

 

"All right. I shouldn't laugh."

 

 

"I'm sure it's very funny," Michael said. "I'd be laughing, too, but it's me standing here like an ass, and in your apartment, too. And it's me wearing your clothes-"

 

 

"Why did you come back? I've seen so little of you."

 

 

'To talk. Up until a few days ago, they've been keeping me busy." He hoped she hadn't heard about Eleuth; he didn't know what kind of gossip network there was in Euterpe. No doubt he would soon find out. "You won't tell anybody, will you?"

 

 

"No. Michael, you are the most unusual person I've ever met, and you get weirder every time I see you."

 

 

"It's just this place, everything about it."

 

 

"Oh. You're normal, then."

 

 

"Yeah - No, I mean, not like everybody else-"

 

 

"Enough, enough," Helena said. "I'll go find Savarin and tell him you need some clothes. He might know where to get them - fabric is scarce around here, you know. You can't just cook it off every chance you get." She giggled. "I'm even bringing home stuff mangled in the tubs at the laundry," she said, pointing to the fabric. "It's part of my job to patch it up."

 

 

"Don't tell Savarin. Don't bring him here, please."

 

 

"But we'll need an excuse. Some reason why you need new clothes."

 

 

'Tell him I wore mine out training."

 

 

"Sure. And walked naked through town to my apartment."

 

 

"Then make something up! Please."

 

 

"I'll be circumspect. I'll tell him it's a secret. You know what he'll think then?" She put on a prim expression. "Well, let him think whatever he wants." She went to the door. "I'll be back shortly. Don't go anywhere."

 

 

"You don't need to tell me that," he said.

 

 

She gave him one final glance, shook her head, and closed the door. Michael looked down at the blouse that barely fit across his chest, and the dress, and gave a helpless groan. He sat on the chair and nibbed his face with his hands, then lifted his head and looked around the small apartment.

 

 

Sitting on the wicker table near the chair was a rounded piece of what appeared to be driftwood. He wondered where it had come from; it was displayed prominently, like a kind of treasure. Wood was highly regarded by the humans. The Breeds were forbidden to trade wood, and he doubted Sidhe traders would supply any to humans. He wondered if he could procure some for Helena, perhaps a board from his hut; anything to make up for what he had just done.

 

 

Near the window looking down into the alley was a tall, columnar ceramic vase with three leafy sticks giving out one small yellow bud. He walked over and sniffed it, but there was no odor.

 

 

The rest of the room was quite spare. Still, after his hut, Helena's apartment seemed like the height of civilization.

 

 

An hour passed before she returned with a cloth bag and held it out to him. "Go into the back room and put these on," she said. "Savarin asked Risky for some leftovers. She had them from a tenant who disappeared years ago. They should fit."

 

 

Michael did as he was told and used the opportunity to examine her sleeping quarters. The bed was made of - what else? - wicker, with a mattress stuffed with vegetable fiber, not precisely straw. Over it were two plain, thin blankets. The area was barely large enough for a single bed. On the walls, more flowers had been hand-painted, clumsy but somehow charming.

 

 

Helena examined him critically when he returned through the curtain. "Well," she said, finger to cheek, "it's not the tailored look, but it will have to do."

 

 

"There's no pocket for my book," he said. He held up the volume, which was starting to look the worse for wear.

 

 

"I'll make you a pocket with some scraps," Helena said. "Give me the shirt." He removed the shirt and handed it to her.

 

 

"So you won't be needing any warm clothes, hm?" Helena asked as she cut out a patch pocket and began to apply it.

 

 

"I don't want to use hyloka again until I know how to control it," he said. He sighed. "There are so many really strange things to watch out for."

 

 

She looked at his naked chest as she sewed on the pocket. He shifted on his chair and pretended interest in the window. He wasn't scrawny but his skin was pale and he was self-conscious. He would never pass for a pin-up.

 

 

"You're getting heftier," she said. "Must be the training. Too bad baggy clothes hide it."

 

 

Snow was falling again. "Does it get real cold here?"

 

 

"Looks like winter's getting started, but you can't always count on it. When winter sets in for sure, it gets very cold. The laundry shuts down, everything stops. Winter is a good time to hide things. The Wickmaster hardly ever comes through then. He doesn't want to see how miserable everybody is. He has to keep us reasonably well-cared for, and what he doesn't see, he doesn't have to correct."

 

 

She finished the sewing and put the needle away. "There. A pocket." She passed the shirt to him and turned her chair around to watch as he put it on. "A regular ragamuffin. Have you thought much about what I said?"

 

 

He buttoned the front and slipped the book into place. "Said?"

 

 

"About our group."

 

 

"Oh. I've thought about it. I'm wondering what you'll do with a piano."

 

 

She stood and peered out the window into the alley, then drew closer to him. "It's not just the piano," she said. "It's bigger than that. The piano's nice, though." A distant look came into her eyes. "I'm all out of practice. My fingers are ruined." She wriggled them and made as if to pound a keyboard. "Stiff. Calluses. But like I was saying, we have other plans. Savarin thinks we can trust you. The Wickmaster seems to hate your guts. Of course, maybe that's just a ruse.There have been humans who have gone over to the Sidhe." She looked at him sharply. "You're more mixed-up with the Breeds than with the Sidhe, and the Sidhe and Breeds aren't exactly close. But we have one reservation."

 

 

"Yes?" He felt vaguely guilty and grit his teeth.

 

 

"Why are the Crane Women so interested in you?"

 

 

"I think because of Lamia," he said. "But listen, if you don't trust me, forget it. Don't tell me anything."

 

 

"You don't know why you're being trained?"

 

 

"Savarin and I have been through all this before. I'm probably the most ignorant person in the Realm."

 

 

Helena laughed. "Don't be upset.well, we have to be careful. You know how serious things are. What do you know about the Pact?"

 

 

"That the Isomage, or David Clarkham, or whoever he is, fought a battle and won some concessions."

 

 

"He lost."

 

 

"Yeah, but he made the Sidhe agree to set up the Pact Lands. I suppose having Alyons watch over us was part of it."

 

 

"Savarin says Alyons was sent here as punishment for breaking a Sidhe law. But what I'm getting at is, if we put up some kind of resistance, or try to change things, the Pact is off. Alyons can do what he wants with us."

 

 

"You're not thinking of resisting?" He remembered Biri running around the rock, powdering it, and Biri was just a young, inexperienced Sidhe. What could a Wickmaster do, if all restrictions were off?

 

 

"Yes," Helena affirmed, her eyes wide with excitement. "Isn't it about time?"

 

 

"Is Savarin the leader?"

 

 

"Heavens no. Someone you have yet to meet."

 

 

"But I shouldn't know his name."

 

 

She hesitated, then shook her head. "Not until we're positive you can be trusted."

 

 

"Do you trust me?"

 

 

"I think so," Helena said after a moment. "Yes, I trust you." She smiled broadly and rocked back and forth in her chair. "Nobody could be an undercover agent and bum his clothes off on my doorstep."

 

 

"So what are you going to do?"

 

 

"We're still planning. Nothing's finalized. But if this really is winter, maybe we can get on with it. They've been planning ever since I came here, and long before. The central committee is very careful."

 

 

"Thanks for the clothes," he said, remembering how Eleuth had clothed him before.

 

 

"Nothing to it. Try not to destroy them."

 

 

"No guarantees," he said ruefully. "Sometimes the best intentions go way wrong."

 

 

"Don't I know it," she said. She fastened her gaze on him and bit her lower lip.

 

 

"What's wrong?"

 

 

"You're very handsome," she said.

 

 

"Bull."

 

 

"I mean it. You're attractive."

 

 

"I think you're beautiful." The words came out before he could assess them. Helena's expression didn't change for a moment, but then a slow, warm smile emerged and she touched his knee with her hands. "I mean it, too," he said.

 

 

"You're sweet. What time do you have to be back?" Her tone became businesslike and she went to the window again.

 

 

"Dusk," he said.

 

 

"That'll probably come early today. You want to learn why we're so positive we can resist, and succeed?"

 

 

"I suppose," he said.

 

 

"You'll have to be sure, now," she said sternly. "I'd have to take you someplace pretty unpleasant."

 

 

"How can I - ? Oh, okay. I'm sure."

 

 

"Strong stomach?"

 

 

"I guess."

 

 

She frowned at him, then held out her hand. He took it and stood up.

