He's worried, Michael thought.

 

 

"He enters the circle, he must come closer," said a voice behind Michael. He recognized Spart but he couldn't see her.

 

 

"Wickmaster!" he cried out. "What was your disgrace? Did you make your masters angry? Were you the lowest thing in the Maln, a traitor, or just something they could do without?"

 

 

"The Maln," Alyons replied coldly, just loudly enough for him to hear, "Still accepts me. I do my duty in the Pact Lands. I keep the human filth bottled up."

 

 

"They won't take you back," Michael taunted. "How did you insult Tarax?"

 

 

"Shy of the mark," Alyons said. Michael could feel his aura of memory being feather-touched. He blocked the probe.

 

 

"Antros!" Alyons' horse passed into the inner circle, but the Wickmaster was not astride. Michael backed up hard against the cold stone.

 

 

The point of the wick thrust up before his face and glowed bright. Alyons flowed into visibility in front of him and lowered the point to Michael's chest. The Sidhe's armor flashed and rippled like living skin. The maple-leaf insignia on his chest seemed to stand apart from the armor, floating with a vitality of its own and changing from moment to moment to oak, then laurel, then back to maple. Alyons pulled the wick back, preparatory to thrusting, singing in that weird way Michael had heard the Crane Women sing, as if searching for a tune and not finding it, only the tune was present all along.

 

 

The dried grass behind the Sidhe flew straight up, swirling into the night. Around the inner circle of the stones, a spiral of dirt fountained upward, the wind of its passage lifting Alyon's hair. For an instant, the Sidhe poised with his wick and Michael again felt the nearness of death.

 

 

Then the Wickmaster vanished. Out of the ground, with the roar of a dozen freight-trains, rose a monstrous steel snake. It had been coiled beneath the grass, and like a spring it lashed out and gripped the Wickmaster in gleaming steel teeth. Clods of dirt struck Michael all over.

 

 

The snake lifted the Sidhe high into the air. Then, with the sound of strained metal snapping, it broke into sections. The sinuosities straightened and plunged into the dirt like stakes, forming a tripod. The snake's head shuddered at the top of the tripod, in the exact center of the circle of stones.

 

 

Alyons, held like a mouse, reached down to Michael with a trembling arm. Michael walked slowly around the tripod until he could see the Wickmaster clearly, then let up his memory block.

 

 

"The wood, the wood!" Alyons whispered. "Quickly! Call the arborals." His body twisted violently, jamming the teeth even deeper through his flesh. His bones ground against the metal loudly enough for Michael to hear and die tripod swayed.

 

 

Alyons died.

 

 

Michael had never seen anything like it. Muscles twitching, he looked up at the corpse, fascinated and sick at the pit of his stomach. Alyons had been trapped and executed and he had been part of it. He turned away from the tripod and the limp, bloody Wickmaster.

 

 

Spart faced him. Her hair blew back in the night breeze. "The coursers haven't finished," she said. "We must go."

 

 

"Who made this?" Michael asked, pointing at the trap.

 

 

"Clarkham, who calls himself Isomage."

 

 

"Why?"

 

 

"I do not know," Spart said. Her voice was harsh and scratchy and the wind made her shiver. "Perhaps it was his revenge for the imposition of the Pact."

 

 

"Did Alyons know it was here?"

 

 

"Obviously not," Spart said. She closed her eyes halfway. "No more questions." He followed her as she plodded through the grass. Euterpe's flames were dying. Snow fell again, and he noticed with curiousity that when it alighted on Spart, it did not melt, as if she no longer maintained her hyloka.

 

 

"I saw Lamia."

 

 

"So?" She continued walking without looking back.

 

 

"She can't do anything. She shed her skin."

 

 

Spart shivered. "Quiet," she said. Overhead was a rushing, wind-whining sound - one Michael had heard before. He looked up but saw nothing in the smoke-palled sky. Snow fell through the smoke as if conjured out of nothing.

 

 

Michael had no trouble keeping up with Spart this time; her pace was deliberate, less than brisk. "Use your training now," she told him. "The coursers are still out."

 

 

"Don't they know about Alyons?"

 

 

Spart didn't answer. He frowned at her back and shook his head. Even now, she had the ability to exasperate him.

 

 

They dodged between the smoldering ruins and piles of brick and within minutes approached the Yard. It, too, had been demolished. Michael peered over the remains of a thick wall. The pits were open to the night air.

 

 

In the least damaged section of town, they passed humans running, or standing in a daze; townsfolk with shackles around their ankles, staked to the ground; men and women huddled in corners, the smoke and diminishing flames adding to the glazed light of panic in their eyes. He didn't see anybody dead, or even seriously injured. Perhaps the Isomage's threat had restrained the Sidhe enough to spare the town from general massacre.

 

 

Spart clambered down stairs leading to a basement beneath a relatively intact two-story warehouse. She walked ahead of Michael in the dark, and he followed her by the sound of her footfalls, using his hands to guide him along one wall.

 

 

At the end of the corridor was a room lit by glass-chimneyed oil lamps. The floor was scattered with smashed wicker boxes and furniture. The brick walls seemed to have been sprayed with silvery glitter that sparkled in a way painful to the eyes.

 

 

In the middle of the room, shoulders slumped, Savarin sat amidst the litter. He barely glanced up as he heard them. His clothes and face were covered with the sparkling dust. He looked down at the floor, then, as if reminded of something, looked up again and fastened his dull gaze on Michael. 'Traitor," he said. "You told them." His voice was flat and lifeless.

 

 

"I didn't tell anybody," Michael said but Savarin was obviously beyond argument. The teacher smiled in a sickly way, shook his head and resumed his examination of the floor. Spart pointed to the far comer of the basement room at a figure seated away from the glow of the oil lamps. It was Helena, her skin and clothes aglimmer. She sat with knees drawn up on a makeshift wicker piano bench. Before her, smashed into the comer, was the piano.

 

 

It had been gutted. Its painstakingly assembled inner works lay warped and twisted a few yards away.

 

 

He walked to her and reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away on the bench, making it shake. "I know you didn't tell," she said hoarsely, turning her face away. She tightened her arms around her knees and pressed her chin against her wrists, rocking gently. "We didn't use the dust. They were here a little while ago. I was playing. It was my only chance to play. We used the piano, we played it. But we didn't use the. what you brought. Here it is." She handed him the bag. It was empty but for a few grains, the tie loose.

 

 

Spart grabbed the bag and pinched it angrily. She took Helena's hair in one hand and shook loose malevolent glitter. "They turned it, they wasted it." She chuffed in disgust and pulled him away from Helena. "They are not worth your time," she said.

 

 

Michael looked back at Helena, uncertain what he felt - sadness, perverse satisfaction at his betrayers laid low, horror and anger that people he cared for could be treated thus.

 

 

"Isn't there any more dust?" he asked.

 

 

"Not for us, not for them. If they try to cross now, the sani is turned. It will attract every monster on the plain." She shook her hand and wiped it vigorously, then pulled him up the stairs out of the basement. When he protested that he had to stay and help, her look asked plain as words, What can you do?

 

 

Nothing. He followed her.

 

 

On the streets, they ran for a short distance, then hid behind the intact corner of a collapsed building as coursers thundered by. "Where are we going?" Michael whispered.

 

 

"You are leaving," Spart said. "With or without the powder. It is your time. You go back with me to the mound, men you go on alone."

 

 

Only now did he remember the book left in the rafters of the hut. He had forgotten it in his haste to leave the Realm.

 

 

"Come!" Spart ran ahead. Instinctively, as the pounding of horses grew louder, he threw shadows. Spart became a crowd of people. The horses halted and reared behind them, screaming with excitement. Michael barely heard the curses of the riders.

 

 

They ran along the deserted and snow-covered road to Half-town. Mottled starlight fell between broken clouds. The smell of smoke subsided. Spart ran as fast as ever and he had difficulty keeping up.

 

 

Halftown lay empty and quiet before them. Spart slowed and walked him through the town, glancing at the empty buildings, then at Michael, as if to emphasize the solitude.

 

 

"Where are they?" Michael asked.

 

 

"They will serve Adonna, those who haven't escaped." That was the whining-wind sound he had heard - Meteorals sweeping in. The Crane Women's pact with the Meteorals had been abrogated. Now was certainly not the time to leave, not if he wished to retain any of his self-respect.

 

 

"I can't leave," he said. "I have to find Eleuth. I have to help."

 

 

"If you stay," Spart said, "the coursers will take you and imprison you with the others. You will be unable to do anything for them. If you escape, perhaps you can help. from outside." She was not telling the whole truth - though a few weeks before, he wouldn't have been able to detect her evasion. And it was Spart who had trained him to be sensitive.

 

 

"Besides, you cannot find Eleuth. She is dead."

 

 

The double confirmation - this time from an unimpeachable source - hit him very hard.

 

 

"She did her best," Span said. "She did well, considering."

 

 

There were tears in his eyes as they approached the mound. The Crane Women's hut was intact, but his own had been knocked over. Biri's had been removed entirely. Michael searched in the rubble for the book and found it pinned between a shingle and a beam, undamaged. He pocketed it.

 

 

Nare and Coom stood behind him. He looked between them, nothing to say, virtually nothing to think.

 

 

"Soon, you are empty," Nare said.

 

 

"Ananna," Coom reiterated. "Ready. Now, never."

 

 

Spart grinned sympathetically. "One more thing, and then you go across the plain, find the Isomage. You must leave your hated parts behind."

 

 

"What?" he asked softly.

 

 

"If there is a part of yourself you don't like, you can be rid of it. You still have too many people inside of you. But that can be an advantage for a while. Sacrifice them. When you are in great danger, make one of the selves you don't like into a shadow. Send it forth. It will be real, solid. It will die for you."

 

 

"That is something you can do, we cannot," Nare said. Coom nodded agreement.

 

 

"Where do I go after I cross the plain?"

 

 

"So positive," Nare said, lifting her eyes.

 

 

"Follow the river to the sea. No matter how far you stray, always the river," Spart said.

 

 

"And what will happen to you three?"

 

 

Nare and Coom were gone already. He seemed to remember their leaving, but not clearly. Spart held her hand in front of his eyes. "In-speaking," she said. "Out-seeing. When you are ready, they are yours. The only outright gifts, man-child. Be grateful. We are never generous."

 

 

Then she was gone, too. He turned to see if they were running from the mound, but there was no sign of them in any direction. The mound was now empty.

 

 

Only dust and old sticks, a few stones, a broken mortar and some pieces of glass showed that their hut had ever existed.

 

 

Michael was on his own.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

 

The border between the Pact Lands and the Blasted Plain was less well-defined now. Michael suspected the circle of corruption was closing, and that soon the Pact Lands would not exist.

 

 

He stood on a ridge not far from the river, looking down at the indistinct smudge of red and gray and brown creeping across the frosted grass. Where the border crossed the half-frozen river, whirlpools of mud and bloody-looking water left pinkish foam on the ice and shore.

 

 

With no sani, with no weapon but his stick, he was indeed empty - empty-souled and empty-handed. For a moment, after leaving the Crane Women's mound, he had hated himself, but even that was gone now. He was a pair of eyes suspended over a vast mental desolation, swept clear of youthful obstructions - but swept clear of youthful ideals as well; of all things beautiful and inhibiting.