 

 

"There are several lessons for you to learn," she said. He felt his heart quicken hopefully, but she put on a shawl and held the apartment door open for him. "I have friends in the Yard. They'll get us inside. There's somebody I want you to meet. A Child."

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

 

The Yard was at Euterpe's center, a broad, flat brick building surrounded by streets uncharacteristically wide for the human town. Helena marched ahead of him, an intent look on her face. "Nobody likes to go here," she said. "I don't go often. Savarin comes here more often than the rest."

 

 

The entrance to the yard was narrow, barely two feet wide, and blocked with a heavy woven wicker door a foot thick. Helena pulled a knob and glass chimes tinkled faintly within. A peephole slid open in the brick wall beside the door and a yellow, bleary eye peered at them.

 

 

"Sherebith, it's me," Helena said. The wicker door opened with a hollow scraping sound.

 

 

"Yes, Miss Helena. What can I do for you?" A yellow-faced, plump woman in a long gray gown stood in the half-open en trance way, arms folded, staring at Michael with neither trust nor liking.

 

 

"This is a friend," Helena said. "I'd like him to see the Yard and meet Ishmael. Michael, this is Sherebith."

 

 

Michael held out his hand. "Glad to meet you," he said. The woman looked at the hand, grimaced in disbelief and opened the door wider. "Come in," she said in a resigned tone. "He's been quiet today. The others are following his example. Thank whomever for small favors."

 

 

Sherebith led them down a dark corridor, the walls, floor and ceiling of which were made of close-spaced bricks the color of dried dung. Some light entered through narrow slits at intervals of six or seven strides; the only other illumination was from wax candles ensconced between the slits. Despite the musty smell, the floors and walls seemed clean and well-tended. Sherebith went first, followed by Helena and then Michael, who had the nagging urge to look over his shoulder.

 

 

The interior was silent. At the end of the corridor was another heavy wicker door, this one studded on the outside with more glass chimes. "Alarms," Helena said, tinkling one before Sherebith opened the door and set them all ringing.

 

 

Beyond was an open court about ten feet square, again made of brick and devoid of ornament. In each of the four walls was another door. Sherebith stepped to the door directly opposite and unlatched it. As the door creaked open, a damp thick odor wafted out, combining the worst traits of musty cellars and the sewer sludge Michael's father used on the family garden.

 

 

The candles burned dimmer in the thick air beyond. There were no slits for lighting, but covered ventilator holes in the ceiling admitted faint barred spots of day.

 

 

The room's opposite walls were lost in darkness. Square brick columns supported the low ceiling, each side holding a guttering candle. Michael saw pits dug into the floor, each about ten feet on a side and faced with brick and tile. Michael counted seven. "Compound three," Sherebith said. "I call it Leader of the Howl Compound, because of Ishmael. He's the big one. The instigator." She pointed to benches near each pit. "When the compounds were built, people thought perhaps the parents would like to come visit their children now and then. Nobody has, not since the first few months. Only me and the caretaker. I'm the warden." She smiled, revealing snaggled, yellow teeth. "I'm the only one who cares about them, who's kind to them, except the caretaker."

 

 

"What about Savarin?" Helena suggested gently.

 

 

"Him? He has reasons to come here. He gets them upset sometimes. No love for Savarin. Does he listen to them when night's down and they hear the calls from the Plain, things you and I can't hear? No." She pointed to her small, curled ears, hidden beneath straight strands of graying hair. "Calls from their real kin. The bodies mean nothing. It's what's in the bottles that counts, not the shape nor the labels."

 

 

She led them to the middle pit. Michael glanced into the other pits as they passed; the walkways were only a yard wide, and it was difficult to stay calm with the unknown on each side. Each pit held a single pale, reclining figure, some child-sized, some larger. He couldn't make out details.

 

 

Sherebith leaned over the middle pit. "Ishmael," she called softly. "Ishmael, are you home?" A thin gray figure stirred in the shadows.

 

 

"Yes, Mother." The voice was thick, deep and cultured, imbued with an abyssal sadness. Michael felt a tug on some emotion that he could not immediately identify.

 

 

"I'm not his real mother," Sherebith confided with a slack-lipped smile. "But I'm the only one he knows."

 

 

"Ishmael," Helena said, kneeling on the walkway. The pit was as deep as it was wide, and the walls were made of slick, hard tile. The figure was naked and the pit was bare except for three bowls, receptacles for food, water and waste, all arranged neatly against one wall.

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

Michael's eyes had adjusted well enough that he could make out the details of Ishmael's face. It was small, round, disproportionate to such a tall body. The hands were large and hung from arms which began thin at the shoulders and widened to grotesque forearms and wrists.

 

 

"We have some questions to ask," Helena said.

 

 

"I'm not otherwise occupied."

 

 

"Has he been here since he was born?" Michael whispered.

 

 

"Almost," Helena said. "He was one of the first that we know of. He's been here since the War."

 

 

"Time passes," Ishmael said. "Questions." He sat down, leaning against the tiles and stretching his pale legs out on the floor.

 

 

"Who are you?"

 

 

"A sideshow for the guilty. A product of lust. Something so evil it must be evilly confined through all its endless life. An abortion walking. Victim."

 

 

"Don't listen to that crap," Helena told Michael. She glanced at him to gauge the effect Ishmael was having, then returned her attention to the pit. "Who are you?"

 

 

"An abortion!" Ishmael's voice rose. "Born of man and woman."

 

 

"You killed your parents."

 

 

"I don't remember." Coy, smiling.

 

 

"You tried to kill others."

 

 

"You are so informed."

 

 

"Who are you?" Helena persisted. "Your name."

 

 

"Call me-"

 

 

"Stop that," Sherebith said quietly. "His name is Paynim. He's one of Adonna's own."

 

 

"Paynim," said the figure, "Ishmael. No matter."

 

 

"He took the child's body when it was born. There are no souls here." Sherebith walked around the pit. "I am the only one who cares."

 

 

"Adonna cares!" Ishmael wailed. "Adonna bred me-"

 

 

"Buried you," Sherebith said, pacing behind Helena and Michael, making Michael edge uncomfortably close to the pit.

 

 

"Adonna freed me."

 

 

"You rose from the Blasted Plain. You still call to your friends there."

 

 

"No friends." Sad, deep.

 

 

"Then what are you?" Helena asked.

 

 

"Out of time, mired in the Realm, given form by Adonna. Ishmael."

 

 

"What are you capable of?"

 

 

The Child shook his head. Michael could barely make out his grin. The air was stifling. Michael wanted very badly to be outside.

 

 

"I stare at the Realm. I foresee."

 

 

"What do you foresee?"

 

 

"Rebellion."

 

 

"When?"

 

 

"Soon, soon."

 

 

"Who will win?"

 

 

Michael looked at Helena, then at Sherebith.

 

 

"The Pact will be broken. Alyons will lose everything."

 

 

Helena's expression was triumphant. "That's the second time he's used those words. He told Savarin the same thing. We'll win!"

 

 

Michael frowned. The Child's face was composed, hands folded in his lap. Sherebith kneeled beside the pit and looked up at them. "Nobody cares for them but me," she said. "I am the only one."

 

 

"And the caretaker," Helena reminded her.

 

 

"And him."

 

 

Behind them, a short lean man dressed in brown pants and a knee-length baggy shirt pushed a wicker cart across the narrow walkways. From the sides of the cart hung the paper and wicker bowls used by the inhabitants of the pits. Three covered containers poked from a recess in the top of the cart. Helena and Michael stepped out of his way and he passed along the narrow walkway, the bowls tapping against the side of the cart. Michael looked at the man's face. He seemed to concentrate on some inner melody, gliding under the bands of light from a ventilator; his eyes were sunken, useless, and as blue as a newborn kitten's. "The caretaker," Helena whispered into Michael's ear.

 

 

"The only one," Sherebith affirmed, gaze fixed on Ishmael in his pit.

 

 

Michael was cold when they emerged from the Yard. Sherebith closed the door behind them and latched it without a word. For the first time, Michael knew what it felt like to want to die - to get the misery over with.

 

 

That was the emotion he had contracted from Ishmael.

 

 

Helena took a deep breath and brushed her hair back from her face. "Now you see why we don't go there often."

 

 

"They're kept in the pits. because they hurt people?"

 

 

"They're monsters," Helena said, walking across the road. "Didn't you hear him?"

 

 

"Yes, but he's been there. how long? Decades? That would turn anyone into a monster."