 

 

He slid down the ridge and across the ambiguous border.

 

 

What impressed him most, the deeper into the Blasted Plain he walked, was the silence. There was only the gentle thump of his feet in the dust, raising little puffs. The dust fell back into place, undrifted by the slightest breeze.

 

 

Winter had not touched here. The morning light was patchy and orange and vibrated occasionally as if all the air were a plucked string.

 

 

Michael walked quickly at first, then broke into a run. He passed brown pools and smoking crevices, skirted a lava pillar and picked up his pace. The pillar crawled with tiny elongated shadows.

 

 

After an hour, his way was blocked by a chasm. It was about ninety yards across, the rim separated like book-pages into razor-thin slices of translucent rock. Sand lay flat across the bottom. At regular intervals, conical depressions blemished the sand like the marks of giant bootspikes.

 

 

He walked along the edge for a while, hoping to find a way across. It was a drop of about twenty-five feet to the bottom and he didn't fancy a trek across the sand, but finally impatience and the chasm's seemingly endless length changed his mind. He experimentally kicked at the rock slices. With moderate impact, they crumpled into shards, and he was able to dig and kick an angled descent to the bottom.

 

 

The sand was gritty and hard-packed. He walked quickly and carefully, avoiding the depressions.

 

 

Thus far, he had seen none of the Blasted Plain's inhabitants - unless the worm-shadows of the lava pillar qualified. He was hoping his passage might be easy when a hole directly in front of him enlarged suddenly. He had to scramble to keep from slipping over the edge.

 

 

A bulbous protrusion was visible in the center of the pit. Michael backed away, but not far enough to avoid being sprayed with sand as the protrusion burst like a bubble. He wiped his eyes and heard a deep pleasant voice say, "You don't know what a relief it is to be free of Euterpe."

 

 

Ishmael, the Child who had prophesied in the Yard, climbed out of the pit. He stood before Michael, lank and naked. His long, pale dour face was free of wrinkles but still seemed ancient. He lifted one hand on its thickened wrist. "I've been away from my friends much too long." His thick-jointed finger flicked, and from depressions all around leaped more figures, not all of them as pleasantly shaped as Ishmael. "How may we help you, human?"

 

 

"Let me pass," Michael said. The emptiness inside helped keep his voice steady.

 

 

"All pass who will. Would you like guides? These areas can be hazardous, you know."

 

 

"No, thank you."

 

 

Ishmael sucked in his breath and coughed up a laugh, his eyes jerking wide. "We're the only kin you have here. Don't take all that propaganda they fed you seriously. We're not nearly as bad as our parents make us out to be."

 

 

"Perhaps not," Michael said. "But I'll manage on my own." He glanced at the others. There were seven or eight, all with some resemblance to humans, but for at least three the resemblance was passing at best. Their hairless arms hung to the ground or grew into their thighs; their faces were bad parodies. Ishmael approached Michael slowly, arms held out as if to show his good intentions.

 

 

"After all that time, we're in the mood to help," he said. His tone became more like a radio announcer's - slick, cultured, less and less believable.

 

 

So which part don't you like? Make ready.

 

 

"For so long, our talents have gone unappreciated," Ishmael said, full of self-pity. "Our emotions have been neglected."

 

 

"Stay back," Michael said.

 

 

"Back, back it is," Ishmael said, stopping. He knelt down and peered up at Michael from large yellow-green eyes. "Brother. Born of man and woman. Just like us."

 

 

"Quiet," Michael said.

 

 

Ishmael took a deep breath. "Where is your powder, traveler? Only a fool would cross the Blasted Plain without powder or a horse."

 

 

/ believe, Michael thought, that I would willingly cast off most of what I once was. Like my foolishness and blindness. Can I cast off those things?

 

 

No answer. It was his own decision, his own risk.

 

 

Or my reckless defiance. If I had looked at things more closely, and opened my mind to how they might turn out, perhaps Eleuth would still be alive, and Helena -

 

 

No, there had been little or no fault in his behavior toward Helena. He couldn't make a shadow from unpleasant memories.

 

 

/ wish to cast a shadow of the self that took advantage of Eleuth.

 

 

For a moment, two Michael Perrins stood in the same spot on the Blasted Plain. Ishmael opened and closed his long fingers. His mouth opened wider and wider until it seemed he had no jaw; his lips peeled back across flexible but very sharp teeth. His face became all mouth, all teeth, the eyes receding and the tongue darting out thin and silvery like a knife blade.

 

 

The skin of the Child's shoulders split and blood poured down his chest and arms. Rank brown nettles and thorny vines crawled from the split skin and twined around the mourn, then slid down the rest of the body, the thorns piercing and grabbing hold.

 

 

"Time to become real," Ishmael said, his tongue clacking.

 

 

The other Children went through their own transformations. Both Michaels remained calm.

 

 

What I did was not all that bad, said the Michael about to be sacrificed.

 

 

But you cannot be all of me, ever again, said the Michael about to escape. You are past.

 

 

He stepped aside. The Children moved with astonishing speed toward the shadow Michael, wrapping thorns, teeth, arms, claws and unnamed organs of destruction around him. The shadow screamed and Michael felt a sudden weakness as he ran across the chasm.

 

 

Ishmael lifted his mouth from the consuming and wailed, lumbering to his feet to follow, but Michael was already kicking aside the sheets of rock and climbing the opposite cliff. He sliced his hands and lay one shin open from knee to ankle, but made it over the top and stumbled on. The pain didn't slow him much, once he was back on the powdery flatness. The dust flew up into his wounds and his blood fell back into the dust, beading like tiny rubies.

 

 

He clutched the book in his pocket. The book was sanity, words from home, arranged by those who had never been where he was now, who had lived in relative normality and worked in quiet to craft their poems. His fingers rubbed the leather spine through the cloth, and he thought of who and what he had just left behind to perish.

 

 

Atonement. Survival.

 

 

Yet strangely, the emptiness was less profound now. He had lost; he had gained.

 

 

He could see the far border of the Blasted Plain, and beyond, the mist and the tall, snow-dusted tips of trees. The lava pillars had become sparser and smaller, more like vertical stacks of slag doughnuts than pillars.

 

 

At the border the mist swirled opaquely, like a spill of milk in water. From where he stood it looked tangible, more spider's web than fog. He was less than a hundred yards from the border, yet he slowed, then stopped.

 

 

Something long and sinuous stretched above the mist and peered down at him. It was the skull-snail, heads and blood-red eyes searching, body dragging the macabre shell behind. Michael tried to judge how slowly it moved and how much chance it had of catching him if he ran across the final stretch.

 

 

It emerged from the mist with an audible sucking sound, its body rippling peristaltic. The skull-shell lurched behind, dragging a smooth furrow in the dust.

 

 

What did it want? It wasn't moving so fast he couldn't outrun it; it didn't seem to be threatening, as ugly as it was. Its multitude of stalked eyes focused on him, outer edges arterial, inner circle venous. The body glistened like oil on a dirty puddle. Michael half-crouched and held his ground, back prickling at the thought that the Children might have followed him out of the chasm, or were burrowing beneath to pop up in front of him again.

 

 

The skull-snail halted, its momentum pushing it a yard or so farther in the dust. The shell changed colors, jagged bands of brown, black and red crossing its surface. The arm which issued from the "nose" cavity rose seven or eight feet higher and formed a very human mouth.

 

 

"Take me with you," the mouth said. The voice was female, unfamiliar to him. "Take me with you," it repeated more quietly. "I am not what I seem. I do not belong here."

 

 

"What are you?" Michael asked, glancing around quickly to see if he was being decoyed.

 

 

"I am what Adonna wills."

 

 

His memory was being tapped, but he didn't opaque the aura. The skull-snail's voice sounded like a Sidhe's and he was curious to know why.

 

 

"Who are you?"

 

 

"Tonn's wife," the skull-snail said. Tonn had been the Sidhe mage mentioned at the Kaeli. "Abandoned. Betrayed. Take me with you!"

 

 

Michael walked a wide circle around the creature. It made no further move toward him. "You are a mage. Take me where I might live again. And I will tell you where Kristine is."

 

 

"I'm sorry," Michael said. "I'm no mage. And I don't know who Kristine is."

 

 

He passed through the bitter-tasting mist and over the border. The skull-snail raised its eyes higher but fell silent as it watched him go where it could not. He walked two dozen yards into the wintered forest before he began to shudder uncontrollably The creature's plea echoed in his head, the voice so lovely - the shape so grotesque, as if a curse had been laid on by a particularly creative and perverse sorcerer.

 

 

He lay down on the icy grass in the snow-shadow of a majestic oak and cleansed his hands with rime, then rubbed his face and eyes.

 

 

It felt like years had passed since he last slept. He damped his body's pains, tried to ignore the signs of suppuration in his wounds and relaxed in the now-dripping grass until his eyes closed.

 

 

It was night when Michael awoke. A light breeze whispered through the tree leaves overhead, brushing their silhouettes over the clear gem-like stars. Flakes of snow wobbled down from the leaves, melting as they struck his clothing and skin. The fresh cold smell of frozen grass sap and crushed leaves met him as he rolled over on his side.

 

 

He had strayed north of the river when he had crossed the chasm. Now, to wash his wounds and clean off what remained of the dust from his passage, he stood on wobbly, prickly legs and tried to find the water again. The cut on his shin hurt the worst and his leg felt swollen. His hands were tender, but he wasn't using them nearly as much. For a moment, Michael felt light-headed, and then his feet splashed in the cold reedy shallows and he wriggled his way through the ice.

 

 

He sluiced his wounds thoroughly, then bound them with the reeds, spreading some of the astringent sap on them as the Crane Women had taught him, it seemed centuries ago. In a few minutes his light-headedness passed and he stood in the shallows and removed his clothes to wash more thoroughly.

 

 

As he sat on the bank, allowing the night breezes and his heightened body heat to dry him, he listened to the noises of the woods. He had no idea whether he was past the worst of it or not. He felt at peace, however. After so many months in the barren Pact Lands, and the difficulties of his training, he had time to be truly alone, to search for himself in the middle of all his experiences. What he found - now - didn't displease him, but he knew rough edges remained, even entire personalities still to be sacrificed.

 

 

And however peaceful it seemed here, he had not left the Realm.

 

 

He wished for some light so he could read the book, but the starlight, while bright, was inadequate, so he massaged his legs with his wrists and forearms and tried to connect with Death's Radio.

 

 

Failing that, he whistled for a few moments before he caught himself - looking around guiltily - and then began to make up a poem, speaking under his breath.

 

 

How often death is simply love.

 

 

Make way, make way for the new!

 

 

He couldn't go anywhere with that fragment, nor could he force more lines. Being at peace, it seemed, was ill-conducive to poetry - at least for the time being.

 

 

And what in hell did he mean, anyway? Eleuth had killed herself for love - he had killed a part of himself, a kind of counter-sacrifice___

 

 

The leaves rubbed against each other, tree-boughs swayed, snow fell, the grass hissed faintly and the river rumbled in its bed, making the frozen reeds snap.

 

 

"Antros."