 

 

"I've only heard stories," Helena said, keeping one pace ahead of him. "They killed their parents, or they murdered other people. Or they escaped to the Blasted Plain and lived there and made raids on Euterpe until they were caught, or killed. And when they were killed, a foulness came out of them." She shuddered, her shoulders jerking spasmodically. "This isn't Earth, Michael."

 

 

"I know that," Michael said, his voice rising. "But Jesus - the way they're treated. If they're so bad, why not just kill them?"

 

 

"We can't kill them," she said. "Aiyons can. Not us. He hasn't killed any of them for a long time. None have escaped for a long time. They're human. sort of. I don't wish to talk about it anymore."

 

 

"All right. Then about his prophecy. How do you know he's telling the truth?"

 

 

"Sherebith will tell you. Once you get past all the crap, Ishmael never lies."

 

 

"But maybe he misleads. I read about the sibyls-"

 

 

Helena turned on him, neck thrust out and fists clenched. "Look! We have little enough to go on, nothing to encourage us. We take our reassurances where we can."

 

 

"From Ishmael?" Michael said, his face flushing. "From someone you lock up as a monster?"

 

 

"A special monster," she said, relaxing slightly. "Don't try to set us straight about the Realm, or about what we're doing, Michael. We've been here much longer than you have."

 

 

That seemed to settle it. They were silent the rest of the way back to Helena's apartment. She walked up the stairs ahead of him. "You want to come in?" she asked.

 

 

He considered. "Yes. I want to know what I can do to help. I don't like Alyons any more than you do. Maybe less."

 

 

"Then come in," Helena said.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

 

 

Helena busied herself cleaning up in the back room behind half-drawn curtains. Michael listened to water splashing, toilet articles clinking, Helena humming to herself.

 

 

He was disturbed. Something was wrong, but what exactly eluded him. The perverse mood brought on by Ishmael's words was passing; what was wrong, or seemed wrong, was much more mundane.

 

 

Helena. When she was away from him, he had doubts she could ever be more than she was at this moment - friendly, but distant. When she was in his sight, the doubts shrunk to mere points, blocked by his infatuation. She was quick, pretty, human. She would never look like the Crane Women. She came from Earth. From home.

 

 

Yet he didn't feel at ease around her. He was more comfortable around Eleuth than Helena.

 

 

Helena parted the curtains and smiled at him. "Thank you for waiting. I always have to wash myself off after visiting the Yard." She offered him a damp rag. He didn't feel any dirtier than usual, but to please her, he robbed off his face and wiped his hands.

 

 

"There," she said, throwing the rag into a corner and sitting in the second chair before him. She adjusted her seat until it was square with his. "You know how much I feel for you," she said.

 

 

He didn't reply for a moment. Her eyes locked his; he had to make an effort to look away and swallow. "I know that you feel for me," he said, concentrating on the curtained window. "I don't know how."

 

 

"Now you're being obscure," she said. "I care for you a great deal. You are a very sweet boy. True, you're caught up in things you don't really understand, but so am I. So are we all. You do the best you can."

 

 

He shrugged, his thick red eyebrows drawn together. She smiled. "You're smart, attractive, and anywhere else I would probably be in love with you, right this minute. I'd want you to write your poetry for me. I'd play the piano for you." Her smile broadened. "You may hear me play a piano soon, anyway. If we were in Brooklyn, I'd take you-" She stopped and her face stiffened. "But we aren't. We have to see that. I can't love you, not like I should. Today you've seen why."

 

 

"I have?"

 

 

"The Yard. To love you properly, I'd want to give myself to you completely. and I can't." She searched his face and reached out to touch his cheek. "Don't you see? They've taken love away from us here. We might make a mistake, a slip. I couldn't stand the thought of having a Child."

 

 

He was dumfounded.

 

 

"Poor Michael," she repeated.

 

 

"I don't see-" he began. But he did see. She was being perfectly reasonable. And yet. there was that wrong thing, that still-nagging point of disturbance.

 

 

"Friendship is very important here," she said. "We live by it. We all have to work together, or they'll overwhelm us. We all have to resist every way we can. I need you. We need you. As a friend."

 

 

He still didn't have any reply. He wanted to show her he knew what she was about to say, but he couldn't.

 

 

"We can't be lovers, Michael. Do you understand? I hope you do. I want to have you understand, now, before it gets all." She waved her hand and cocked her head to one side. "All crazy."

 

 

"I understand," he said. It was too late. He felt it even more strongly now. Not being able to have her made him love her all the more. He knew it was perverse, but it wasn't a new emotion; it was just that the denial unveiled it completely. He had to be near her any way he could. "Friendship is important to me, too," he said with a weak grin. "I need friends here."

 

 

"Good." She laid her hand on his knee and regarded him earnestly. "We need your help."

 

 

"How?"

 

 

"If you truly want to be one of us, to resist Alyons and the coursers and to free us all from the Sidhe. you have to listen for us. Let us know what you hear."

 

 

He laughed. "The Crane Women don't tell me anything," he said. "I feel like a God damned mushroom with them." He was surprised by the bitterness in his voice.

 

 

"Yes. I know the joke," she said. "We all feel that way. But Savarin says you're right in the thick of things. There's a Sidhe living not ten yards from your hut, and the Crane Women are training you. I've told Savarin I bet you're already learning things no other human knows. Like how to bum off your clothes." She smiled. "We still don't know why you're being trained. Probably only Lamia could tell us that. But there must be things you can learn, knowledge you can pass on to us. You could learn about the land beyond the Blasted Plain-"

 

 

"I've been there," Michael said.

 

 

"See!" Her excitement doubled. "Wonderful! You could tell Savarin what it's like, what we'll find v/hen we break out!"

 

 

"I'm not sure it's wise to even think about crossing the Blasted Plain," Michael said. "Even the Sidhe have to dust themselves with sani and use their horses for protection. It's dangerous."

 

 

"We know a little about the powder. Can you get some for us?"

 

 

"I don't think so," he said. "I don't know where it is, or even if the Crane Women have any - - -"

 

 

"But if you could get into their hut, look for it___They must have some."

 

 

"I wouldn't even want to try," he said.

 

 

"Why not? They're half human."

 

 

He chuckled. "The forgotten half. You should see their windows at night. Like they have a blast furnace inside. Orange light, flickering. You'd think it was on fire."

 

 

"Can't you even look?" The goad in her voice was not particularly sharp, but surrounded by the silkiness, the hint of doubt, it hurt.

 

 

"I'll let you know," he said after a pause.

 

 

"We'll need it soon."

 

 

"How soon?"

 

 

"Within a fortnight. Two weeks. Sorry - I start to talk like the old folks here." She gave him a questioning look, lifting her eyebrows. She was practically begging.

 

 

"I'll try," he said.

 

 

"Marvelous!"

 

 

"I better be going back now." He wanted to be alone, to think things over and subdue the buzz of confusion and disappointment.

 

 

"Don't cause any trouble," she said. "Don't try to run away again. Just work with us. help us. You heard what Ishmael said."

 

 

"I heard." They stood and she kissed him on the cheek, gripping his arms tightly.

 

 

For the next week, he hardly had time to think. The Crane Women suddenly integrated him into Bin's training, without explanation - and without reprieve.

 

 

The day after he'd spoken with Helena, they took Michael and Bin to a barren mound about two miles south. Coom supervised Bin and Spart kept watch on Michael as they tried higher and higher levels of hyloka.

 

 

The Crane Women were positively grim. Spart barked out her instructions, her voice growing hoarse as the hours passed. Before the day was out, Nare was instructing Michael on how to block his aura of memory - which, among other things, would prevent a Sidhe or Breed adversary from in-speaking. "Occult the knowledge," she told him. "Occult the knowledge, not just your immediate knowings, but the knowings of your mother and father, your forefathers. memories of your kind. No eyes will see, no minds will use what you do not wish them to have."

 

 

Snow fell more frequently during that week. The season was indeed going over to winter, in fits and starts, as if the air itself were undecided. But more days were cold than were not. Michael's hyloka kept him warm under the coldest conditions.

 

 

Spart schooled Michael on how to throw a shadow while asleep, and how to sleep like the dead, his heart barely beating, while at the same time his mind was alert. He controlled his breath until he seemed not to breathe at all. He explored his inner thoughts, paring them down to the ones most essential to his exercises.

 

 

For a time, he forgot about Helena and Eleuth. What little spare time he had, Michael spent exercising these new abilities, reveling in the potential that was being unlocked without resort to Sidhe magic.

 

 

He could not locate the inner voice that had briefly conversed with him in poetry. He did find, however, a good many other unexpected things in his mind. Some edified him, some astonished him, and others made him wilt with shame. When he complained he couldn't stand any more introspection and asked if this was just incidental to the other disciplines, whether it could be foregone, Spart told him that a warrior must know all there was to hate in himself, or his enemy would use it against him.

 

 

"Blackmail?" Michael asked.

 

 

"Worse. Your own shadows can be thrown against you."

 

 

Bin's training seemed similar, but at a higher level. There was no repeat of the torturing circle-formation the Crane Women had exercised against him. Nevertheless, Biri became thinner. He was less talkative and seemed more resentful of Michael's presence. Michael stayed away from him.

 

 

In and around all the other exercises, there was running with and without sticks, physical training from a taciturn and frowning Coom, verbal harangues from Spart when he didn't pay attention.

 

 

He hated it, yet the training exhilarated him. He missed Earth even more but he began to feel as if he could survive in the Realm.

 

 

There was no training on the eighth day. Biri and the Crane Women left the mound before sunrise. Michael was asleep and had no idea where they went.

 

 

He walked around the mound in the early dawn, calling out their names, looking at the fresh footprints heading south, wondering if now was the time to look for the sani in the Crane Women's hut. He lingered near the hut, frowning, feeling he was about to betray them. Still, they were not exactly friends - taskmasters, tyrants, not friends.

 

 

Then why did he feel beholden to them?

 

 

He began to sweat and ran away from the mound, going to Eleuth's new quarters in Halftown. She was cleaning clothes and preparing for more of her own exercises; he half-listened as she described the Sidhe magic she now knew.

 

 

"If I brought a beetle back now, it would be alive," she said proudly, smiling at him.

 

 

"No need," he said gloomily.

 

 

"You are bothered."

 

 

He walked around the small single-room apartment, one of four units in a single-story wood building. The room was barely fifteen feet on a side, divided in half by a curtain; clean, neatly arranged, but somehow oppressive. Eleuth didn't seem to find it so.

 

 

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

 

 

'I'll be assigned another task soon," she said, looking down at the floor, eyebrows raised.

 

 

"Like what?" he pursued.

 

 

"The decision hasn't been made yet."

 

 

He was about to say something that might make her feel miserable but he caught himself. He was upset. He couldn't stand her calmness but that was no excuse to pass on his gloom. "The Crane Women are gone today," he said. "I don't want to stay on the mound. Would it bother you if I stayed here?"

 

 

She smiled; of course not.

 

 

She fixed a simple dinner for them. In perverse exchange, he briefly put up his wall against in-speaking, leaving her fumbling for words, without ready access to his memory of English. She was chastened, but remained outwardly cheerful.

 

 

After dinner was cleared, he asked her whether she could transfer someone between the Realm and Earth. He thought the question innocent enough; he just wanted to know how capable she was.

 

 

"Why are you angry?" she asked.

 

 

"I'm not angry." He shrugged and admitted perhaps he was. "It's not your fault."

 

 

"I feel that it is."

 

 

"Damned females, always so sensitive!'"

 

 

She backed away and he flung up his arms. "I'm sorry," he said.

 

 

"You wish to return to Earth?"

 

 

"Of course. I always have."

 

 

"You would consider it love if I returned you to Earth?"

 

 

The question took him aback. "Can you?"

 

 

"Would you consider it love?"

 

 

"What do you mean, love? It would be wonderful, yes."

 

 

"I'm not sure I can," she said. "I wouldn't want to fail you."

 

 

He paced around the room, scowling and mumbling. "Jesus, Eleuth, I'm just confused. Very, very confused. And angry. Yes."

 

 

"With whom are you angry?"

 

 

"Not at you. You've never done me anything but good."

 

 

She smiled radiantly and took his hand. "I would want everything I do to be good for you, to be love for you."

 

 

He felt even more miserable. What if he never did go home, would it matter much? Could he make a life here in the Realm, even in the Pact Lands? Others had lived in worse conditions and been happy, or at least not miserable. Eleuth sensed some of his mental peregrinations and gripped his hand all the tighter.

 

 

"It could be a good life here," she said. Her hopeful tone was like a dart in his temple.

 

 

"How?" he asked, shaking her hand loose. "I don't belong here! I'm human, and you're-" He pounded his hand against the wall. "And she's human, and that's the problem, isn't it?"

 

 

"The woman in Euterpe?" Eleuth asked, staring at the back of his head.

 

 

"Helena," he said. He imagined it to be the most vicious thing he could say: the name of the woman toward whom he felt as Eleuth deserved to have Mm feel toward her. As Eleuth wanted him to feel.

 

 

"Humans have many more troubles than Breeds, actually," Eleuth said. She didn't sound upset or jealous. He turned toward her. Her face was composed, half-caught in the afternoon light from a high window, eyes large and deep and calm.

 

 

"Please," Michael said.

 

 

"You could love her, and be with me," Eleuth said.

 

 

Tears began to flow down his cheeks. He was furious, every thought part of a turbulent, rising whirl. "Don't say any more. Please, no more."

 

 

"No," Eleuth said, standing and reaching for his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I don't understand. I cannot be.jealous. Sidhe women are not jealous. Who can be jealous of males who cannot love, cannot attach?"

 

 

Michael sat on a bench and nibbed his eyes with his palms. None of the calmness exercises would work now. He couldn't bring down his level of misery, or control its effects on his body, the tension in his neck and arms.

 

 

"I could love you while you loved her," Eleuth said. Michael didn't seem to hear. She sat beside him and put her head on his shoulder. "I could do many things for love, and what I cannot do, I will learn." She stroked his back with one hand. "It is all a Sidhe women ever expects."

 

 

He stayed with her that night and the next morning returned to the Crane Women's mound. The huts were still empty. He entered his own hut and stashed the book in the rafters, then sat on the mats and tried to think of a poem. Not even an opening line would come. His head was empty of words. Full of turmoil; empty of expression.

 

 

By late morning, he made his resolution. He would search for the sani. He didn't know right from wrong himself; perhaps Helena and Savarin did.

 

 

In Bin's empty hut, the plaited mats were neatly folded in one corner. He looked everywhere in the hut and found no sign of the powder.

 

 

He crossed to the Crane Women's hut and stood by the door. Peering through the windows, he saw only darkness within. He tried to pry the door open with his fingers, but it seemed latched. He pushed, hoping it would open. It didn't. Then he pushed harder and something wooden clicked within. The door swung outward slowly.

 

 

The Crane Women obviously didn't feel the need of locks. So what - if anything, or anyone - did they have guarding the hut? The thought didn't give him much pause; he was beyond practical concerns.

 

 

The sunward window cast a shaft across the room, illuminating shelves stacked with bottles. The contents of one of the bottles wriggled pinkly in the beam. His eyes adjusted slowly to the gloomy corners. In the center of the room was a cylindrical brick oven, reaching almost to the roof, with four mouths opening around its circumference. A ceramic platform surrounded the oven, shiny white and indented with a regular series of pestles. A few mortars lay on the table, and small piles of powder of differing colors and roughness. The fire was out, but the oven still retained heat; he could feel it on his face and outstretched palm.

 

 

Across the room from each other were two sets of shelves, both packed tight with bottles full of teeth and small fragments of bones. Other bottles contained roots and vegetable matter. A bottle with a forked root had been the first to catch his eye; even now, the root squirmed.

 

 

Yet another shelf was devoted to bottles of dusts. None of the containers were labeled. If they had discernible uses, only the Crane Women knew what they were.

 

 

Beyond the closest set of shelves was a partition made of wooden boards, on which thin sheets of tough, pearly tissue had been stretched between pegs to dry. Below the sheets hung the skeletal forearm of a small clawed animal. The claws appeared to be made of gold.

 

 

On the other side of the room, partly hidden behind a drape of gray cloth, a glass box sat on a table. In the box were pieces of frosty crystal finely carved into abstract shapes. Each crystal had a single clear facet like a peephole. Michael pulled the drape aside with forefinger and thumb and opened the lid of the box.