 

 

Michael was instantly on his feet. His hyloka vanished and the cold sucked up his warmth. A few yards away, standing in the darkness with wick in hand, was die tall, unmistakable shape of Alyons.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

 

Michael tried not to show his terror. He tried to restore his warmth and control the beating of his heart, which threatened to explode in his chest.

 

 

He had seen Alyons crucified by the steel snake. He had watched the life and blood drain from the Sidhe, and had heard him call for the Arborals___

 

 

And now Alyons stood before him, grinning as if nothing had happened. Michael knew the Sidhe were even less likely to return from the dead than humans, yet here was evidence to the contrary - solid-looking, terrifying.

 

 

Alyons advanced slowly and stared at a point over Michael's shoulder. "Why so frightened, human?"

 

 

There wasn't a thing Michael could say that wouldn't seem ridiculous.

 

 

"You thought you could be rid of me so easily? That you could save your people from their own stupidity?"

 

 

Michael kept still. His hyloka flickered back, but he shivered from fear anyway and the returning heat didn't seem to help. "I didn't-"

 

 

"Yes, man-child? Stupid, weak man-child."

 

 

"I didn't kill you," Michael said.

 

 

"No matter."

 

 

"I didn't. enjoy seeing you die."

 

 

The Sidhe shrugged. They faced each other in silence for a long minute. The Wickmaster's coat flapped in the gentle night breeze; his red hair looked black in the starlight. His eyes were distantly reflective, like mirrors seen from miles away. Finally, Michael backed off. Alyons didn't move.

 

 

"You are dead, aren't you?" Michael asked. He could feel nothing inside Alyons; there was no aura. Or. he hadn't yet learned how to use the boon.

 

 

"I am dead," Alyons confirmed. "Beyond hope even of the trees. And if you didn't kill me, then you led me to the circle, tempted me in. It's all the same."

 

 

"I didn't know."

 

 

"If you had known, I wouldn't have been trapped," Alyons said. "I would have read your knowing. Or do you think I was a complete fool?"

 

 

"Sidhe don't leave ghosts," Michael said. Evidence to the contrary.

 

 

"True."

 

 

"Then what are you?"

 

 

"I am grief, Antros. Your grief, my grief. I am emptiness, not even one left. My horse wanders and does not take a rider now. You have wronged me twice, man-child."

 

 

"I don't understand."

 

 

"You drew me to my death, yet you did not claim your prize. You disdained."

 

 

Michael was now several yards from Alyons, one foot behind the other, prepared to turn and flee.

 

 

Alyons gestured to the woods. A horse emerged from between the trees. It was wounded on its withers and rump, and its eyes were wild with recent danger.

 

 

"Kill a Sidhe, claim his horse. Disdain the horse, double the insult. You are very stupid, man-child."

 

 

"What do I do?"

 

 

Alyons pointed to the horse. "Take rny epon. Do not waste all that I was. Surely, a Sidhe horse will be valuable to you."

 

 

Indeed, it would, but Michael no more wanted Alyon's horse than he desired the Wickmaster's company, "I can't," he said. "I don't even know-"

 

 

"Tell it, 'I am your master, you are my soul.' It will know you then."

 

 

"Why do you want me to have it?'

 

 

"I have no wishes, no wants. It is the way things have been done. Only a human would not know instinctively.. it is the way."

 

 

"You're a shadow," Michael said, revelation dawning.

 

 

"With no wishes, no wants. and no time limit, if the horse is wasted." He folded his arms as if prepared to patiently wait forever.

 

 

"You'll go away if I take the horse?"

 

 

Alyons nodded once. "I am not here now. It is only your ignorance that shapes me from darkness. I am nothing but grief and violation."

 

 

"Then I take the horse," Michael said. The shadow pointed his wick at Michael and the horse paced over to him, turning behind Michael to face the image of its former master.

 

 

"The grief remains," the shadow said, growing darker. "But the violation is ended___" Then, with a harsh braying laugh, the image became as black as the distant trees and blurred into nothingness.

 

 

Michael convulsed violently, throwing aside his fear in a single paroxysm. The horse regarded him with large, puzzled gray eyes. He reached out tentatively to touch its muzzle.

 

 

"Gift horse," he said. "You must have crossed the Blasted Plain alone. or perhaps he, it, led you." Michael peered into the night where Alyons had stood, as if the shadow might still be there, awaiting its chance. A hundred thoughts plagued him. What if a Sidhe could impress his essence in an animal after death - what if the horse still obeyed the Wickmaster? It could throw him, kill him.

 

 

Yet as Michael probed, there wasn't the slightest taint of the Wickmaster in the animal. And he could certainly use a horse in his journey.

 

 

He lay back in the snowless lee of the oak and regarded his undesired mount for an hour before going to sleep again.

 

 

The day was well along before he awakened. The horse kicked frost from the grass and ate breakfast. Michael was ravenous; hyloka had to get its energy from somewhere, and he suspected he wouldn't stay warm for long without substantial food.

 

 

"Where do we find something to eat, hm?" he asked the horse. It shook its mane and kept an eye on him as it ate. Michael stroked its flank softly, then approached its head and whispered slowly, carefully into its ear. "I don't know if you understand English, but I am your master. And I hope I have room. now. for you be be my soul." The horse nuzzled his palm and jerked its head back.

 

 

"Ready to go, eh?" Michael said. No sense trying to mount as the Sidhe did. He climbed on as best he could, gripped the mane and nudged the animal.

 

 

The horse tensed its muscles under him uncertainly and tossed its head. Then it broke into a trot. Michael laid himself low against its neck to keep trees branches from swiping at his face.

 

 

There was very little food in the wintered Realm. He survived off a scant supply of red berries gleaned from bushes and was glad for them, and for the crazy character of the Realm's seasons, that bushes should bear fruit in winter. With so little food, his hyloka became undependable, and he quickly learned how to concentrate what warmth was left and light fires with his index finger. It wasn't as neat a trick as the ones Biri had performed, but it made him suspect that his abilities strayed at least a short distance into the domain of magic. He warmed himself by the fires and melted snow for drinking. The horse survived well enough on frozen grass, but gladly drank some of the snowmelt, and stayed close at night when the fire burned and smoked.

 

 

After some days of that kind of fire-lighting, Michael noticed that the finger was losing its nail. He was soon able to peel back the skin and remove the nail completely. He thoughtfully tossed it in the middle of his most recent blaze and watched it blacken and shrivel. The consequences of certain kinds of discipline began to worry him from that moment.

 

 

Within a week, he traveled about two hundred miles - there was no way he could be sure of the distance, if distances were ever reliable in the Realm - staying near the icy river. He was hungry all the time and growing thinner. He longed for the porridge the Crane Women had. fed him, so bland and so wonderfully filling.

 

 

On the eighth night, huddled close to his fire with woods all around (and this was a small forest!), the horse standing nearby with its head lowered and eyes hooded, Michael thought about killing the animal and eating it. Part of him remembered Biri immediately after his ritual horse-eating; another part fondly remembered the taste of solid food. He tried the grass, but it was bitter and clearly not fit for humans. He tried bark, or rather chewed on it while searching for grubs, but the bark tasted like quinine mixed with lemon rind and grubs didn't exist in the Realm. He did manage to make a fair tea from the bark, using a queer scooped-out rock as a pot in the middle of the fire, and rolling a cup from the unstewed bark. He thought some of the trees might be laurel, because the leaves were shaped and smelled like the bay leaves his mother had used in cooking; others were obviously oaks, but lacking acorns (and he wasn't sure he could have prepared acorns for eating, anyway - did one do more than just steep them in hot water after crushing?). By far the majority of the trees were now huge conifers with needles thick as iceplant leaves.

 

 

He saw no other animals.

 

 

On the ninth day, the pines gave way to more oaks and laurels; the air grew warmer; the snow became patchy.

 

 

Within ten miles - about an hour on horseback - the seasons began to change. The trees had never lost their leaves and the grass had never browned off; when the Realm's erratic and premature spring appeared Michael found his first food and wept for joy.

 

 

There were fruit trees everywhere, standing unarrayed in wild orchards, bursting with fruit untouched by any but himself. Apples, pears, peach-like fruit with brown-striped skin, large cherry-like clusters that clearly tasted alcoholic. There was even a pulpy, salty fruit that grew on the laurel-like trees and satisfied his craving for meat.

 

 

He was relieved of his troublesome thoughts about Alyon's golden horse.

 

 

Michael stayed in the wild orchard for two days, even taking the risk of getting mildly drunk on the wine-tasting pulp of the cherry-fruit. The horse cropped grass contentedly nearby. As Michael lay with his back against a tree trunk, he thought of the Kaeli and wondered what the animals had been like that had carried the Sidhe between the stars. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine such a journey, made without fireball launch-ings or spaceships; simply riding on the backs of the original epon, stretched out across space like quicksilver or molten gold - -

 

 

He read a few poems from the book, savoring them, his mind warmed by the fruit, his stomach full. He was content as never before, even with the past horror and his own shame - perhaps because of it. He thought of himself as a comet head at the source of a vast tail of experiences, flowing out behind him, growing longer and richer. Gradually his reverie muddied and he slipped into a doze. The book tumbled from his fingers and lay in the grass, the wind turning the pages deftly, sighing when it found what it wanted.

 

 

An Arboral female stood at Michael's feet, regarding him with unblinking green eyes. She walked over to the horse and patted it affectionately, though Arborals had no use for epon. Then she looked up at the Meteoral who had luffed the pages in the book, and a face between the tree branches winked at her. She knelt down and applied a blue-green paste to Michael's forehead. The paste sizzled, releasing vapors which poured down the sides of his nose and into his mouth.

 

 

Both of the Sidhe melted into the woods.

 

 

Michael saw a palace of silk and gold, as airy and light as a vast tent, rising above a mountain of ice and granite. A huge cataract of melt-water poured from the caverns in the mountain's side. He was led by a shadowy guide from enclosure to enclosure through the palace, and found within a great king - an oriental Khan - :bemoaning the fate of his lost fleet, destroyed by a demon wind far to the east. The Khan had dreams also; dreams of great plains of grass and high snow-capped mountains and trackless desert and wild horses stalked by sturdy bow-legged men with hard, flat determined faces and lank black hair. all of that in the Khan's past. Now he ruled the greatest empire of all time, stretching from the Eastern sea across the mountains and plains, south to the mountains of the snow devils, north to the tent-pole of the world.

 

 

The Khan's face changed, becoming that of a pale, gray-haired Caucasian, looking younger than his years, sitting on the Khan's throne. He was not of the royal line. The plains of grass faded, the empire vanished into far history, and the pale usurper regarded his palace with an expression of repressed rage and boredom, of impatient waiting....

 

 

Waiting for Michael.

 

 

The paste had evaporated. The visions swirled and Michael opened his eyes slowly. He had never dreamed in the Realm, and he didn't believe what he had seen was actually a dream. It had a certain quality, a stamp, which indicated he had once again had a message from Death's Radio. this time, without the use of words.

 

 

After tying up a supply of fruit in his shirt, Michael reluctantly left the orchard and followed the tree-lined river, which now turned east, sometimes doubling back in a lazy loop or wrapping around mist-shrouded islands. As the horse walked patiently on, Michael stared across the river at the largest of the islands and fancied he saw battlements in rocky crags. He always stayed on the left bank; it was equally easy to fancy Riverines lurking in the water, ready to deliver him up to Adonna's forces if he was so indiscreet as to try to ford.