 

 

The temptation was too great; he removed a crystal and held it up to his eye. Like a slide viewer, the crystal contained an image. Green rolling hills and a wonderfully vivid sky appeared to Michael. He was about to put it down and pick up another when a woman walked over the hills. With a shock, he realized she was a much younger Coom. Her name, the crystal informed him in no obvious way, was Ecooma. She smiled and swung her arms, her long, shapely legs outlined beneath a wind-blown red dress. Her face resembled Eleuth's, but was even more comely. She passed out of range of the crystal eye, prompting him to turn with it to follow her, but to no result. The crystal maintained one steady point of view.

 

 

A second crystal showed a high mountain pass. Swift clouds threw shadows on a snow-covered slope beyond. The naked female standing on a rock, undaunted by the obvious cold, was called Elanare. She stretched her arms out to the wind, long red hair trailing behind her. In her youth, Nare had been even more lovely than Ecooma,

 

 

He picked up a third crystal. Spart - Esparta - stood among a group of young human women, seated on marble benches in a small stone amphitheater. The women wore short white dresses tied around the waist; Spart wore a long black gown and her hair was tied up in a bun with sparkling gold thread. She was speaking to the women, and they laughed now and then as if surprised and delighted. Though her beauty was more subtle than that of Ecooma or Elanare, to Michael she seemed the most beautiful of all.

 

 

Gone were their distortions of face and frame, rolled back by time. He gently laid the third crystal in the box and reached for a fourth. The one he picked revealed a man and a Sidhe female from the waist up, arms around each other. The man was ruddy-skinned, with a thick brown-black beard, wry intelligent eyes and a sharp short nose. The Sidhe's facial features were so evocative and familiar that Michael was sure he must have seen her before, however impossible that was.

 

 

They were Aske and Elme, the crystal informed him, and there was good reason for their portrait to reside in the glass box. They were the mother and father of the Crane Women, and of seven other Breed children whose pictures resided in other crystals.

 

 

He put the crystal down quickly, his arm hairs tingling with premonition. He quickly searched the rest of the hut for sani and spotted a pouch resting on a small wooden table near the door. He hastily sprinkled some of the contents into his palm and saw the unmistakable golden flakes he needed. He poured the flakes back into the pouch and re-tied the knot.

 

 

Now that he had found what he needed, Michael felt a sudden tingle of panic. He looked around to see if he had disturbed anything, knowing there was no way to conceal his invasion from the Crane Women. Hopeless. They would catch him, and what would they do?

 

 

He fumbled at the door latch and pulled it open sharply to leave -

 

 

And jumped back with a yell. There stood Bin, covered with mud and blood, his eyes wild and mouth gaping wide as if in agony. Black blood oozed from the corner of his mouth and dripped from his hands, spotting his sepia. He made small whining noises deep in his chest like a hunted animal.

 

 

Michael retreated into the hut, horrified, his throat constricting. Bin rolled his eyes back and twisted his head horribly.

 

 

"Michael, oh, Michael," he groaned. "What have I done?"

 

 

His body contorted and he raised his hands in supplication. Then he straightened and ran. Michael went to the door and looked after him as he leaped the stream and ran past the limits of Halftown.

 

 

Nare, Spart and Coom walked onto the mound from the opposite direction, skirting the piles of rock and bone and staring at Michael in the doorway of their hut. He slipped the pouch into his pocket surreptitiously.

 

 

Spart motioned for him to leave. She put her arm around his shoulder and walked him to his own hut, then stopped and turned him to face her.

 

 

"Was he hurt?" Michael asked, swallowing. "What happened to him?"

 

 

"You have witnessed Biri's shame," she said. "You must tell no one. He has survived his test."

 

 

"What test? For the priesthood?"

 

 

"Yes," Spart said, her expression unusually grim. "Tarax sent Biri's favorite horse across the border. Bin hunted it down and slaughtered it. When he recovers, he will be ready to serve Adonna." She focused her eyes on his and frowned, releasing his shoulders. "What you have, what you know. you will use it wisely?"

 

 

"I will," he finally said after swallowing hard twice.

 

 

The Crane Women entered their hut and shut the door behind them. Michael stared across the grasslands, tears on his cheeks, wondering if he would ever again feel like a whole person.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

 

 

The snow fell quickly, leaving behind a blank white page on which was lightly sketched the horizon, Halftown, the huts and. a few gray gaps in the clouds. The stream was dark and shiny gray, with a thin layer of ice projecting from each bank. Little ice-blades sliced the smoothly rushing water.

 

 

Michael stood on the bank and watched the stream. The falling snow seemed to calm him. His discipline isolated him from the cold. His mind felt just as isolated from reality, aloof. If he had done wrong, he thought, it was through no fault of his own. He was involved in a situation for which he was totally unprepared, in the face of which he was of necessity immature.

 

 

The pouch of sani rested in his pocket.

 

 

Bin sat outside his own hut, head bowed. The Sidhe hadn't spoken once, hadn't eaten. Coom had washed his hands and face and wrapped a reed blanket around him.

 

 

There had been some peremptory training for Michael that morning - a run with the stick across the fields, while Spart paced him and checked his skin temperature with long, black-nailed fingers. He had thrown a shadow for Coom, skilfully enough to delay her catching him by a few seconds. He had blanked his aura of memory well enough to prevent Spart from in-seeing. All this, as the snowflakes careened slowly down like drunken, frozen dandies, oblivious to the dark emotions around them.

 

 

"I'm going to Euterpe," he told Coom, who squatted outside the Crane Women's hut, keeping an eye on Bin as she pounded a rock to powder with a harder rock. She nodded.

 

 

He left the book in the rafters of his hut. He wasn't expecting trouble, but if any came, the book wouldn't help and he didn't want to lose it or see it damaged.

 

 

The road seemed longer, extended by the whiteness. When he came to Euterpe the town was as private and closed-down as a sleeping face. He walked through deserted streets, glancing at brick walls and tile roofs, worn-out wicker baskets piled in a heap, carts carrying buckets of frozen human waste. He saw everything as if for the last time. The sensation of fatedness was strong, emphasized by his numbness.

 

 

He took the familiar alley, approached the familiar entrance and stairs and climbed slowly and quietly. He reached for the bag. When he came to the wicker door, now draped with a cloth cover, he held his hand up to knock, then hesitated. He heard voices inside. Helena had a visitor.

 

 

He felt, if such a thing was possible, even more more deeply isolated and sick at heart. He pushed the door. It became party to his stealth and opened with only a faint scrape. The voices continued. He pulled aside the curtain to the bedroom, knowing it was wrong to invade someone's privacy, but feeling his own grievance was stronger.

 

 

Savarin and Helena lay on the narrow cot, covered mercifully by a dun-colored blanket. Helena saw him first. Her eyes widened. He lowered the curtain and backed into the front room, pulling the sani from his pocket and laying it on the front table. There was scuffling and creaking behind the curtain, and sounds of clothing hastily being put on. "Stay here," Helena said. "Don't come out. I'll talk to him."

 

 

She emerged from behind the curtain, combing out her hair with her fingers, looking at him sidewise. Her face was white. "Michael," she said.

 

 

"I brought it," he said, pointing to the wicker table. "What you need. What you wanted."

 

 

"I'm sure you don't understand," Helena said, coming closer. "It's-"

 

 

"Please," he said. "Enough. I'll go."

 

 

"Let me explain!" The note of desperation held him. "It's not what any of us wants. Savarin can't have children. Before he left Earth-"

 

 

"Please, enough," Michael repeated.

 

 

"He's safe, don't you see? You're not. You're not safe. That's the difference." She repeated these words a few times, coming slowly closer, holding her hands up. Finally she stopped, hands circling to form small shields. She straggled for something more to say. "We need your help still."

 

 

"You've had my help," he said. "You have the powder. I'll go now." As Helena called his name, louder and more frantically, he ran down the stairs and back to the street and out ot Euterpe.

 

 

He was hardly aware of his running. His long stride carried him without apparent effort. He seemed suspended within his body, isolated from the exertion, his breath smooth, the machine running even better without his interference. He passed a woman clutching a cloak about her head and shoulders.

 

 

As if on an endless cycle, he was going to Halftown. The awareness that it was all drawing to a close, that his adventure in the Realm was about to end, was very strong.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

 

 

Halftown was also quiet in the mid-afternoon snowfall, its half-circle streets covered with shallow drifts. Michael wasn't thinking clearly and it took several extra minutes for him to find Eleuth's quarters. He stood outside the door, his mind almost as blank as the fields of snow between Euterpe and Halftown.

 

 

As he knocked, it occurred to him that not for an instant did he suspect betrayal behind the door. (Had Helena betrayed him? Or had she just done something which, in his youth, he couldn't begin to fathom?)

 

 

The door opened. Eleuth examined his downcast face and took him by the arm, leading him inside without a word spoken. She sat him on the bunk and took the small stool for her own seat. Several deep, jerking breaths were necessary before Michael could say, "I have to go back now. There's nothing more I can do here."

 

 

She nodded, then shook her head, and nodded once more. "Do you need my help?" she asked.

 

 

"Of course I need your help. I can't do it myself, or I'd have done it already."

 

 

"Then I'll help," she said. "We have to wait until dark, and we can't do it here. Somebody might see us, or feel what's happening. Until night, you'll stay here, have something to eat?"

 

 

"I'm not hungry," he said.

 

 

"You'll need all your strength," she said, pouring him a bowl of stew. After he finished eating, she took the bowl and pulled back the covers on the bunk. He sat down. She adjusted the pillow for him and he lay back with his eyes open. Deliberately, with another breath, he closed them. His face was rigid.

 

 

Even when she was sure he was asleep, his face remained stiff. She sat watching him for some time as the snow fell faster outside and the wind rose. Then she went around the room, removing objects from the dresser drawers, from shelves, and from the low table. She assembled the articles in a cloth laid over her lap: white face cream, though it really didn't matter, she thought; a few twigs from a flowering tree beyond the Blasted Plain; some stones from the Plain itself, dusty to the touch; and the dead green beetle she had summoned from Michael's neighborhood. When she had pulled in the corners of the cloth and made a bundle by tying them, she sighed deeply, pulled back a few loose strands of hair with both hands, and stared out the window at a white world she doubted she would experience much longer.

 

 

With darkness, the snow stopped and the wind died, leaving the Pact Lands in muffled silence. Michael awoke and ate more of the stew while Eleuth painted her face with the white cream. "It reflects the light," she explained.

 

 

The inevitable unreality of everything was coming down on him now in an avalanche. Why should he be dismayed by betrayal? None of these people existed. They were all phantoms; to find his way home, all he had to do was enact some formula which would bring him out of his trance, his waking nightmare.

 

 

He forgot all the proofs he had accepted in the past about the Realm's existence. They were dim, feeble things compared with his present pain. Eleuth tied a blanket-cloak around his neck, in case his discipline slipped in his distraction. Then she took his hand, lifting the bundle in the crook of her arm, and led him into the night. He followed her through the snow without speaking. Her grayish outline advanced into the darkness beyond Halftown and away from the road, the stream, the mound, taking him in a direction he had never gone before.

 

 

The grass was frosted with snow that powdered with the brush of their legs and fell on their feet, melting into their cloth shoes until they were soaked. Only hyloka kept their feet from freezing.

 

 

When they were far enough away from everything to suit her, she cleared the snow away for him to sit, laid out the cloth and arranged the articles and squatted opposite him. He could barely see her. Only a few stars peeped through rifts in the clouds. The cream on her face glowed slightly and he followed her movements that way.

 

 

"You wish to go home," she said, her tone more stern than he had heard it before.

 

 

"Yes," he said.

 

 

"You wish to get there by Sidhe magic."

 

 

"I do."

 

 

"There is some risk. Do you accept that?"

 

 

"Yes." He didn't much care.

 

 

"Do you accept this gift from me, given out of love?"

 

 

"I do." He felt a pressure in his chest. "I appreciate this very much, Eleuth."

 

 

"How much?" she asked, almost bitter.

 

 

He shrugged in the darkness. "I'm not worth much. I don't know why you feel so strongly toward me."

 

 

"You acknowledge that love?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"Do you return it?"

 

 

He leaned toward her dim features. "I love you, too," Michael said. "As a friend. As the only friend I have here. Wherever we are."

 

 

"As a friend, then," Eleuth said, her tone less astringent. She laid the twigs out on the cloth in a circle, pointing toward the center. Near one of the twigs she laid the beetle. Next to another she placed one of the pebbles. The rest of the pebbles she piled on one comer of the cloth.

 

 

"Is that all you need?" Michael asked.

 

 

"That, and my training," Eleuth said. "I'm still not very good." She stood, took his hand, and made him stand in the middle of the circle of twigs. "For you, I wish I were a full-blooded Sidhe," Eleuth said, holding out her arms. She assumed the same pose he had seen in the crystal portrait of Nare. "But Lirg's blood is good and I rely on him, too. Wherever he is now." She danced lightly around him, spinning from one toe to the next. He turned his head to follow her. "Face straight ahead," she said.

 

 

After a few minutes she stopped, breathing more heavily than when she had begun. "Did the Sidhe pass his test?" she asked.

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"Did he take his flesh, drink his blood?"

 

 

"I think so."

 

 

"He left the Crane Women this evening," she said. "He goes to his new home. Perhaps he will see Lirg."

 

 

"I don't know."

 

 

"Do you know what your friends in Euterpe are doing tonight?" she asked.

 

 

"No."

 

 

"All the Breeds stay in tonight. We don't know either, but we have our suspicions." She resumed the dance, reaching now and then to brush his shoulders with her fingers. "Michael," she said, her breath harsh, spinning around him. "Look straight ahead. It is time for you to go home. very soon."

 

 

Light sprang up around his feet. He glanced down and saw the twigs burning brightly from the outside in, like multiple fuses.

 

 

"Out of love," Eleuth said. She formed her arms into a circle. Two circles of light leaped from the arcs of her fingers, rose and fell around him, stopping at waist level. The twigs burned to their ends. He stood in the middle of a radiance of fire that rose around his feet but did not bum.

 

 

Eleuth stood rigid in front of him, arms held high, breasts pulled taut against her rib cage, stomach flat, heaving. Her hair was disarrayed and her eyes were closed. She twisted her head to one side. "I will guard," she said. "For as long.

 

 

As.

 

 

I.

 

 

Can."

 

 

Her eyes opened. They were black, rimmed with blazing red. He felt himself falling toward them. His feet lifted from the cloth. The circles tightened around his waist like belts, cinching close. The fire spread to Eleuth, crackling and hissing, searing away the darkness until the land around them was bright as day. When the flames touched her naval, she flinched and screamed.

 

 

The fire surrounded her. Arced outward to the snow-covered grass. Melted the snow into steam. Dried the grass and set it ablaze. She twisted in her own fire, mouth open to reveal darkness much deeper than the night. Michael rose toward her and felt the cold electric destruction of the power she had unleashed.

 

 

"Please," she said, barely audible over the crackle and roar. "I will guard. Careful! Out of love-"

 

 

She became smaller and darker, twisting in the fire until she receded to a black point.

 

 

Michael was no longer on the grassland but high above, looking out across the infinite expanse of the Realm, its forests, plains and mountains laid out beneath him like a topographical relief map. The river snaked far to the northeast through forests, scrub lands, blank desert and swamps. There was a mountain surrounded by a city with walls like a tangle of silvery roots -

 

 

And a black, spiky something beyond.

 

 

To the north he saw a broad lake glowing cobalt in the night - Nebchat Len, possibly. Beyond the lake stretched more forest, and beyond that massive jagged mountains. Looking down, he saw the Pact Lands mounted in the middle of the Blasted Plain, a yellow-green circle surrounded by warm, forbidding orange-tinted darkness. This darkness seemed to writhe, rise up to grab him. Then everything writhed - and vanished.

 

 

He could have been suspended in nothingness for all eternity. The sensation of time left him. In the void was a flicker of light, somewhere above where his head had been. He was aware of a canopy of leaves, then of something beneath his feet, hard and gray. His circle of vision expanded. His head filled with rushing blood, and the sensation of weight returned.

 

 

Michael closed his eyes and rubbed them. The rush of exultation was dizzying. He wanted to jump, to shout. He glanced at his wrist to see what time it was - what time the trance had come to an end. But his watch was missing. He still wore the clothes Helena had scrounged for him; his feet were still shod in cloth.

 

 

A flicker of fire played around his ankles. He stared down at the fire, watching it brighten, fade and brighten again. Suddenly it flared up around his calves until it obscured the sidewalk. Tendrils rushed to wrap his wrists like shackles and crawl up his chest like serpents.

 

 

"No!" he protested. "NO!"