 

 

He ate sparingly of the fruit, which stayed at the peak of ripeness. Like all Sidhe food, little was sufficient.

 

 

In the dusk of his fourth day away from the orchard, the horse took an opportune gap in a wall of shrubs and followed a very old, almost overgrown trail up a gently sloping mountain. They spent the night near the crest, Michael sleeping in an open spot near a weathered cairn, the horse nearby, blinking sleeplessly in the dying firelight.

 

 

Michael awoke and saw a silvery band crossing the predawn sky. He rubbed his eyes and looked up again. A mother-of-pearl ribbon of light stretched from horizon to horizon at an angle of about thirty degrees. It had moon-like mottlings, and in fact could have been a severely elongated moon, though it seemed about four times broader. As dawn came, the ribbon dissociated into blurred disks, which broke down further into an indistinct contrail and vanished.

 

 

After breakfast - a chunk of meaty fruit - he walked the horse up to the crest to get his bearings. They looked down the opposite side of the mountain into a long, broad valley. The horse snorted with eager recognition; the atmosphere above the valley was a?> golden as its skin, and the trees - thick as lumpy moss, from this vantage - seemed suspended in another season entirely, not spring but autumn. They made up a patchwork of browns, oranges and golds. Despite the warmth of the colors, the morning air filling the valley like liquid in a bowl was quite chill.

 

 

Michael looked for some time before finding the structure hidden far to one side of the valley. It was dark, angular and ornate, but he couldn't make out much beyond its general shape. It resembled a tall Oriental pagoda.

 

 

"Can you think of any reason we should go down there?" he asked the horse. The horse couldn't. "Nevertheless, we're going."

 

 

Caution had kept him from crossing the river, but he discarded caution now. The compulsion was strong - and had nothing to do with Death's Radio.

 

 

Chapter Thirty

 

 

The slope down to the valley was about ten degrees, never greater than twenty. On the mountainside, the green trees of the regional spring gradually gave way to autumnal colors until few traces of green remained. The flowers beneath the horse's hooves were transforming from blues, pinks and reds to a uniform golden yellow.

 

 

The deeper into the valley they traveled, the darker the sky overhead became, until they were bathed in rich shadowy gold, like the twilight in a smoky old oil painting.

 

 

Michael's eye caught a last gleam of blue in a patch of flowers a few yards off the trail. He stopped the horse and dismounted to inspect them.

 

 

Four tiny blue flowers, luminous and enchanting, defied the auric suffusion. He could hardly take his eyes off them. He bent down on one knee and cupped them in his hands, then leaned over to smell them. They had little scent, but their color alone was sufficient. He picked one and removed the book from his pocket. Opening at random, he pressed the blue flower between two pages, arranging its petals carefully.

 

 

With a sigh - half drowsy and half nostalgic for the colors left behind - he remounted and continued toward the pagoda near the opposite slopes.

 

 

A wider winding trail became visible between the trees. Michael guided the horse onto this path and they followed it to a clearing. In the middle of the clearing stood the building, black and shiny as obsidian, sitting on a foundation of glazed dark bricks which absorbed the gentle rolls of the clearing. Surrounding the foundation were bushes glistening with waxy yellow-green leaves and large yellow flowers. Around the bushes stretched a lawn of smooth straw-grass, somewhere in color between ripened wheat and bleached bone.

 

 

Michael lifted his eyes to the tower. The first impression of a pagoda-like structure was misleading, he saw now. The tower had seven levels and was taller than it was wide. It seemed to have been carved out of foamy black lava, with the exposed pockets in the rock serrating every edge evenly. The effect was that of lace doilies and wickedly sharp obsidian daggers.

 

 

Wisdom clearly demanded a rapid retreat. Yet the house or palace was the most striking piece of architecture Michael had seen in the Realm. He wondered whether the Sidhe had built it. They seemed so little interested in the material arts.

 

 

He dismounted and took the horse by the muzzle as he had seen Spart do, leading it toward the dark polished granite gate set in a high courtyard wall. The horse's hooves clopped over ochre-swirled tiles of yellow stone. The top of the courtyard wall was protected by sharp upright crystals of golden quartz. Michael looked around, listening, hoping for a faint breeze to relieve the moribund silence and stillness.

 

 

The gate had no knocker, but mounted in the wall to one side was a polished wooden dowel tied to a gold chain. The chain passed through two circular eyes mounted in the stone and vanished into a hole.

 

 

The horse whickered and nudged Michael's back. He patted its forehead. "Nervous?" he asked. Strangely, he wasn't, and that made him wonder if the place was enchanted. "You be nervous for me," he said. He was becoming more drowsy; the valley swam in the color of so many half-remembered dreams. Part of him felt right at home, protected by the half-light, captured in a pleasant reverie - -

 

 

He gripped the dowel and gave it a firm tug. "Hello? Anybody live here?"

 

 

A mirror mounted on a wooden frame swung out from the gatepost, swayed briefly and ratcheted downward until it jerked to a stop about three feet above Michael's head. It angled slightly toward him. He looked into it and was startled to see a tiny face peering right back. All he could clearly make out was an unruly tuft of black hair, two glistening eyes with tawny pupils and a physiognomy not precisely human, yet certainly not Sidhe.

 

 

The mirror was apparently connected with a series of other mirrors that conveyed images into the building - and vice versa. The face appeared to speak, and in a tinny distant voice said something he couldn't make out.

 

 

"Pardon?"

 

 

"Hoy ac!" the face shouted, barely audible.

 

 

"Hoy," Michael said. "I need a place to stay the night." Oh, did he now? part of him asked.

 

 

"Antros?" the face asked, showing astonishment.

 

 

"Yes," Michael said. "I'm human. May I come in?"

 

 

The gate creaked, swayed and swung wide, scraping over an accumulation of pebbles and dust in the courtyard. It apparently hadn't been opened in years. Michael walked inside and drew the reluctant horse after him.

 

 

The courtyard was deserted. Black stone walls surrounded a well carved from onyx. A black marble crow perched on the rim, water pouring from a slit in its throat. The crow's beak lifted to the dark swirling brown sky and its stone eye regarded Michael with calm curiosity. At the opposite end of the courtyard was another gate, already open.

 

 

A small man stood in the gate. He wore a silky golden robe, its hem pooling around his feet. Michael automatically sought the man's aura of memory. It was unfamiliar and difficult to read, neither human nor Sidhe.

 

 

"Hello," Michael said.

 

 

The small man nodded, A wispy black beard hung to his chest, and his features were slightly oriental. His sallow skin was glossy like fine leather. He hid his arms in the sleeves of the golden robe.

 

 

"Sorry to bother you."

 

 

"No bother," the man said in perfect English, and without probing Michael's aura. "Not many visitors pass by, certainly no humans. Introduce yourself."

 

 

"I'm Michael. Michael Perrin."

 

 

'And I am Lin Piao Tai. What may I do for you?"

 

 

"Your vaJley." Michael gestured beyond the gate, which swung slowly shut, groaning and vibrating He guided the horse around the fountain, closer to the man. "It's very unusual. It seems to be in a season of its own."

 

 

"A perpetual season,'' said Lin Piao Tai. "You're traveling, and you need a place to rest. Although I daresay you haven't been bothered by any of the Sidhe, since for a circuit of hundreds of li they scorn these forests. All but the Arborals and Meteorals., and I daresay they haven't shown themselves."

 

 

"No," Michael admitted. "I haven't seen anybody until now."

 

 

"Just as well. Come in. Leave the horse here. My servants will see to it." Michael patted the horse and followed Lin Piao Tai through the second gate, into the house.

 

 

The gate swung behind Michael without any visible help. Just inside the gate, a second fountain was set into a nook. The walls of the nook and the smooth, slightly feminine cup of the fountain were made of pure jet, while the interior of the cup and the floor of the surrounding pool were formed of smooth gray porcelain. The pool itself was illuminated by pale golden candles set in glass cylinders around the rim. Goldfish gleamed in the rippling water, their scales reflecting radiantly in the walls when they swam close. Lin Piao Tai walked down a black corridor, motioning for him to follow.

 

 

"Come."

 

 

Michael came to the end of the corridor.

 

 

"Welcome to my home, Michael - if I may call you that."

 

 

Michael looked around the large room. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high, made of a warm yellow wood intricately carved with designs of birds and fish. The walls were covered with panels of black and rich brown framing gracefully rendered screens of mountains, forests, and flowing rivers, floor to ceiling, the panels serving as fronts of drawers, closets and recesses.

 

 

"You must be hungry." Lin Piao Tai pulled the train of his robe aside and with a bare brown foot, drew back a straw mat from the floor, revealing a pit with several pillows spread around the outside and a low table in the center. "My servants will bring food - human food for you, I assume, though no meats - and tea. Be seated, please." Michael descended into the pit and found welcome warmth under the table. A ceramic pot filled with coals kept the entire pit warm.

 

 

Lin Piao Tai joined him, arranging his robes to make a kind of sack in which he perched, legs crossed, like a pupa. "Have you traveled far?"

 

 

Michael saw no reason to hold anything back. "From the Blasted Plain," he said.

 

 

"I am not familiar with. ah! Yes! I remember. Your people are kept there now. They used to wander at will, you know."

 

 

Michael's attention was distracted by the figures entering the room. They wore black robes and stood no more than four feet high, slender, with stylized metallic gold faces suggesting neither male nor female. Their hands were jointed and supple.

 

 

Whether they were robots or something else, Michael couldn't decide, and he felt it would be impolite to ask, or to probe Lin Piao's aura.

 

 

The servants brought in trays with food and pots of hot tea and set them without sound on the table, bowing and retreating. Michael reached for a jellied cake and savored the rich sweetness. "Delicious," he said. Lin Piao poured him tea. "They've closed the Pact Lands down, I'm afraid," Michael said, isolated from the memory. He felt so calm - had felt very much at ease since entering the valley - and what, after all, was wrong with that? Everything was so elegant and peaceful.

 

 

"I suspected that would happen eventually. You humans - if you pardon my opinion - are rather troublesome. I've had many dealings with humans in the past. But, on the other hand, I've had dealings with the Sidhe, as well, and I must say I prefer humans." He smiled at Michael. "You don't seem to know what I am. You are aware I am not Sidhe. yet not human, either. My kind is most rare now, all credit to the Sidhe. Rare in my form, at least. Doubtless you've seen my kin on Earth. How is Earth, by the way?"

 

 

Michael tried to think of one word that summed it all up, and couldn't, so he boiled it down to three. "Desperate. Cruel. Beautiful."

 

 

Lin Piao beamed as if with nostalgic pleasure. "Some things never change," he said. "I am a Spryggla. My kind is as ancient as the Sidhe or the first race of humans, but we allied with neither during the wars. You know about the wars?"

 

 

"A little," Michael said.

 

 

"Eat hearty," Lin Piao said, passing covered bowls to him. "How fortunate you could drop by. We have a thousand things to talk about. I just know it. A thousand things."

 

 

Michael ate from bowls of steaming noodles in savory broth, and spiced vegetables in eggshell-thin procelain cups. As he ate he told Lin Piao what had happened to him in the Realm, and whenever he excised something from the narrative, he found himself slipping it back in a few minutes later. He was wary enough, however, not to mention the book, which was still in his pocket.

 

 

"Fascinating," the Spryggla said, shaking his head after Michael had finished. "Now I assume you wish to know more about me."

 

 

"Certainly," Michael said. That seemed polite, and he was curious.

 

 

Lin Piao's voice changed timbre, increasing in pitch and becoming more sing-song in delivery. The overall effect was entrancing.

 

 

"Of the thirty races," he began, "the Spryggla were those naturally suited to mold the dirt, grind the stones, make the bricks and plaster and erect the buildings. We loved places in which to live, and we loved them at a time when Sidhe and humans were content to wander under the broad and roofless sky. We built the first walls, and made the lands within them our own. We erected the first houses and the first granaries, and then the first fortresses. At first, we were not appreciated. The others thought we were possessive and greedy, but that wasn't so. We were just preparing ourselves for the finest of our accomplishments, the cities.

 

 

"Soon others saw our worth, and the worth of our cities, and accepted both. They lived under our roofs and within our walls. The rain became a controlled blessing. It was our choice whether to go out in it, or not. The wind became less vexing. There were no animals on Earth at that time; they were created much later, some by the humans, who were excellent in the vital arts, others by the Urges. but I stray.

 

 

"We built magnificent cities, all dust now I'm afraid, buried beneath the oceans or crushed in the mouths of the hungry Earth. We were essential. Ah, those times were para daizo - paradise, that is, within walls. but troubled. Soon each kind of glowing light, each intelligence, grew intolerant of its fellows. Tempers became short, and in those times tempers could be formidable, because our powers were formidable. Factions developed in each race, fomenting dissent and urging separation. There was excitement and intrigue, and no one really suspected where it would all lead. We were powerful but innocent. Knowledgeable but naive."

 

 

Michael had eaten his fill and sat back against a cushion to listen. He felt a thrill oi expectation. Here at last was the story, simply told, and who cared if it was biased or not, true or distorted?

 

 

"Gradually, individuals gathered others around them and became leaders. They called themselves mages. There were four principal mages, called Tonn, Daedal, Manus and Aum, and their power grew at the expense of all the others. They were too strong to really desire war with each other but the lesser mages brought on the conflict through their own ambitions. The war lasted for ages.

 

 

"It was not entirely a bad thing, that war. Nobody died. not forever. We were like young gods then and injuries of combat, while distressing, were remediable. But gradually we learned the desperate arts of tact, and lying, and deceit, of gamesmanship and honour. Then we learned distrust and our, magic grew stronger. The war became earnest. Enemies found it necessary to either be polite or to attempt to destroy each other. There was no middle ground. All the perverse pleasures of combat became engrained - the pleasures of triumph over another, of defeat at the hands of a stronger, of tragedy and loss, contest and victory. These are strong discoveries, and run deep in our blood even now."

 

 

Michael nodded, his eyes half-closed. He was awake, but he didn't need to see Lin Piao to appreciate his story. "The other races - what did Tonn turn them into?"

 

 

"I am coming to that. Finally, it was discovered how to kill. To kill so that the dead would never return to the Earth. All had immortal souls then, but we were bound to the Earth with such desires that death was abhorrent. War became serious indeed. Hate was a thing to be breathed, lived, wallowed in.

 

 

"There were winners and there were losers. The losers were treated badly. When the humans under the mage Manus vanquished the Sidhe, they imposed the worst punishment yet - they stripped the Sidhe of their souls. And when the Sidhe regained the upper hand, strengthened by the desperation of complete extinction, the mage Tonn put an end to the war. The Sidhe did not have the means to steal our immortality, but they could put us in more humble packages. The Spryggla, followers of Daedal, had always been proud of the work they could do with their hands, so Tonn took their hands away from them and put them in a place where there was no need to build - the sea. They became whales and dolphins. Humans were turned into tiny shrews, to exhibit their true character. Others were turned into other beasts. Some had their souls divided among millions, even billions of smaller forms, like the Urges, who were all transformed into one of their own creations, the cockroach. Aum's people, the Cledar, were music-makers, and their art was stolen by the Sidhe, who called it their own. Then Aum and all his kind were turned into birds."

 

 

Michael's eyes had closed, but he listened carefully to every word.

 

 

"Of all the races, the Sidhe preserved only a few of the Spryggla, that we might build for them. They let us live in comfort, and in time we grew accustomed to our fate. We were given work. They took my ancestors off to the stars with them, and we built great things out there. They returned to the Earth eventually, and I was born."

 

 

"How old are you?" Michael asked.

 

 

"I don't know," Lin Piao said. "How much time has passed on Earth?"

 

 

Michael opened his eyes. "How should I know?"

 

 

"Perhaps I will describe something for you, and then you can decide. When I was last on Earth, the greatest human ruler of all time reigned." He spread his hands, his voice carrying a hint of sarcasm.

 

 

"Who was that?"

 

 

"He was a scion of Genghis Khan. His name was Kubla. From shore to shore of the great lands, he demonstrated the new power of the humans, rising again over the sad Sidhe."

 

 

"That was seven hundred years ago, I think," Michael said.

 

 

"Then I am three thousand and seven hundred years of age, by the time of Earth. And how old are you?"

 

 

"Sixteen," Michael said. He started to laugh and choke at once. Lin Piao Tai made a gesture of magnanimity.

 

 

"And yet here you are, traveling the Realm, free and independent. Marvelous. You seem tired, my friend, and evening is coming. Perhaps you should rest."

 

 

"So soon?"

 

 

"Time in the Realm still surprises you? My servants will make up a bedchamber."

 

 

"How did you come to the Realm? Why did you leave Earth?"

 

 

"Tomorrow," Lin Piao said. Michael followed as the Spryg-gla went to a wall and pulled back a panel, revealing another dark corridor. In a small, sparsely furnished room, a feather mattress rested on finely woven reed mats, while on a nearby table a tall candle flickered in a glass dish beside a plate of cold tea and crackers-"For the night, should it last longer than expected and you become hungry."

 

 

The accommodations were the most luxurious Michael had seen in the Realm. He lay on the mattress, pulled the blanket around his chin and was asleep in seconds.

 

 

Beware, beware, his -

 

 

Shh! Hiss!

 

 

On a dreamless plain, voyagers

 

 

Voyage, their eyes shut tight; listen

 

 

To the dripping voices. Children

 

 

Grow, discard ashes, cinders.

 

 

Judas selves linger, ponder;

 

 

Judas others ponder, linger;

 

 

Rude as strange words in the not-dream

 

 

Ponder, linger, and always scheme.

 

 

Michael jerked awake, shivering. He felt in deep danger. His body was wet with sweat; the mattress and blanket were soaked. The candle had burned halfway and flickered with his sudden breath, making the close gray walls dance like gelatin.

 

 

He turned his head to the other side of the room and saw one of the gold servants standing a few feet away, its head in shadow. Michael reached out and lifted the candle. The servant's face rearranged itself in blocks like a clockwork puzzle or toy. Suddenly all the pieces slid into place and the face became a smoothly sculpted blank. It bowed to him, but remained where it stood, as if posted to guard.

 

 

Michael felt under the covers and found the book, still in his pocket. He lay back and tried to remember what had jerked him awake. Perhaps another brush with Death's Radio. The contacts seemed to come more often now, but he seldom remembered them.

 

 

A bell chimed in the hallway outside the room. Lin Piao Tai walked slowly past, carrying a gold and crystal lantern with a leaf-shaped reflector. He winked and smiled at Michael, then motioned for him to follow. "A fine morning," he said as Michael left the bedchamber, buttoning up his shirt. "The finches are singing in the gardens, the lilies are in bloom, breakfast awaits."

 

 

They sat under a rose and golden dawn in the middle of an immaculately groomed garden. Lin Piao had ordered a golden lacquer table set on the slate flagstones to one side of the meandering pathway, laid with dishes of fruit, cooked grains and more spiced vegetables. Michael was ravenous and ate an amount that surprised even himself. Lin Piao Tai picked at his food, watching his guest with obvious delight.

 

 

"There is no finer satisfaction than catering to an appetite, and no greater compliment than eliminating one," he said. Michael agreed and wiped his mouth with a raw silk napkin. 'Today, I would enjoy having you tour my grounds. You should see what a fine place I've made of my prison."

 

 

"Prison?"

 

 

Lin Piao's expression tilted slightly toward sadness, then brightened again, as if on cue. "Yes. I have been audacious in my time, and now I pay for it. The Sidhe do not forgive."

 

 

"What did you do to them?"

 

 

"I served. Shall we walk?" He led Michael through the gardens, pointing out the various tiers and banks of flowers, all, of course, of assorted golden and yellow hues. A fine mist gently blurred the gardens as they came to the end of the path, blocked by a tall black lava wall. "I was a faithful servant," Lin Piao continued. "In those days, the Sidhe had long since returned to the Earth. They had dissipated themselves between the stars, you know - you've heard most of this before? Good. It tires me to relate Sidhe history. They were not as vigorous as they had once been. They still used Spryggla, and we still did their bidding, though our numbers had diminished even from the few of times past."

 

 

He pulled his golden robes aside and sat on a smooth onyx bench. "There was a conflict. Two factions of the Sidhe - perhaps more - were disputing over how they should conduct themselves on Earth. The Realm had already been opened to Sidhe migration, you see, and many Sidhe had come here, rather than remain in the lands of the new human race. In their squabbles, the factions created various songs of power, hoping to outdo each other. One faction planned to give the humans a song of power. I am confused as to the motives behind this - or even which faction engaged in such foolishness - but I believe it was the Black Order, and that they wished the humans to be just strong enough to force all Sidhe into the Realm, where Tarax could control them in the name of Adonna. Praise O Creator Adonna!" He winked at Michael. "They've done their worst, but it doesn't hurt to follow the forms.

 

 

"I was highly regarded in those days, and so I was given the task of designing a palace for the Emperor Kubla, who would have it revealed in a dream. When Kubla Khan built the palace - and it was inevitable he would, given the strength of the dream and the beauty of my designs - in all its forms and measures it would embody an architectural song of power, making the Emperor the strongest human since the wars. I faithfully designed the palace, and others under my command prepared the dream. but a strange thing happened.

 

 

"The dream was transmitted improperly. Kubla was tantalized no end by his vision, but he could not remember it clearly enough to construct it properly. And when I was placed in his service on Earth, the workers were plagued with slips of hand and diseases of the eye. The Black Order was foiled. They blamed me. In their court - a most fearsome place, and may you never see it! - they tried me and found me guilty of bungling. For that, I am confined to this valley." He leaned forward, looking up into Michael's face. "Spryggla have magic too, you know. Magic over shapes of matter. We can be very powerful, though not as powerful as the Maln. They took away my magic, all of it except that pertaining to things yellow or golden. They imprisoned me, and I have done as best I could. Not done too badly, do you think?"

 

 

"Not badly at all," Michael said.