 

 

He doubled up as if kicked in the stomach. Curled, he flew backwards into darkness, winding along a jagged reverse course and surrounded by a comet's tail of fire.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

 

 

Michael lay on his stomach, gravel and dirt pressed to his face. His legs sprawled across dry grass. He opened his eyes to the twilight and saw dark bushes with greasy green-black leaves. Rolling on his back, he encountered a featureless gray-blue sky, low and oppressive. A few muddy stars glistened wetly in the expanse.

 

 

Something rustled nearby. The path on which he lay crossed a yard of sickly grass and ended at a red brick porch. Dull orange paper lanterns hung on the trellis arbor rising over the porch.

 

 

He got to his knees. The rustling became louder. He stood, turned and flinched from the touch of dry, cold fingers against his face.

 

 

The figure in the flounced dress was less than a yard away, arm bent at two crazy angles and pointing toward him. The shadow of the wide-brim hat still obscured the features, but Michael was more certain than ever that it was a woman, caught between the Realm and the Earth, probably as crazy as Lamia. He wondered what he had to fear from her.

 

 

She advanced, lurching as if one leg were shorter than the other, or improperly jointed. The sleeved arm stretched out again and Michael smelled dust, mildew, something metallic. He backed away several steps. He had been home -

 

 

You are home.

 

 

The voice, soft as the still twilight air, reached around his ears and touched the back of his head. You are home. He focused on the fingers of the hand. They were thin, colorless; they could have been twigs wrapped in strips of coarse cardboard. They flexed against each other with the sound of rustling leaves.

 

 

Beyond the guardian was the gate leading to the alley. He looked over his shoulder for the merest instant, trying to see if he could go back through the house - reverse his course - but there she was, barring the way. When he wasn't watching she could move with incredible speed. He faced her and slowly backed toward the gate.

 

 

Stay. Images of incredible luxury, voluptuousness. Gardens filled with flowers and thick vegetables, luscious ripe berries studding intense green bushes. Tomatoes red as arterial blood.

 

 

If he stared at her - she was gaining on him, lurching - she might catch him. Already her hands were reaching out, her fingers rustling in anticipation. If he turned to run for the gate she might leap quick as darkness and have him anyway.

 

 

She played him like a fish on a line. He was trapped, no way out this time. There was only one way for the trance to end - in her garden, caught between the projected paradise and the dry, somber twilight reality.

 

 

Reality. As real a doom as any.

 

 

Still, he had learned a lot since he had last encountered her. There might be one way to elude her.

 

 

He searched for the hidden impulse, found it feeble but present. Between the Realm and Earth it would work only intermittently, weakly. Still, he had no choice but to try. He threw a shadow.

 

 

The gate seemed an incredible distance away - only a few yards. Behind he heard drapes of fabric shustle frantically, sensed the arms closing around something, passing through empty air. The guardian screed like a bat or a falcon.

 

 

He ran down the alley. Sixth gate on the left. But he no longer had the key! He couldn't open the lock, couldn't pass through. He felt rather than heard his pursuer leaping after like a wave of foul dead air.

 

 

At the locked sixth gate, he did not hesitate. He ran to the seventh, some yards farther, and found it without a lock. He jerked it open, making the rusty hinges and spring scream.

 

 

The guardian's hand grasped his shoulder and flung him back as if he were made of paper. He toppled and slid across the pavement, rebounding from the brick wall opposite. The gate slowly closed, its spring softly singing. He knew he would never have time to open it again if it latched.

 

 

He would never reach it, anyway.

 

 

But the guardian held back, rocking on hidden limbs like a nightmare toy, a puppet pulled by idiots.

 

 

He pushed against the wall with arms and shoulders, leaping, using all his new prowess to make it through the gate. The gate clanged shut behind him.

 

 

Michael stood in a long, narrow lot, bordered on all sides by low red brick walls. Some distance away over the end wall he could see the outline of the rear of Lamia's house, the Isomage's mined mansion.

 

 

Perhaps the sixth gate wasn't the only way.

 

 

Bordering the path that led to a gate in the distant second wall were two continuous trellises, thickly wrapped in dead brown ivy. He hurried between them.

 

 

"Not that way!"

 

 

He stopped. The voice had come from his left, as much a dry croak of pain as a warning.

 

 

"She will have you before you reach the end."

 

 

"Hide!"

 

 

"Watch for her!"

 

 

The voices came from the ivy-covered trellises. Against all his instincts he slowed to a walk, his legs cramping with fear and indecision.

 

 

Then he discerned them. They were caught in the vines, limbs entwined: corpses. Emaciated, skin slumping like dry leather, jaws gaping, arms and legs skeletal, eyes hollow. But their heads turned to follow him and they strained against their bonds, lips pulled back over yellow teeth.

 

 

"Don't let her have you! Die first!"

 

 

"Watch for her!"

 

 

"Not that way. She'll get you!"

 

 

In fact, the gate seemed farther away now than when he had begun. The closer he came, the more it receded and the longer the trellises were. And the more writhing mummified bodies he saw in the grasping dead ivy.

 

 

"If she has you, you never die."

 

 

"If she loves you, you sleep."

 

 

"And awaken here."

 

 

"Live forever."

 

 

"But decay!"

 

 

Maniacal laughter all around. The corpses struggled horribly, pieces of skin flaking off to the ground. Some reached out to him, imploring; others strained their hollow chests against the vines, heaving and thrashing and shaking the trellises until they seemed in danger of falling over.

 

 

The guardian was on the same path now. He hadn't seen her pass through the gate; perhaps she didn't need to. As she walked, the wide hat swung slowly from left to right. She surveyed her past victims, lurching down the path to certain conquest over another.

 

 

She collected them. Had them, used them, placed them here. She savored her collection, her work well done. This was her paradise of vegetables and succulent fruits, the garden of her labors.

 

 

Stay.

 

 

He half-ran, half-stumbled crab-wise, trying to find the center of impulse again. But he had no clear way to throw another shadow. The guardian, dress flapping and pressing back against her distorted frame, had risen a foot or so above the path and was accelerating toward him like a piece of fabric on a spinning clothesline. She pitched head-forward in her flight until the hat pointed directly at him and the dress fanned out, a deadly trailing blossom.

 

 

He turned and fled from his doom, screaming.

 

 

Ahead of him, Eleuth stood on the path, so close he couldn't avoid colliding with her.

 

 

And passing through. He stumbled and fell on the ground. Glancing back, face contorted, he saw the translucent Breed woman spread her arms before the hurtling guardian.

 

 

They merged. There was a drawn-out cry as the fabric and distorted body tangled in mid-air and fell to the ground like a downed bird. Michael ran. The gate at the end of the lot was much closer. He reached it in a few strides, opened it, looked back at the guardian still crumpled on the pathway and saw Eleuth's final shadow gently spinning with the force of their collision. It floated off the path, fading, fading, until it was gone completely.

 

 

Michael stood on the field behind the homage's house. With a hollow clang, the gate latched itself and the wall vanished.

 

 

Once again he looked out across the Pact Lands, down the slope to the broad river. His breath was ragged, his elbows and knees were scraped and bleeding, his head hurt abominably.

 

 

The trance was far from over.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

 

It was late afternoon in the Realm. From miles away, Michael could smell smoke. A thick column of black rose over Euterpe. Hardly able to walk, he crossed the field and went to the front door of the Isomage's house. In the distance he heard thunder and indistinct shouts and screams. Then the wind shifted and all was quiet.

 

 

The parlor, ballroom and dining room of the house were empty and silent except for a noise like sand or dust falling. He wasn't sure what to do next so he climbed the stairs. He wondered if he should confer with Lamia, ask what had gone wrong with his journey and what was happening in Euterpe.

 

 

He didn't particularly wish to know.

 

 

The room of candles was deserted and dark. He crossed the wooden floor, footsteps echoing sharply even though he still wore his cloth shoes. The room's echoes were like returning knives - breath, heartbeat, rustle of his fingers against his chin.

 

 

He noted, with a start, that he was beginning to grow a rough beard.

 

 

He walked farther down the hall, away from the open landing. Shadows ruled the house; all the candles sat unlit in their sconces or lay shattered on the floor, as if someone had despised their light. "Lamia?" he called, quietly at first, then louder. His throat still hurt from his screaming in the Between. He brushed one hand against the wall, venturing into the darkest recesses of the hall. The wall vibrated like a bell at his touch; the entire house seemed alive, yet fearful, shrinking back.

 

 

He touched a doorjamb and turned into the doorway. From a half-drawn curtain, twilight snuck into a small sitting room. Lamia sat in a chair facing the window.

 

 

"Please," Michael said. "I need help."

 

 

She didn't answer, didn't move. He approached the chair cautiously, fearful of her bulk, her quiet, her fierce concentrated expression as she faced the waning light.

 

 

For a moment, the dim lighting and the folds of her skin had concealed the fact that she was unclothed. She sat naked and still in the large chair. Michael was convinced she waited for him to come close enough to reach out and grab. But nothing moved. She didn't even appear to breath. Was she dead?

 

 

He reached out to touch her shoulder. His finger curled back involuntarily into his palm and he forced it to straighten.

 

 

Hie skin gave way beneath his finger, first an inch, then two. Repelled, unable to stop, he continued pressing. She hissed faintly and her head folded in like a collapsing souffle. Her arm and chest began to collapse and she fell into a pile of white translucent folds, sliding from the chair to the floor.

 

 

Not Lamia, but her skin - shed completely. He bent down and rubbed it between his fingers. Such a familiar texture. He had felt something like it before - in the closet downstairs, when she had hidden him from Alyons.

 

 

She kept a closet full of her own shed skins.

 

 

But then, where was she? Hiding someplace, vulnerable, like a soft-shell crab or snake still damp and tender?

 

 

"Boy."

 

 

He swiveled on his heels and saw her in the room's opposite comer. She was dressed in dark gray and blended into the shadows. She was even more huge now, perhaps half again as tall and fat as she had been. Her voice was deeper, more appropriate to the mountain she was becoming. Everything about her was vibration as she stepped forward, from her cheeks to the flesh of her hands.

 

 

"You tried to go back, didn't you?"

 

 

His mouth was dry. He nodded. She came within two yards of him and stopped, momentum swinging all her flesh toward him like a cresting wave. and resilience drawing it all back until the motions damped themselves out. He couldn't see her eyes in the fleshy folds of her face. The nose - tiny and surrounded by flesh - was her last identifiable feature but for her hair, which was glossier and more luxurious than before.

 

 

"The Breed girl. I heard about her. Lirg's daughter."

 

 

"How did you hear?"

 

 

"Hear many things," Lamia said. "Even when I'm.not quite up to my usual. Why didn't you cross?"

 

 

"She didn't get me all the way. I mean, she did, but only for a moment. Then I was drawn back."

 

 

"The Guardian? Meet her?"

 

 

He nodded.

 

 

"And you escaped."

 

 

Nodded again, only once, to signify just barely.

 

 

"Your little Breed girl sacrificed herself for you."

 

 

"What?" Though he knew.

 

 

"She wasn't even half Sidhe, boy. She couldn't do all that and survive the consequences. Even so, her life wasn't enough. You're still with us." This seemed to amuse her, and a little tremor passed through her, accompanied by a deep muffled chuckle. "Do you know what happened while you were gone?"

 

 

"How long was I gone?"

 

 

"Days, I suspect. Do you know?"

 

 

He shook his head. Her smell was dust and roses and acrid, sweating flesh.

 

 

"Your little rebel friends decided to defy Alyons. The Wickmaster has never been even-tempered." Again the deep-buried humor. "There's nothing I can do. Not now. They could have picked a better time. Now Alyons has what he's always wanted - a chance at the humans. To level them, make them pay for intruding."

 

 

"What's he doing?" Michael asked, his throat almost closing off the question.

 

 

Lamia peered down at her shed skin. "The guardian. She's my sister, boy. We were Clarkham's wives. Lovers, actually. He brought us here. There were fine times then. Dances, all the people rallying around the new mage. The Isomage, he called himself then - equal to the Serpent Mage. Come to bring everybody out of the shadow of the Realm, into the light of his rule. Oh, he didn't hate the Sidhe. He didn't hurt them, not really. He could work magic with music, with what the Sidhe taught us long ago. He was very proud. Soon, he claimed he was the mage reincarnate - born again to avenge what the Sidhe had done to the original human race. His arrogance became too great for the Sidhe to bear. The Black Order sent their armies against us. That was the war. the war that made the Blasted Plain." For a long moment she was silent, the folds of her face working. "He was not the mage. He could do magic, but he couldn't win with it. He could only lose a little and call it a draw. He fled. He gave us up, my sister and me. The Sidhe made their Pact with him but he gave us up. He claimed he had buried powerful magic here, fatal to any Sidhe who transgressed the Pact. He'd fought well enough that the Sidhe had to believe him. So he bargained. He set aside the Pact Lands and put all his people - he thought of them as his own - right here. The Sidhe shrunk the boundaries by half, to let the Blasted Plain act as a barrier. Keep their females from human temptation. Keep themselves pure."

 

 

"Are they fighting in Euterpe?" Michael asked.

 

 

"What would you do if you knew? Go and save them all? They're fools. They only get what they deserve. Though I'd fight the Sidhe myself if I could. In a week, I'd be able to. If your rebels had waited a week for their foolishness - - But now I'm in my curse. I eat nothing and grow huge. I shed my skin like a snake and my flesh is fragile as unbaked clay. You, you could grab my arm and tear it off, if you wanted. Here's your chance." She held out her arm. Michael backed away. "But I'll toughen, as I always have before, and the power he left me, that'll come back. Then Alyons will pay, if he hasn't already."

 

 

"Please. What are they doing?"

 

 

"They made my sister into the guardian, to keep humans from using the Isomage's pathway. She still has a touch of humanity, maybe? She doesn't catch all who would cross. Not you. maybe she held back a bit, seeing what you are."

 

 

"Tell me!" he demanded, neck muscles cording, lower lip contorted.

 

 

"Scourging," she said. "Scarbita. Alyons is the Scarbita Antros, and there's nothing you can do."

 

 

Michael ran from the room, down the hall and stairs. The sky was on the thread's edge of night as he ran down the road, trying not to focus on the smudge of orange light against the night.

 

 

He was hardly breathing hard when he came within sight of Euterpe. Invoking hyloka had restored energy to his tissues and given his senses hallucinatory precision. The brick houses lay in heaps around a central bonfire. He saw mounted Sidhe driving people in lines and clusters ahead of them. Wicks flashed in the firelight. Overhead, the stars seemed to have turned away in fear. The ground glittered with excited pinprick lights.

 

 

He left the road and crossed a hill. Most of Euterpe was in ruins, some glowing as if electrified. For a long minute he stared at what seemed the ghost of the hotel, limned in glowing outline against the fountains of fire, everything else translucent.

 

 

As he watched, the outline evaporated and the hotel was gone.

 

 

Piano music drifted from across town. The courser's mounts reared back and they broke away from their captives to ride back through the flames. Not all of the resistance was broken.

 

 

Michael ran around the outskirts, stopping to listen for the music. It came from the last remaining stand of buildings - from the school. Sidhe on horseback darted up and over the flames as if maddened by the music.

 

 

The Wickmaster stood on a mound about a hundred yards outside the town, lost in thought. His golden horse waited patiently behind him. Michael tried to keep well back from the firelight, but the Sidhe turned and saw him. For a long moment their eyes held; then Alyons smiled, baring ghost-white teeth, and glided onto his horse.

 

 

Michael reversed his run and fled from Euterpe. He wasn't afraid; if fear was a chemical, it had long since been used up in his body. He acted purely as he had been trained. Now it was obvious that his education had been accompanied by a good many subliminal instructions. The Crane Women had tinkered with his aura of memory. He could visualize tactics, methods of escape he never would have thought of on his own.

 

 

There was one instruction which he couldn't quite bring to the fore; nevertheless, he acted on it. The Wickmaster's golden horse glided up behind at a leisurely pace, its master exulting. Here was his chance at the troublesome antros, with no one to hold him back.

 

 

Ahead, Michael saw the outline of giant teeth - a ring of stones, slightly darker than the night. He ran in that direction - into the jaws and to one side, backing up against a smooth round stone carved with spiral grooves. Alyons slowed just outside the ring. "Hoy ac!" he cried.

 

 

"Hello yourself, you cruel son of a bitch," Michael whispered.

 

 

"Antros! You need the Wickmaster's mercy. Come out and join your own kind. They aren't mistreated, only punished."

 

 

"Come in," Michael invited loudly enough for Alyons to hear if he strained; no louder..Alyons lifted his wick to the sky. The tip glowed dull red. His horse paced between the stones, weaving in and out. The Wickmaster chanted softly in Cascar.