 

 

"I'm glad to hear it. You're the first company I've had in decades. Now and then, some of the Sidhe call on me, give me commissions. It was I who conferred with Christopher Wren, and earlier than that, with Leonardo and Michelangelo. But perhaps I shouldn't be telling you these things."

 

 

"Why would the Sidhe want you to help them?"

 

 

"It all has to do with the factions, the songs of power___No, there's certainly no need for you to suffer through all my past exploits, past failures. That's what they were, you know. Never quite as magnificent as first conceived, always interfered with in the final construction. I'm under a kind of curse." He became emphatic. "But not through any fault of my own! I am most unfortunate, caught between warring Sidhe, dragged this way and that___"

 

 

"Who was your last guest?" Michael asked.

 

 

The Spryggla's face darkened. "Someone I'd rather blot from memory. Most unpleasant. Besides, I am honored by a far more welcome guest now, and I must make the most of his company before he leaves!"

 

 

They walked back to the black stone house. "My powers are strictly confined to the valley. While I am limited to yellow and gold. I can work moderately well with the neutrals, blacks and whites and combinations thereof. Reds and browns do not interfere with my abilities, but of course I prefer yellows. And I can never leave the valley. So, as you can see, I lavish my creativity here." He sighed. "I fear I change my surroundings frequently, otherwise I would end up in a tangle of baroque embellishment. I would go quite mad."

 

 

"May I look in on my horse?" Michael asked.

 

 

"Of course, of course! How fortunate that I designed quite wonderful stables just before you arrived. Your horse is there now, very comfortable, I trust."

 

 

One wing of the house opened to the stables, which were made of gleaming black wood with natural oak stalls. Michael followed Lin Piao along a row of empty stalls, trying to remember something he had forgotten, something important___

 

 

With an effort, it came to him. Lin Piao swung wide the door to his horse's stall. Michael entered and patted the horse on the rump, checking it over to make sure it was being properly cared for. (Why would he suspect otherwise?)

 

 

"I have to leave soon," he said. Lin Piao nodded,, his permanent smile somehow out of place. "I have a responsibility."

 

 

"Indeed."

 

 

"I have to find the Isomage. So I can help my people."

 

 

Lin Piao nodded. "An honorable journey."

 

 

"I appreciate your hospitality."

 

 

"Yours to command as long as you wish."

 

 

"Everything seems fine," Michael said, closing the stall door. "Thank you."

 

 

Lin Piao bowed. "If I am too zealous of your company, please inform me. I am used to being alone, and perhaps haven't retained all the social graces."

 

 

"I don't mind," Michael said. Indeed, he didn't. He was starting to wonder what it would be like to be on his own again, without these marvelous surroundings, and this wonderful source of information.

 

 

"At any rate, I have work to do," Lin Piao said. "If you will excuse me, make yourself at home. The servants will respond to your needs."

 

 

They separated and Michael returned to the garden to sit and appreciate the flowers, the peace. He was becoming used to the limited colors. He had always liked yellow - liked it more and more now - and felt quite at home.

 

 

With nightfall, they supped in the main chamber. Lin Piao told him of the vicissitudes of working with the human Kubla, of the Khan's quiet melancholies and towering rages. "He was so nostalgic for his people's beginnings, for the steppes. We had tailored the design of the palace to impress him all the more. It was like a Mongol tent, one that might be found in the highest of the seventeen heavens - much larger than the grubby yurts his forebears slept in. All its walls were made of silk. It was a beautiful thing. in conception. But when I saw it built on Earth. the finished thing." He laid a bitter emphasis on thing. "I was dismayed. Heartsick. All my work, my conferences with the Sidhe. for naught. It was a travesty. It didn't float, it loomed. It was encrusted with Mongol ornament. It was gaudy. Yet I could not make it otherwise. I was only an advisor, an architect. I could not overrule the Khan. He was desperate to capture what he had seen in the dream. Politics, my dear Michael, is a plague found wherever groups of beings gather. I imagine even termites must deal with politics." He smiled. "But you grow sleepy."

 

 

Michael's eyes were so heavy he could hardly keep them open. Lin Piao led him to his chamber, and as he pulled the covers over himself, he heard the Spryggla say, "It's very simple, why there are no dreams here. It is to keep the ways clear....

 

 

"You. or I. We are the ones."

 

 

Then, oblivion. And in the oblivion, almost immediately, Michael struggled. Death's Radio was on him strongly now. He was not dreaming; he was struggling to stay on the ground. There was a great city seen from high in the air; he was almost as high as he had been when Eleuth tried to return him to Earth, but all his seeing focused on the great city, and to one side of the city, black and spiked like the nasty seed-ball of some evil tree, the temple.The Irall. Michael recognized it immediately. The temple of Adonna, and he was being drawn toward it___

 

 

He twisted under the blankets and came awake. He was groggy at first, and almost immediately forgot what had aroused him. There was a noise in the dark room. Michael's eyes seemed glued shut by the secretions of sleep. He took his fingers and pried them open, then rubbed them.

 

 

In dim golden candlelight, Lin Piao stood by the sleeping mat, clutching something. There was a look of exulting on his face, and exaltation.

 

 

"You have brought it to me," he said. "As it was ordained. To me. Across the worlds. The Song. My Song."

 

 

For a moment Michael didn't realize what the Spryggla was holding. It was the black book of poetry Waltiri had given him on Earth.

 

 

"That's mine," he said groggily.

 

 

"Yes, yes. You have kept it well. I thank you."

 

 

"My book," Michael reiterated, struggling to his feet. He reached out for it, but was restrained by two of the golden servants, who stepped from the shadows and held his arms in firm, warm-metal grips.

 

 

"You don't even know what it is," Lin Piao said contemptuously. The change in his tone was abrupt and it shattered whatever remained of Michael's lethargy. "Didn't I tell you, I worked to transmit the dream? And now I see they've tried again, but this time not in architecture. in poetry! And again, somebody interfered. I had heard rumors that your Isomage had part of the Song of Power. Now I know what he has been waiting for. For you, for this!"

 

 

He held up the open book so that Michael could see the page he was referring to. "A human poet is sent the Song in a dream. He remembers it, begins to write it down line for line. and is interrupted! Practical business, a person from Porlock, sent no doubt by the meddling opposing faction of the Sidhe. And when the poet returns to his paper, the dream is obliterated, only a part of it written down But Clarkham must have the part never recorded on Earth! And now you have brought the segment not allowed in the Realm, the poem Coleridge recorded, forever a fragment." Lin Piao's eyes flashed as he swung the book up and began to read.

 

 

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea."

 

 

He turned the page.

 

 

"So twice five miles of fertile ground

 

 

With walls and towers were girdled round-"

 

 

The Spryggla suddenly broke off with a choke and batted at the book with one hand as if a wasp alighted on it. He began to dance, holding the book out at arm's length and squealing like a wounded rabbit. "Traitor!" he cried. "Human!"

 

 

From between the pages fell the blue flower Michael had plucked at the edge of the golden valley. It landed on the floor, flat and lifeless but startlingly brilliant. Amid all the gold and yellow it stood out like a jewel.

 

 

Lin Piao danced away from it, still squealing. He dropped the book as if fearing it contained more. One of the servants released Michael's arm and darted for the flower but at its touch the blossom leaped and seemed to take a breath, expanding and contracting.

 

 

"No!" Lin Piao wailed. "Not this, not now!"

 

 

The servant tried again to pick up the flower, lifting it from the floor and sweeping it as high as it could reach, rushing for the door. But the flower left behind a trail of blue with every motion. The trail seemed to drip color like a swath of paint and then diffused and broadened, pulsing, alive. Lin Piao shrieked as if he were being murdered and followed the servant, staying well away from the trail of blue.

 

 

The second servant released Michael's arm and backed away. Its face rearranged itself in blocks. Michael quickly dressed and picked up the book. The trails of blue had faded. For a moment everything was quiet and seemed perfectly normal.

 

 

Then a smile confronted him in the doorway as he tried to leave. Merely a smile, nothing else; bright blue lips with electric blue teeth. It zipped away. Michael peered around the doorframe, looking from one end of the corridor to the other. Empty and quiet.

 

 

He was on his way to the stables, walking through the main chamber, when he saw brilliant veins of blue creeping under the walls, linking to form a cobalt carpet which spread over the floor. Liquid blueness dripped from all the closets and drawers and doorways, splashing across the floor, each drop trailing a thread. Michael could not avoid the invasion. It passed under his feet, tingling but painless, and crawled up the opposite wall. Faintly, from which direction he couldn't tell, he heard Lin Piao cursing.

 

 

Michael's numbness wore off rapidly. The Spryggla's magic was failing. He was frightened and pleasantly excited at the same time. The feeling of power, of overwhelming transformation, was like a tonic. He wanted to dance on the blue floor, slap his hands against the blue walls. "Free!" he shouted. "Free!"

 

 

He wasn't sure what he was free of. Had Lin Piao actually manipulated him, drugged him? He didn't know, but his thoughts were much clearer and his sense of purpose very strong.

 

 

He had to get out. He found the door leading to the outer hallway. The black stone seemed unaffected; even the fountain bowl and luminous pool were as they had been when he first entered. Now, however, he saw waves forming in the pool. The ground vibrated underfoot. As the vibration increased in frequency, the waves in the pool took on a pattern, a tesselation of geometric figures. The water rose up in bas-relief, like gelatin formed in a mold.

 

 

Michael watched the process, fascinated, until the tesselations suddenly broke down into blue smiles. The smiles lifted from the pool and flashed past him to do their work.

 

 

Michael exited to the courtyard and stood there, trying to remember his way to the stables, when Lin Piao came rushing through a side door. His golden robe was singed at the edges and his black hair had turned white. The Spryggla stopped and fixed Michael with a hate-filled stare.

 

 

"You did this! You invaded my home, my valley! Monster! Human! I can find a way to destroy you-"

 

 

"I mean you no harm," Michael said coldly. "If I can do anything to help-"

 

 

A servant came through the door Lin Piao had just used, swaying back and forth as if about to fall over. Its once-golder surface was now the color of tarnished gun-metal. Its robes were charred and tattered. They fell away in shreds. Lin Piao backed off in terror. "It's spreading! Stop it, stop it!"

 

 

"How?"

 

 

"I admit, you are the one, you are the intended. Now stop it, make it go away! I will stay here forever, I will be content-"

 

 

Blue cracks appeared in the black stone walls. The cracks joined and the stone crazed as if struck by a hammer. Indeed, the sounds coming from within the house suggested something pounding to get out.

 

 

"I don't know what to do," Michael said. "I'm not a magician."

 

 

"And I AM!" Lin Piao screamed. "How could this happen to me?" His eyes widened and the skin of his face paled almost to white as he saw a great chunk of stone fall from the wall. Above, the pagoda-like tower teetered, crumbling, all its serrated edges bathed in blue fire. Bolts of fire spread in fans to all corners of the house and walled grounds and crackled out to the valley.

 

 

Michael knew there was no place where he could flee fast enough. Not even throwing a shadow would help. The ground lifted under his feet and the paving stones separated, leaking a bright blue glow. He closed his eyes and opened them just as he was abruptly tossed high into the air. All around, fountains of electric blue rose to the sky, catching the warm dark ochre of night and transforming it into cold, star-specked black.

 

 

Michael's stomach lurched. He was without weight or substance, wrapped in eternal cold, eternal ice. Lightning played between his fingers and his hair stood on end. All the wool carpets he had ever scuffed across, all the cats he had ever rumpled, came back to haunt him.

 

 

He closed his eyes again and lay on the ground, shaken, breathless. The air smelled electric but the ground was still.

 

 

There was a long silence. He waited for more but the quiet held. Even before he opened his eyes he felt for the book. It was secure in its pocket.

 

 

He looked around. There was little amazement left in him, but all that remained was engaged by what he saw. The house had disappeared, and the gardens with it. In their place was a spreading field of blue flowers. Blue flowers blossomed all over ihe valley. The trees of the valley were losing their autumn foliage. The new leaves were rich emerald like the forests outside.

 

 

He felt for bruises. For once he had come through an experience in the Realm without cuts, scrapes or contusions.

 

 

Michael turned to see the other half of the valley. Right behind him, fist raised as if to strike, stood Lin Piao Tai. Michael drew back, then stopped. The Spryggla was motionless.

 

 

He was, in fact, solid blue.

 

 

He had been transformed into a statue of lapis lazuli, complete with his expression of horrified anger.

 

 

Twenty yards away, the Sidhe horse whinnied. They walked toward each other, and Michael greeted it with a pat on the nose and an incredulous smile. He had survived, and the horse had survived. They were none the worse for the experience.

 

 

But whatever forces had been unleashed to restore the unknown balances of the Realm had not ignored the horse's golden coat.

 

 

From tail to nose, Alyon's mount was now a dazzling shade of sky blue.

 

 

Chapter Thirty-One

 

 

Snow was falling on Lin Piao's prison-valley by the time Michael reached the crest of the hill and turned to follow the river. He stopped the horse and looked back through the snow veils. He couldn't make out the spot where the house had stood; the valley was covered with blue velvet, soon to be white. He was hardly surprised by the abrupt reversal of seasons; it was Adonna's whim and to question it, he thought with a grin, would not be following the forms.

 

 

He was still unwilling to give the Sidhe horse full rein, so he never rode it faster than a trot. Several more days were spent crossing through forest. Again, food became scarce. Michael hardly noticed. His hunger had lessened. What he really needed, as night followed sunset and yet again three times, was an indication he was heading in the right direction, doing the right thing, and not just moving from point to point on a map of foolish incidents.

 

 

At night he kindled a fire with his nailless finger and sat by the flames, reading from the book. His interactions with Death's Radio had stopped; his sleep was undisturbed. He read "Kubla Khan" several times, but he had acquired most of it by heart in junior high school. The words seemed at once silly and sublime, pellucid and obscure. Coleridge's preface to the poem was also in the book, reinforcing some of what Lin Piao had said, but Kubla's dream and the building of the palace were not mentioned.

 

 

If Lin Piao had been telling the truth, and Michael saw no reason to doubt the broad outlines, he was in possession of part of a Song of Power. If the Isomage had the second half - the part Coleridge had been prevented from recording - then together, they might be able to break the dominance of the Sidhe and save the humans and Breeds.

 

 

Or did he misunderstand the process? How could a Song of Power be both architectural and poetic? Lin Piao had mentioned encoding; perhaps poem and pleasure dome, as originally broadcast by the Sidhe, could be abstracted into a principle, an aesthetic equivalent___

 

 

At that point, his mind was lost in vagaries and he closed the book, lying back near the fire.

 

 

Proportion, after all, was important in both architecture and poetry.

 

 

"Go to sleep," he told himself wearily.

 

 

The next morning, at the edge of a broad savannah, with what looked like a mountain (and likely was not) in the hazy distance, Michael found a snare.

 

 

It had been tied to a sapling and fitted with a very sensitive rope-and-stake trigger. It hadn't captured anything yet. The horse sidestepped it with a nervous nicker. The snare had obviously been designed to catch a small animal; the sapling couldn't support anything large. The bait was forest roots placed near the trigger in a loop of rope. The roots were still quite fresh.

 

 

Michael looked around the bushes and thinning trees. No Sidhe would set a trap for a meat animal; what if it was a magician's snare, set to catch a specimen for some rite? He had seen bones around the Crane Women's mound and hut. But he suspected a human had set the snare. There was something about the snare, a humanness in the casual and elegant way it had been constructed.

 

 

He didn't know whether to be hopeful or wary.

 

 

He didn't have to wait long. The river broke through the last of the forest and made its half-frozen way across the savannah, straightening and flowing faster in a deeper bed. Michael tried to discern what the towering shape in the distance was, but couldn't. He was positive it wasn't just a mountain.

 

 

He was walking the horse on the sandy river bank, skirting patches of river ice and snow, when he felt an imposition. Nothing more than that; simply the awareness of a presence, aware of him.

 

 

He stopped and pretended to check the horse's hoof The imposition grew stronger. He took a deep breath and felt for the aura of memory. He had never needed to probe a purely human aura; now, sensing one - a man - he found it quite easy to search.

 

 

He knew how far away the man was, but not the direction. Whoever had set the snare was following him at a distance of about a hundred feet. The frosty grass was barely two feet high. "Anything I can do for you?" he called out on impulse. The man was forty or forty-five Earth-years old. Not a native English-speaker, but he seemed to be able to speak English well enough. "I'm not a Sidhe, you know. I found your trap set in the woods."

 

 

Slowly, a heavy-set bearded man with short spiky gray hair rose from a low crouch in the grass, shaking his head and smiling through a broad moustache. "Good trick," he said. "You smell like a Sidhe. I didn't know what you were. Bozhe moi, a human, out here!"

 

 

The man was a Russian, Michael realized, and a hunter. He didn't come any closer. He stood in the grass, dressed in skins and furs with a cloth bag over his shoulder and a fur cap perched on one side of his head, ear-flaps untied.

 

 

"Well," the man said after a pause, "Not like a Sidhe, that is, you don't exactly smell like one. Not sure what you were. I followed you to the Spryggla's valley. You went in, came out. Big changes. I followed you here."

 

 

"Then you can teach me a few things," Michael said. "I didn't even suspect you were around until I saw the snare."

 

 

"Not much of anybody here, you know." The hunter began walking toward him, eyes flashing with caution. "Sidhe don't come here much at all. This whole area, south to the mountains and east to the city, west to. the Isomage's hole. Euterpe. You from there?"

 

 

Michael nodded. "And you?"

 

 

"They never caught me," he said. "I was a dancer." He held out his arms and looked down at his solid frame. "I came here when I was fourteen. Christos!" He wiped his eyes with a gloved hand. "Memories. Just seeing you brings them back. Forty years or more. I don't know. Been here." Now he wept openly, standing ten yards away and shaking, wiping his eyes and finally turning away in shame. "Just a boy," he sobbed. "You're not much older than I was, then."

 

 

Michael was embarrassed. "They didn't catch you?" he repeated, trying to calm the man.

 

 

"Too fast! Much too fast." He wiped his face with his sleeve and faced Michael again, coming a few steps closer. "I haven't talked with a human in. I've forgotten how long. I hunt, eat, sleep, go to the city and visit the Sidhe - - -Your horse. That's what made me think you might be a Sidhe. Where did you get it?"

 

 

"From the Wickmaster of the Pact Lands."

 

 

"Alyons?" The hunter stepped back in awe. "How?"

 

 

"He's dead. He thought I was the one who killed him. I wasn't. But he - or rather, one of his shadows - gave me the horse."

 

 

"Alyons is dead?"

 

 

Michael nodded again. "Killed in a trap set by the Isomage."

 

 

"I was there during the Isomage's first battle, long ago," the hunter said, st king his head. "I watched the pillar of magic, all the colors and monsters you'd ever hope to see. Some of it caught me, changed me, but I escaped. It aged me." He bit his bearded lower lip and looked up at the sky to blink back more tears. "I became the age I am now. I was just watching, but the magic caught me. I fled. Never stopped until I came to the city." He pointed to the hazy mountain-shape. "A Sidhe woman took me in, taught me. I was very slender back then. But this is all premature. We need names. I am. Christos! I've forgotten." He blinked. "I am. Nikolai! There."

 

 

"I'm Michael." Nikolai removed his glove and they shook hands.

 

 

"Your hands are very warm for not being warmly dressed," Nikolai marveled. "The Sidhe have taught you, I suspect?"

 

 

"Breeds," Michael said. "The Crane Women."

 

 

"Do I pry if I ask where you are going?"

 

 

Michael didn't feel ready to answer, so he smiled and shrugged.

 

 

"I understand. At any rate, you go to the city. The river passes the city, and you follow the river, correct? Do we con- ' tinue together?" He stared imploringly at Michael, bushy eyebrows lifted. Michael agreed.

 

 

As they walked on, Nikolai revealed the contents of his bag. He had strips of dried meat, tied neatly in pale white bark. "From something like a rabbit, big eyes," he said. "Stupid for a Sidhe animal." There were pieces of roots used to bait the snare, and fruit much like the kinds Michael had eaten in the orchard. He also had nuts and a bag of acom flour. He took out a wood-bole pipe. "To smoke, I have this leaf, dried. Quite tolerable. Never smoke around a Sidhe. They enrage with jealousy. They can't smoke, you know."

 

 

"You're tolerated in the city?"

 

 

"They welcome me, they do! The females, you'll see. Sidhe males don't live there much now. Very cold. Prigs, I say. The females will welcome you, too. But the horse. I don't know about the horse. You tell the truth, that Alyons passed it on?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

Nikolai shook his head dubiously. "We'll see. It's a wonderful place, the city. Built for the Faer by Spryggla, ages ago."

 

 

That night they camped on a snow-free stretch of sand on the inner bank of a bend in the river. Nikolai offered his pipe to Michael, who refused it politely. Nikolai took a deep puff and blew the smoke across the still night air, just as the stars settled overhead. "My story," he said, "then yours. Agreed?"

 

 

Michael nodded. Nikolai began his story and spun it on at great length, in much more detail than was necessary. Hours stretched on, but the hunter seemed tireless. Finally Michael lay back and rested his head on his arms. Nikolai offered him a small pillow filled with flexible leaves. "Go ahead," he said, "doze. Won't bother me." And indeed, it didn't.

 

 

The core of the story was that Nikolai Nikolaievich Kuprin had been brought to the United States from Leningrad to dance in the Denishawn school. He had been dancing since the age of seven-"Really dancing, not just tottering like when I was four"- but not necessarily by choice. Music had always held more attractions for him than dance. Along with the grueling dance practice schedule, he had tried to study piano, and finally had become proficient enough to play accompaniment for the other dancers. "It happened when I was playing Stravinksy," he said, voice softening. "I was at my family's dacha in California, in Pasadena, on leave of absence. Nervous exhaustion. They let me play the piano because it relaxed me. I was doing 'Rite of Spring' for the next season's presentations." He lifted his shoulders and sighed. "Fourteen, I was. I knew nothing of our world, let alone this! Alyons' coursers almost captured me, but I was naturally canny. They were distracted by the conflict. That was when I came near the battle and saw the finale."

 

 

He looked down at Michael, who was nearly asleep.

 

 

"A little black-haired boy, watching," he said, eyes welling with tears. "What they did, the monsters they unleashed. The hatred for my people. It's wondrous I can like any of the Sidhe now. Wondrous."

 

 

That was the last word Michael heard that night, or heard clearly; Nikolai continued long after he was asleep.

 

 

In the morning, Nikolai was still awake by the embers of the fire, staring out across the misty savannah with bright eyes and an alert expression. "One more thing I learned," he told Michael. "Humans do not have to sleep here. Perhaps you can stop sleeping now, too."

 

 

The season was changing yet again. Two days later, the enormous city of the Sidhe covered almost the entire northeastern horizon. The sun was warming, driving out the snow and freeing the river of ice, which crackled and snapped all night as it broke up, and sometimes boomed like cannon. Nikolai suggested they camp on a boulder in case the water rose and flooded the savannah.

 

 

Michael offered to let Nikolai ride the horse but he refused. His attitude - half reverence, half fear - worried Michael. There seemed to be something the Russian wasn't telling, perhaps out of politeness, perhaps assuming that Michael already knew.

 

 

In the afternoon, less than five miles from the city, they rested beneath a broad laurel-like tree that stood alone on the grassland. "The city is a hundred miles from side to side, roughly.guessed," Nikolai said, tugging experimentally on a low-lying branch. The smell of grass and damp soil swirled around them, driven by puffing breezes. "It's surrounded by five wails, with four gates in each wall. Now those towers on the left." He pointed a leaf and sighted along it with his left eye. "That's where the music masters work. Sidhe music. Never heard it, myself. My female acquaintances say it would blast a human brain to blissful ash. Interesting experience, perhaps. And over there, in the golden dome, are Sidhe factories. What they produce I've never been told. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out, but they make, nonetheless."

 

 

In the warming sun, the city glistened gold and white and silver, with-blue-gray walls and pale gray bridges and roads surrounding a central mountain of Realm granite. Atop the granite a needle-slim spire rose several thousand feet above the savannah, studded with crystalline structures. "We can't see it from here, but on the other side, about ten miles beyond the city wall-"

 

 

"The Irall," Michael said. "Adonna's temple."

 

 

Nikolai stiffened. "You've been here before?"

 

 

"I've seen it. from above. In visions."

 

 

"What else have you seen?"

 

 

"A Sidhe who trained with me showed me the mountains where the Black Order raises initiates for the temple."

 

 

"Those mountains lie far to the north," Nikolai said. "Always in snow, wrapped in snow-clouds, black rock with age-old blue ice sheets."

 

 

"You sound like you've been there," Michael said.

 

 

"Near."

 

 

On the western slope of the city's mountain was a building shaped like a rhombus twisted into a two-turn spiral, about a mile high and three-quarters of a mile across at its base. Around the base were huge tree-trunk supports holding up floors without walls, open to the air. Higher, the trunks branched out and multiplied until they formed a solid thicket around the upper floors. With the trunks and branches providing vertical stability, the Spryggla builders had arranged for transparent panels of many different colors to cover the upper levels, a single color panel to every region separated by a branch. The effect was a miracle of variety and color. Several similar structures, of different size and height, grew up around the mountain.

 

 

Closer to them, on the southern slope, was a low flat building consisting of a mesa-like upper surface braced by thousands of the tree-trunk supports. Each trunk was hung with clusters of dwellings arranged in a pleasing haphazard fashion around the building's circumference. Atop the mesa - barely visible as a green fuzz from a distance - was a thick forest. Yet another building had floors arranged like a stack of cards given a shove and slanted. A third had floors tilted to intersect other floors at angles of thirty degrees or more, the whole resembling a crystal latticework.

 

 

Between the larger structures were profusions of street-level houses, following the contours of the foothills, covering the lower slopes of the mountain and spotting the heights between ambitious roadways.

 

 

Michael regretted he hadn't had more time to talk with Lin Piao. If the Spryggla could build cities like this, they were something very special; he had never seen anything like it and didn't expect he would again.

 

 

Nikolai clearly enjoyed Michael's fascination. "The city is always impressive," he said. "Look over there." He pointed with proprietary glee. "That building. They make it like a small mountain, the walls come out in ridges. Caves in the walls. Never been there. What kind of Sidhe lives there, do you think?"

 

 

Michael wouldn't hazard a guess. The horse walked along beside them, looking ahead with ears perked, as if it knew it would soon be in more familiar company and looked forward to it. As impressed as he was, Michael wasn't quite so enthusiastic. The few experiences he'd had with the Sidhe didn't lead him to relish the prospect of further contact. Nikolai tried to reassure him.

 

 

"Listen, in the country, it's like they're bumpkins. Rude, unsophisticated. This is the city. Females are very different. Not many males. They welcome me, welcome you. We'll get along fine."

 

 

"What about the horse?"

 

 

"He's your horse, is he not? Alyons willed him to you."

 

 

"I don't have any proof," Michael said. Nikolai had nothing to say to that.

 

 

The walls of the city had been assembled from huge blocks of stone, covered with a bluish ceramic glaze. Nikolai urged him up an incline onto a roadway paved with white stone slabs. The roadway pointed straight as an arrow to a broad, low mouth-like gate in the shadow of the outermost wall.

 

 

"We come in from the rear. This is the face the city turns to the grasslands. Not much traffic, a little-used gate."

 

 

The gate resembled the entrance to a huge dark cavern. The wall appeared to be hundreds of feet thick, yet it was only a hundred feet high, making it more of an elevated causeway around the city.

 

 

Nikolai stopped at the edge of the roadway and put down his bag. "Here is where I change clothes, stash my food, domesticate myself to the ways of the Sidhe. You are disgusted if your cat brings home a dead animal, no? The Sidhe would dislike my foodstuffs and choice of apparel." He pulled out a simple tunic and pair of pants, stuffed his other clothing into the bag, and hid it in the hollow trunk of a nearby tree.

 

 

There were-no visible guards. Nikolai led Michael a little ways into the darkness, then stopped and sat down with his back against the glass-smooth inner surface. "We wait a few minutes."

 

 

In more like an hour, Nikolai peered off into the darkness and nodded to himself. "There," he said. "She comes."

 

 

Far off in the gloom, a single figure approached them.

 

 

Michael stood and made himself as presentable as possible while Nikolai looked on. "Who is this contact of yours?" Michael asked.

 

 

"An attendant to the Ban of Hours," Nikolai said enigmatically.

 

 

The Sidhe woman was taller than Michael by a foot, and Michael was somewhat taller than Nikolai. Her most striking feature was her face, which was marked with horizontal stripes of orange bordered by lines of charcoal gray. As she walked gracefully up to them, Nikolai gave her an exaggerated theatrical bow. She hardly looked at him, keeping her gaze on Michael. Her eyes were pale gray-blue, like the edges of clouds set one against another. Her lips were narrow, almost severe, in a typically long Sidhe face. She wore a purple-brown cloak edged with a satiny strip of flame red. Beneath the cloak, glimpsed briefly as she walked, was a cream-colored gown with appliqued floral patterns of pure white.

 

 

She wasn't what Michael would have called pretty, but she was extraordinarily exotic.

 

 

"Hello," she said. Michael felt his aura being delicately feathered, with nothing of Alyons' bluntness or the Crane Women's forthright probing. The sensation was pleasant.

 

 

"Sana rega Ban," Nikolai said. "I introduce my friend, Michael Perrin. He wanders as I-"

 

 

She ignored both of them now, looking at the horse. She smiled and turned back to Michael, then reached out and gripped his upper arm in warm, gentle fingers. "I am Ulath," she said. "Of the line of Wis. Your friend is most unusual, Nikolai. The Ban of Hours will enjoy him, don't you think?"

 

 

"I certainly hope so," Nikolai said.

 

 

"This is your horse?" Ulath asked Michael.

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"I've never seen a blue horse, even in the Realm."

 

 

"There's a story behind that, rega Ban," Nikolai said. "I'm sure he'll tell it again, when the time is proper."

 

 

"Come," Ulath said, "and be welcome to Inyas Trai."

 

 

"That." Nikolai said, "is the name of this city, and I advise you not to say it aloud, even when you are alone."

 

 

"A superstition, Nikolai," the Sidhe woman said, her voice deepening.

 

 

"My lady," Nikolai said, bowing again. "We are but poor-"

 

 

"None of your humility. It doesn't belong here."

 

 

"No, indeed," Nikolai said, straightening and smiling at Michael. "There is nothing humble about the city of the Sidhe."

 

 

The tunnel branched in two in the depths of the wall, one branch leading off into reddish darkness, the other toward a half-circle of daylight. To Michael's relief, they walked toward the daylight.

 

 

They emerged onto a narrow street which wound between walls of tan and white buildings. The street was profoundly quiet. Michael felt as if he were at the bottom of a deep river gorge. Crystalline circular mirrors set in the walls reflected daylight all around, throwing luminous patches onto the streets at intervals of a few yards. As the sun passed overhead, new networks of reflection shifted into being, and new patches appeared as the old faded.

 

 

Ulath walked a steady two paces ahead of Nikolai and Michael, her robes rustling richly and her thick dark red hair swaying back and forth, a seductive pendulum counterbalancing the roll of her hips.

 

 

Nikolai looked around with bright interest, smiling now and then at Michael and silently pointing out one or another feature of Inyas Trai. After a few minutes, having passed only three other Sidhe - all female, and all dressed in some variation of Ulath's garb - they arrived at a broad rugged stone laid into a high-walled, shadowy alcove. Two natural steps provided easy access to the stone's flat surface. Ulath climbed the steps and looked back at them. "Does he know of stepping stones?" she asked. Nikolai shrugged.

 

 

"Do you?"

 

 

"No," Michael said. Ulath then faced him fully and by the most marvelous kind of out-seeing Michael had experienced, filled his head with the most important particulars of Inyas Trai.

 

 

To get from place to place in the huge city, stepping stones simply and directly took one from here, to there. Each stone had seven correlates. A passenger had only to think of the desired correlate, and he was whisked away. Inyas Trai had no vehicle transportation. One either walked, rode a horse (of which there were few in the city) or used the stones.

 

 

They stepped. The alcove brightened and faded and they stood in the middle of another stone, at the edge of the roof of a very tall building. Wind whipped Michael's hair. They were nearly level with the peak of the mountain and the air was quite cool. A sweet, spicy odor met them, wafting from slender bamboo-like stalks on one side of the stone. Michael was the last to step down; he was still "seeing" and absorbing the information Ulath had provided.

 

 

The city was populated almost entirely by females. Males didn't appreciate urban life; centuries ago, they had retreated to the woods around the Irall, rarely if ever returning. Females ran the city; the Ban of Hours, Ulath's mistress, was the equivalent of a counselor in the city heirarchy.

 

 

Michael blinked. He had suddenly become aware that in out-seeing, Ulath had deftly avoided his aura's barriers and plucked out a substantial chunk of personal information. She smiled at him apologetically and walked on, robes and hair swinging.

 

 

"Where are we going?" he asked Nikolai in a whisper.

 

 

"To the house of the Ban of Hours," Nikolai said, "She keeps the Sidhe records of the city. I will introduce you to Emma, and then I will go on my pilgrimage."

 

 

"You didn't mention a pilgrimage."